Be Careful What You Wish For
by John D. MichaelisExcuse me.
Mind if I asked you a couple of questions?
Are you quite tall (5ft 11ins) and handsome and blue-eyed, clean-shaven, with short, dark brown hair? Do you have a medium build and weigh no more (but not much less, either) than 175 pounds? Do you earn £30,000 or more per annum and have a BA? Do you own a £300,000 home? A silver Mercedes Benz automobile? Are you a non-smoker who is less than enthusiastic about football but adores our furry friends (I mean pets)? Have you yet to be married or have children, had no more than six previous sexual partners and only been serious about three of them? Do you like going to the theatre, the cinema or eating out?
Yes?
Well, you’re in luck. According to a survey made recently, you possess the perfect male profile for most Internet Dating sites.
And you probably sound like the new iPhone’s Siri. Or as weird as Dougray Scott did in Desperate Housewives.
And while I already think that I’m inclined to dislike you, girls will soon be pestering me for your phone number so that they get in the queue to sleep with you as they did with the misogynistic Tolen in The Knack.
It’s no use telling them that you might be gay, or that you could have psychopathic tendencies (not, I hasten to add, that the two have any synonymy). Or that you did a longish stretch in Pentonville (which is why you’ve only had six previous partners until now) for doing something unusually unpleasant with your sister or that you have industrial-disaster-scale bad breath. Or that you stole the Merc, murdered your parents to get their house, stabbed your best friend in the back to get his job (which you’re rubbish at, by the way), and always seem to have left your wallet behind when it comes to paying the restaurant bill.
None of that will matter much, very little of it will matter at all.
Online, at least, you are perfection.
