Speed dating: Seeking sex in the city

Now I'm no cocktail-swigging, Manolo Blahnik-wearing, chain-smoking Carrie Bradshaw, scribbling down profound observations on sexual anthropology while staring out of her window. For one thing, I like my alcohol neat, and for another, I'm the only woman I know who doesn't have a shoe fetish.

Nevertheless, there I was — surrounded by 17 eligible young men, although I do use the words “eligible” and “young” advisedly. Let me put it this way: all were single, all were wealthy enough to blow R180 on a chance for happiness (although if you find it, R180 is a small price to pay), none had checked into a retirement home just yet, and all were talking to me. (Only because they had to, but still.)

Actually it wasn't a dream. You could tell because in TV-land, only beautiful people exist, whereas in the real world everyone looks like you and me. Can't complain; as an oil painting I'm distinctively Picasso myself.

When my editor, in a pregnant tone of voice, asked me if I'd heard of speed dating, I knew feigning innocence wasn't going to get me out of this one. In fact nothing was — and almost before I'd had time to mascara my eyelashes, slip on a pair of Spanish Inquisition torture instruments — oops, I mean, two-inch-high strappy sandals — I was being bundled off on an undercover assignment.

Speed dating is a deceptively simple concept. The Speed Dater organisers take 40 bright young things, with even helpings of each gender, lock them into the same room and let nature take its course. You end up spending a short amount of time — in this case, three minutes — with 20 members of the opposite sex, with a handy card so you can jot down their names and any applicable comments. This is necessary because, before you know it, you'll be frowning at your card and wondering who the heck Nigel was, even if you scribbled "the alcoholic one" next to his name. (That's because, at a speed dating event, everyone is likely to be at least a part-time alcoholic).

At the end of the evening you indicate who you'd like to see again, and if your dreamboat happened to tick you too, the almighty organisers provide you with his/her email address.

So, is there any sex in this city?

Now love don't come easy, even in this day and age, and if you're a single woman in the Mother City you've got it harder than most. “I couldn’t score in Cape Town if I was naked and covered in cream,” comedienne Tracey Klass once chortled, and I had to admit there was a ring of truth in her words. I’d really be much better off moving to Pofadder, if that was my aim.

So it's unsurprising that South African women have taken to speed dating like rave bunnies to ecstasy. Equally unsurprisingly, men have been less enthusiastic — the night I went, two had ducked out of the event while one had turned up, got cold feet, and sat at the bar instead while his equally off-putting friend was introduced to dozens of willing females.

Still, I must admit that the crop I was introduced to weren't really all that bad. If you're willing to overlook the niggling fact that most were old enough to be my father, that is, and I was attending what was supposed to be an event for 26-to-38-year-olds.

The sexy librarian look: A contradiction in terms?

A colleague suggested I dress as a mysterious vamp, but I'm afraid it's hard to be mysterious when you're wearing pink nail polish (incidentally, do men even notice nail polish? And if so, why on earth would they be turned on by painted claws?).

In any case, I'm really just a spectacle-wearing jeans-and-T-shirt kind of girl, with a wardrobe sadly lacking in vamp essentials. I was going to have to go for the sexy librarian look, something I'd always thought of as a contradiction in terms, but there you go.

I found a miniskirt I’d last worn, oh, only about five years ago, and managed to squeeze into it too. Should be okay as long as I don't breathe in, but hey, what is beauty without suffering?

But I didn't do all that badly. Given what I had to work with, I was smokin'! Silk purses out of sow's ears and all that...

I was attempting to exude smouldering sexuality, Catherine Zeta-Jones style, and failing miserably, but still, I thought, as I pouted into the mirror, I wouldn't mind taking myself out for a gin and tonic or two. I just hoped someone else would feel the same.

What I thought was going to happen:

For some reason I'd pictured a very intense singles-bar kind of environment, everyone dressed according to their level of desperation, quaffing drinks like there was no tomorrow, and trying out their best pickup lines. I knew I'd be a hopeless failure at this. The only line I could remember was: "Hi, I've lost my phone number. Can I have yours?"

I could imagine it already:
He: So what are your hobbies?
Me: Sex.
He: Anything else?
Me: Nope. Just sex.

No, I didn’t quite think that would do the trick.

What actually happened...

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