the website, it means someone likes me. So far, there have been a few winks. A few winkers, shall we say? Feel free to change a letter there. Here are some extracts from their profiles. I promise I didn’t make any of this up. This is all totally genuine.
“I’m not a big book reader. The last book I read was sixteen months ago and I have forgotten the author. However, I really enjoyed it.”
Portly gent from Bunbury, several thousand kilometres away. Shame. He sounded like a winner, don’t you think?
“I’m debt free, own my own house, and love where I live. I would consider a move for the right person but you’d have to be EXCEPTIONAL!!”
Heavily moustachioed man in EXCEPTIONALLY horrid stripy jumper. Don’t think I’d make the grade. Shame again.
“I am single by choice as I am yet to find someone special. Ladies, I am honest. Looks and size matter. IF U R INTERESTED I NEED A PICTURE. NO PICTURE, NO REPLY.”
Man with no picture himself...
“Family, friends, wofk ar my mane golds..i am grateful for helth and happiness...I like books and last read a book on medievil britian.”
Man with no spell check.
“I need a beautiful woman with a high s*x drive.”
Sixty-year-old from Port Hedland. Even farther than Bunbury. Needless to say, not that beautiful himself.
So, I went into this with high hopes, and now I’m utterly bloody depressed. Even when you have a nice, literate, intelligent online chat with none of this ‘RU’ stuff, it still doesn’t mean they turn out to be anything but disappointing. Like last night’s. Oh look, here’s Kelly ringing to see how it went.
“And?”
“And what?”
“Well, so far you’d found out he was good-looking and he could string a sentence together. By email at least. Plus he had a normal name. How was he?”
“He was sad.”
“Sad?”
“Sad. You know the way he looked kind of skinny sexy in the photo? Well in the flesh it was skinny sad. It was like the light inside him when that photo was taken had been switched off. I asked him when it was taken and said he looked so happy. He said ‘I was. I was on holiday with my ex-wife.’ Then he looked like he wanted to cry.”
“Do men not realise you need to get over someone before you go looking for a new someone?”
“Clearly not. He just wants to fill a gap. He asked if he could see me again.”
“And you said?”
“I said if we were seeing each other and his wife came back on the scene, what would he do? He looked at me like I had asked the craziest question in the world. He said ‘I love my wife. I will always love her’. So I said what would be the point of me going out with him then? He said, ‘Because you are such a good listener, and anyway, I don’t think she will be coming back to me.’”
“Thank God you said no.”
“Even I won’t stoop that low.”
Josie
I can’t believe its February and we still haven’t done book club this year. As book clubs go, it’s a bit lame, to be honest. It’s the curry house, every time. So many bloody calories. Does no one else care about their weight? I regularly tell them how many calories there are in butter chicken, and now when I do, they’ve developed this little routine. They put their hands over their ears and start doing silly Indian accents whilst wobbling their heads. Ella will say something like, “Goodness gracious fucking me Jospinder, calories again, eh? Eh? We need to fatten you up for Frankpal. No meat on those bones!” Whilst pinching my arms. Jen and Kelly will be guffawing and head wobbling too, and it is all very silly and not very politically correct.
And also - and this really gets to me - I dutifully read every book, even if it’s a struggle to get into, and it so often is. But even if I don’t like it half way through, I keep going. As far as I’m concerned, that’s the point of a book club. You give everything a chance and learn about new authors you may otherwise not have bothered with.
Well, the others just don’t play fair like that. I picked a Di Morrissey once. She writes great books. They are informative and exciting. Do you know what Jen said? She said, “Josie, I got ten pages in and couldn’t go further. Not my type of thing.” One of the bestselling authors in Australia, and Jen won’t give it a chance. She’s such a book snob with her English Lit degree.
As for Ella, I think she just comes along to escape dear little Charlie. She tells Ben book club starts at six. You think he’d twig we’re all at work until then and we have to factor in the time to get the train to weird Newtown. Book club, of course, starts at seven, which gives Ella an hour in the Marly (weirdy, studenty Newtown pub) for far too many (shocker) pre-curry glasses of wine.
One time, Ella turned up so hammered she started talking about the wrong book. Kelly and Jen thought this was so funny, but I think it’s just annoying and a bit rude.
Kelly can be like Jen – very dismissive of my choices. One time I picked Fifty Shades of Grey. Every day they were selling a thousand copies of Fifty Shades at Sydney Airport! The man in the bookshop told me. Everyone was reading it. It’s fantastic, and gave me some great new ideas to please Frank. Whenever he’s in the mood and I’m not, I naturally want to get to the same place for him, so I think about some of the things Mr Grey would do. Combine that with Frank’s gorgeous body... well, I’m there in a minute. Kelly declares it to be ‘Fifty Shades of Shite’. I tell you, she is gay.
I nearly walked out on book club for good when we did my favourite book of all time and they were all so bloody rude. Everyone knows, even Oprah, that Eat, Pray, Love is like a Bible for women. Here is a single lady (Hello, Jen?) who, through a holistic and wholesome approach, after a bit of naughtiness, finds love. The world is a finer place with Elizabeth Gilbert in it. She shows us how to nurture ourselves. To learn. To grow. To find spiritual resonance with the world. Surely we all want that. Well, seemingly not. This is the juvenile discussion we got:
Jen: I hate her!
Kelly: I hate her too!
Ella: I liked her in Italy when she got fat.
Jen: Yeah that was good.
Kelly: I hated her most in India.
Ella: Especially when she got thin.
Jen: I hated her most in Bali. All loved up with that bald man. She makes him out to be so good-looking and he’s not – Google him!
Ella: When she was fat was the only time I didn’t want to hit her. You go girl. Keep eating the pasta, lard bucket.
Jen: But then – she lost all the weight!
Ella: I really hated her then!
And so on and so on.
You can see why I seriously wonder why I bother with book club. And tonight’s I have dropped out of altogether as work is just murder. I sent a group text and Jen’s reply was she is drowning in work too and it’d be great if we can rearrange. Ella said, “Fine we’ll do it another time.”
She’ll go out with Kelly tonight and they’ll bitch about what total flakes we are.
Ella
Jen and Josie work in buildings near to each other. They are posh buildings with concierges. We text them to say we’ve left them each a caramel slice with their building concierge for them to collect when they finally leave their desks.