Opening lines.

Right now, I am detained by the Australian government in a 5-star hotel in Melbourne. It is day 14 and I haven’t left this room. Technically I can leave at 11.59pm tonight but my only option then would be to check into another hotel, so I’m staying until the morning. The closest thing I’ve had to human contact is when the nurse coming along to stick a cotton swab up my nose. To prevent the slow slide into madness I’ve started this blog.

I have recently returned to my home country of Australia after three years living in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. I’ve gone from lockdown in Vietnam to quarantine in Melbourne and I’ll be going into lockdown again once I get out of here and go to my parent’s place in NSW. It’s a lockdown-crawl! Like a pub-crawl, only really shit.

In case you don’t know, anyone entering Australia is served with a detention notice and must stay in hotel quarantine for 14 days — unless you are super-wealthy, then you can be trusted to quarantine at home in your mansion. It hasn’t been too bad, I had a very nice chat with the lamp this morning.

This is the first post of my new blog and for my opening post I thought I’d write about opening lines — specifically, opening lines from the shit-show that is online dating in your 30s.

The relative anonymity of the screen has given a lot of people the audacity to text to a stranger what they wouldn’t dare say to their face. While in the real world when we first meet someone we ask what do you do? online its what do you do, in bed? And can you send me a naked photo of you doing it, thanx.

The classic what are you wearing? pops up a lot, though I am really not sure what kind of answer these men are expecting

Oh, you know, I’m just here on the lounge in satin pasties with nipple tassels. The usual.

I’m at home, what do you think I am wearing? If I am around the house the truth is usually grey old granny undies under a loose, old dress that my bra-less boobs are happily flopping about in.

Do you like penis?

Moving on, no discussion about opening lines would be complete without this gem –

I suppose I shouldn’t complain. He said hello then asked my opinion on a topic to get the conversation going. Still, it was a no from me.

Romance isn’t dead

Some people say that online dating is killing romance and that Tinder is the McDonalds of love. It’s not true. Men still want to try to sweep a woman off her feet, like Nick here, who messaged me –

“Hi there Carly I’m Nick. Can we meet for coffee tomorrow at Richmond station at McDonald’s”

❤️

Yeah. That just sounds painful

Here’s one I definitely can’t imagine a man saying to a woman if he got to chatting to her at a barbecue. Pre-covid, I matched with a guy who was visiting Ho Chi Mi City.

The first thing he messaged me was –

Do you want to come to my hotel? I have ropes. I can tie you up and slap your tits

Slap my tits? Ow. No. I have a feeling he just cut and paste that message and sent it to every woman he matched with, hoping that, if tit-slapping is a number’s game and he’d get lucky eventually. Not really my scene though.

I am not sure if this man was trying to sound sexy, but this opener just reminded me of it rubs the lotion on its skin

In the real world

Awkward openers aren’t always just behind a screen. I’ve been on a lot of dates where men have raised questionable topics to get the conversation going

I don’t sleep with hookers

I don’t sleep with hookers. We had barley got passed the how are you and what do you do? stage when he decided to share this with me.

It’s not because I think God will strike me down. I don’t even believe in God. It’s because of diseases

Right. I drained my beer and looked around for the waiter. I was going to need another.

I don’t believe in God, but I believe in diseases. And that’s why I don’t sleep with hookers.

Thank you. I am glad we could establish that within the first few minutes of us meeting.

So, after the lovemaking…

Personally, I don’t think it’s ever wise to include the words so, after the lovemaking in a story, but this man just ran with it. About 10 minutes after meeting. He was following on from giving his opinion on laws around late-term abortion. Another classic, first-date conversation starter.

He launched into a story about how he’d been on a date with a woman when he’d first arrived in Vietnam. They went back to a hotel together where I guess the “lovemaking” went on. And it was after the lovemaking he realised his wallet had been stolen.

An interesting choice of anecdote to get a first date started, but here we are.

💔 A global pandemic has killed my dating life, but I’ll be out of quarantine soon, restrictions will ease eventually and who knows, maybe true love is just a vaccine shot away. In the meantime, I am forever finding myself in funny and weird situations and I’ll be blogging about them here so get cosy, subscribe and I’ll be back with more soon.