Remarks on the Phenomenology of Dating

One of The Gang asked me when was the last time I went on a date? I gave some sort of politely evasive answer like "my memory isn't that good", which evasion is allowed by may age and maturity. The real answer is "what the frak would I do that for?" Or rather "why the frak would I go through the motions?"

A date is two adults, after 7:30 in the evening, with the possibility of sex. If there's no possibility of sex, it's not a date, it's just a meal or a movie or a night at the opera. Now, at the end of every weekday evening I have to catch a commuter train - cab fares from central London are silly - so it's going to be an early evening. Sunday night is a school night, and so is Friday night because I have housework to do Saturday morning. Saturday night is for the under-thirties and people who don't get out during the week: grown-ups don't do Saturday night dates. This leaves zero possibility of sex. Even before we factor in the whole age thing. Let alone the differential looks thing (women my age look it, I don't: women who look the age I look are ten to twenty years younger, and they aren't going to date me). Why would I go on something that looked like a date, when I know in advance that it isn't? I can go to the theatre just fine on my own thank you.

It's actually worse than that. Though I would be good company, I doubt there would be one moment when I actually thought of whoever she was as a woman. A woman is a female with whom sex is a possibility: once it's no longer a possibility, she's not a woman, she's just a guy with estrogen.

I've begun to realise that this is actually a general phenomenum. I'll give you another example. I'm Pilates Class Guy. You've seen me: one guy, maybe two, in bloke-ish shorts and sloppy sweat shirt, wearing socks. The rest of the class are women of varying ages and looks, all wearing clothes that fit and with bare feet. If you're Pilates Class Guy, you realise after a couple of sessions that your natural masculine instinct to check out the women is a little, well, creepy in such a confined space. Especially when half of them would be as old as your daughter if you had a daughter. So you focus on the exercises, stop looking at the women and after a while, and I mean, in less than a class, they've stopped being women.

A person is someone with whom we have dealings, or the think we might have dealings, or wish we didn't have to. (The technical term for the last type is "assholes".) The someones on the escalators and stairs on London Transport aren't people: they're just mobile obstructions to be dodged round. The staff behind the counter at Fernandez and Wells are people: I have dealings with them. I don't know their names, but they are people. The Gang at work are people and personalities: I have dealings with them, gossip and banter with them, I take what I know about them into account in my dealings with them. The women in the Pilates class aren't people and even if they were, they wouldn't be women. Women are females-with-whom-sex-is-a-possibility. There is no possibility of sex with any of them.

In fact, actually going out on a date with someone I might, in other circumstances, have liked to go on a date with, would spoil it. As a fantasy date she's a woman, as a real date, she's someone I'm saying "Thank you, I had a lovely time" to, before I catch a ten o'clock train home, and has stopped being a woman. Which is a nifty little Catch-22. Or to put it another way: if you know you're coming back home alone at the end of the night, why they hell did you bother going out in the first place?

Now that last bit may be as much my fault, in that it's a blind alley I've driven myself into, but that's not the point. The point is the how it shapes my view of and feelings towards the world. It makes it a more empty place.