Sometimes it feels like I live in a town where I have exhausted all my romantic options, come to think about it I have just about exhausted even all my one night stand options also!
I live in a town of just under 20,000, not including surrounding towns, because there are none. In fact you have to travel two and half hours to get to the next town and the only thing to do there is keep driving through to somewhere more interesting even further away.
It's a mining town so you would be excused for thinking that there is an abundance of burly men. Alas this is not the case. Having grown up feeling entitled to a job on the mines young men are often shocked to find that the foreign owned local mine requires qualified and experienced workers, so the young men leave. They are not replaced with men from "away" as the required workers are flown in and out. The end result is that us women often feel that there are just not enough men to go around.
This is not always the case, for several weekends starting in October our town unwillingly participates in the annual drunken arsehole exchange. At this time we send a football team of cashed up bogans to someplace else and get five teams in return. In this respect it is much like the illfated Malaysia deal, and just as succesful. We turn up at the local classy establishment to find ourselves in a sea of young, drunk, unavailable men. And they seem to be standing around wondering where the hell all the hot young available women are. They're at home with their kids.
Now I may be completely off the track but below is how I see the typical small town bogan romance, henceforth known as a bogance, unfolding in more situations than not. Guy knows of girl and girl knows of guy, cause lets face it in a town of 20,000 you're pretty much guaranteed to know everyone in your age bracket. Guy is at pub with mates, girl is at pub with girlfriends. They are both there to pick up, clearly. Guy gets drunk and hits on girl, girl gets drunk and lets guy take advantage of her. Guy takes girl home, girl never leaves, they end up married with two kids by 24. There are other variations, but you get the gist of it.
By the time they hit 40 they are divorced and have split the house, debt, kids time, friends, community in general and what days each one of them can go to the one only pub that happens to be cool at the time. Now looking for wifey number two, the 40+ divorcee wastes no time heading back to the pub with his, also divorced, mates and the system repeats itself only with someone 5-10 years his junior.
The divorcee wife stays at home with the kids, occasionally going out with her single gal pals to get way to drunk, act way to flirty and end up with a bad reputation. The times, they have not a changed that much.
One thing that gets me about this whole awful process is the lack of actual dating. I would like a guy to actually ask me out, on a date, something involving dinner and a wine, with a follow up date and then gradually get to know someone. But the men out here aren't trained that way and as all the guys my age are now entering the divorce phase of their lives and I go fishing for second round offers I can't help but think... do I really want to be with a romantically challenged retread anyway?
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