(This is from my upcoming book “How I Became a Dirty Old Man (like Bukowski)”)
Finally, my daughter came back and picked up that demon mutt. Sparky wagged his tail and leapt into her arms like an angel, as if he hadn\u2019t spent three days turning my flat into a war crime scene. She kissed him on the snout and called him \u201cmy sweet little baby.\u201d I waved weakly, muttered \u201cgood riddance,\u201d and shut the door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Silence. Blessed silence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At last, I had time to return to the only true hobby of a divorced man: online dating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Hunt<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I fired up my laptop like a general preparing for battle. Profiles flashed before me\u2014women between the ages of eighteen and death. That was my filter. Eighteen and death. Nothing more, nothing less.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I crafted the perfect message, a masterpiece of charm and subtle flattery. But I wasn\u2019t stupid\u2014I knew sending the same note to everyone would look lazy. So I customised each one, sprinkling in details from their profiles:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI also love sunsets.\u201d<\/em> Copy, paste, tweak, send.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By the time I finished, I had messaged one hundred and four women. One hundred and four. That was my Sunday gone. By the end, my eyes were red, my fingers were cramped, and my optimism was circling the drain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Results<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The next morning, I opened my inbox with trembling hands. The gods of romance had surely rewarded my effort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Three messages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Three. Out of one hundred and four.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Well, better than nothing, I told myself. Three women were still three more than zero. A full week\u2019s calendar if I played it right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I clicked the first reply.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The second.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The third.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And then my jaw dropped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They were all from the same woman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The same damn woman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Devil Herself<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n She wasn\u2019t impressed. In fact, she was furious. Apparently, she had multiple profiles on different sites (why, I don\u2019t know\u2014schizophrenia? paranoia? low self-esteem?), and I, clever Jan, had managed to message every single one of her alter egos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She tore me apart. Called me a creep, a desperate dirty old man, a serial dater, a player without the looks or the charm to back it up. She wrote paragraphs, entire essays about how I was \u201ceverything wrong with modern men.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n I could almost hear her voice in my head, shrill and triumphant, like she\u2019d just won Wimbledon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Punchline<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n And yet\u2014here\u2019s the kicker\u2014I\u2019m going to meet her tomorrow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why? Because that\u2019s how pathetic I am. She insulted me, humiliated me, told me I was a dirty old man (fair enough). But at the end of her rant, there was one tiny sentence: \u201cStill, you seem\u2026 interesting.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Interesting!<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s enough for me. I\u2019d crawl over broken glass for \u201cinteresting.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n So yes, I\u2019m going. I feel I might get lucky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Or at least, lucky enough to hate myself a little more afterwards.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (This is from my upcoming book “How I Became a Dirty Old Man (like Bukowski)”) Finally, my daughter came back and picked up that demon mutt. Sparky wagged his tail and leapt into her arms like an angel, as if he hadn\u2019t spent three days turning my flat into a war crime scene. She kissed … Lue lis\u00e4\u00e4<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dirtyoldman.blog\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dirtyoldman.blog\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dirtyoldman.blog\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dirtyoldman.blog\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dirtyoldman.blog\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1577"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dirtyoldman.blog\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1578,"href":"https:\/\/dirtyoldman.blog\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1577\/revisions\/1578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dirtyoldman.blog\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dirtyoldman.blog\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dirtyoldman.blog\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\u201cYou look lovely in that green dress.\u201d<\/em>
\u201cI\u2019ve always wanted to visit Portugal.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n