Going out on a limb

Alex and the one armed girl...

It was my very first experience of the wonderful world of online dating.  The big city hitter that I am, I opted for a free dating website on which to pop my online cherry.

I setup my profile, with a write up befitting of the major player that I am and carefully uploaded a series of hand selected photos of me from days when I was thinner in waistline and less thin in hair follicles.

A cautious start as it was my first foray into the world of virtual love, I had at this point viewed a few lady profiles, but had yet to take the next step of initiating communication.  On these sites you can view who has looked at your profile and one of the maidens I had perused, clearly enamoured by my general handsomeness, sent me a message.

An attractive looking girl with a good write up, I got in touch and we exchanged a few messages via the site.  We went on to swap msn details and a delightful chat ensued.  She lived in London, worked for a company my previous company had done some business with, everything checked out.  A bank holiday was coming up, so I asked what her plans were and whether she would be free to grab a bite to eat and a few drinks on the Monday.  We agreed a time and place to meet and swapped numbers.  She had but one request, that we have a chat on the phone before we met.  An online dating novice, this didn't seem an unreasonable request to me.  Maybe she wanted to make sure that I didn't have a voice like David Beckham? Maybe she wanted to make sure it was a man's voice?  So I agreed to give her a call the following evening after work.

That evening was a Friday night, so I gave her a call and got her voicemail.  I left a message explaining that I was now out with friends, but would try and reach her the next day.  The following morning, horribly hung over after indulging in a few too many glasses of vino maison blanco, I was recovering on the settee in the living room.  After a while I realised I had left my phone in my bedroom and when I went to get it I had two missed calls from my online suitor and a text message.  The text message read,

'That it was not a problem for her or any of her friends, but that she only had one arm and wanted to make sure I was okay with that'.

Panic set in. The first thing I thought was how the hell did I not notice this is any of her photos!  I logged into the dating site with immense speed and viewed her profile.  Four photos, a head shot, right hand profile and two with friends standing over the missing limb...bollocks.  My mind was going into overdrive and I was wrestling with my conscience on what to do.  Had she deceived me?  Should I be dating someone who is dishonest?  To an extent she had certainly told a few fibs, but nothing to the degree where I could actually justify calling off the date.  So fearing I would go straight to hell otherwise, I texted back that of course it wasn't a problem at all and that I looked forward to meeting.

Countdown.  The next day, one day before the date, I was having a few drinks with a friend.  I told him that something bad had happened and revelling in the consistency of my life tragedy he was eager to know more.  I explained what had happened and foolishly leaned on him for advice.  Prior to receiving the informative text, I had agreed to go for pizza with the fair lady, what the flip was I meant to do?  If I offer to cut it up for her is that patronising?  If I don't offer is it rude?  My social consciousness is in hyperdrive at the best of times and I was metaphorically soiling myself at the prospect of how badly I would get this wrong.

Luckily my friend demonstrated class and remarkable insight when explaining that she would have lived with one arm for a number of years, so would have Darwinially adapted to the predicament.  He hypothesised that she may have some kind of hat with a fork attached to it, so that she could hold the pizza in place with a mere nod of the head whilst cutting with the remaining limb, or maybe she would just drag the pizza over the side of the table and just lower down and munch straight into it. 

It is people like my friend which is the exact reason I had to go on this date.

So the big day came.  I was so worried that I was going to put my foot in it by saying something like 'do you want a hand with that', or 'I've got to hand it to you', 'you and what army', 'no strong arm tactics', 'pull the other one', 'is your favourite Star Wars character Hans Solo?', 'you seem armless enough' (I have more).

I waited at the station and fairly promptly she arrived.  Luckily she was easy to recognise.  When telling this story people often ask about the missing limb.  For the purpose of visualisation there was no prosthetics and it was the the entire limb that was missing.

The date was actually okay and generally without incident.  I decided the best thing to do would be to just act as normal as possible and I think that was the right thing to do.  There were a could of awkward moments though, the first came when walking through Covent Garden in central London.  There was a street artist that she recognised and wanted to watch.  After the performance everyone clapped and I didn't know if clapping would be an arrogant display of my dual limbed state, or whether I should offer up one of my hands to create a co clapping scenario.  In the end I just clapped.  There was also a moment when she went to get some drinks in.  I offered to go with her, but she said she would be fine.  Logistically baffled about how two drinks could be carried sans hand I didn't want to make an issue out of it so just sat down.  Turns out she just did two trips from the bar, simple really.

If I'm honest, I went into the date thinking about how I would legitimately not go on a second date.  Luckily, she gave me a pretty good get out.  Having just split up with a long term live in boyfriend that she was planning to marry and have kids with, she was dead set on finding someone to help fast track her back to marriage and kids.  At the tender age of 22 and being a male, that kind of commitment request is petrifying at the best of times so I explained that I thought we were looking for different things on different timescales and she agreed and understood.

My very first Internet date, it is still the most memorable, but unfortunately it was by no means the worst.