Love Your Life(4)

“It’s called ‘Last Chance,’?” explains Sarika. “I can reprieve any of them by clicking on them.”

“Reprieve him!” I say, pointing to my favorite. “Reprieve him!”

“Ava, you don’t know anything about him,” says Sarika, rolling her eyes.

“He looks nice!”

“But he’s vegetarian,” says Sarika, and presses Done.

The screen shimmers again and all the guys with crossed-out faces disappear. The remaining guys swirl around the screen and then assemble again in neat rows of photos, with new ones taking the place of the vanished.

    “Great,” says Sarika with satisfaction. “I’m getting somewhere.”

I stare at the screen, slightly traumatized by this culling process.

“It’s brutal,” I say. “It’s heartless.”

“Better than swiping,” puts in Nell.

“Exactly!” Sarika nods. “It’s scientific. There are more than eight hundred possible filters on the site. Height, job, habits, location, political views, education…The algorithms were developed at NASA, apparently. You can process five hundred guys in, like, no time.” She consults her list again. “Right, on to the next. No one over six foot three.” She starts typing again. “I’ve tried super-tall. Doesn’t work with me.”

She presses Apply Filter, three red crosses appear, and within seconds a new selection of guys is gazing out from the screen.

“Apparently one woman kept on applying filters until there was only one guy left on the screen, and she contacted him and they’re still together,” Sarika adds, scrolling down the typed list on her phone. “That’s your ideal.”

“It still feels wrong,” I say, watching the screen in dismay. “This can’t be the way.”

“It’s the only way,” Sarika contradicts me. “Basically everybody dates online now, right? Eve-ry-bo-dy. Millions of people. Billions of people.”

“I guess so,” I say warily.

“Everybody dates online,” Sarika reiterates clearly, as though she’s giving a TED Talk. “It’s like going to a cocktail party and everybody in the world’s standing there, trying to catch your eye. That’s never going to work! You need to narrow it down. Ergo.” She gestures at the screen.

    “ASOS is bad enough,” puts in Nell. “I searched for white shirt yesterday. You know how many I got? Twelve hundred and sixty-four. I was like, I don’t have time for this shit. I’ll take the first one. Whatever.”

“Exactly,” says Sarika. “And that’s a shirt, not a life partner. No more than ten minutes from tube station,” she adds, typing briskly. “I’ve had enough of schlepping to flats in the middle of nowhere.”

“You’re ruling out guys who live more than ten minutes from the tube?” My jaw sags. “Is that even a thing?”

“You can create your own filters, and if they like them they add them to the website,” Sarika explains. “They’re considering my one about hair-washing frequency.”

“But what if the perfect guy lives eleven minutes from the tube station?” I know I’m sounding agitated, but I can’t help it. I can already see him, drinking his coffee in the sunshine, wearing his cycle shorts, listening to his Bach playlist, longing for someone just like Sarika.

“He’ll lie about it,” says Sarika comfortably. “He’ll put ten minutes. It’s fine.”

She’s really not getting the point.

“Sarika, listen,” I say in frustration. “What if there’s an amazing guy who’s six foot five and vegetarian and he lives twenty minutes away from Crouch End…and you’ve ruled him out? This is nuts!”

“Ava, stop freaking out,” says Sarika calmly. “You have to have some deal-breakers.”

“No you don’t,” I say adamantly. “I don’t have any deal-breakers. I want a good man, that’s all. A decent, civilized human being. I don’t care what he looks like, what his job is, where he lives…”

    “What about if he hates dogs?” says Sarika, raising her eyebrows.

I’m silenced.

He couldn’t hate dogs, because only really strange, sad people don’t like dogs.

“OK,” I concede at last. “That’s my only deal-breaker. He has to like dogs. But that’s the only one. Literally.”

“What about golf?” chips in Nell craftily.

Damn her. Golf is my Achilles’ heel. I’ll admit I have an irrational loathing for the game. And the outfits. And the people who play it.

But in my defense, it’s because I used to live near the snootiest golf club in the world. There was a public footpath across the land, but if you even tried to go for a walk on it, all you got was furious people in matching sweaters flapping their arms at you, telling you to be quiet, or go back, were you an idiot?

It wasn’t just me who found it stressful; the council had to have a word with the golf club. Apparently they brought in a new system of signs and it’s all fine now. But by then we’d moved away, and I’d already decided I was allergic to golf.

However, I’m not admitting that now, because I don’t like to think of myself as a prejudiced person.