Around the World in 80 Dates

by Jennifer Cox

  Everyone laughed, except me. I was just too tired. Too tired to laugh, too tired to talk, too tired to explain why I had no idea where I was. He was right, though: I had no idea where I was going, I was just plowing ahead blindly. And when I thought of how much more traveling was still ahead of me, I wondered if it was really worth carrying on.

  Chapter Seven

  London

  Catching up with my sis’s kids,

  Isaac and Tabitha

  But I felt better as soon as I got home; it was the perfect tonic at just the right time. To be able to shut the front door and feel the stillness and silence slowly soak into my bones, like milk gently coloring black coffee caramel, drop by drop.

  Until I had to leave for the U.S. two weeks from now, my time was my own: no dates, no traveling. It felt like an impossible luxury. And in the meantime, I could see my friends, sleep in my beloved bed, pick any outfit from my entire wardrobe, and do all the things I’d missed so much about my daily life in London. I was off-duty and I was going to relax.

  Except I couldn’t.

  My brutal Date & Go, Date & Go schedule had become ingrained and there was still so much to be organized before I’d be ready to leave again. I was completely incapable of switching off.

  Plus there was the backlog of London dating traffic that had been accumulating in the time I’d been traveling through Europe. I haven’t really mentioned this before, but despite deciding to travel in search of my Soul Mate because London seemed such a dating desert, for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to give up on my home city altogether. I’d been in low-impact email contact with about six or seven people from London (and about six or seven hundred everywhere else in the world) while I’d been away. Nothing serious, just gentle seeing if we get on chat.

  I’d vaguely agreed to meet the friend of a friend and replied to a few people from a dating website I was on; plus I’d been asked out on a couple of regular dates just before I left on the first leg of my trip.

  I’d been completely honest with everyone and explained the reason for being away. There was an unspoken agreement that if I was still available when I got back to London, we’d meet up. Inadvertently, I’d committed myself to a significant amount of home dating.

  And now I was back, feeling frazzled and a bit dated-out.

  hi there are you back? I was just wondering if you were around to meet up for a quick coffee? Patrick

  It would be lovely to see you, either in Greenwich or the West End if you are free/in this country! Love, James

  I can’t remember when you said you’d be back? Give us a call—can’t wait to meet up. Cheers, Chris

  Karl was a Swiss man I’d found on an Italian dating website, when I was looking into dating in Rome. As it turned out, he now lived in Egypt, but we’d stayed in regular contact, partially because there was no reason not to go to Egypt for a date (even at this point my route wasn’t confirmed) and also because we were both working away from home and had struck up a rapport via email.

  But suddenly, Karl was coming to London:

  I will probably come back around the third for a couple of days before I head off to Cairo, will you be around then? Otherwise I am also in London on fourteenth for three days, how about then? How is your quest for the perfect match going, have you met someone special yet? Karl

  I desperately needed a break from dating. But at the same time, what if one of these men turned out to be what I was looking for? My journey would be over and I could stay in London. I could neither afford nor bear to ignore this possibility.

  Clearly, I did need time off, though. The job of keeping all my date balls up in the air had utilized my professional skills as I had anticipated. But whereas in the past, I’d run a department to get the job done, it was now my family and friends who were helping. And I was in danger of treating them like staff.

  My mother observed very gently on the phone that I’d become “a bit bossy.” I was mortified to hear it but knew she was absolutely right. In fact, I’d become bossier than ever. I’d had to be to make all the elements of my journey come together. But I was home now, and I’d missed my Date Wranglers as the regular friends they’d always been and wanted to hear what they’d all been up to in the time I’d been away.

  But it didn’t quite work out that way, precisely because I’d asked all my friends to help me with my quest. Now I was home, they understandably wanted me—in accordance with the International Girlfriend Charter—to act out the high- and lowlights of the twenty-seven dates they’d been instrumental in setting up. I was torn between my friendship and obligation to them and my need, for reasons of self-preservation, to switch off and recharge my batteries before the next big push.

  I arranged to see my friends and family anyway. Belinda and I caught up as we crawled around the floor with her young daughter, Maya; Paula and I watched John Cusack films and talked about music; Eddie asked lots of questions and was as dry and funny as ever; Eleanor and I chatted as she pushed Alex along the Thames path in his pram; I did the crossword with my parents in the village pub.

  It felt good to see everyone, but it was frustratingly one-sided at times. I was trying not to bore on about my journey, but it seemed that was all anyone else wanted to talk about. And as selfish as it made me feel, I did need to talk.

  But it wasn’t all ooohhs and aahhhs. Although interested and supportive, some had observations I found hard to hear.

  Charlotte was my other best friend, and, like Belinda and Toz, had watched my Relationship Empires rise and fall over the years. As she fed Poppy and watched Daisy, Charlotte listened to me list the reasons why so far none of the dates had been right. “Oh, Jennifer,” she said sympathetically but with characteristic bluntness. “Your problem is you’ve become too picky.”

  Charlotte didn’t mean to hurt my feelings, and I think her reaction—talking with a woman who had access to virtually every single man in the world and was still complaining none was suitable—was quite understandable. But it stung. I was bossy and picky? Would I have found a suitable man among my dates if I’d been less judgmental and given them more of a chance? (Everyone thought I’d been too hard on Olivier in Paris.) And if this was true, was it possible my Soul Mate had been in London the whole time and it was my bad attitude that had been keeping us apart?

  I gave it serious consideration, then decided, no, that wasn’t the case at all: When it comes to finding your Soul Mate, there is no such thing as too picky. I wanted a boyfriend who made me happy and I could make happy in return. I didn’t think I wanted children (or maybe I did? I don’t know); I had my own money, house, friends, and adventures. I didn’t need anything from the relationship other than the relationship itself. If I didn’t like him and couldn’t enjoy his company, what other reason did I have for being with him?

  Being forced to examine these issues—although difficult—was incredibly useful: It helped me reestablish how important the journey was to me and my belief in the value of the search. It was another very old friend, Ian, who finally cemented my commitment to the journey I was undertaking.

  I was talking to him about how hard it was to pull everything together and what if I didn’t meet anyone and was my bossiness spiraling out of control and God, I looked tired and like rubbish…. Ian just hugged me and said calmly: “Jen, this is the trip of a lifetime and it’ll be over before you know it. Stop putting yourself under so much pressure and just enjoy what you’re doing while it lasts.”

  And I knew he was right: A bit like the Love Professor saying you had to like yourself before anyone else would, I had to enjoy the journey if I was going to get anything out of it. So I stopped moaning and got on with setting up the U.S. leg of my trip.

  Out of all the places to set up dates, the States was the hardest. Although relating to my mission, Americans seemed a little reluctant to get involved. I’m not saying they weren’t helpful, it’s just that it rarely got us anywhere. The situation was most acute in L.A. My friend Olaf explained why:r />
  As you know, L.A. is a very demanding city: Men already feel under so much pressure. I think perhaps they don’t want the additional stress of competing with all the other men who are dating you?

  I found this a worrying observation: Were L.A. men too stressed to date per se or just too stressed to date me? After I looked at the personal ads in the online papers, I started to realize just how different a culture I was dealing with:

  FUN STRAIGHT GIRL SEEKING FRIENDS

  Be slim and pretty, to hang out with at all the hip new clubs, shopping, movies, lunches at hip/trendy restaurants, and of course rich man hunting. Please be sincere and fun. (SFV/LA) Call Box #…

  I assumed these ads were for prostitutes, but my friend Ellie put me straight:

  Sweetie, L.A. is about what you do and how you look. Making friends is super hard, so we have Activity Buddies instead: clubbing buddies, movie buddies, gym buddies…L.A. is more about what you do than who you do it with.

  Yikes.

  But maybe because it was so hard to form any kind of relationship—romantic or social—the American online websites were full of the most gorgeous-looking men ever: all plaid shirts, strong arms, and bold smiles directly into the camera. They described themselves using words like “smart,” “active” and “curious.” There was a real energy and sense of manliness about them.

  In contrast, the British websites were all receding hairlines, Next casual shirts, and smiles so forced they looked like they’d been photographed at gunpoint. The profiles were dispiriting too: “I don’t really know where to start…,” “My friends say I’m caring and supportive” (always followed with a self-deprecating “but they would, wouldn’t they?”), “After seven difficult years…”

  Going online late, after a night out with my friend Cath, I saw I had a couple of emails from a dating website. The first man looked quite normal (though he did use the phrase open-minded twice when describing himself), but when I looked in the photo section he was draped across the hood of a red sports car, wearing leather trousers, his shirt open to the waist.

  The second man told me he liked to travel, but “that was in the days when my knees both worked at the same time…”

  Happily, I had already decided to give up on London dating by then; there simply wasn’t the time to date, socialize, and relax.

  I did think I’d try to meet Karl, but he lost patience when I struggled to find the time. I explained:

  It’s not that I don’t want to see you or you’re unimportant, it’s just I won’t know until the end of the week when I’ll be free.

  Who knows, maybe I was procrastinating because I only really wanted to see him on the road, not on home turf. Either way, Karl wasn’t happy:

  For a person traveling the world dating, you seem surprisingly afraid of committing to meet up. I take it those you actually do see meet some criteria I’m not aware of. I guess it’s time to call it quits, don’t you?

  I didn’t blame him for being angry. He got back to me a few days later and said he was sorry for getting annoyed; he liked me and felt frustrated we couldn’t meet. We awkwardly made up—just one example of how insane meeting through a dating website is: We’d never even met but we’d already had our first row.

  In the meantime, I was still flat out trying to set up the U.S. dates. I felt I needed to approach the situation differently: Rather than have a succession of rushed one man/one night dates, I thought staying in one place with the same group of people would mean more time to get to know them.

  I was going to Missoula, Montana, for a few days to date a smoke jumper (basically a parachuting fireman), a rodeo rider, and some friend of Jo’s. It was a teeny town in the American Rockies and the kind of community where I thought I’d fit in. The experience of the Burning Man Festival, camping as part of the Costco Soul Mate Trading Outlet, was another strong possibility.

  Costco had its own intranet site where all forty of the campers seemed to email each other constantly. Although logging on to find up to ninety emails a day from them was a bit mind-boggling at times, they seemed a really fun and interesting group of people:

  “Absolutely, bring the kissing hammock,” Rico had told a man called Gambo approvingly.

  I chatted with Rico a lot via email; we talked about Soul Mates and work and life. He seemed a lovely man, though we did argue sometimes. He told me he was deeply in love with his partner, Rite Aid Annie, and he hoped I would meet someone who would make me just as happy:

  I want to see you get your ass kicked by love.

  You don’t say.

  What am I, some kind of a love slacker? Rico, I want to be in love too, and have taken pretty drastic steps to try and make it happen. But it takes more than just wanting and looking, you know: Fate and chemistry need to show up and play their part too.

  Meanwhile, there seemed to be a strange new phenomenon at home. As word of my homecoming had spread throughout my group, old boyfriends and The Ones Who Could Have Been were getting in touch. To try to rewrite history?

  Was lovely to see you. The freckles are gorgeous. Am definitely up for hot date. Not in the least worried to be one in eighty.

  And Would-Be Dates (WBDs) were trying to use me to settle professional-rivalry scores.

  How’s your round-the-world dating going? Let me know when it’s my turn! By the way, is ******** going to be a hot date as well? He wrote a nasty review of my ******* book in the *******. Cut him off your list!

  The Date Wranglers were having a bit of a moment, too. Hannah rang from Budapest to ask if I thought I was going to get on with the friend she’d set me up with in Bangkok. I quite understood why she was having second thoughts, but what could I tell her? That I’d never met him, but she knew both of us and so was clearly the only person who could make that judgment call?

  Posh PR Emma had set me up with Jake, her friend who worked as an A-list photographer in Vegas. Newly divorced, he lived a larger-than-showbiz life: gold bath fixtures and his last two ex-wives’ implants in the fridge (cold eye-masks for reducing puffiness before a photo shoot). He sounded extraordinary. But so far his emails had been a little disappointing, more blank than bling.

  Out with Jo, I mentioned my concerns about Jake and she shrieked, “Oh, God, Jennifer, he’s Emma’s pet project. She set me up with him too, and he’s DULL, DULL, DULL. You think he’ll have all these really interesting stories and he doesn’t: He’s just really, really boring.”

  I don’t want to sound unkind, but I wasn’t the dating arm of the Samaritans. I was looking to meet my Soul Mate and it was important I didn’t get rerouted into other people’s dating agendas. I know that sounds mean, but I just didn’t have the energy to spare. I learned this the hard way when Paul asked me to go down to the pub.

  It had been a long and trying day: trying to firm up the hotel in Vegas, work out if a tattooist two hours north of San Francisco was worth the drive, and get the New York Fire Department to take me just a little more seriously. (“Like I tell all of you ladies calling to date our boys, put it in writing.”) The dating website that based your matches on which books you read just highlighted that men and women read different books; thankfully, the site that based your matches on what you liked to watch on TV was looking more promising.

  Paul rang to say that a group of our friends was going down to the pub and did I want to go? I was frazzled but thought I could do with a break, so agreed. When I arrived an hour later, Paul was the only one there.

  “Oh, are we early?” I asked as I plonked myself down at the table.

  “No,” he replied cheerfully. I was confused but thought I must have misheard him. While Paul was at the bar buying me a drink, my phone chirped. Jo was texting me:

  Let me know how it goes.

  How what goes?

  Paul came back from the bar and we settled down and chatted for about half an hour. He was unusually attentive, also quite tense. “Is everything okay?” I asked him, concerned he might be having a bad time about something and w
anted to talk about it. “Yes,” he replied anxiously, “I’m just pleased to see you.”

  It was then that it dawned on me. “Paul, are we on a date?” I asked, trying to sound conversational. He nodded and squeezed my hand.

  I could have killed him.

  He was a nice guy but there was no way I would have agreed to go on a date with him, especially at the moment when I was dated to the max. And he’d tricked me into it by pretending our other friends would be there—probably knowing it was the only way he’d get me to say yes. We walked to the railway station together at the end of the evening, and I had to execute an advanced Quick Peck and Hug maneuver to avoid his persistent advances.

  Back in my little flat, I thought how good it had been to spend time at home. But by involving all my friends in my Soul Mate quest, I’d made my home life too chaotic. And if I stayed here any longer, things would only get more complicated and out of control. My two weeks were up anyway. And in my upside-down fairy-tale world, I’d really enjoyed it: working quietly, eating nothing but toast, and living in worn-out old T-shirts and frayed jeans every day. But now the clock was striking midnight and it was time to squeeze those glass slippers back onto my feet and whirl and twirl across America, in search of my Prince.

  Chapter Eight

  U.S.A—L.A.

  Date #52—All shook up

  in Vegas, USA

  Weird, bloated stomach; indecisive and easily confused; tired and craving sugar…jet lag is the PMS of travelers, without the payoff of knowing you’re not pregnant.

  But I was in L.A., low-fat, low-sugar capital of the world, and I was determined that it would be the inspiration for a new healthy me. I was going to get back in shape, eat properly, and start working out again. I’d feel and look better, as well as having more energy for my quest.