Читать книгу The Geese That Lay The Golden Eggs - Nicola Maria Vitola - Страница 4

No offence, but it’s happened to us all, poor lonely women caught out by an online message which we’ve fallen for, some perhaps more than others. With our heart beating madly for that oh so handsome, charming, passionate man who’s noticed us, fascinated by our face in a photograph; won over by our story, or by the few personal details that the more reserved of us have only hinted at on our Facebook, twitter or other social network profile.

We can’t help it! Us women are romantic, and "friendly” to the point of absurdity. Friendly and willing to believe that finally cupid has smiled down upon us, noticed our most intimate desires for love and let fly his arrow.

It seems like a wonderful sign of fate that such a remarkable man is interested in us, a man in naval or military uniform. With an honest gaze, open smile, profound dark eyes or even light ones, it doesn’t matter. When we fall in love even the colour of the eyes is changeable, it matches the ideal image we carry around inside us. Remember Proust and the colour of the little Gilberte Swann’s eyes, who he meets as a child? He describes them of such a brilliant black as to give back a bright blue light, so that if the little girl had not had such dark eyes - writes Proust - he would not have been in love most particularly with her blue eyes.

It’s the meeting of desire and true likeness that fits our ideal image. The two pieces of a puzzle. What a coincidence! What luck, we think from that first contact with a few polite phrases from the fake American soldier. He’s even the right age for us! Somewhere between fifty and sixty, like so many lonely separated women, or widows, or divorcees, who before this lucky meeting had tried all the Meetics, dating sites, Badoos, where nothing ever came of anything, perhaps because of our aversion to the person who said he was 25 years younger than his real age, or the irremediable faults which led to separations from exes: wives, lovers, girlfriends. When my sister-in-law once asked me why I hadn’t rebuilt my life with a new companion, I told her it’s difficult finding the right person, because as we get older we become more demanding; we do not easily surrender our independence, and the men who approach us have already been left by their woman, probably because they’re flawed.

“Flawed?” replied my sister-in-law and she began laughing out loud repeating “Ah, flawed, flawed... what a description!”

But the same can be said of us too, what’s that got to do with it? On dating sites, we too describe ourselves in our Meetic profile, posting a photo on the net that was taken a few years after our first communion. Then we go to meet the poor guy in the hope that he won’t notice that the person before him looks like the grandmother of the beautiful girl in the photograph. So, what happens in these cases? The more courteous offer a coffee and say goodbye. The others ask you straight out to your face, "Why are you hiding your age? You can’t be forty! You must be at least twenty years older!”

“Well what about you? You’re supposedly only 55?" we might reply and get a brazenly optimistic response. “I’m sixty-four, but I look young for my age!”

Faced with such vanity, what should we do? I think it’s best to just forget about it. Or, out of pure revenge, we could recommend that our friend should at least buy a mirror to furnish his home.

How many Friday night encounters end with an argument, or perhaps a bad-mannered comment from a guy who seems aristocratic enough online, but then turns out to be more accustomed to the sort of company found down at the docks, not setting sail, but loading and unloading.

But let’s not be dramatic. Is the boor of the moment’s language distasteful? Then each of you better go their separate ways. At worst we can just ban him and put the whole story to bed!

Bluffing never pays. Not even a pizza together to make friends is allowed, when you meet on misleading premises. These are the risks of social networking. Moderate risks overall, until recently anyway: a bad impression, a disappointment, a missed invitation to dinner. Nothing more serious.