A Glasgow kiss: Tales of online dating from a woman's perspective

Too often these eye-piercing accounts are transactional and mechanical like how you imagine a Which Guide To Sex might be.

Often you’re left unsure if it’s a sexual encounter that’s being described or a new event in the modern pentathlon.

And so you approach an interview assignment such as this with a degree of trepidation.

I’m meeting Sophie Gravia, the young author of what might turn out to be one of the defining literary works of Scotland’s collective lockdown experience.

This 30-something Glaswegian wrote A Glasgow Kiss from the collected accounts of her on-line dating experiences and those of her friends.

It started life as a lockdown project from a series of Facebook blogs, written anonymously.

Before long they were being shared widely by women (and a few blokes) for whom Sophie’s dating experiences struck several chords.

They are raw, unflinching and very, very funny.

The book, though fictionalised, features Zara, a young Glaswegian health worker whose online dating adventures could have been scripted by Quentin Tarantino and Bette Midler.

But they’re characterised by the seasoned Glaswegian’s capacity to find humour in the most absurd and socially awkward encounters.

And amidst all the unrefined concupiscence and gleefully abandoned foundation garments there is tenderness too and the eternal struggle of a young woman seeking reassurance and validation about her looks and experiences.

This being The Herald, I’ve chosen the comparatively subdued aftermath of one of Zara’s bedtime rendezvous which she discusses with her friend, Ashley.

“So, how big was he,” she screeched as she walked through the door into the kitchen, holding the Chinese bags in her hand.

I burst out laughing. “F***ing big. Like … this big.” I pulled a rolling pin out of the cutlery drawer.

“Lucky! And was he generous?”

This confirms all men’s worst nightmares of how women describe these occasions.

The full account of the previous evening’s exertions are outrageously funny and gloriously manky.

In all the spilling and leaking and splashing, though, there’s humanity and compassion as one girl struggles through shame and self-doubt to find what everyone is looking for: love and a little tenderness.

“I was really touched by the messages I was getting from other women when I first started posting my blogs. They were telling me that they’d been waiting for years for someone to describe how it really is for them in real life.

“There was a time when people tended to be judgmental about dating websites, as though it was for desperadoes. But it’s totally mainstream now.”

I ask her if it’s not fraught with a greater degree of peril for women than it is for men. Are they taking a bigger risk?

Several of my female friends have relayed tales of meeting blokes who think that the simple act of agreeing to go on a date is a contractual guarantee of sex.

“I’ve never agreed to date someone with whom I haven’t had a prolonged period of chatting beforehand. Therefore, you can usually tell who the roasters are. Are they over-affectionate or too complimentary about the way you look?

“And if you’re only agreeing to have a coffee then that sets its own boundaries.

“When I was younger I was probably quite naive about all of this, but you learn from experience. I think you can get a sense of someone from the way they dress and their chat if they’re bad news.

“My friends call this ‘The f***-boy vibes’.”

This is one of several revelatory locutions with which Sophie acquaints me during our conversation. I strive to appear knowledgeable and seasoned about all of this and affect an insouciant man-of-the-world vibe that soon crumbles.

I’m treated to some other new concepts. One of these is “dropping a pin”.

Sophie explains this is a safety mechanism where her friends can electronically embed her location on their smartphones in case anything untoward unfolds.

Another one is the “Tinder-walk”. This, Sophie explains, became one of the big features of Scotland in lockdown while people like me were watching old football videos and trying to decipher cookery books.

Yet this Tinder-walk malarkey possesses a reassuringly vintage aesthetic. “Everyone got a dog and went on Tinder walks during lockdown,” she says. “It helped to ease us all through the social restrictions and was a way of keeping the flames of romance enkindled.”

Heather Suttie, the Scottish events and PR specialist, was thrilled when she first read A Glasgow Kiss. “It just seemed to be what a lot of us had been waiting for,” she said. “I can’t remember laughing so much at a book – and crying too.

“It’s just so honest and it could only have been written by a Glaswegian because it’s got that honesty and directness that’s usually missing from fiction that deals with sex and relationships.”

Suttie is founder of BookFace, an international, online book club that holds monthly events in Glasgow with modern authors. “When Sophie appeared at one last month the response from women and men was overwhelmingly positive. Yes, some of the scenes are outrageously graphic, but they’re leavened with humour and honesty.”

There are several astonishing aspects to A Glasgow Kiss. It’s been written by a first-time author who had not the remotest idea of how to break into the publishing world and yet has secured her a two-book deal featuring the further adventures of Zara.

And as well as hitting top spot in the Erotic Fiction charts, Waterstone’s made it one of their books of the year. Yet, she’s still looking for a literary agent.

Perhaps the most startling is that Sophie wrote the book while juggling the demands of being a full-time nurse in a busy Glasgow hospital during lockdown with the responsibilities of being a single mother to two children.

“I didn’t really stop to think about that,” she said. “Writing the book probably helped me cope during the pandemic.”

And while the majority of the responses to the book have been from women, quite a few blokes responded too.

“I can honestly say that all the responses from men, including from some former internet dates, have been very positive. They all got the humour.

“One messaged me last night and said: ‘F*** me, it was like reading an old scuddy mag when I was a lad. If you ever feel like ditching the halo just give me a shout and I’ll take you out’. I mean, where did he even get his hands on the book?”

Any worries she may have harboured about the reactions of friends and family were ill founded.

“I’d only initially told a few of them and they were all so supportive. I was a bit more anxious about my family’s reaction, to be honest.

“They’re all pretty committed and traditional west of Scotland Catholics, but my mum says she’s very proud of me. She hasn’t read it and I don’t really want her to. But she knows what it’s about. And my family have also said that, of all of them, I was the one with no filters.

“I recently bumped into one of my gran’s friends, a woman in her 80s. She waved over and said: ‘I bought your book. I sat down with it at 11 o’clock last week and I didn’t stop til 4am.’ And she’s the holiest wee woman ever. She’s lovely.

“And then she said: ‘Your granny would have been so proud of you’. “I was also a bit worried about how it might be received at my workplace. And then I saw that some of my patients were reading it. One of them was sitting in our dialysis unit reading it and asked me to come over and sign it for her.”

Recently, on the gogglebox, there have been some howlers posing as provocative television drama that are about as edgy as Classic FM.

You find yourself unconsciously casting A Glasgow Kiss even as you’re reading it, as it’s perfect for a six-part comedy drama. The second book in the series will be published in August and by then Sophie hopes to have found an agent.

There’s a message from the author at the front of the book. It says simply: “This book is for any girl who has ever wondered why she isn’t enough.

“Just open your eyes and raise your standards. I see you.”

l A Glasgow Kiss, by Sophie Gravia, is published in paperback by Orion Books, £8.99.