Tools of love

How did your parents meet? This is generally a safe, cross-generational question (most people have parents who met at some point, even if it was just to fleetingly rub noses) which I like to ask people and which I am genuinely curious about. Among my generation more often than not the answer is either at work, I dunno, or it was arranged by their parents.

Nowadays when I ask new acquaintances of my own generation how they met their current partner/squeeze, particularly expatriates, quite frequently the answer is online. Whether they were actively seeking love/friendship via an online dating service or in a more passive way (she saw an online advertisement from a guy who dog-sits and asked him if he could look after her pups while she took a package deal to the Dominican Republic. It turned out that he was the [re]incarnation of Solal des Solals so she cancelled the trip to help him look after her puppies who were, after all, still quite young and a bit of a handful).

When people ask me how H. and I met I’m reluctant to say online. It's not that I'm embarrassed about online meeting. Gone are those Sydney days when the internet was still quite new as a tool for meeting people - those days when my sister in-law was saying that internet thingy is never going to take off. Back then the internet was predominantly the domain of deception. Those were the days when, although I never photoshopped my nose (mainly because I didn't/don't know how to use photoshop), short boys didn't do me the courtesy of refraining from standing on chairs in their photographs. They were the carefree days where the people I met via the internet omitted to tell me before our first meeting that they just had a recent brain explosion or that when they said they were an artist they just like painting those little toy soldiers in army greens, and that's all they like doing.

Lately at least I've found the internet to be a little more honest - ofcourse people are often a slightly off-kilter version of their online persona, but they are generally only a mildly dirtier version of the spade they said they were.

I moved to Paris when I was christmas cake, that is, past the age where I could walk out on the street and toss a ball to someone and their act of throwing it back to me meant that we were friends. Working from home I didn't have the platform of a parisien office in which to meet people and, being far from where I studied, I didn't have the backdrop of friends from school or university. As I don't even have a decent horse and carriage to go from house to house leaving visiting cards, here the internet has been a useful tool for widening my circle of friends.

One English friend who moved to Paris before the days of the internet and was freelancing from home says: "You don’t know what it was like Pinochiette. Those were dark days. I was forced to treat the Champs Elysées like Les Rambles in Barcelona, strolling up and down hoping to make contact with another form of life. I used to meet American boys who were pretending to be French, and I used to pretend to them that I was American. It was all very confusing. Much more confusing than now with the internet when everyone is much more upfront."

Technically H. and I may have met as the result of a random click and add on his profile as part of a `recruitment' drive - back in the days when my English comrade-in-fun and I organised Funster Fridays. These were bubbly nights where we invited a whole lot of strangers from our online community out for a drink, and we sat back and watched as their profiles were flooded with light, and names and vital statistics became circles of flesh standing askew in a bar.

But I think that H. and I really met through my cat.

When I was thirteen years old I begged my mother for a pet dog. But although my mother was very giving and allowed me to have enough rabbits and guinea pigs to fill a barn, I could not, must not, would not have a dog.

For the most part, I didn’t really want a dog. I just wanted a prop for meeting boys. Trapped behind the walls of an all girls catholic school it was clear to me that my only way to meet boys would be dog walking. He might be walking his dog too or he might be just walking along feeling the lack of a dog. He'd be drawn to me by the light of my golden retriever. This loveable pedigree would be a mere tool for ensnaring a boy.

In the best of all possible worlds, after the boy had taken the bait and petted my dog (presuming my dog was the friendly type who didn't frighten the boy away by gnawing his hand or Cujo-style drooling), he'd be forced to enter into conversation with me where I'd finish him off with my wit. Like lassie or the littlest hobo, the dog would be be free to go and aid another lovelorn catholic girl.

After my click and add, H. and I remained acquaintances. Perhaps when, on a whim, I emailed him to say I was looking for a cat, I was subconsciously harking back to these days when I saw domestic animals as a means of tying the bonds of love. But I think I really did just want a cat. I described briefly, but exactly, the kind of cat I wanted: it must be a boy, black with white paws.

H. texted later: "My friend who lives on a farm has some kittens looking for a home. One is a boy. Black with white socks and a stamp on his nose."

When I went to collect the kitten from H. it was as if with the force of having a little bundle of fur depending on us, we were seeing each other for the first time. As I held my loveable mutt with his overgrown ears and big look-after-me eyes, he looked back and forth from H. to me and it's as though we were being introduced for the first time: H., meet Pinochiette. Pinochiette, meet H.