GQ Magazine

Long-Distance Lover

The perfect date : How far is too far, asks Kevin Braddock

I have been dating intensively, because it takes initiative to be successfully single on the wrong side of 30. Five dates in three countries over ten days delivers one “result” from the vast anonymity of the singletonsphere, providing that dating does work, as does carpet-bombing during the war. Whichever way you look at it, a 20 per cent success rate is still a 100 per cent improvement on another empty night in bed. And there have recently been plenty of those chez moi.

It has never been easier to find sex, because there is an explosion in new ways to meet and seduce women beyond Binge Britain’s 200,000 licensed premises. But British men do not date well. The naked scrutiny of one another’s bedroom potential, prospects and a salary across a dining table is an everyday procedure in New York, birthplace of the “date”. But dating here is an imbroglio in which reserve meets embarrassment in an alcohol marinade and fails to get on. British and American dating are mathematical, but that’s where similarities end. If you’re on to Date No. 3 in NYC, you pack Trojans and Viagra. If you end up drunk on the same person’s sofa five times in the UK, it’s known as a relationship.

Throwing money at the situation is also nature’s way of showing you care. In dating, it also pays to play the field from as many angles as possible. Thus, I prepare a CV and upload some pictures onto an online-dating service, which is free. I am then conscripted into a matchmaking agency that introduces high-earning professionals, for a fee of £5,000. My profile crystallises thus: am open to new experiences; avg appearance, intelligent, active, NS, GSOH, can cook, spell, play guitar!; WLTM 25-33, brunette, own personality, cultural horizons beyond Dan Brown, for fun, possibly more; millionairesses welcomed.

The agency provides me with three matches: all attractive, professional women who may not be millionairesses yet, but probably will be one day soon. Meanwhile in the online sphere, by some anomaly of evolution, I generate 24 Favourites (profiles I have selected) and 34 Fans (members who have selected me). Two wish to meet. That’s five in total. I brush my teeth and we’re off.

Whether you date for love or date for sex, what happens over the next ten days is indicative of how it happens today.

There are the Dates-On-A-Plate, and these demand reserve. The expensive agency sends me for lunch to St Tropez – yes, really – where I meet a 28-year-old B on the beach. The setting and food are magnificent, I feel great and she is glam in Chanel, shades and racy tights and heels. We get on famously. I manoeuvre conversation towards the Battle of the Sexes, i.e., us. She tells me about dates: the banker who got so drunk she had to carry him out of the restaurant, the hopeless ones, the ones that were just “dinner and fumbling”. While we eat we play a fantasy love game. Name the person you would: go for dinner with (her: Robbie; me: Kirstie Allsopp); go dancing with (Fred Astaire; Madonna) go to be with (Brad Pitt; Sophia Loren and Britt Ekland, in honour of Peter Sellers); spend the rest of your life with (she can’t think of anyone; the French girl in the Renault ad)

When we talk about our ideal holidays, B cites naked on the beach in the Caribbean” and pulls off her shades to see my reaction. I say trekking in Bhutan would be interesting. She admits she likes a man’s man and believes women should never have been given the vote. The door of opportunity swings open. We text-flirt while I ride to the airport, but I’ve lost my appetite. Sometimes that happens when it is served on a plate.

There are the Foregone Conclusion dates, and these require endurance. The agency next sends me to New York, where J turns up at a restaurant I booked for lunch. |There is less chemistry than the periodic table. She wants answers. “So you’re in journalism?” “Yes I’m a generalist – generally, I’m not very good at it. “She laughs and the freeze thaws as we order. We struggle for common ground, and it freezes over again. She is 34 and does something corporate. “Where do you see yourself in five years time?” she asks. “I rarely see myself in five days time,” I say. I can’t even commit to my own future. Another clanger. She says she would like kids and marriage. “For women, it’s different; you have to think about kids.” I am still thinking about the starters.

A chilly hour later she says, “I’ve had a lovely time,” and taxis away with indecent urgency. I’m already regretting every second because it’s 2.20pm on a dull Monday and I’m half drunk and it’s sad, even though my expectations were lower and smaller that mice on the subway floor.

Most dates make you wish you weren’t dating. Prospects that don’t ring back, dates that don’t turn up and dates that lead nowhere. I take a Japanese artist I met online to an East London pub. We get drunk and she is impressed when I fix her bike. I tell her I will drop her a line. She stipulates e-mail and tells me she is seeing someone else. There are the dates when you know you’re being played but can’t help yourself.

Most dates are hard work. I lavished theatre tickets, kir royals, Gordon Ramsey meals, chauffeur-driven cars and door fees, more cabs, breakfast and hours of attention on delightful City girl L, 26. The change out of £500 was exhausting gratitude, a laugh and pillow talk. But no cigar.

But then there are the Clockwork Dates that bring out the seducer you never knew you had. Your moves work, your lines stand up and the girl you met 20 minutes ago holds your arm as she creases up at your routines. You insinuate rude things and pretend not to mean them, hold her gaze and ask her leading questions. You take charge, giving her the impression she is in charge.

I met R on the free online service. She was 29, worked in something philanthropic, preferred cocktails and wore leather boots. We met in a bar staging an electronic music event where nothing recognisably musical was played. We agreed on politics. Her family sounded as weird as my own. “What have you ever done that’s really bad?” she demanded to know over cocktails. I told her she was my fifth date in ten days.

We went to some more bars, and to a club where I twirled her around the dance floor. Some guy gave me “respect” – it was working. “Do we really have to go back to mine?” I mock-complained in the 2am cab, and we duly did. |We fell into bed, fooled around and detumesced into sleep. We had brunch the next morning, said we would call, which we didn’t. That’s the way it goes. But it also shows you’re as likely in this classless age to find love by splashing out £5 on a cab ride at the right moment as you are by throwing £5,000 on a matchmaking service.

Dating is costly, time-consuming and 80 per cent of the time, unrewarding. You get used to a slow Morse code of disappointment and the sensation of an erection growing out of your forehead rather than your pants. But the more you date, the easier it gets to steer events toward the bedroom, and the more you see that less is more: small details and minor moves work better than big gestures, because the art of seduction is the art of being seduced. I am still single and right now I feel better than ever about it.

Which way is Bhutan?

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