What if we were real?
“Look for the guy in the fedora. I’ll wait for you outside,” his text read.
“Great, I’m walking over now, and I have on a stripped black and white skirt and a purple sweater top.” I responded. A few minutes after I sent the text, I began my walk over to Café Asia, the restaurant I chose for dinner, because it was two blocks away from my job, and the walk was barely three minutes.
It was a first date, and just as he texted, he was standing outside the restaurent in grey flannel slacks, a white sweater top and a fedora. He saw me a few second after I saw him; he walked over, smiled, held out his hand and said, “Hi AdeOla, Tim (not real name) and nice to finally meet you.” This simple and helpful gesture, in addition to the fedora, further confirmed he was my date. We had only just met on Plenty of Fish (POF) about two weeks prior, and this was our first face-to- face meeting.
In the moments that transpired between sighting each other and shaking hands, I made a quick and much like me decision to have a blast and to have a great story to tell afterwards. I also made an unusual decision to order the most expensive appetizer, entrée, dessert and wine I want on the menu. I gave him a charming smile and let him lead me into the crowded restaurant.
And a good date it was. I let him wow me with stories of his life. Most notable were stories of his trips around the Middle East and Asia, his business dealings in oil and in Silicon Valley, and his love for fast cars and Black women. He flipped through pictures on his iPhone of him standing side by side or sitting next to several world figures including kings, presidents, celebrities and a warlord or two. I shared my life, my dreams, my love for Jesus and my passion for travel, writing, dancing, adrenaline and adventure. He never took his eyes off of me and shared a compliment every three sentences. In between dinner and dessert, I must have heard how beautiful I was a million times, and how my eyes and skin were otherworldly. Honestly, I couldn’t take my eyes off of him either, he was not anything I expected and I couldn’t stop staring at him.
We laughed, we joked, we debated topical issues and I was charming. He leaned in to kiss me once, and I leaned away. It was the only awkward moment of the evening with the exception of when we first met outside. But it passed quickly almost like it never happened. You see it was a great date except I was sitting in my seat laughing not at his jokes, but at the absurdity of the situation. I leaned in closely every once in a while as he rambled on about his success while showing me evidence of said success on his phone, but I was really leaning in to study the face before me to make sure this face before me was really before me. When I did that thing I do when I curl my lips, raise my eyes and pretend to fall into deep thought over something he just said or asked, I was really thinking through whether I intend to end the night on a melodramatic note or just dramatic.
Because you see, a few details were missing and the most important was this wasn’t the man I virtually met on Plenty of Fish. This wasn’t the man I have been communicating with the last few days. You see the man, the one whose message I responded to on POF, and whom I had interest in meeting that evening was thirty-two years old. He was olive-skinned, Pakistani to be precise, and quite handsome with a full head of hair. He was a little over 6 feet and had gorgeous teeth and smile. However, sitting before me was opposite of everything I was expecting. The only things they shared were male, olive skin and a Pakistani heritage. Sitting in front of me was a man in his late 50s and maybe even 60s, bald and a little taller than my barely 5’4” self.
Needless to say, I had been cat-fished, and my retribution in expensive meal and wine, I realized in retrospect, couldn’t have been payback enough for the seemingly successful and interesting, but ironically insecure man siting before me. At the end of the evening, he walked me to the Farragut West metro station, and right before I said my goodbyes, I looked him dead in the eye with my charming smile and said, “I had a great time tonight, but you are either a liar or you must have aged overnight. You look nothing like your POF profile. How old are you really?”
Without hesitating, he responded with a sneer, “ Sixty-two! Please! Would you be here tonight if I had been truthful on my profile.”
“No, I wouldn’t, but we will never be back here again, because you lied!” I replied, turned around and walked away.
A few days after, a text came through on my Google phone number, “Would you be interested in going out again? I can show you the world”
“No, you are masquerading as someone else, and it makes me question what else you are lying about and would lie about. And no Aladdin, magic carpets already exist in my world”
“Well if you want to know, I am impotent, bitch”
And that was the end! Well other then me trying to report and flag his POF profile. But, alas it had disappeared and I bet he moved on to a new profile or a different dating site in another attempt to woo another woman with lies and more lies.
But, Lord knows, I am not that woman!
Well, I’ll let you decide the moral of the story.
PS: Only a 62-year old man would use ‘impotent’ to describe an inability to achieve sexual erection. The word feels archaic, at least to me.
Don’t dip out on me yet!
Have you ever been cat fished?