Catfish Me: Part III, From Russia with Love

I’ve been thinking about my post about my Nigerien girlfriends, and it’s made me take a close look at myself. (Socrates would be so proud of me.) I’ve realized that the continent of Africa gets a bad rap. What, with the Nigerian princes who owe me well into the millions of dollars, my Nigerian girlfriends, and the yet-to-be-told tale of my Ghanaian lover, I can kind of understand why. But I don’t want to pile on Africa.

There are, indeed, other regions of the world that are also seething hotbeds of internet perfidy—and this isn’t just white guilt trying to make up for what could be the appearance of trying to make Africa look bad. Indeed, I would be remiss if I failed to discuss Eastern Europe, Russia, the home of Guccifer 2.0, Fancy Bear, and the infamous troll farms. Those are just the best-known Russian internet malefactors. I won’t even get into the hacking of the Democratic National Committee servers in 2016 nor the support of Wikileaks. Russian misinformation campaigns to subvert elections aren’t even on my radar.

As I’m sure you’ve suspected, I’m talking about Natalya, the Russian Temptress—and liar. Oh, haven’t heard of her? Allow me to fill you in.

In the fall of 2010 when I was falling in love with Mills and Rita, my Nigerian girlfriends, I also met someone online from Russia. Her name was Natalya. At first, she was using another name. I can’t remember what it was, but I’m sure she was blonde. Pretty sure. (And I’m not second-guessing myself in an “I’m not sure if the carpet matches the drapes” way. I mean it in an “I’m not sure if I remember the color of her hair” way.)

So, this blonde woman—almost 100 percent sure she was blonde—reached out to me on the Match.com messenger thing. I was all, like, “Wow. She is very attractive. I think I will send her an email at the address that is, for some reason, hidden in this other message,” you know, as one does. Then I sent her a message. There was no reply.

That’s always a disappointment. For a while I was kind of apprehensive about sending messages. “She’s out of my league,” I’d think, incredibly inaccurately in retrospect. I often felt that. It’s weird to me now because I’m much more confident. Indeed, now, I believe that a lesser me would probably make these women stand in line, perhaps even wait around until a line formed. But I’m not a lesser me. I’m a fucking gentleman, so I give ‘em a chance.

This blonde woman’s lack of response didn’t break my heart. I was just a little disappointed, but—to paraphrase a saying attributed to Kobe Bryant that I’m far too lazy to try and verify the provenance of—you miss all the opportunities with attractive women on dating sites that you, uhhh. . . don’t try to have an opportunity to meet with? Something like that, anyway. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. No big deal.

Pretty quickly, I was moving on, for soon thereafter, I received a message from a very attractive redhead. (I’ll spare you the dissertation on whether or not she was in my league, then or now.) I have a fondness for redheads. They aren’t my “type.” I don’t have a type—other than “has nice butt.” When I spoke of my passive fondness for redheads to a friend, he stated that, in his opinion, sometimes redheads aren’t attractive. Yeah, no shit. There are people who love guys with mustaches, but no one is suggesting that they love all guys with mustaches. Two people aren’t going to see me walking by and have a conversation like this:

 “I love guys with mustaches.”

 “Gross,” the other will reply. “Hitler had a mustache. You want to have sex with Hitler. You sick fuck.”

 No, indeed. The first person, obviously, just wanted to have sex with me.

Anyway, types are overrated. There are so many things that can be beautiful—a lady’s bottom, for instance. It seems silly to rule out a bunch of women just because they don’t meet one silly, superficial criterion. (A nice butt is absolutely not a “silly criterion.” Butts are serious business.) One thing that I find, um, “appealing” in many women is a genuine interest in getting with all this [gestures at all this to indicate what I’m talkin’ about]. Am I going to dismiss a woman’s interest in all this just because of her hair color, her height, her figure, her ethnic background, or her accent? No, I want her to be smart and funny, and have a nice butt.

All that being said, I like stylish women, not necessarily a certain style, but stylish. It’s kind of a moving target, though. I once met a woman who had been described as a “t-shirt and jeans girl.” T-shirts and jeans are fine. I had pictured a woman with subtle makeup, tasteful jewelry—whatever fit her mood—her hair up. Her t-shirt would be a cute top, perhaps with stripes or maybe with a vintage map of her dream vacation spot. Her jeans, a darker rinse, maybe with some wear—this pair would have been there for her through good times and bad and would help her feel comfortable as she ventured out to meet this Ted guy with the cool mustache and, reportedly, a nice ass—they would accentuate the curve of her hips and thighs, the roundness and strength of her calves. She wore a cute pair of sandals or some Chuck Taylors.

And yes, I do like cute things, on women. I’ve known women who’ve made automobile purchases with a deciding factor of whether they looked cute driving it. They did, and I loved them for it. I don’t really care about cute—unless the context is babies or kitties or women. I do like to joke with guys about cute things sometimes. “That’s a cute tie, Steve,” or “That’s a cute Tom Brady jersey, Mark.” Most guys aren’t fans, but I do like cute things on women. That’s something you can take to the bank. (I wouldn’t try using that to negotiate your mortgage, though.)

You may note that I didn’t mention my imaginary t-shirt and jeans girl’s bottom. This is on purpose. As much as I’d love to marvel at another imaginary lady’s butt, I don’t want to fall in love like that again. I don’t want to get depressed about never being able to meet another magnificently bottomed, if imaginary, lady. I also don’t want to stop time again. If time and space are, indeed, enmeshed, stopping time would also mean that the expansion of the universe also stopped. I would worry about affecting the pace of universal expansion and slowing it to a point that it could start prematurely contracting—if it will eventually start contracting. That could mean that the universe would end billions of years early, if not still billions of years in the future. I don’t need that kind of guilt. So, yeah, like somebody got in the way of me watching her butt as she walked away.

Anyway, this woman, this real “t-shirt and jeans girl,” when we met, she did not meet my expectations—my very, very grandiose and unrealistic expectations, I know. I didn’t literally expect her to meet the description I, uh, described a few paragraphs ago. I also didn’t figuratively expect her to meet any high bar my imagination set. I mean, I wouldn’t have been upset, but I just—I don’t know. (A fella can dream, can’t he? Don’t judge me!) So, she had some shapeless old jeans on and an even shapelesser t-shirt from some nearby construction company—or whatever. Look, I don’t want to say her outfit was disappointing. (It totally was, though—man, I was way off the mark!)

I didn’t’ get a look at her butt, either, but that’s fine. It wasn’t going anywhere. Well, her butt did, in fact, go elsewhere, I’m sure. She and I just didn’t really connect. The conversation wasn’t anything special. No sparks flew. And I’m not going to say that she was the problem there. I’m sure she wouldn’t have been thrilled to learn more about me and see that I’m such a stuck-up, elitist prick. (Note to self, work on that, Ted.)

She was a redhead, though, I think. Maybe I’m just making that up as a way to transition back to the redhead on Match that messaged me right when I was getting over the bitter disappointment of being ghosted by that blonde who’d given me her email address but never replied to me. (Are we on the same sheet of music again?) That was a tough loss, though, that blonde—not that blondes are my type, unless, of course, they meet all my other exacting criteria.

So, I got a message on Match from the redhead, too! That was cool. I was really getting my confidence back after this blonde situation. The redhead, for some reason, had her email address hidden in the message. This was always fun. It was like the New York Times crossword puzzle, except it was much, much less challenging and in no way intellectually stimulating. But I sat down with pen and paper, carefully removing the words “at” and “dot” and replacing them with the appropriate punctuation.

Luckily, the ID or screenname or whatever it’s called didn’t have an “a-t” or “d-o-t” in it. Otherwise, I may never have been able to decode it. (I just now wondered if “atgmaildotcom@gmail.com is available, not enough to actually look, though. I just wondered. Feel free to check.) But when I had pulled the address from the message, I felt the cold, stabbing wound of betrayal. The redhead, my would-be lovebird, had given me the same email address as my lost lovebird, the blonde.

I was new to the engaging with catfishers game, and this kind of irritated me. Hell, I didn’t even know that “catfisher” was the term for it. I understood that these women—if, indeed, there were women on the other side of these accounts, but a boy can dream—I understood that they weren’t being 100 percent forthright with me about who they were. Still, I had that tiny, innocent piece of my heart overoptimistically holding onto that itsy-bitsy one-in-a-million chance that these were women who just possibly might be real, even though in my head I knew that there was a zero chance in a billion that any of them were real. The pictures were pretty hot, though, so I had to hang on to that one-tenth-in-a-trillion chance, that sub-atomic glimmer of hope that one day I might meet one of these beautiful women. If we met, maybe we’d hit it off. Maybe we could love each other.

The same email address from two separate profiles of two obviously different women, that was a slap in the face. It was a kick in the groin, and I’m on the fence about mentioning that along with the sciatic nerve pain radiating down the back of my legs, I have an impingement in the root of my ileo-inguinal nerves that radiates pain into my testes regularly. I sometimes—as often as daily—have the sensation that I’ve just been kicked in the balls when I’m merely sitting alone, minding my own business. I’ve had to have a couple of testicular ultrasounds to make sure there was nothing testicularly amiss down there—there wasn’t—and during the second, around 12 years ago, it felt like they were being crushed. I whimpered in agony and almost passed out as the good gentleman technician assured me that he was being as gentle as he could, and he absolutely was.

Imagine, if you will, my feeling of being kicked in the balls by the everlasting, vast and empty infinite nothingness of time and space and wonder not at my animus toward—indeed, my profound disdain for—the very idea of a benevolent god. That being said, I am not above giving the right sexy faith healer an opportunity to lay her hands upon me.

You know, this has probably been a bit too much, all this about the ileo-inguinal nerve pain radiating into my testes. I don’t think I’ll mention it. TMI, Ted! Merely saying it was a kick in the groin is enough to show what a hurtful insult it was. Any gentleman will give his solemn assurance that such a kick is, indeed, a grievous insult and injury, physically and emotionally. I need not demonstrate that I experience that grievousness so much more grievously than the common man. The garden variety of such a kick more than suffices to show my meaning. Please disregard the above description of my gonadial woes. It is, as mentioned, rather too much information.

Anyway, there I was, staring at my screen, mouth likely agape. I can’t say for sure, having long ago suppressed the traumatic memory, but with my wounded heart and pride, I took the step that I likely would not today. I reported the profile, and it was taken down.

Am I proud of snitching? No, but in my heart, I felt I was acting on behalf of the public good to prevent this likely criminal—if not in action, at least in intent—from scamming me or my fellow lonely gentlemen online. I do not regret this act. And though I may not do the same thing if put into the same situation today, I absolutely would not change what I did back then. . . if only because of what happened next.

That very same day, I believe, I received an email from the address that had been hidden in both the blonde’s and redhead’s messages. I had sent an email to it after getting the message from the blonde. So, the person who was behind the profiles must have figured out that not only do I have at least half a brain, but that I had used that half to induce that there were strange things afoot when both profiles had sent me the same email address. Elementary, motherfuckers.

Admittedly, I was momentarily apprehensive about opening this message. Was it going to be a warning from some international crime syndicate? Had they planned to use the redhead’s Match.com profile to carry out their evil plan to bring the world to its knees? Would they have gotten away with it if it weren’t for this meddling Ted? Was I a marked man? (Well, I was a marked man, but not a “marked man” marked man. I was simply a mark.) Did I even want to open it? Should it just go right to the spam folder?

A smart man would not open it, and I am a smart man. Hell, I often feel like I’m smarter than everybody, too smart for my own good. No, a smart man may not open it, but would the smarter man’s hubris bring him down? Fortunately, my vast intelligence didn’t really play a part in the decision. It was overruled by my greater quality. (No, not my handsomeness. I wasn’t quite feeling my amazingly good looks back then.) My sense of humor ruled the day, though, and knowing that there would be greater opportunity for a good laugh, I opened the suspicious email, foolishness notwithstanding.

There was no threat. Its message was quite simple.

“Do you want to see pictures of me in my underwear?”

That was a very good question, but I had questions, too. Such as, who might be asking me if I wanted to see pictures of them in their underwears? I certainly hoped it would be a lady in her underpanties. That’s usually pretty cool, man. But I wondered if the “me” asking about the underwear pics was the blonde or the redhead. I’d certainly have appreciated—wholeheartedly—a gander at either woman in her fine washables. I mean, I’m not going to get into the weeds about blondes versus redheads. That’s not my thing. What’s important to me, superficially, is that she’s stylish, not that underwear can be really indicative of one’s overall style. The, ahem, bottom line—aside from her bottom, itself—is whether she’s smart and funny and, of course, tolerant of my foolishness. But an even bigger question on my mind was whether it would even be a “she” who would be sending me underwear pics.

I couldn’t be confident that the sender would be either the blonde or the redhead. Either of them, or a third party, had been using these dating profiles to attract gentlemen such as myself. I only knew that someone was trying to use them, but who was it? Could I be about to set myself up to see a gentleman in some sort of banana hammock? Perhaps that would teach me to be such a wise guy, reporting the damn profile and ruining the plans that had been in the works for months, maybe years. Now, I would not necessarily enjoy getting a picture of some fellow wearing tidy-whiteys, but it would be very funny. I had no idea who was setting up these profiles, so it was a gamble on a variety of levels. Still, my interest was piqued.

“Sure, I’d love to see pictures of you in your underwear,” I replied.

I would love to say that I wasn’t disappointed when I got the next message, but there was so much going on for me by this point that I’m not sure how I would put my feelings about it into words. I certainly wasn’t not disappointed, but I guess I would have appreciated it if the pics had come from either the blonde or the redhead. Again, both were lovely, and I didn’t have a preference. I just wanted to know which one was the real person—or would be presented as the real person. It was neither, and no, it wasn’t a gentleman in Hulk underoos.

The next email was from a lovely young brunette. Her name was Natalya, and at 24, she was rather too young for me. I mean, it’s pretty cringe-worthy for a 40-year-old man to date a 24-year-old, and I don’t feel at all hypocritical saying that because when I was 24, I was seeing a woman who was a mere 39. Nonetheless, as a 51-year-old, I don’t think it would be as weird to date a 35-year-old. Someone who’s 35 can run for president, the most significant of Constitutional age requirements. That’s how I like ‘em.

Naturally, I wouldn’t turn away a woman who was running for Congress. I’m no executive branch snob. I would just prefer that she’s eligible—age-wise—to run for president. Obviously, Natalya can’t run for President of the United States. She hasn’t been a permanent resident of the US for fourteen years nor is she a natural born citizen nor was she a citizen at the time the Constitution was adopted. If I’ve done my math correctly, though, she’s 35 now.

Anyway, she wasn’t 35 then. She was 24 and a bit too young for me. I told her so, several times, and if I were to judge her based solely on her responses to my clear statements that she was too young for me, I would say that she was rather dense. I’ll talk about our correspondence soon, but I feel it’s important—before I got too far down the rabbit hole of Constitutional age requirements and whether age is an accurate metric for the maturity to run for office or to share one’s life with me—that I talk about the elephant in the room: the promised—as inferred—underwear pics.

As I said, I was offered—if not promised—pictures of, as it turned out, Natalya in her underwear. Now, I’m not one to complain. I prefer the verb “to bitch.” I feel that it captures the essence of my overwrought sense of entitlement, especially in this case—when I literally had no reasonable expectation of anything, at all. Yet, here I am, about to bitch about the number of underwear pictures that a complete stranger was sending me. A complete stranger, by the way, whom I had reported as having a fraudulent dating profile, but who still found a place in her heart to offer me a glimpse of her physical self, clad in naught but her underthings.

I am 100 percent that bitch, for, you see, there was but one picture of her in her underwear. She lied to me when she offered “pictures” of her in her underwear! And it could have been a bathing suit. (Do I really want to split hairs that finely? Yes, but I’ll spare you.) She wore a thong in the picture, so it could have gone either way. I’m certainly not upset that it was a thong—be it underwear or bathing suit. I, as I believe I made clear in my previous piece, I’m rather a fan of ladies’ butts. This particular butt was fine. It wouldn’t defy any of the laws of physics, but it was fine. Motorboatable? Sure.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Thongs are okay. One might think that with my personal affinity for bottoms that thongs might be my favorite type of women’s underwear. They’re not. I mean, they’re fine, just not my favorites. I like a little left to the imagination. Indeed, I do have quite the imagination, but I also don’t want my imagination to do all the work. I am but one man. And don’t get me wrong about not getting me wrong, this has been just an excuse to write about butts.

(By the way, if one were to Google “women’s underwear styles” to get the name of a style of women’s underwear that one likes better than thongs, one might decide that it doesn’t matter. Also, if one scrolls far enough, one might see a link for devices that one may insert into the undergarments to approximate the contours of either a camel toe or a moose knuckle. . . Might, indeed. It turns out that those search results could not be duplicated. The internet is a fascinating place. Browse responsibly.)

Seemingly lost in the shuffle of my ruminations on butts and my bitching about the quantity—and, dare I say, quality—of underwear photographs, you might be wondering if there were any other pictures and what they might have shown me. There was one of her dog, Grey, who looked like a good doggie. There were a few from her travels in Moscow. There were some of her hometown of Podgornoye. (Frankly, if I’d done my research, I’d have made note of the significant red flag that wanting to leave this place surely was.) There were also several pictures of her in jeans and a parka—just jeans and a parka—and boots, of course.

How could I tell she was wearing just jeans and a parka? I got these eyeballs, duh. But now that I think about it, it is possible—even likely—that she had one or more layers beneath the parka. One of those potential layers definitely wasn’t a bra, and however many layers she had under it were clearly opened along with—and completely obscured by—the afore-mentioned parka.

And no, she didn’t show me what her boobs looked like. Her parka, along with however many layers, was opened between her breasts and spread to expose her midriff. She said that she had only one “N A K” photo, and that was the thong pic, which was fine. I did not reciprocate with a low-angle selfie—nor even offer one—for I had not even coined the term yet.

Now, you may wonder why I’m bitching about getting these pictures instead of pictures of her in her underwear. Mostly, it’s because I love bitching, but I’m also rather fond of women in bras and panties. I was looking forward to pictures of her in them—whoever it had turned out to be. When she offered pictures of her in her underwear, I took her at her word. I was expecting underwear pics. I don’t think that was an unreasonable expectation. And believe me, I’m not complaining about getting pics of her with her parka opened between her breasts and spread out to show her midriff and one pic of her in a thong. No. My beef is that there were no pictures of her in her underwear.

Fortunately, over the past decade, I’ve been able to find peace in my heart. I’ve come to accept that I won’t see pictures of Natalya in her underwear, and that’s okay.

I’m also okay with the, initially, confusing use of multiple women’s pictures. While it may have been concerning, she explained to me that you can’t send an email address in a message from a Russian profile, at all. (Damnit, Putin!) She was using a friend’s profile, and she didn’t know how to use the site. Simple. And what’s really odd is that this is about the only time any of my catfishers explained why they were using a profile that wasn’t, you know, real.

While I’ve been bitching about pics, you may have been asking yourself what this Natalya may have wanted from me. I still wonder. She didn’t ask for anything up front like money to start a bespoke nesting doll shop on Etsy or a money for her father’s liver transplant or any money at all. The only thing she really asked for, directly, was the nearest international airport.

Apparently, Natalya was among may young Russians who were in “. . .a special program for young people who wants to work abroad.” There weren’t many opportunities in Russia. (“It is very terrible. The economic crisis will reach apogee...!”) So, this program would help “. . . to register documents and gives suitable work in any state(town)of USA, Canada or Europa (or other big country).” Since she’d never been abroad, she needed to make a friend outside Russia to be some kind of sponsor (I guess).

Then again, I don’t think she wanted a sponsor. “I would like to be sure that I have a man who waits for me there. . . I just don't want to be alone in the evenings, and I want to be sure in advance that somebody waits for me!” I assured her that she was a bit young for me. I wished her luck, and I offered to answer any questions she had about the US. I also told her that Maine had two international airports, in Bangor and Portland.

Earlier, when I said that she came across as “dense” when I was telling her that she was too young for me, shit like this is why: “. . . have you heard a saying The older the violin the sweeter the music?!” Are you kidding me? That only makes me want an older violin, too. Why would I want a new violin, that probably just lays there, leaving it up to me to be the good music. I want a nice old violin, too!

And even though I had gently dismissed her, she was going to go tell her parents about me. She was “. . . sure they will be happy that someone is waiting for me over there!” She asked for the international airports near me, again, and she told me she was going to Moscow in a few days to get ready to come to the US. I tried to gently dismiss her obvious lust for all this and told her that she should wait—and again that she was too young for me.

She came right back at me with that violin garbage again, and she said she thought an older man could teach her things and take care of her. I probably should have just told her that I can barely take care of myself, but I don’t think I was that self-aware yet. I don’t want a goddamn new violin, either. She also suggested that a younger man might eventually find her unattractive as she ages and then go after someone younger. . . So, she expected me to die before I found her unattractive enough to go look for someone else? Nice, Natalya.

Anyway, I kept telling her she’s too young for me and that if she came to my area, I’d be happy to show her around and help how I could. She kept moving us forward. She told her parents about us—“us”—and said that “. . . now they don`t worry about me as before because now they know you are a kind man and can help me if I will need your help.” Which would be fine (you know, if any of this were real), but even with my dismissals she kept asking about things like, “is it normal if we will like each other may be it is possible to live together?”

She just kept moving forward, becoming more suggestive with each email, and getting ready to pack her things and leave for Moscow and then the US. She kept asking me about the international airports near me, and I kept telling her that I’d already told her what they were. She was ready for me to, ahem, get to see her (and obviously play shitty music on that crappy new violin).

In the last message between us, I told her that she should probably look into this program. It was possibly some kind of scam. I never heard from her again. Likely, she went into the program to ask questions once she got to Moscow, and they killed her. Is there another reasonable explanation?

She gave me her address, so someday, when I go to spend a week or so in Podgornoye seeing all the sights, I can visit her parents and pay my respects. “Hi, I’m Ted, the American that got your only daughter killed when she started asking questions about that program.” And they’ll thank me because they knew I was a kind man and that I could have helped her, if she needed help.

 

 

Up next, The Ted Perrin Test If English Is a Second Language. 

Catfish Me: An Introduction to My Search for Love Online

Sometimes it seems like yesterday, but it’s been over ten years since my marriage deteriorated to its painful but not entirely unforeseeable conclusion—unforeseeable in the retrospective sense, of course, if there is a retrospective sense of foresight. It was difficult, though. I came to realize that I had to accept much more of the responsibility (I hated the idea of using the word “blame” here) for the marriage’s failure than I’d initially been willing—or, rather, honest enough—to admit.

And, before you start thinking that I regret the divorce, no, I do not. I’m not a fan of regret. I try to learn from things rather than regret them. I’ve moved on from the marriage—which is what this piece is about—and so has she. She’s found a much better match for herself, and I’m genuinely happy for them. I just mention the marriage and its dissolution as an introduction to my journey of love. Anyway. . .

Now that I think about it, though, these several sentences hence, it does seem so long ago. I’ve learned so much about myself since then. Most importantly, I’ve let myself love again along the way. It took some time to learn and to grieve, but when the time came, I was ready.

About 15 months later, in fact, I was ready, really ready, like really ready-ready. Really. I’d reconnected with someone I’d met in college, and we really hit it off after the interim years of growing and stuff. I mean, we really hit it off. We moved-in together and all that. We probably would have married if it hadn’t been for the one thing—the one big thing—that we couldn’t get past.

"I was ready, really ready, like really ready-ready"

But this isn’t that story, either. It’s this story, the story of before how I’d hit it off with that one lady I met in college but after I’d taken some time to heal from the separation and divorce from my ex-wife, that three or four months in the fall of 2010. Let’s call it just three months. That way, I don’t have to write anything unnecessary to explain how four months fit into one season, even though that shouldn’t really be much of a leap because I live in a state where winter has only recently been reduced to about five months—thanks to climate change.

Anyway, I had these few months in the fall of 2010—see, that works. I can just say “a few months” and save the space for more important details. So, I had those few months in the fall of 2010 to fall in love, over and over again.

It was difficult, at first. I had really been hurt by the separation and divorce. Several years before this there had been some low points that led me to seek treatment for my depression, but this pain was different. I was afraid to give myself fully to a relationship again, until I remembered that love was worth it (and, ultimately, until I had someone to show me how to just jump feet first into love again). But I did want to feel it again. I wanted to be close to someone again. So, feeling somewhat socially awkward about meeting chicks in the wild, I opened an account on Match.com.

I must say, checking out women on Match felt kind of creepy at first—about as creeping as calling it “checking out women on Match” makes it sound—but I soon realized that they were posting their profiles to introduce themselves to the area’s available gentlemen, not unlike I was doing for those ladies. So, I furthered the introductions with some messages and made some connections.

The first date I went on was a fine how-do-ya-do into the world of online dating for me. That first in-person meeting was at the Starbucks in the nearby Barnes & Noble, and she led with the questions.

“What’s your five-year plan?”

“My five-year plan?” I replied.

That’s right, she asked me what my five-year plan was. I had been rather secure in my job at the time and hadn’t been on a job interview in years. I had interviewed for a couple promotions at work, but the interview questionnaire they used didn’t include an inquiry into where I planned to be in five years. I definitely wasn’t ready for that question. Even if I’d had a friend try to prep me for that date, I don’t believe that my five-year plan would have even been on my radar.

"checking out women on Match felt kind of creepy at first"

All that I could think of was, I don’t know—in five years—be alive and stuff, maybe not live in a basement apartment. I managed to say something that seemed reasonable, but it clearly wasn’t a plan because I’d obviously just come up with it on the fly. One thing in that plan was to have a house, which I managed to move into with a few months to spare in those five years. It had nothing to do with that plan, but still, pretty impressive, whatever your name was.

My conversation with whatever-her-name-was was rather superficial. The coffee was fine. We didn’t have a second date. I was clearly not goal-oriented enough for her. No big deal. I do feel bad for her sometimes, though, for she missed an opportunity to get with all of this [gestures at all of this]. Poor her, but then I guess it just wasn’t meant to be.

There were other dates, too. Mostly coffee and a chat, a few dinners. There were a couple women I had multiple dates with. These dates didn’t turn into a whole lot. It was soon hereafter that I reconnected with the woman I’d met in college and am not writing about in this story.

One woman, God bless her, sent me a picture of herself in her under-panties, and I sent her a picture of me in my boxers. Things escalated, and she sent me a picture to show me what her boobs looked like. Ultimately—at least as far as this aside goes—I sent her a type of picture that I’ve come to call a “low-angle selfie” (a much nicer name than “dick pic,” I think). These were very special moments between two consenting adults. I am somewhat loth to write of these special moments between this lady and myself, but the subject of low-angle selfies will be a big—no, “big” isn’t what I’m trying to say here—low-angle selfies will be an integral part of the story of my online loves. Only the discussion of them, of course—and naturally, only in a tasteful and hilarious way.

I have a strict “no unsolicited low-angle selfie policy” and a frequently narrowing interpretation of what “solicitation” means in this context. That being said, I do, regularly, send them as replies to spam text messages that suggest I may need some pharmaceutical assistance in that department. I just use them as a simple way to say, “Thank you, but no,” to my would-be friends in the boner pill logistics business.

But I digress.

Having coffee and dinner and showing each other pictures of what our nakedness looked like was all so much fun, but where was the love? I did find it, in-person, eventually, if only for a while, but I also found it there, on Match.com, in a subset of women who lived in the Bangor, Maine, area, but who, sadly enough, had temporarily relocated to Africa. Crazy timing, I know!

"I have a strict 'no unsolicited low-angle selfie policy'"

These were among the most beautiful women on Match in the Bangor area, well from the Bangor area. Life had just gotten in the way of us being able to meet in person. (I’m so unlucky in love!) But we were able to meet online, thankfully. And let me tell you, they fall in love fast. It was almost hard to believe, but then again, of course they’d fall in love with me that fast, just look once more at all this. [Gestures, once again, at all this.]

To be honest, I loved them, too. I loved how they were so open to having a future with me when we hadn’t ever met. I loved how I could say anything to them. I loved how they were honest about their situations and how they were open to me about their financial struggles, in Africa.

I gotta say, I felt bad for them, these young women from greater Bangor who just happened to actually be from Africa and how they were just trying to make it in this crazy world.

I knew what I had to do. I had to try and occupy some of their time, so that time wouldn’t be spent on some sucker who might actually send them money. Don’t get me wrong. I loved them; oh, I loved them. I loved them as a man can love a woman who’s pretending to be local and thereby scam him out of his money. That’s how much I loved them. That’s how much I always will.

There were a number of these women over the years, beginning with those few that fall, and not all of them found me on Match. I guess I just have a way of attracting hot chicks who need money. And before you worry, I do realize that there could have been men who were pretending to be local women who lived overseas. I just fell in love with the women part of the whatever it is this is called.

So, I’m going to have a few posts coming up about the attempts to catfish me and the fun I’ve had along the way. I hope you enjoy them.