Winter Shoes for Cross-Country Running

Chapter 3. The Agency with Almost No Members

Here is one more thing you will have to face: you will make mistakes. And learn from them, since you will go your very own way. So use my guidelines, as they may just help you to find your way around. In the Agency with Almost No Members, they used the most creative approaches to try and sell me various crap. Truth be told, I cannot be sure that all of the men they tried to force on me were crap, as some were rejected outright, before seeing in person. First of all, I think that if a female is a paying member, and a male is not (if he is headhunted, as they call it), the dynamics of their relationship are not classy from the very start. If you don’t feel this way, then your outlook is just different, but for me, that is how it is. So, the staff of the Agency with Almost No Members had much trouble with me. By the way, it was the only type of agency with a business model that I completely understood, or so it seemed to me. I never managed to figure out the business model of the Most Expensive Agency, which had only full members, as they told me. But I digress. In any case, this Agency with Almost No Members was not able to deliver to me, in two years, eight candidates, as it promised. After two years, the membership ends, and you lose all your privileges, don’t forget that. I didn’t need to meet new candidates just to gain more knowledge. I had more than enough of it already, enough even for this humble book. At last, they tried to burden me with some useless pulp not fitting my requirements, but I preferred to close my contract instead of meeting not up to standards men. In a year, they gave me one member whose membership expired a year ago and who became disappointed in the agency before he met the potential girlfriends promised to him. They set me up with a non-member who endlessly surfed the internet and, judging by the criteria announced on the dating sites, was looking for someone 10 or 15 years younger than me. I did not hide my doubt as to the viability of this relationship but the agent insisted that the guy chose me and was eager to meet me. In her dreams, maybe. He never called. In the Agency with Almost No Members, they still marked him as another introduction on my account. Quite an approach….

By the way, it has never happened that a full paid member didn’t call. It makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Naturally, every agency has its tricks, but they are subtler and not so obvious. The owner of the Agency with Almost No Members was all over television, promoting herself as benefactress and helper of children in third world countries. She prepared her PR campaign in advance, probably, in case one of her clients got very annoyed indeed and shared his story with the press, and brought it before the public’s eye, so to say. The agency owner would then be able to pull out of her handbag a very nice mask of the socially responsible adventurist who made a rich undecided dummy pay, not for herself, but for the sake of poor children. It’s like the Union of Sword and Plough, in an updated British version.

The next of my candidates was a non-member again. But with this one the matchmaker and I met on the seaside and agreed that if I don’t get a date, the suitor won’t be added as an introduction. By the way, the guy was not bad. He could not be called good either, but he was not pretentious, did not show off, did not air undue expectations. He did not cause indigestion, but neither was he interesting or at least strange. Just a one-off date. Which was not so bad.

The next one they offered me was a sinewy guy of some 58 years, a real member for a change. Intelligent, adequate, boring. I knew the score myself and didn’t need his opinion. Not a chance for a miracle. Then they sent me another ex-member who got disappointed in the agency and did not get enough girls to fill his quota. This one was more fun. Late in his 50s too, ex-lawyer, now artist. Definitely more fun than a manila envelope. He invited me to “La Bohème” and asked me to sit for him. ‘Naked?’ I asked at once. The guy was visibly embarrassed. At least, it was a diversion for me. I already mentioned the lawyer who protected the civil rights of the Taliban movement, and his three pound nuts.

Time passed, I was in no hurry. The agency was more used to working with nervous and needy brides-to-be. It got rattled. The Agency with Almost No Members had their best matchmaker call me for a private phone talk about the next candidate. I have no prejudice against age difference, and I mentioned the maximum age of 60, but if the man looks well, then 63. Nevertheless, Trudie was eager to discuss a fiancé of 72 (for the record, I was 42 then). He was an ‘ex-minister, and owner of factories, newspapers, steamboats’ as an old Russian rhyme went. Ex-minister, no joke. He also owned an open park of modern art on many hectares of private land. Trudy admitted that 72 was a ripe age, but told me that the old man was alert and looked much younger. I saw such men, including Andron Konchalovsky. And I decided to meet the candidate. As Andron’s father once said: ‘A rich man is never old.’ I did not really see myself playing the role of Anne Nicole Smith, but who knew what the future will bring us.

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