It is interesting how different life is when, after a long drought, it appears you might have a boyfriend. There’s so much free time, for a start, when you are not obsessively trawling dating sites and trying to get perfectly ordinary blokes even to reply to you. It became seriously time-depleting, recently. The more they didn’t want to talk to me, the more determined I became to break through.
Now, there is Marc. Marc is possessed of a natural mental certainty. After one date, he assumed we were now together, search over, though it is possible he has been the same with a string of others. (I can’t help this thinking. It has become ingrained.) By the time we got to our Sunday walk, around a part of the city I didn’t know, he was holding my hand and saying, “Maybe we should go away somewhere interesting for a weekend.” It’s hard to react honestly to this kind of thing, this rushing ahead. The heart wants to leap with joy. The mind tells it to cool it, and slow down. In this case, the mind won. No Airbnb listings have yet been scrolled through.
Marc is confident by nature. He isn’t fazed by other people’s hesitations. He doesn’t dwell on them. He’s a bit like a golden retriever. He doesn’t take it badly if you don’t want to play, just waits stoically until you’re ready. All of which made it easy, and also difficult, to navigate Wednesday’s third-date expectations.
On Sunday’s walk, ambling along, talking about cheese, he remarked suddenly that I wasn’t anything like as fierce as he thought I’d be. Fierce? I said, not entirely gently. Yes, he said – judging by the things you say about yourself on the profile, your academic interests, the anti-reality-TV-tirade, I expected … But that’s just to save time, I said, interrupting. It’s a filter. And it’s true. I have become someone very specific online. This, without doubt, is to do with my age. It’s a way of feeling less invisible and more substantial. This is me. I’m interesting. Look how interesting and diverse I am (I say, without actually saying it), and if a small waist’s more important to you, your loss, buddy.
You, I said to Marc, are not really there in your profile. You give nothing away. Well, that’s my policy, he said. Bland in the profile, friendly in the email, lively at the pub. That’s how the men do it.
Wednesday came. We hadn’t spoken again about Wednesday and its possible significance. The thing is, although I’m having more fun than I’ve had in quite a while and third-date sex is considered perfectly respectable in the circles I move in (a straw poll was done), I knew in advance that I wasn’t going to be ready, not least because, in this case, the three dates were all in the same week.
This is something that hasn’t been an issue, yet, but might be about to be: negotiating the protocols of dating and sex in middle age. My ex-husband and I got together at a party. First-date shagging ensued (it wasn’t really even a date), but we were barely adults and it all seemed perfectly natural then. These days self-consciousness is potentially a hurdle. I can’t help that. It’s one of the paradoxes of 50 that one is fearless in so many ways, liberatingly so, but when it comes to focusing on the body ... Being naked and saggy with a man you like is a risk; that’s just a fact. For some of us, it’s only our clothes that are holding it all together. Even someone you like might mind that. They might not be able to help it.
We had a glass of wine in a pub, and then he said he had a lovely bottle of white burgundy chilling in his fridge (code: It’s sexy time, baby). I was nervous about going to his flat with him, this man I don’t really know, and the door closing behind us, and said so. He didn’t flinch. We sat out in his tiny city garden and drank the lovely wine. Then … well, there wasn’t wave-crashing, but there was a walk along the shore, so to speak. He said, “Are you sure you don’t want to come in?” and I said I wasn’t ready. He walked me to the bus stop, and it rained, and we sheltered in a doorway, kissing. Two teenage girls ran past with their coats over their heads. One said, “Did you see those two old people? That’s real passion. I want that.”
• Stella Grey is a pseudonym
