A Book By its Cover

Online dating begins with the visual. 

When you have a total asshole photo of yourself, what reason is there for someone to bother to click and read your personal profile???

Can I tell you that the amount of shitty pics men have posted as a main profile photo, fucking blows my mind!!  Too dark.  Low quality.  Too far.  Sunglasses on.  Out of focus.  Group shots.  Photo with another woman(SERIOUSLY?!)  Photo with kids(REALLY?!).  Up the nostrils selfie and the best one of all…a goddamn photo of JUST their dog.  No wonder they’re STILL single.

The photographer in me is trying REALLY hard not to be greatly irritated at the sad state of some of these photos.  It just makes the sites I paid to use so much like the free Fishing site I purposely avoided. 

I decided to step up my game with the photos.  I added 5 more images of myself.  Another full body in a super-cute vintage bird print knee length dress where you can clearly see I’m disabled, two completely make-up free head shots as I think men like that shit too and two dolled-up selfies.  A well-rounded selection of perfectly focused, properly lit pictures of me.  Dudes should appreciate the effort I went through.  I may not be the prettiest or able bodied of the bunch but fuck, I put up some quality images.

I had a few views of my profile but when I added the extra photos there was a little more traffic and after 4 days of being a paying member of this seedy and questionable community, I got 5 hits…

They always say, “Never judge a book by its cover.”  I generally try to take this to heart as I would NEVER want someone to do that to me, especially now.  Thusly, with a grain of salt and a big fat deep breath I opened up the emails.

The first three dudes are old.  Dirty old-ass men close to their 70’s!!  WTF?!  My profile clearly states I’m looking for someone between 35-45.  They are not even good-looking silver foxes.  They are the kind of old that qualifies as Anna Nicole Smith material.  Totally asshole of me but I just delete the emails from the seniors.  I know, I know, I may have just flushed a sugar daddy down the drain.   I’m hard up BUT not THAT hard up…yet.

The last two emails come from one gentleman, 51 and another the same age as me.  Neither of them are what I would be physically attracted to (I’ve come to the sad and painful realization that not everyone will look like David Gandy). We have many of the same interests, as per my review of their profiles.  I need to add that they have used one of the many painful photo options I detest. 

{Sigh}.

The email from the older gentleman, aka ‘OG’, was nice.  Harmless actually.  He said he liked my profile and that he was well educated and found me to be a nice person.  My initial reaction was that he was a little old but in comparison to the grandfathers, this dude was a spring chicken.   The next email came from the dude who was the same age as me.  He was a little more cheesy-Rico Suave in his email.  He asked if I had plans this evening or for the weekend and said I had a nice smile.

It took me 4 days to actually reply to them.  Why?  I was chicken shit.  I also had no fucking clue how to properly respond.  What the hell do I say to a total stranger that won’t make it seem like I am needy and desperate?  They are after all basing their willingness to contact me based on my profile pics and personal profile.

I want to tell you that I did reply to their emails, but both emails took me over 2 hours to write. EACH.  I was a fucking wreck of nerves when I was typing out my replies.  My hands were shaking like I had Parkinson’s and I had a small anxiety attack.  I already know that I’m fucked if I ever go out on an actual date.

I replied to both with a similar yet different response.  I thanked them and told them I was very flattered and gave them a little more info about how I was a single mother and shit and the nature of the cancer I had.

I want to tell you then that after I hit ‘send’, I fucking dry-heaved in my bathroom for a good 10 minutes.

Now I wait for replies.