Rory Carrick’s first romance with the cute guy he met on Plenty of Fish turned out to be one hell of a morning after the night before.

Having taken the time to set up a fairly decent Plenty of Fish (POF) profile and pretty much immediately matching with my ex (isn’t it ironic, don’tchya think?), I decided to do a bit more trawling. The great thing about POF is its range of features. It has combined some of the best features from a range of other more ‘hook up’-type sites, added a more detailed narrative about its users, and packaged the whole experience as something a little classier.

You can see people who are close to you (as on Grindr). You can see a list of who looked at your profile (like Growler). It also has a ‘Meet Me’ function, which allows you to flick through profile pictures and select a Yes, No or Maybe (like Tinder). Anyone who matches with you will then show on a mutual matches list and you can spend a bit more time looking at their profile. This means you have the opportunity to see what you have in common, rather than just making a snap judgement based on someone’s pic.

After reading through a few profiles I found Choir Boy (he sings in a choir). He was easy on the eye. He liked to run. He liked to cook and bake and was a bit of a foodie, just like me. Check boxes: tick, tick, tick! I sent off a message to say “hi” and he took the bait. We had a bit of back and forth, swapped numbers and arranged to meet for a drink after work. Choir Boy was delicious in person. He smelled great, was well dressed, chatty and fun. I didn’t have to use the ‘pretend emergency phone call, sorry I have to leave’ move. We hung out for a few hours, agreed to meet for lunch the following week and then headed off home (separately), both of us smiling.

There were loads of cute texts between meeting for a drink and the follow-up lunch date. Choir Boy sent me hilarious videos of himself doodling our names while he sat at his desk. I spelled his name out in Post-it notes on my desk and sent that to him. It was incredibly adorable and all good clean flirting. Not a dirty picture in sight. All very POF and in the best possible taste.
Lunch was lovely. We chatted. Got to know each other a bit more. Choir Boy was refreshingly confident and made me laugh a lot. I might even have been slightly intimidated by him, but in a positive way. An hour for lunch is just never long enough, so we agreed to kick our budding romance up a notch and have dinner and drinks the following week. Again we had lots of texts in between, which was great. Then came the pivotal third date.

Dinner was a leisurely after-work affair with wine and chats. Wine, which didn’t take too long to go to my head and make me want to maul Choir Boy. After dinner we hit the pub for some pints. More chats, more of a buzz and then some actual mauling. As if we hadn’t already drank enough we found ourselves stumbling through Temple Bar and ended up in god-awful Buskers. There was more beer. I swear we were not already plastered at this stage. There was bad dancing (me not him), there was more mauling and then there was a taxi to Choir Boy’s apartment.
It all got a little vague. Clothes were abandoned. Things got a little heated. Okay, very heated. There was some very blurry sex (I think), which may or may not have been good. All I know is that I woke up beside Choir Boy (he still looked quite good, I have to say) with possibly the worst hangover I have ever had in my life. Not only that, but it was accompanied by the worst hangover horn. The hangover and the horn usually travel together. Sometimes they work together, get the job done and everyone can relax or pass out again. Sometimes they are like the red and green Luas lines – on similar tracks but just not going to meet in the middle and get you where you need to go.

Despite better judgement I decided to give it a go anyway. Fast forward about five minutes and the hangover has taken over, bitch slapped the horn and I’m hunched over the toilet throwing up everything but my memories. It was all sorts of embarrassing. Not heeding the warning, the horn figured he would try again. This time the hangover bitch slapped Choir Boy and he spent some time talking to God on the big white telephone. After that we settled for spooning. It was less traumatic for all concerned.

Leaving Choir Boy’s apartment that morning I was a rattling mess. My head was pounding, my stomach was churning and I was raging he didn’t get to experience my 25-position porn star love making. Apparently that only works when you are sober. The silver lining was that suspecting I might end up in his place I had stuck a toothbrush in my jacket pocket. It’s amazing how better you can feel after descaling your mouth with a vigorous brushing.

In an unfortunate twist of fate, timing seemed to be against me and Choir Boy. He was swamped in work and our follow-up date was postponed once or twice. Time moved on and I guess we both did too. My first POF romance was whirlwind and thoroughly enjoyable. Choir Boy was sweet and funny and easy to look at, and I suspect I’ll bump into him again. Besides he still has my toothbrush.