Blog 15 - From a Villa in Grey Lynn - The Dating Game Rejoinder

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and being alone won’t either, for solitude will break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You have to risk your heart.

-Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum

My miserable experience with Percy has elicited much sympathy from my sagacious readers, even from Percy himself, who writes:

“I still love reading your blogs even if the dating game was about me. My being is always open if you ever wish to revisit the thoughts of laying your head on my shoulder. It was never my intention to hurt you; quite the opposite. I remain humbly yours.”

I send Percy’s reply to my sister, Dammie, and receive an urgent reply sent from a lock in a French canal: "An egoist it’s in their bones, blacklist him immediately! Don’t reply, love Dammie."

Dammie, who likes to solve, not muse on, problems like I do, placates, then instructs me, “I can’t believe it is so hard for you to find love. There is something about kiwis that is so prudish and boorish all at the same time. So, my darling, it is a trip to France for you that your sister prescribes as soon as you can get your hands on some money.”

My friend Nix, who found someone on Findsomeone, was also most concerned about me and counseled me thus, “Ash, I’ve just read blog 14. I know you so want love. I don’t know whether to say keep trying, or let it go and if it’s meant to come your way it will.”

My aquatic friends gather around me in the changing rooms of the Olympic pool where little leaflets on the wall instruct us to only use the hair dryers on our hair. Like a corps de ballet of synchronised swimmers weeping over a fallen swan in a lake, they reassure me that I am much more loveable than a used Uber Eats bag. I am touched but slightly put out that my blog elicited sympathy rather than being viewed as a humorous insight into the tawdry marketplace of love - me love me not.

I am therefore somewhat relieved when my ex-husband, who reads my blogs avidly to see if he is mentioned, failed to comment on it. Although I never expect a response from him, as it is not in his nature to encourage people, I still found it churlish when a text after my blog’s release said simply: "Will contact you 2morrow aft if u available need talk thru summary partic attached spreadsheet."

As always, I am intrigued that Michael, a complete computer illiterate, has become literate in the useless and infantile art of abbreviating words, a skill identified as SMS language. I can only think it’s part of his self-perpetuating persona of an important man in a hurry who should really have a helicopter. I simply can’t help myself and text back: "Michael, have you read my latest blog? - The dating game?"

"he asks as I imagine him inhaling deeply on a Benson and Hedges, enjoying that he has lured the little mouse out of her hole.

"Yes, Michael, the dating game. Do you agree that you dumped me like an Uber Eats bag?"

"I don’t get Uber Eats," he replies in his cunningly ingenuous way. "And ash, I do love you dearly."

That does it !!!!!! I will not let he who dimmed my once brilliantined feathers dull their shine anymore by patronising me. Today, 13 years down the track (I have always been a slow learner), I am grasping an essential truth. It was more my pride that was hurt that he didn’t love me anymore than that I loved him so much I couldn’t live happily without him. It is this simple truth that has confounded my progress in what’s called “moving on.” I can now put a bold cross through pride to join sloth, wrath, gluttony, and greed, with a slightly lighter cross through lust and envy.

I hereby graciously accept the sympathy of my friends and family in helping me recognize a truth which will enable me to truly embrace the humour I so blithely pepper my feelings with.