Be mine, be mine, tonight...

Oops. It appears I've forgotten to post for a very, very long time. If I have any subscribers left, hi! What have I been doing? Well, I tried to write a book and that didn't happen. I tried to write a new song and that didn't happen. I tried to keep my job, and that didn't happen - and then I tried to get a new one and that didn't happen either. I tried to have meaningful interactions with a male of the species and well... you can guess.

Following an unfortunate creepy stalking incident, I also deleted my NZDating profile. It's all fun and games until someone approaches you at the pub after recognising you, and won't take "fuck off, it's a joke profile" for an answer. So to those readers who followed me only for my (if I may say so) hilarious NZDating stories - sorry. The joke had run its course.

But while we're on the subject of relationships, I have been thinking about this subject a fair bit lately. A couple of weeks ago, on a cold and stormy night, I huddled under the heatpump with a blanket and my clichéd cat to watch the movie "He's Just Not That Into You". I'd seen bits of it years before on pay TV in a hotel room somewhere, but fell asleep before the end.

Everything they say makes sense  in theory. If a guy likes you, he'll ask for your number. If he doesn't, he won't. If he doesn't call you, he doesn't like you. Blah blah blah. The upshot of it is, we should just wait around for someone to like us enough to get our numbers and call us. If the girl does either of these things instead, she's needy and doomed to die alone, with her many cats eating her face.

All well and good - but is there a country in the world where it's still normal for guys to ask girls on dates? Or is it the domain of romantic comedies alone?

Case in point: me. Thirty-one, not entirely horrible to look at, I dress ok, have an alright job, can converse on current affairs with some competency and have been known at times to be funny. I can count on one hand the number of times I've been asked on a date, and still have enough fingers left over to open a beer. As for being asked for my number... well, I'm pretty sure that count currently stands at zero.

So it stands to reason that I can make eyes at the guy I'm currently drooling over as much as I like (knowing me, it's likely I appear rather more drunk or gassy than seductive) - it just isn't going to get me anywhere. And a male friend confirmed the other day "that's just not how it works anymore."

So, no matter how much it offends my inner romantic, it seems the 'kiwi way' is here to stay. You both get drunk at a party, one of you says "go home with me", and then if you don't hate each other in the morning, do it again. After a while one of you will either update your relationship status on facebook or start sleeping with other people. And that's pretty much it.

Sigh. I'm gonna need more cats...