Love Potion No.9.  

She looked at my palm and she made a magic sign

She said, "What you need is Love Potion No. 9.”

(Lieber and Stoller 1959)

Internet dating. You probably haven’t tried it, but you probably have a good idea of what’s involved and you probably also have a bit of a prejudiced view of it. I know that as soon as I tell you I have tried it, no matter how hip you consider yourself to be, the thought that I am a bit of a sad loser will creep into that supposedly open mind of yours. Well, we all have our prejudices and I would have been the same a while ago

But, I admit it, I am a bit of a sad loser. I have reached the age of 40. I have spent a large part of my life building up my chemical research company and I haven’t had the time to build a decent long term relationship. Anyway, online is the modern way of doing things. Or so I tell myself.

Now we’ve got that out of the way, I hope you’ll be a bit more sympathetic to the story I have to tell you. 

If, like me, you choose to go down this route to finding a partner, the first thing you have to do is to find the appropriate web-site. I wasn’t after a Thai bride, or a Russian wife wanting a visa. Nor did I want any kind of short term sexual relationship. I was genuinely seeking a soul-mate to share the rest of my life with. 

Writing your profile for the website is quite a challenging task, especially if you want to be original. You have to puff up your positive qualities and ignore your shortcomings, all the while trying to be very Britishly modest about yourself. I settled for what I considered to be a reasonably factual description. Something along the lines of ‘career-minded research scientist; 40 years old; tall; prefers rugby to football and classic R and B to classical opera; fit and active; enjoys the outdoors but also a quiet glass of Chilean red by the fire; looking for like minded female for long term relationship.’ Pretty anodyne, but along with the pictures (oh, the agony of choosing the right pictures, but we’ll gloss over that), I felt that i wouldn’t be accused of misleading anyone. Especially about the beard.

Then you realise, that you don’t just sit back and wait for the opportunities to fall in your lap, you have to go out and look as well. So, I started the daily search of all the female profiles fitting my, pretty broad, parameters

There are certain things that rule some of them out straight away. Aberdeen, for example, or Truro, Very nice towns, but a little far to go on the off chance. 

So, you spend hours trawling through hundreds of similar ads of women who are ‘not interested in one night stands’, are ‘looking for Mr Right’, who ‘like’ or ‘hate’ ‘cooking/long walks on the beach/ cosy nights in/ visiting art galleries/ travelling’ and/or any combination of any of the above. Believe me, unravelling DNA is easier,.

Actually going on dates is quite a thing, at least at first. You look at the photo, (who the hell said looks don’t count) and spend hours agonising over which one to contact first. You finally take the plunge and she responds. A place and time are agreed and the big day comes. You decide what to wear (smart casual seems to say: I care what I look like, but I’m not a peqacock), look at her photo any number of times to make sure you get the right person and then set off.

My first date was in a pub, which I thought was promising; relaxed, not committed to a long session; either of us could leave after one drink; possible to extend with “would you like another”; a bit of background noise maybe. And it turned out OK. She was attractive, pretty much as she described herself (although we didn’t get the chance to test her resilience for long walks on the beach) and I think she felt that I had described myself appropriately (though she didn’t get the chance to try out my predilection for Renaissance art). So, we passed a pleasant hour or so together, but, in the end, as she put it:

“There doesn’t seem to be the chemistry,” and we agreed that we would move on.

And move on I did. The second time was easier, but no more fruitful and the third time was almost a breeze. I was soon into double figures and had almost got to the stage where I was coming to an instant judgement and was, at times, tempted to arrive and say goodbye in almost the same breath.

I began to wonder what was wrong with me, because there didn’t seem to be anything seriously wrong with them. I asked friends, who I suspect, because they are friends, said nice things, like I was a catch and any woman who turned me down was a fool. I believed them about as much as I believed in my ability to fly.

The one thing that seemed to be constant was that word “chemistry”. Apparently, it just wasn’t there. Then it hit me. I’m a research scientist. If it IS chemistry, then I ought to know the chemicals involved and how they react.  Scientific journals probably hold the definitive answer, but Google is an easier place to start. The chemicals that kept coming up were things like dopamine and vasopressin and phenethylamine and tyramine. All very well, but you can’t go into Boots and buy dopamine over the counter and, even if you could, there is no indication about how much you need and how to administer it. And of course it’s not ethical. It was when the word Rohypnol appeared on the screen that cold shivers went down my spine. So, I abandoned that line of enquiry.

Then one day I was browsing through profiles again, with the radio on in the background. It was a sixties station. Not my era but easy enough to listen to. A sixties band, The Searchers, were singing a song...

“She bent down and turned around and made a magic sign

She said what you need is Love Potion No 9”

The idea flitted across my mind, but as a serious scientist, I dismissed it. Despite that my fingers started typing “love potion” into Google.

I shouldn’t have been surprised by the number of results, but I was: over 46 million. At the top of the page were the adverts and the YouTube do-it-yourself videos, so I started clicking through on some of them.

Did you know that, and I quote ,…

“Among the Yusufzai Pukhtun of Swat in Northern Pakistan the most efficacious love magic is the water that has been used to bathe the body of a dead leatherworker.”

I think dead leather workers are even harder to come by in the West of England than dopamine.

There was another one that seemed a bit more achievable. I think I should mention that I was doing this in the evening after a stressful work day, which I was medicating with a glass or two of Chilean red. Anyway, the recipe for this one consisted of the kind of things you have around the house, if you are a 40 year old, single male with a beard. It was to be made using garlic (of course), cloves, basil, apple seeds, red rose petals, red wine, vanilla extract, a lock of hair (owner unspecified) and distilled turpentine oil. Apart from the hair and the turpentine it sounded like a slightly odd Christmas punch, so probably not illegal. Nine ingredients for a love potion to be made by the light of nine candles. The scientist prevailed and I put it to one side.

However, the next day on my way home I was passing a hardware shop and thought I would enquire whether they had any distilled turpentine oil. I put it on the kitchen table when I got home and opened another bottle of Chile’s finest red. 

About half of that had gone before I returned to the recipe. It started, “Place the candles in a circle round the cauldron…”. Who the hell has a cauldron these days? Le Creuset would have to do. I followed the rest of the instructions to the letter and consequently was left with a slightly uneven appearance, after I decided to source the lock of hair from my beard.

I left it to stand overnight as instructed. 

With the sobriety of the following morning came the realisation of the practicalities. My intended had to consume it, presumably unwittingly, at the same time as I did.

So, the sober scientist in me poured it down the sink. But it left behind a smell which lasted for a number of days. It was an odd mixture of cloves, garlic, wine and turpentine. Really quite pleasant and very distinctive.

Work was very busy for a couple of weeks and I hardly left the lab. I even slept there a couple of nights. Then things eased off a bit and I went back to the dating site. There were a couple of messages from prospective partners. One of them even looked quite promising. So, we went through the usual process and agreed to meet that Friday in a quiet pub.

We met and it was a very pleasant, but brief, meeting. I was quite taken with her, but she didn’t seem quite so keen, especially when she mentioned my beard.

“It looks kind of lop-sided.” She then whipped out a pair of nail scissors and suddenly it was…

“There that’s much better.”

We parted with the usual kind words. I expected little to come of it. The missing chemistry again, I supposed. Then, surprisingly, she got in touch and we agreed to meet again. The second time was different.

She was there first and on the table was a bottle of Chilean Merlot. My profile read and acted upon. I was impressed and not just by that. She seemed different from the first time we had met. She stood:

“Hello, Tom.”

There was a long pause.

“Hello, Belinda.” For some reason I had trouble getting out even a simple hello.

“Erm. Shall we sit down?” she said.

We sat, she poured the wine and said,

“Cheers.” Pause. “To us.” Which seemed a little premature, but I said:

“Cheers.”

And we drank. She looked at me very directly and I almost fell to pieces. This was what they meant by ‘chemistry’.

Then she leaned across the table towards me and said,

“I think we’re going to get along fine,” and smiled.

As she leaned away again she left behind a trace of her perfume. It seemed to have a hint of cloves, garlic, red wine and an underlying base of turpentine. Really quite pleasant and very distinctive.