I Found Love through a Porn Advert

What happens if you actually click? Love, that's what.

The Wild Wild Web can be a treacherous place to find sex/romance/love. We’ve all heard the cautionary tales.

One sympathetic email and you’ve set up a joint bank account with a charismatic, but camera-shy Antiguan royal. Nowadays, broadband ushers even the most lackadaisical of sex offenders into your DMs in nanoseconds. Some debonair avi will catfish your grandma into pouring her pension into a scheme to erect an actual pyramid.

These horror stories leave us browsing with a sceptical head and a fenced-off heart. It feels like one romantic cyber misstep and BAM – you’re bleeding out on the information superhighway, cold, broke and alone. 

I'm a big believer that trust is a two-way street. What if the internet’s behaviour is just a grubby reflection of our lack of faith? I decided to put myself out there and trust the internet to find me a physical or emotional connection somewhere on the fondle-to-soulmate scale. It's time to scroll with my heart and mind wide open.

On a predictable detour, I found myself on a soulless scroll for some porn. When a unique opportunity popped up in the corner of my screen.

“Single Moms Need Cock.” Well, I guess I have the requisite organ. Could I be the fully-clothed man of these moms’ dreams?

Oh, hold up - my willingness to “fuck ugly women” at a moment’s notice isn’t my strongest faculty. A moment is not really very much notice, is it? So I’m only granted an indefinite, but very short, amount of time to ready myself for the asbestos touch of a traditionally unalluring lady. What if I’m busy when they issue this moment’s warning? I can’t exist as an on-call sex aid. 

Then again, there are two promising asterisks guaranteeing no bullshit or sign-up. Alright, let’s see what happens - open heart, open mind.

Jesus, sex right now. I was apprehensive when I was allowed a moment to gather myself. Now the immediacy has cranked up another notch - it’s sex right now. 

No time to brush the toast crumbs from my discoloured pyjamas. No time to compile a raunchy and safely intergenerational playlist. No time to sweep my flat for any man-child knickknacks that might divert their thoughts to their teething toddler. We’re talking, sex right now. I wonder what their childcare situation is.

There are thousands of members primed for the casual sexing in my humble corner of East Oxford alone. Thousands! As luck would have it, my arrival has improbably coincided with a “Limited time Offer! Free Access - Only Today.” The online universe instantly rewarding my faith - high-speed karma for the fibre optic age. 

My inbox will shortly be overloaded with possible sex dates! That sounds exciting; a little bit tricky administratively, if I’m being honest, but exciting. 

The woman looming in the brothel-like glow of the background seems quite a bit older than the woman in the initial cartoon appeal, but it's all groovy. She definitely has a very reassuring, sexiest of the lunch ladies thing going on. 

Again, this shadowy woman in the background has completed a few more levels in the game of life than I had been expecting, but all is good. A long week in a long career has understandably left her pretty jaded with her situation, and her don't-give-a-fuck approach to posing is pretty damn bewitching. 

Hmm alright, something’s definitely up here. The background models are ageing by the page. This lovely old lady is a certified nan, with all the neckwear credentials to prove it. At the risk of being discriminatory, she probably is. We're talking odd-on-racist age. This isn’t really what I didn’t sign up for. Let’s hope she got home OK.

All my background research suggests the age bracket is a little more comprehensive than I originally expected, but that’s OK by me. Hopefully, our passion can pierce the slang barrier. We’ll try to make it work. What's a couple of decades?

I am a bit miffed they're only narrowing my catchment to the South East of England. 14.5% of the country is a pretty broad definition of a neighbourhood. I don't drive. The proximity of these potentially injurious liaisons could really get in the way. 

Alright, I was moaning about sex right now with an ever-ready and terrifyingly local mom. But the prospect of a sticky 9 hour 23 minute, 10 transfer commute to Stodmarsh, East Kent, sounds even less steamy. Surely, there’s some middle ground between being immediately set upon by your ancient neighbour and a day-long sex pilgrimage using every conceivable method of transport. These travel arrangements could attach a few too many strings to this affair. 

My (biological) mum can't be expected to drop me off. Even if she did, my single mom might mistake my birth mum for a love rival and we’ll get off on the wrong foot, if at all. I can't really expect my yommy-mommy to make the trip up, either, what with her corns playing havoc again. 

Wow! 2654 members in my regional neighbourhood. That makes the constricting selection of pube categories a worry of the past. 

Let’s crunch those mom member numbers or - for those schooled to the game - mombers. 2654 moms spread over the 19,096km² in South East England. OK, on average that’s 1 sex-peckish mom for every 7.19517709118 km². Those aren't great mombers. Terrible, mombers, in fact. The chances of local, mutual interest are slimmer than my unembellished dong stats. 

“BUY ENOUGH CONDOMS, YOU WILL NEED THEM.” I suppose that is meant to be a declaration on all the IRL rumpy-pumpy on the cards? It comes across as a warning about the notoriously suspect sexual health of their clientele. Or maybe a caution about the fertility of these proven procreators.

“ENOUGH,” is so vague. How many am I going to need? And is it better to buy them in small amounts all over town to limit suspicion, as a terrorist does fertiliser? Or should I consolidate all the shame into one flustered transaction?

Anyway. Alright, I’m in.

Fuck tonight! - Tonight. Now, that is a doably erotic timeframe.

The lady in the background is a borderline septuagenarian. I now wonder if they have an exclusive lifetime photography contract with the same model, and they just checked in with her every 15 years to cut costs. I feel like I've really matured along with her over the course of filling in my details. 

In the end, the website, Meet40Plus, is for meeting over 40s. I feel a little misled, but mainly gutted I only scored 16 out of 1654 matches. That shrinks my neighbourhood mombers to a dismal one mom per 193.5 km². 

All 16 of my prospective lovers have gone to the great trouble and expense of forking out for professional photography, lighting, make up - the works. My moms are hunched saucily over their tasteful furniture in various states of undress. Each making sweet, kindly love to the lens of a professional, erotic photographer in a well-lit domestic setting, mainly conservatories.

All of these ladies are at least double my age. Despite their eyes holding the twinkle of a half-century's experience, I don't feel that spark with any of them, particularly. Most of them are at fully-fledged grandma age. You can imagine the papery texture of their hands as they doll you out a discontinued brand of toffee. Can we build a bridge across the age gap out of tenderness, candy and mutual pube preferences? Realistically, probably not.

I feel for all of these single moms murmuring into cyberspace for the answer to their loneliness, but sadly, I don't think I'm it.

Suddenly, the inboxes started flooding in. Shit, they really meant now. It's nice to feel wanted.

A message buzzed in from a namesake of my favourite food. All the other moms have lazily used their first names, I like her originality. Or maybe, she just endearingly mommed-up the application. Or maybe that's her real name, maybe it's meant to be.

P*z*a wanted to be my “secret flirt.” I really don’t have it in me to reject anyone, anywhere. I don't want to be impolite and so I just sort of go along with it; until eventually I'm locked into a loveless marriage. Online is no different. I responded “yes”. 

Then this message popped up - whatever these credits are, I'm out of them.

Hmmmm it seems there are a range of reasonable packages I can purchase to respond to my darling, my most satisfying of topped doughs. The highly-touted Best Seller creditbundle boasts 50 messages for a mere £39.99, reduced from £59.99.

The thought of my darling, my most circular of pan-fried delights, hanging on for me is troubling. I can picture her looking straight through her unchanged Windows 95 desktop background, dripping with molten cheese, awaiting my flirty response. But that's a lot of money to splash on a hypothetical cross-county fling with a middle-aged lady, based solely on the deliciousness of her name. Sorry, *i*z*. In another life. 

Well, I'm proud. I did it. I laid my heart down to the whim of the web. Ok, it didn't work out, but I discovered that romance is out there lurking in the web's seedy crannies, if only you let it in. Although, it does come at a price, and that price is in the ballpark of a bottom-of-the-range microwave.