100 words or less

Tonight, at approximately 7.12pm, I registered with a dating website. Go me. It might not sound that hard but it is an extremely important step which I have successfully completed. I feel good about this. Then around 7.23 and 7.37pm I registered with two more.  If I’m going to convince 20 people to go on a date with me over the next year then I’m going to need to keep my options as wide open as possible.

It’s a strange concept creating an online dating profile. It starts off easy enough, just answering a few simple questions about yourself. But then you get to the final question and you’re left staring at a large blank box, wondering how the hell you’re supposed to describe yourself in 100 words or less that will make random strangers decide they want to eat food with you and talk about Harry Potter.

At first, I went for the practical approach. I have a 97% positive rating as a seller on ebay, I can certainly sell my own dateability. I can make this happen!

26 year old Lesbian Virgo. Made in Glasgow. 55% water, 41% bones, skin, blood and stuff, 4% sheer determination. Good condition – slight scarring on left upper arm from riding a horse into a tree at age 12 but hardly noticeable. Height: 5’3”. Weight: Unknown – hasn’t been near a set of scales since 1999. Hair: hard to say – appears to have created an entirely new shade of hair colour through repeated home dyeing using low quality haircare product lines.

My next thought was to go with what I love: the theatre. I love reading programme bios. I make a point of selecting out my favourite cast member from who has the funniest bio and focussing on them for the entire show. I know how these things go.

Luna is delighted to be making her online dating debut here on match.com. Previous dating credits include: that girl from that club in Sydney, she think her name might have been Alice; Gemma the straight girl with the boyfriend she didn’t tell Luna about; the exchange student from Mexico who spoke a delightfully broken English; a drunken mistake or two with her friend Lisa, which they’ve agreed never to speak of again.

A Haiku, perhaps?

A girl called Luna
Frolicks in the summer rain
Cake, eats it and smiles

Maybe I should just be honest?

Hi, I’m Luna. I like Kung Po Chicken, musicals, books that are set somewhere I’ve never been, cold beer on a hot summers day, good spellers, girls, travelling, sleeping, laughing until it’s hard to breathe and the internet. I don’t like fish, pretending, people who try to get on the bus before I’ve had a chance to get out, creatures that have more than four legs, cooking, high heels and getting hit in the face. If any of this makes sense to you, let’s date.

Or cut right to the chase?

Hi. I’m Luna. I’m nice. Um, please date me?

I didn’t use any of these in the end. It took ideas from them all but went with something that hopefully made me sound like a normal human. As is quite obvious, I tend to ramble. I don’t think it’s my most attractive quality so I tried to keep it pretty short. Succinct and mysterious. Enough information that might convince someone they would like to meet me, but not so much that they realise I’m slightly strange. I hope it will work. I think it might.