I am in Leeds, or Barnsley, or Nantwich, sometimes Vietnam, a port town in Thailand, who knows, but I have strayed from London, from the southeast, wandered into distant lands. The filter was set at thirty-miles, then sixty, one-hundred, and now I am at the other end of the M6. I do not photograph well and photographs of me are rare; I am difficult to pin down, to get a clear shot of, always in motion, mid-step, an ugly enigma. I still remember the first time a date pulled out her phone to photograph us together: on the stern of Tattershall Castle, she looked fabulous and yet my facial expression was unprepared, of one unaccustomed to being photographed by somebody who wanted to remember us together, for my previous partner never did as such.

Sometimes — for reasons unknown — a man’s profile will make its way to me, in spite of my settings, and I examine it with a keen curiosity spared the fairer sex, as though I am Attenborough in the seventies. What can I learn about this man? What can this man teach me about myself, about the tumult of modern dating? He is unremarkable, but I, too, am unremarkable. I see the background and his clothes, his facial expression, how many teeth he dare expose, the furnishings of his home, and I try to picture, with my limited imagination, what his life must look like. Is he successful? Does he lie about his height, politics or activity? Is he one of those who sees many women at once, just for fun? My profile photograph is of me at my school-friend’s wedding. I have blurred out my friends’ faces, not with emojis (typical) but in a mosaic Crimewatch style, which I find more aesthetically pleasing. My friends are anonymous, which is exactly how I prefer them. Is that when I am most attractive, I wonder, when I am at a wedding? I do not know, but at the time I quite liked it. Often there are women at weddings too, and the gowns are often thin, clinging to the body, and that is really something to put your eye to, for research purposes.

And then come the details that really narrow me down:

40 — Mechanical engineer — University of Hertfordshire 2006 — My bio: Please imagine that in all of my photos I am topless & glistening & my muscles are rippling & I am holding a massive fish & the fish is panting & I am panting & now you are panting from all the fish & the rippling. — 5’9” — Almost never — Undergraduate degree — Yes — No — Man — Don’t want kids — Don’t have kids — Virgo — Left — he/him — Atheist — I’m looking for: A long-term relationship, confidence, humour, emotional intelligence — My interests: social awareness, writing, hip hop, creativity, cooking — What I’d really like to find is: someone I can match with and then just not say anything to, both of us locked in a beautiful & mutual silence, a dance as old as time, a romance for the ages — My causes and communities: Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ+ rights, Human rights.

It is the kids-bit that throws me most. Breeding? What a peculiar thought. If I spy her and swell, but then: ‘Wants kids’ stirs in me a revulsion I cannot wipe my lips of . Lift yourself up from the soil! I say, and for a minute I pity her that she lost out on the chance to date me.

It is all that and much more, my own appearance and abrasions, to now end up in Carlisle, seeking those — plentiful, or is it sparse? — who wish to meet, no games, emotionally mature, no one-night-stands. Will they travel? Must we meet in the middle? She does not appear but I have to plan these things.

Surely, what a horror I must be!  Yet that — in the absence of other metrics —  is what I hold myself to. This wicked sideshow of romance! Eventually one’s judgement shifts and turns on themself. It fruits a terrible sense of loneliness, of less than. If I am alone, then, after all this time, it must be my lot. Why, with all the variety of this species on a plain, and naught but rejection, then what else?