Don’t think that I wasn’t disappointed about this latest disaster. I’d had big expectations regarding a relationship with Reed and fell from an emotional high. I was also a bit afraid of my new, mysterious, one-way pen pal, a.k.a. Cathy. There was a time I looked forward to meeting Reed.  I had only one picture of him that he’d posted on the dating site. I viewed it again. He certainly was handsome.

I noticed that there was an attachment to Cathy’s last email. Initially, I was afraid to open it. Then I noticed there wasn’t a link involved, so I clicked. It was a photo— a dreadful photo of a pot-bellied, older man with a Nazi haircut, holding a garden hose, watering plants. He wore a wife-beater tee-shirt, baggy gym shorts, and flip-flops. His coloring was fish-belly white. Was this really Reed, or was the photo a fake? 

Cathy had written Reed was nine months pregnant. I assumed that was her own vulgar, descriptive terminology hoping to dissuade me from meeting him. The gardening-man picture looked nothing like the photo on Single Seniors. I stared at both images. Then, I closed the laptop.  I had nothing to worry about because I would never meet him.

Not wanting to give up, I thought that, perhaps, I had limited my chances of finding a suitable someone by signing up with just one dating site. So I joined another one. I began surfing the new site, checking out men’s photos. I realized that I’d seen a lot of the faces before. It became apparent that both sites belonged to the same parent company. They just get you paying twice for the same group of men.

I started to wonder if this form of entertainment was worth the time, money, and anxiety. So many profiles turned out to be lies. There was one guy who wrote,

LOVELY PICTURE. I’d appreciate the opportunity to talk with you. (Is Simsbury within 50 miles of Boston?)

Dennis

617-721-9655

This guy’s profile indicated he was college-educated. Really? There is MapQuest, Google Maps, AAA, and more. How difficult could it be to map out two points? Oy!

I put on my Sherlock Holmes hat. I logged onto Been Verified—the site I used to check out Reed. My daughter calls me the stalker. She avoids telling me who she is dating. She’s afraid I’ll investigate him. I do! And,  I find out stuff!  So, I looked up the phone number that Dennis provided. And guess what? It didn’t belong to anyone named Dennis. I responded to Dennis’ message with the following;  Whose phone number did you put in your message? It’s not registered to you.

Dennis never replied. 

Another gentleman, identifiable only as 154026447, reached out to me. His profile indicated he lived in Albany, N.Y. and that he was born in Queens. Normally, I don’t respond to men who are more than 30 miles away. I don’t like to drive too far from home. But this character’s English was so broken, I just had to.  He wrote;

I did lost my wife 5yrs ago due to Cancer..to make things worse I did lost my mom and my wife with the space of months..it was like my world coming to an end..I have been nothing but strong.

He continued:

I really enjoyed been a married man but I did not have much time to enjoy my marriage before I lost my wife. I need someone to spend the rest of my life with because am not getting any younger.

I doubt the writer was born anywhere on the North American continent.  I was polite and suggested he find someone closer to where he lived. (Was it Albany or Albania?) 

My next decision was to sign up with a Jewish dating site. That was the biggest scam. A majority of men on that site never posted a photo. If they did, it was often fake. You could tell because the picture on the site showed a clean-cut American. But the English they used to communicate was obviously their second language. I can’t tell you how many wrote that they were “willing to convert.”

The phone rang late one afternoon, and the caller I.D. indicated it was Reed. I hesitated but ultimately picked it up. Curiosity? Politeness? Stupidity? Who knows?  He got straight to the point.

“I’m flying to Connecticut next Monday. I’d like you to meet me at the airport. If you don’t like what you see, I’ll turn around and take the next flight back to Colorado. You won’t be getting any more emails. I’ve taken care of the problem. I have my ticket, and I’ve booked a room at the Residence Inn in Avon, CT. From what I can tell, it’s not far from where you live.”

I have a vivid imagination. I’m also a little paranoid. All I could wonder was;  A. Did he murder Cathy?  and, B.  How does he know where I live?

© Miriam Greenberg, and the blog Love In The Time Of Corona, beginning April 2022 to the Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Miriam Greenberg and Love In The Time Of Corona with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.