It Started With A Wink...: Chapter One

It was the early spring of 2004. I was recently divorced and had just started my own business. My son was almost 5 years old, and I barely had enough time to shave my legs or masturbate, let alone meet new people.

“I know!” I thought. “I’ll try to meet people online!” The beginning of my surreal nightmare had begun. I set up a profile on a dating site and quickly became a “stranger voyeur”. It was sort of like shopping for a new mattress online – only different. (I want you to really think about this metaphor… Would you, could you buy a mattress online? Really? Of course you couldn’t – because you have to see it and squish it and lay on it and bounce around on it before you decide to buy it. And chances are, you’ll probably even visit more than one mattress store, and bounce on more than one mattress (probably several if we’re really honest,) before you take home the mattress you’ll be sleeping on for many years to come. And if you’re anything like me and value your sleep as much as I do, you don’t scrimp on your mattress - and it better be REALLY fucking comfortable!!!) Moving on… I don’t even remember now what that very first profile said. Probably something stupid. It doesn’t matter right now– but it will.

I started chatting with a guy. It was hard to actually tell what he looked like in his photos, but he was supposedly “toned,” around my age, and divorced with a kid. On paper he looked okay. Not great – but okay. During one of our chats, we discovered that he lived about a mile away from me. Well that would be convenient, wouldn’t it? He agreed to go out to his yard at a designated time and I was going to drive up and say hi in person. “This is it” I thought as I turned around the corner. “I hope he’s good-looking.” The first thing I saw was the trailer. Yikes. A single–wide to top it off. The second thing I saw, was an overweight guy who looked at least 10 years older than what he had said he was, leaning against the side of a beat up pick-up truck with a gun rack. I kept driving. Fast.

Welcome to the world of online dating. Where people lie. Ack. It wouldn’t be the last time either… And I hate to admit it, but it only gets worse. Much worse.