A few years ago I was lonely, bored, depressed and rarely left my bedroom. After too many white wines one night, I created a profile for myself on RSVP and sat back to watch my inbox fill with eligible young bachelors. One guy in particular sparked my interest. Let’s call him Gavin, because that was his name, and still is his name, assuming he hasn’t died.

Gavin and I exchanged a few emails and chatted on MSN. He was smart and funny, and looked cute in his profile picture.

I asked Gavin if he wanted to meet up for coffee. (Like I said – I was extremely single at this point in my life.) He agreed, but said I’d have to meet him in Penrith because that’s where he lived and he didn’t drive.

Alarm bells began to ring softly in my head, but I ignored them. Unlike today when a single spelling mistake can disqualify somebody, back then I was a lot more tolerant. I liked to think that I would never judge a person based on where they lived.

And so I made the long drive out west, found the shopping centre Gavin had nominated, and located the coffee shop he wished to meet at. It was closed, so I sat outside on a bench and watched the local ageing men walk past. Suddenly one of them stopped in front of me and asked, “Annik?”

I considered denying my identity, but I’d already hesitated too long and confirmed it. Gavin bore an uncanny resemblance to Mr Burns from The Simpsons. He was completely bald, hunched over, and had rotting teeth. He smelled like cheap cologne and was wearing a block-colour charcoal track suit. He embodied every physical Penrith cliche.

“The coffee shop’s closed,” I stammered.

“That’s okay, we can just go for a walk,” he replied.

We strolled slowly to the side of the carpark as he babbled awkwardly about a holiday he once took, I can’t even remember where, because my brain was busy going “JESUS FUCK I HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE.”

As we approached the road, I turned to Gavin and said, “You know what? I have to go.”

Then I walked over to my car and drove home.

When I got there, I had a text on my phone from Gavin saying, “Sorry if that was disappointing.”

I didn’t write back. I blocked him on MSN and changed my email address. I removed my profile from RSVP and showered thoroughly. Then I burst into tears.

Never before had I felt so incredibly shallow. I’d enjoyed conversing with somebody and exchanging stories, then as soon as I knew what they really looked like, I wanted nothing to do with them. I was a bitch and I was going to hell.

Later that night, I related my online-dating experience to a friend’s mother.

“Am I totally horrible?” I asked her when I had finished.

“God, no,” she replied, “You can’t fuck an ugly person.”

When I was ten years old, my parents made me change schools mid-term. We’d moved a few suburbs away and the 30+ minutes of driving every morning and afternoon was giving mum the shits.

I’ve never been able to make new friends easily, and I was no better at it back then. In fact, the only friend I managed to recruit that year was a girl named Kim, who wore thick glasses and constantly had the faint aroma of shit about her.

“Kim wears nappies,” the other kids gossiped, “cause she poos her pants all the time.”

I didn’t find the smell too bad, so I hung out with Kim and invited her over to my house a few times. She was nice enough and she always gave me half of her roll-up.

When school finished for the year, Kim went away on holiday with her family. She sent me a postcard from Jenolan Caves that read:

Dear Annik,

I miss you. I’m glad you came to our school. Thank you for being my friend and for not making fun of me like the others do.

Love, Kim.

After the summer break, Kim and I were enrolled in different classes because I was smarter than her. In my new class, a group of four girls, who were reasonably pretty, started letting me sit with them at lunch and invited me to the movies and their birthday parties. I never really spoke to Kim again after that.

Me: Dad, there’s something gross on my neck. Can you take a look?

My brother: Is it your face?

Dad: It’s eczema.

Me: I’m going to my room.

Somewhere around my fifteenth year, I sat at the kitchen table one evening, doing my homework and eating a frozen piece of banana cake. My mother entered the room and looked from the cake to me.

“What?” I asked her.

“It’s not that you’re fat, darling,” she explained, “You’re just…flabby.”

My mother is generally oblivious to anything I do, say, wear or inhale, so she is constantly endangering her heart’s health by noticing my tattoos, piercings and the like up to 12 months after their advent.

Last night she picked me up from the airport and immediately exclaimed, “Annik! You’ve shrunk!”

Pleased that she had noticed my new sleek figure, I proceeded to explain my recently tweaked workout regime and how I have been hauling arse out of bed at 5:30am every morning to exercise, but it has obviously been worth it because now I am thinner and hot.

“No,” she interrupted, “I think you’ve gotten shorter. Are you slouching even more than usual?”

I once dated what I thought was a smart guy. On our fourth (and final) date, we were out having drinks when I made a joke about being a supermodel.

“Oh my god!” he snorted, “That’s hilarious! I mean, you’re gorgeous, but you could never be a supermodel!”

I know that, cocknose.

When I was nineteen, I shared a house in West Ryde with a twenty-six year old tradesman. This meant that 80% of the fridge space was taken up by beer and the TV could always be heard from halfway down the street, but apart from that, he was an acceptable housemate.

When summer began, my housemate’s co-workers started coming over regularly to work on their cars in our large backyard. Undeterred, I continued my strict sun-bathing regime and spent every afternoon lying on the trampoline in a bikini. Gradually, I gained the attention of one of these guys, and once I knew I had it in the bag, I told my housemate to hand over my phone number.

“Why would you want to date him?” my friends asked, “He’s a tradie.”
“Don’t be so judgmental,” I scolded, “Just because he breaks stuff for a living doesn’t mean he isn’t intelligent, charming and interesting.”

A week later, I received the following text message:

Hey, how rya? Do ya wanna go out 1 nite dis week n grab sum food n shit?

I sunbaked in the front yard after that.