Dudes, why do you always ask us to get on the videophone? Especially if it’s the first time “meeting” us online? That is no bueno. Seriously. Why? Because we all aren’t Beyonce and don’t have perfect lighting and Diva Fans readily available!
Here’s why you can’t just ask a woman you just chatted with online or on the phone to do a videophone call:
1) When we meet you in person, we want to look our best. Hair perfectly curled, perfect lipstick, cover up those little blemishes, etc. If we’re talking to you on the phone or by IM, we most likely are in our big baggy sweats, rollers in our hair, and pimple cream slathered all over our faces.
2) The video quality is bad! It’s not the same as seeing us in person! Sometimes it’s grainy & pixellated. Most times it looks like someone’s smeared mayonnaise over the lens. I don’t care what brand, how high-tech or new fangled it is, it’s STILL not the same as seeing us live in person!
3) The lighting is awful! Unless you have a studio set up, videophones are often dark and create weird shadows. You need to give us some time to design a lighting set-up before we can converse.
4) 3-D things don’t look as good in 2-D. I’m a curvy girl. If you flatten my 3-D curves into just 2-D, I look extra wide. Plus it’s a known fact that cameras add 10 pounds.
Guys, it’s perfectly ok to ask us to chat via videophone after we’ve been out on a few dates. You know, after you’ve seen us at our best and maybe our date-acceptable-worst. You know, a fitted t-shirt and ponytail, and only wearing mascara. Seriously fellas, if the first time you saw us was in a poorly lit, grainy videophone with us looking a HOT mess, you’d NEVER wanna talk to us again!
Curly was my favorite Stooge. I guess because I like big ole oafs. I don’t know why. But I’d talked to Curly years before and we had something kinda going on even though it was long distance. I’m not sure how I met him, but it was online somewhere. He’s tall. Very tall. 6’7”. I just have a thing for big cuddly teddy bears! We’d had a decent relationship before, great convo and everything, he even sent me a dozen red roses for no reason. First guy to actually send me roses. But I was a young thang back then. Wasn’t ready for a serious relationship. Plus we’d never actually met in person. So I bailed.
Fast forward to 2009. He finds me on Facebook. We reconnect. We were supposed to meet up when I was visiting Peach City for Thanksgiving. Alas, Curly does not have a car either. I tell him that’s an issue. He can’t come to my mom’s house to court me after getting off the bus. She don’t play dat. Plus, I probably wouldn’t be able to borrow a car and didn’t have the money to rent one. Finally, I found a car to use, but I didn’t hear from him.
Fast forward to a few weeks ago. I see him online and go to his page. He saw I stopped by and wrote me a note simply saying “We need to talk.” “Talk about what?“ I think to myself. I ain’t got NUTHIN’ to talk to his dumb azz about. Well, being the kind and loving person that I am, I decide to give him a call. We talk, and we eventually agree to go out that Sunday for a movie (and I assumed lunch or dinner, depending on the time). I said I would go out to him and pick him up.
I get there. He towers over me. Curly bends over to give me an awkward hug. He stinks. He’d been looking forward to meet me for years, don’t you think he could have splashed on just a LITTLE cologne? Some Axe or Old Spice even? No. I push the seat in my teeny little car waaaaaaaay back. Some how Curly manages to squeeze in although his knees are all up in the dashboard.
We get to the theater and Curly asks me what I want to see and says he wants to see Iron Man 2. I tell him I hadn’t seen the first one and I’m not really into that kind of movie. So I suggest another action movie and Queen Latifah & Common’s Just Right, which is about love and basketball. Should have been a good date movie. We get to the ticket counter. “Two for Iron Man 2” he says. Ugh!
We walk right past the refreshment stand. He doesn’t ask if I want any popcorn, no Jujubees, no nothing. He didn’t even give me the chance to offer to buy him something. (Not that I would have. I mean, I DID just drive like 40 minutes to pick him up!) The movie had already started, and it was a good thing. That meant 10 less minutes that I had to sit through that mess. I was bored. I’m sure I would have enjoyed the movie had I been a 12 year old boy, but I’m not!
I’m acting kind of pissy during the movie, but try to suck it up and enjoy the company. I fake attraction and put my right leg against his left. Meanwhile, my left leg was as far away from him as could be! Curly reciprocated the closeness. With his arms folded, he touched my arm with just his one finger poking me in an ET kind of way. How romantic.
Two hours later, we leave the movies. “What’s next?” I ask. “I don’t know. What do you want to do?” Curly responds. I tell him how I’d skipped lunch and was hungry and ask if we can get something to eat. “Ok,” he replies, “but it has to be somewhere inexpensive.” Inexpensive??? Is he for REAL??? I wanted to leave Curly in that parking lot and burn rubber! But I was hungry, and a free meal’s a free meal. I mean, it wasn’t like I was ever going to see him again, right?
Curly wedges his expansive self back into my compact sports car. He asks if Ruby Tuesday is ok. I have no problem with that place whatsoever! I wasn’t expecting dinner at the Four Seasons, so that place was more than fine. Had he not said the word “inexpensive,” he might have had a chance for a second date. Well, actually, no he wouldn’t have! Had he not said the “I” word and used some Irish Spring, he MAY have had a second date. I said MAY!
After dinner, he crams himself back into my car. He asks if I want to go back to his place and chill and watch TV. I quickly come up with an excuse. “You know, I’d LOVE to, but I have a dentist appointment tonight. I know it’s a Sunday and all… But I gotta get a root canal.” Ok, so I had a better excuse than that, but it was still pretty bad.
On the drive back to drop him off, Curly says “On our next date, I’ll take you to the Cheesecake Factory!” Um… Dude… There won’t BE a next date! NEXT!!!
At the same time as I was getting to know Larry, I also began to talk to second dude. Let’s call him Moe. Moe was a very handsome, tall piece of dark chocolate. He, of course, had gone to college (an important criteria for me), pledged a fraternity, and even played professional football for a week and a half or something.
Moe had a job. Not the best job, but a job none the less, and in this economy, that’s golden! His living situation was a little odd. He had just moved in with a female friend whom he claimed was not his girlfriend. Why do I keep giving these “special cases” a chance? If I liked dogs, I’d be the person to take in all the pups with two broken legs, mange and are blind in one eye. Geesh! Anywho… Back to Moe….
We chat online for a while. Then he tells me he has to go work overnight as a security guard. Moe asks me what I’m doing that night. It happened to be Cinco de Mayo. I tell him I’m going to a comedy show with my girls. Why does Moe ask me to meet him for a drink when he gets off at 1am? Sorry! I don’t do booty calls! NEXT!!!
So as you know readers, I’m giving online dating a chance. It has its’ winners and its’ losers, just as any club, bar, wherever you go to meet members of the opposite sex. Or same sex. Miss Scarlett doesn’t judge! This time I got responses from three guys. I decided to give all three a chance. Dude #1. Let’s call him Larry. He’s four years younger than me, college educated, hard-worker. Seemed like a decent guy. I mean, he even texted me poetry one morning! Our conversations online were pretty good. Making small talk. Asking about our hobbies, favorite sports teams, talking politics, and so on and so on. Then he asks me if I enjoy going for walks. “Why?” I ask. “Do you not have a car?” I say jokingly. “Actually, no. I don’t have a car right now, is that a problem?” He said he had car troubles and was taking public transportation for the time being. I was sympathetic, since I drive a 1999 hooptie. I decided to continue my conversations with Larry. But then, he gets a little to comfortable with me… “I hate my job. It doesn‘t pay enough.” He texts one day. (Oh, for the record, I‘m texting or IMing everyone because my cell phone doesn‘t get good reception out here in the woods.) “I don’t know if we can meet up Tuesday. I have to go to court.” Larry says in a text. I don’t ask any questions, assuming it’s traffic court for a simple speeding ticket or parking ticket. Dumb ole Larry continues… “Yeah, I have a $1,000 ticket.” HOW THE HECK DO YOU GET A $1,000 TICKET?!?!?! That’s not for speeding in a school zone. He had to have been stashing some cocaina in the trunk or shooting at cops or something. Let’s see… No car, has a job he hates, and has done something dumb enough to earn him a $1000 ticket well into his grown-azz-manhood? No thank you! NEXT!!!
So readers, I’ve been so busy living my new life that I’ve hardly had the time to actually blog about it! I’ve been here in Peach City for just about six weeks now. People have told me the dating scene down here is horrendous, but I figured it couldn’t be any worse than what my love life was like back up north. Up there, it was SO bad, it was on life support!
You know I’ve been actively dating online for a while now. Well, as soon as I unpacked my car that Sunday, I decided to update my profile to reflect my new city. I instantly got a hit. That Wednesday I was supposed to go out with a great catch. He was a tall, handsome doctor who owned a home and a condo., loved to travel all the time, dressed well, and so on and so forth. Well, he had to postpone because he had an emergency C-section.– greatest excuse I’d heard in a LONG time! We were able to meet up the next day. He was great! Handsome, smart, charismatic. I refused to believe that I’d met my Prince Charming just four days after moving down here, but he allowed me to see that there really are good men out there and to “keep hope alive!”
I didn’t really think we had that great a connection, but was willing to give him another chance. I mean, he’s the kind of guy a mom dreams of for her daughter. As we were leaving, he asked if I wanted to meet up again Saturday morning. I told him I was busy. But I was almost willing to cancel my plans to see him again. He then asked what I was doing on Monday.
“Nothing,” I said.
“Ok, we’ll meet up Monday then” said Dr. Charming.
Alas, Dr. Charming DID have a wart a two. I called him Saturday morning. No answer. No return call. Then I texted him Sunday night just to say hey and looking forward to Monday. No response. Monday, a text asking if we were meeting up. Nothing. A week later I called to say what’s up. Again, no response. Oh well! Some things are just too good to be true! Back to kissing toads for me!
So I recently started talking to this dude I met online. This is nothing new to me. I’ve been doing it for a while with mixed results. No better or worse than traditional dating I guess.
Anywho… You know Miss Scarlett wouldn’t be posting this story unless it was something truly outrageous. Nothing normal ever happens to me. I guess I just attract freaks like the sideshow tent at a circus.
Randy would feel at home in that tent. He lives near to where I have a lot of family and he often comes up this way for business. We’ve yet to meet, but it’s only been a few weeks anyway. We talk on the phone several times a week and he’ll text or IM me during the day. Sounds great, right?
Well, one night, I was going out with some friends. Being that he was hundreds of miles away, Randy asked me to take a picture of my outfit. Ok. He wanted to see me dressed up and make sure the pictures I posted online were really of me and not Zoe Saldana. No harm there, right? So I took a picture and sent it to him. Randy liked it. I asked him to return the favor. He did. Sent me a pic of him at the gym after working his upper body. Nice.
Another day, I had to go somewhere in my business best. Randy requested a photo. No problem. Then Randy started getting a little, while, randy, and asked for more provocative photos. Typical guy stuff. Pushing the envelope. I tell him I’m not comfortable with that, and maybe (read: never) I’d send him some later after we get to know each other better.
Randy dropped is plea for the racy photos, finally realizing that’s not my thing. I was IMing him at work while I was eating my lunch. A spinach pie. The crust broke and the spinach dropped all over me. Why did Randy ask me to send him a provocative picture of me eating the pie? (Hold your jokes please.) Now, I understand some dudes have a food fetish & enjoy watching women (or men, I don’t judge) eat sexually suggestive foods like ice cream and bananas, but a spinach pie??? Um… Lose my number please! Thank you!
So I recently started talking to this dude I met online. This is nothing new to me. I’ve been doing it for a while with mixed results. No better or worse than traditional dating I guess.
The Scarlett Letter 