Looking in London

The night before last I had a date with this Australian guy, now I’ve always liked the idea of dating an Australian guy, I love the accent and the whole surf look intrigues me, and my naive opinion has been that my adoration for Australians would probably overcome any flaws I encountered in any of the Australian guys I were to ever meet, at least I always HAD that opinion, this date changed that completely!!

We met at he train station and initially I’m quite impressed, he’s stocky but in a nice way, gorgeous blue eyes, short shaved hair and dressed fairly reasonably, probably a little short at 5’9’’ but no-ones perfect and I’m in no way on a search for perfection. He’s sexy, manly and I can’t wait to hear the Aussie accent to match.

So in this split second approaching each other, I have images of growing old on a beach hut down under, sun kissed skin for the rest of my adult life, the tears as I wave goodbye to my family at the airport, leaving to start my ‘married’ life………THEN HE SPEAKS!!

Now this is not the accent that comes out of all my other Aussie friend’s mouths, at first I think maybe I’ve got it wrong, is he South African maybe? Then I guess he has just been in England too long, I later find out he has actually been here for 4 years, so he has no doubt lost a majority of his accent, he is also originally from Sydney; apparently the accent isn’t so strong there, damn!

Ok so he hasn’t got the sexy Aussie accent, but he’s still pretty sexy…actually no he isn’t, I’m not finding him attractive anymore!!! Surely I haven’t gone off him simply because he isn’t quite ‘outback’ enough for me, I’m really not that picky usually, ‘What is wrong with you Darren?’……THEN HE SPEAKS AGAIN!!

It suddenly dawns on me not only does the accent sound unfamiliar but if I were to close my eyes I suspect I probably wouldn’t be able to tell you whether this accent/voice was coming from a male or female, although I would probably lean towards the latter. He is so camp, I start to notice the hand movements now too, oh dear, although surprisingly I actually start to chill out now, I don’t find him attractive and am able to completely relax into my true self.

We go into a bar and end up having some really fun conversations; he makes me laugh a lot, which is quite a rarity on dates, well a genuine laugh anyway. He is really quite a bitch and definitely a comedian, unfortunately it’s in a Dame Edna kind of way as opposed to Russell Brand, but still I’m amused and having quite a good time.

I drop him home afterwards and accidentally end up kissing him goodbye, well he kissed me, I just accidentally let him and kissed him back. This is such a regular occurrence its unreal, its so much easier to return the kiss when a date you are not interested in tried to kiss you, I’m hardly going to pull back and go ‘Actually I’d rather you didn’t, I don’t actually find you attractive’ and in all honesty at least if I’m kissing him it shuts off the camp sound for a couple of minutes!!

Was it a good kiss? I’m afraid not, his tongue was far too long and far too forceful, at one stage I thought to myself, surely he can tell this is a bad kiss, but it seemed not, I got home and had the ‘Would like to see you again text’ and what else can you do but ignore it, no reply paints a very clear picture much more politely than a ‘Thanks but no thanks’ reply.

And after that night I find myself looking at examples in the past when I could have possibly been in his position and my date in mine. The dating game works in circles for me, I’ll have a situation with one guy and then with the next guy, or a few after, the roles are reversed, maybe its the rules of dating-karma, could it be the reason I can’t find ‘the one’ is my karma has to be equal before I can stop. If that’s the case then geez I wish I could work out where the imbalance is?

So after a failed long term relationship and then two failed attempts with two ‘wonderful’ people to get to that 'In Relationship' status on Facebook, you would think I would just give up, but do I? Of course not!

With most things in life that we fail at time after time, we usually come to the conclusion that we are not good at it and do the dignified thing and give up, but for some reason when it comes to finding that one special relationship I just can't seem to let it lie.

I have spent so many Saturday nights howling with laughter at Simon Cowell telling yet another cat-strangling-singing-hopeful who believes they have a talent to give up their dream of a career in pop only for them to turn up at the following 2 years auditions, when in fact in my own special way I'm doing the same thing month after month, admittedly I'm not doing it on National TV but nonetheless the audience is still embarrassingly large. My work-colleagues find the tales especially amusing and are more than happy to lend their ear, to the latest tales of love that I have managed to embroil myself in, maybe in writing them down, I can prevent my life become the spectacle it seems to be turning into for the people surrounding me.

And I have come to wonder, how many others are the same? Are a large majority of us on this same search, suffering the same set backs again and again without ever giving up?
And will I in fact actually throw the towel in one day and accept that I can actually be happy alone?

They say you won’t ever find your true love until you stop looking, and from observing others around me it does seem to be for the most part true. But try as I can to stop looking, I only ever end up ‘not looking’ in order to find The One, so in reality I haven’t really stopped looking at all, which defeats the whole purpose. So I’m caught in a catch22 and unless I prove the saying wrong or reach the enlightening state of singledom happiness it seems I may just end up dying trying.

So here begins a record of what will no doubt be the many lows and hopefully one or more highs of my solution to or my dying trying Looking for Love in London….