First Pages

Prologue

There’s something about self-sabotage that just makes it so addictive. The pain is crippling, deep, and frightful. It just takes too short a time to forget about it. The clock beats its angry rhythm at you and before too long you’re back in the same place, doing the same stupid things. The only one that really gets hurt is yourself.

It's time now, it's time for the end of the world.

I know it’s melodramatic but at this point I’m one burnt meal from crying out to the stars and cursing god at my rotten luck. That’s why I figured it was appropriate, given the circumstances. The circumstance of my own broken heart. So what’s really important here is how I feel, and that is devastated. Even more so when I found out the word devastated is spelled with two ‘A’s. Like the letter is going out of fashion. We seriously can’t keep this up --English language. We need to spread the load. Otherwise we’re going to be in *A* load of trouble.

Ultimately it comes to social media, and unhappiness. A beautiful cocktail that nobody should drink. It’s more like WD-40 and espresso. Nobody gains from this, not even oil manufacturers. Pain begets pain, and you tend to start to look for it. Even unlikely places, like your ex’s journal. That I did not steal.

Who is this Rob, anyway?

CHAPTER 1:  The Rules

The rules follow a basic principle of being poor, but horny. 

There’s a fragile balance to maintain while dating and on a tight budget. A delicate margin; of putting yourself forward as someone without crippling debt - but not going too far into boasting (lying) about wealth and success. You want to come off as a useful up-and-comer, rather than a minimum wage clerk. You’re going somewhere, and you damn well know where that is. You’ve sat down and drawn a 5 year plan out in some sort of movie montage while lifting weights - or running - or something.

I call them “rules”, for brevity, but really they are generally just tips in order to stay ahead. Dating can be cumbersome, expensive, and seriously competitive. It can get ahead of you and nobody wants to add “wooing” as a line item in your budgeting spreadsheet. Don’t even bother trying to add that as a significant expense to try and attract the bank staff while applying for loans. Even with a wink, this will not go down well.

Instead, we focus on efficiency. Sometimes it may come across as deception, but I assure you I do it with good intentions. I hate the term “game” when talking about dating and its variables and outputs, but you just have to play it sometimes. So we come down to this: optimisation and efficiency. 

Dating is truly a numbers game, and you have to pump those numbers up in order to have a chance, get ahead, and really find that long term happiness. If this makes you feel a bit gross about it, that’s a relatively normal reaction I’d say. You damn romantic, you! It’s easy to get lost in the weeds of wanting everything to happen nicely and naturally, and this absolutely can happen. However, I find that in this ever-connected and perhaps over-connected world - that’s just a lot less likely. People are less inclined to strike up a conversation in a Blockbusters, an Arcade, or a photo film development joint. Mainly because these places no longer exist - that does make it harder..but the point still stands! It’s an unfortunate reality that unless you’re exceedingly attractive, you probably won’t have great luck meeting a stranger in some coffee shop or gym. Meet-cute is a term that is used to describe an incidental meeting of two strangers who will eventually go out and probably fall in love. 

There’s no term for creeping someone out by trying to get a date after spilling coffee on someone. You’re more likely to be out £20 re-buying someone’s coffee (how much was that again?) while they stare you down angrily. It’s not a good time.

Rejection can be quite prolific when it comes to that approach, and as someone with a fragile ego and a tiny penis (one of those is true), for me that can be too hard to take.

Due to this, I prefer to go with a more streamlined approach to dating. One where I can go for assured success and consent. At the end of the day, when you start talking to a stranger, you have no idea if it is a welcome exchange or not. They might have absolutely no interest in talking to you, and that is totally fair - but you’re suddenly imposing yourself on them and it can be intimidating.. It can be a social construct that they have to see it out and try to excuse themselves out of it in an acceptable way that they won’t feel rude, and you won’t feel shunted. 

I like to approach these little strategies in a shotgun style approach. As in, go with all of them at the same time if your time allows. 

Time is also another faceted resource that will be different to all of us. Sometimes it can be extremely difficult to go up against people with near-unlimited time, the people that can crunch and message and date and chase. This isn’t always an efficient approach but always a consistent one. We’ll try and focus on some less time sensitive matters later but to start with, we’ll look at my first plan. Something that will take up plenty of time, but if chosen correctly, should be something you intensely enjoy and could become a lifelong skill.

Hobbies

Sit down with yourself and really start to let yourself wonder what sort of skill or past time is appealing to you? For the purpose of this we’re going to rule out any non-group friendly pastimes. So I’m afraid all of you would-be-rockers looking to learn guitar as part of this - it just won’t work. I’m sure somewhere in the world there’s a daring hippy looking to start up their first group acoustic guitar club, but I’m not sure 8 people in a circle all learning ‘Wonderwall’ at the same time is cohesive to meeting friends and engaging socially. However - it might serve for a great hearing aid advertisement. Any marketers reading this? Call me.

You’re going to want to have some sort of hobby group that is in fact - a group. Something with a least surface level sociability. Something that has some percentage of the opposite sex.

Contrary to what might be expected, this isn’t going to be some sort of hunting ground for dates. That’s why I’m trying to push into something that is interesting - for you - and not for your loins. If you’re a man and pick up some yoga class to try and stir up interactions between yourself and women - you won’t be fooling anyone. Also, the problem with dating or even asking for a date with the opposite sex in this potential group, is that you can’t really do that more than once. You could if it’s perhaps a hobby based around a group fascination with swinging or orgies, but your regular arts & crafts aren’t going to appreciate you letching for dates. By its nature, one of these groups (should be) somewhat close-knit. That means, word travels fast within it. Heed my warning.

Over a decade ago I was in a small country town with my then girlfriend. I was a relatively awkward younger person, without many friends. This was due to my constant continent level moving based on that year’s whim. At least that’s what I told myself. Also my total aversion from socialising with anyone, didn’t help. It was the early time of the internet, a magical time indeed. You could get practically any album from Limewire - a less than legal option for media sharing between people and groups. You could talk to anybody on forums or message boards, and better yet - you could pretend you were anyone.

Due to my prolific use of dating websites at the time, I managed to score a normal woman. She must have been feeling charitable. In those days, going into towns as a 20 something, and worst yet - the dreaded pub slash nightclub combination has frequent and somewhat cheap regularity. Poorly mounted rotating disco lights, and a fog machine that, when used, fused the smell of carvery and chemicals into the limited atmosphere.

The clientele would consist of anything from full toff - those adorned in felt waistcoat and designer boots, usually sporting some type of argyle flat cap. To the general youth of the area, which could anywhere or anyone --from the fully suited, blinged out. Down to those dressed in the nearest level sporting goods. On that night, it so happened that the DJ took a turn for the older and played some remixes of vintage songs from the 40s and 50s.

Within the fake fog and hastily thrown aside chairs, a large dancing circle emerged. It was a circle not of necessity or convenience, or even feng shui. It was a circle and space granted out of respect. Two dancers - a man and woman, connected in partnered dance, were making everyone stop their own shimmy and stare. We, as a collective, had become an audience in any otherwise together, but alone style setting. It had transpired to an accidental performance in an otherwise standard fair. I think the beauty of it was that nobody expected it, but everybody appreciated it. A free show. Of a kind you would never even think to order.

They were fast, graceful. They made large, impressive, moves look effortless. Akin to watching a sports athlete cross a field in mere seconds, enough to cause your television to blur them out - not understanding it is a focal point instead of an artefact. They made it look easy, and they decided to do it not because of the attention but because they heard a song and realised their learned skills let them express it in a way that all of us normal people felt was exceptional.

I had no specific plans, nor goals, or even a deadline. However, in that intentionally dimly lit, slightly moist place I decided I wanted to be them. I was never a follower usually, I never went with what was necessarily expected of me or even wanted of me. That day though I had inadvertently added that sort of dance into my bucket list. It was just too cool, so effortlessly cool to forget about. What yet was that it was different. Previously I had some sort of internalised motion that I wanted to learn some kind of dance, but because I had no real understanding of what dance could entail - I went with the default. Ballroom. I still think the ballroom is fascinating, it’s structured and beautiful. However it lacks the pizazz, it lacks the uniqueness I was after. The music was old and somewhat tired. Nobody would be there for it, unless already a part of that world.

I wanted something like this, something that could prop up in some random nightclub in the middle of nowhere and impress everyone. Not because of its pomp, but because of the creativity that flowed within it. It’s not staged or choreographed, it’s fluid and dynamic and it’s an expression of a musical conversation. Something like that could not just be ignored or left asunder, it was something to be embraced.

Over the years now I know now that there are more than one type of dance that uses these ideologies. There’s actually many. Most of which I’ve never had the pleasure of hearing about or even seeing. Most movies and TV shows go with what's known and what’s expected. There is a whole world out there, usually not too far away. That embraces clutches of community about this whole scene and lets it flourish.

It took a year, a break-up, and a new job.

In that time I was able to work up the courage to actually be able to go to one of these classes. If you want to take any help from me - do it sooner, do it now. The adage of doing one thing every day that scares you may be a little extreme for my tastes - there’s really only so many spider staring competitions I can hold in a day. However, there is a modicum of truth that I take from it - if it scares you, maybe you should do it. It’s a way of compensating your silly human hesitations, survival instincts, and anxiety. Pushing those aside sometimes where it’s feasible is a great way to broaden your horizons, find something new about yourself. Remember - it’s totally fine to do something you were once scared of and decide that huh, maybe this is not for me. That’s still healthy progress.

Walking up to and into the classroom was a terrifying ordeal. With many considerations of backing out. Once things started however, I realised that a lot of people in the room were in the exact same fear-and-anxiety-riddled state of beginning. It was still unnerving that it didn’t come to me easily, a gene I was usually very proud of demonstrating. This time, I was completely out of my element. Don’t get me wrong, I was more excited than ever to try and conquer that hill, watching the competent members of the group go and bust a move before and after the class made me steadfast in my goal that “it’ll be me one day”.

Just as someone who had spent more time on a computer than on a sports field (by a severe percentage), the action of timing a beat and moving your feet in a relatively strict pattern was just so alien to me. I had the same problem when learning to drive.

“You’re saying I need to balance both of my feet? I need to feather out the clutch and balance the gas pedal at the same damn time?”. What am I, a circus performer? Honestly, who has any dexterity in their damn feet?

Over the next following weeks there were many times I’d be stealthily practising my footwork in the office kitchen. Or while brushing my teeth. Waiting for a coffee order.

At about week 3 of classes--moving my feet started to become natural.. It started to click. Things all start to open up at that point. Once you get past having to desperately worry where your feet are going and how they are moving, you can actually start concentrating on your partner and the moves and you can start learning and practising more than just the absolutely basic choreography.

The next year or so became a dizzying affair of dance socials, trips to a varying amount of cities for their big dancing events. Workshops specialising in all sorts of dance movesets and styles.

It was then I met Lisa.

We were lucky that there were multiple classes of varying skill and approach in quite close proximity. I was lucky enough I was part of the more beginner friendly group. We were able to take it slow, aimed towards the slightly older clientele that weren’t looking to exactly blaze the trail on their effectiveness. Happy enough to just get by with the basics with very little fanfare.

Lisa was part of the class I didn’t frequent, she was part of another group that I can safely class as expert level. We were lucky in that they were warm and friendly, happy to help, and not too bothered by mistakes which they would gregariously laugh off. If we were open to it -- they would offer hints and tips on how to improve.