[opti_mist]

The online dating universe is a strange, shadowy, though often sweet world, as Peter Malcouronne discovered when he went to an NZDating party.

On a given Saturday, the 120,000 members of NZDating.com, New Zealand's largest on-line dating community, can stop virtual flirting, shut down their computers and head off to a dozen or so events taking place across the country. There are karaoke nights at the league club in Pakuranga. There's a Hypnotist's Evening in Amberley, hosted by a Christchurch dominatrix, and a fortnightly philosopher's breakfast in Kelson, Auckland, where, presumably, people are hungry therefore they eat. Or there is an orgy scheduled to take place in an unspecified central Auckland hotel room. Twenty-eight men have signed up so far and just one single woman, a 45-year old mother of three from the North Shore.

Not wishing to spend the night in the company of sexually frustrated single men from Glenfield, I decided to head south to the Night of Enchantment, an NZDating fancy dress party. I'm here in Hamilton with Gerry, a bashful friend now dressed as a Palestinian freedom fighter, wandering down the main street just minutes before the Super 12 semi between the Chiefs and the Brumbies kick offA strapping lad of the land seems unimpressed with my Louix XVI clobber. "Where are you from, ya fag?" he asks. "Oh? Dorkland!" he jeers. We take refuge inside a kebab house and consider skulking back to Auckland before the friendly proprietor straightens up Gerry's kaffiyah, slaps him on the back, and we return to the fray. Finally at 9.30pm, two hours late, we make it to the party venue, Gravity Bar. There are two princesses at the door flirting with Zorro and a rather care-worn cowboy. Dennis the Menace is chatting up Rapunzel, Alice in Wonderland is snogging the Mad Hatter.

Not entirely by accident, Gerry and I sit at a table opposite a nubile fairy princess from Te Awamutu. "Who are you?" she asks. "Um I'm Pedro the First. The Last King of West Auckland." She doesn't find this as funny as she should and already her attention is starting to wander. Mike, a recently separated Cambridge father of two, muscles in. Aside from the fact that he is the tall, dark, handsome type that far too many women inexplicably go for, he has another crucial advantage over me: he's dressed in jeans and a stripy Grammar-boy shirt. "So, who are you then?" I say snippily. "Oh, I dunno. Just me. Didn't have time to organise a costume. I work as a landscape gardener so I guess, um, you could call me, um... Captain Compost." Fairy Princess finds this far funnier than she should so I harrumph off to the bar, leaving poor Gerry in the clutches of Puss in Boots, a leggy 53 year old brunette in fishnet stockings.
At the bar a disenchanted highwayman sits by himself, absent-mindedly stripping the label off his Heineken. He introduces himself as Mazstar, which is not as silly as it sounds - as I will soon learn. NZDating members prefer to use noms-de-guerre. Mazstar has been an NZDating member for about a year and has been to five events like this one. He chuckles when he hears that I'm an "event virgin" and tells me he met a woman at the first party he attended. Went out with her for six months, was going to move in with her. But then she got back together with her old boyfriend. He found out by text message.

He desparately wants to find his soulmate, but plumbers don't meet many women, he says, despite salacious myths to the contrary. So he logs on to NZDating each night and spends a couple of hours talking to "slappers and solo mums".