About five years ago, my mother still had hope she’d become a grandmother one day, and was adamant that I wasn’t putting enough effort into finding my future ex-wife. While I was home for the holidays, in an attempt to calm her down, we signed up for one of those online matchmaking services. I picked out the picture of myself that made me the least suicidal, and tapped out a fairly charming little ad that was really more to get Mom feeling better about her spinster son than finding me a mate. Ironically, I had actually just started seeing someone, but for reasons I didn’t want to go into, I wasn’t really comfortable telling my mother about it.

So as time went by, I’d get the email updates from the site, but as I was dating someone, I never paid much attention to them. And in the five years the profile was up, I had one girl email me to say she was interested. One. In five years. And, I hate to say it, she was, like me, not a pretty person. Though I can’t really be sure, what with all the metal studs in her face and the tattoos on her cheek. I’m sure she was super cool.

Now, I know I am not an attractive person. I understand this. I’m even ok with it most of the time. That girl I had started seeing behind my mother’s back? She explained early on in our relationship that she was “only going to date ugly men, because all good looking men are assholes.” At the time, I actually rationalized that it was a nice thing to say, because it meant she respected me enough to be honest with me about my looks. I can be pretty retarded when I need to be.

So last month, more as a social experiment than anything, I took my picture off the profile. In less than five weeks, I’ve gotten eight women to express some interest in letting me buy them things. And interestingly, seven of them demanded that I post a picture of myself, lest I never hear from them again. I suspect the eighth one was going to wait to see what kind of car I drive. I considered actually complying and putting the picture back on, just to see what sort of creative excuses they’d come up with, but it seemed like a lot of effort just to prove something I already know.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 13th, 2008 at 9:31 pm and is filed under My Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.