by Maggie Voysest

The liars and cheats and the mysterious online disappearances

I think that it is safe to say that Gigi experienced almost every single kind of scam and lie and con out there, or darn close to it. Those that she didn’t experience, her friends sure did. Oh her friends… that will be the next book that Gigi writes when she finishes her memoirs. In fact, she has many stories that may remain unwritten, because they just run into each other, into a big, confusing, hard to remember mess, and also because some were just too dull and boring to even bother mentioning. Yes, that’s how many men Gigi met along the Online Way. I wonder if any of these men will ever realize who Gigi is when she becomes famous thanks to their contributions to her life. Will anyone come running back and ask her to give them another chance? God, will they even dare to ask for a share in the benefits? And in what language should Gigi tell them exactly where to go? I think Italian sounds wonderful when cussing. French is too romantic. Although Spanish does have some great swear words that are completely untranslatable into English. Maybe a combination of all three? Followed with a big kick to their derriere?

A different kind of liar and cheat was the man who pretended to be single, and then ended up being married, or almost divorced, or on the point of divorce, or quite truthfully nowhere near a divorce. She would never understand how people (and not just men, but women too) would join these sites when they were not even divorced yet. Their profiles listed that they were divorced, but they weren’t. To be fair, a few really were on the point of divorce, but most were not. Some even said they were divorced, but were still living with their soon-to-be ex. Some were probably nowhere near getting a divorce. It was just a distant dream in their minds, and they needed an escape from their unhappy marriages. And some were probably just good-for-nothing dregs of society out for some free booty. But how to tell in which category these liars fell into? Sadly, there was just no way of knowing.

So how could they even be free to date? How could a woman ever be sure that a divorce was really in the works? Gigi thought after a month spent with one such guy that she really should insist on seeing legal paperwork before ever going out on a date with a man. Next she should insist on going to his place, not hers. If the man was reluctant to let her visit his home, there was probably a very good reason for it, and she was probably tall, blonde, and skinny. Mean and with teeny, tiny breasts, which is why they wanted Gigi, her exact opposite. So no legal paperwork, no date. No home visit, no falling in love with them. Would a written permission slip from the ex or soon-to-be ex be possible to get, or would that be too much to ask for? I think these websites should ask for proof of divorce before allowing them to become paid members. Shouldn’t the website have at least some kind of responsibility? Because a woman could not very well ask a man to show him his divorce papers on a first date, could she? No. She would have to take him at his word and be fooled later.

Not to mention that, in my opinion, people should wait until they are actually divorced BEFORE joining the website. In fact, they should first lick their divorce wounds, fool around some, and not even join a dating site until the rebound period is over. This would stop them from turning to the woman they’d been dating for weeks or months and tell her that they’d just realized that they were not quite ready to date yet. These “divorce liars” would later admit to not bringing up their marital status right away so as to first get the woman to talk to them, because most sane women would not talk to married men. You think? Once they had engaged her interest, then they would admit to being slightly married, (is that like being slightly pregnant?) and then they’d say that their divorce would soon be final. The problem is how could a woman ever really tell for certain? Men should come with a D on their forehead once their divorce is final, or an M for married, or a DYTIS for Do You Think I’m Stupid!

The worst liar was Niles. Niles Brown from Ann Arbor. I wish that I could use his real name so as to warn his future victims, but it’s probably not such a good idea. (Girls, he’s got a devastatingly sexy British accent, has several tattoos, is 6 foot 1, and says that he works as a sleep technician. So don’t fall for him, ok?). Most women would probably not even listen to such advice, if they are the kind of woman to believe in giving someone the benefit of the doubt. And what if his wife were to read this and Gigi broke up another marriage? Not that Niles deserved her compassion, that spineless, lying creep. Now by the time Gigi met Niles, she had already lost her trust in men. So the whole time that she was dating him, she had this feeling that he was probably lying to her, and that his soon-to-be divorce was not even a distant dream, which is why she was not completely devastated and heart broken when it all ended. I think that he lied about being almost divorced AND loving Gigi – a double liar! Now I am not going to talk about Niles in this chapter, because thanks to just another irony in Gigi’s life, she would soon enter a period in her life when she dated three men, one after the other, who all had the same last name of Brown, Again, I kid you not. So Niles will show up later in the chapter about Gigi’s Mr. Browns. I really think that God is a sardonic, sarcastic, mischief-loving creature who is so bored up in heaven that he creates these moments in Gigi’s life, so that he can sit back with his big bowl of popcorn and laugh till he cries.

So how many not quite so divorced men did Gigi encounter? Too many to remember is the sad truth. She talked to one such man, whose name she cannot even recall now, on a Valentine’s night not so long ago. It was a sad and lonely Valentine’s night. David had reentered her life (he would do this for about a year), but all that they had done was go out to a movie, exchange a passionate, soul stirring kiss, and then he had left her all alone, in the house where she was both house sitting and dog sitting. Yes, Gigi spent Valentine’s night alone in the sexy red lingerie she had bought for David that he would not see for a while, in bed with three huge dogs. So she turned to her online site and found someone to talk to. It took him several hours to confess that he was married, but he promised faithfully that he was getting a divorce.

Gigi was lonely enough to continue talking to him, and he asked if he could take her out to dinner. He had no photo on his website, and didn’t want to send her one. Gigi insisted that she would not meet someone without knowing what he looked like. He then tried to tell her that his job was very political and delicate and that he could not just have his photo floating around, but he reluctantly sent her one when she threatened to stop talking to him. Now Gigi was getting smarter and so she asked for his cell phone number and home number. He told her that he could not give her his home number because he still lived with his wife. And the truth came out. He could not quite divorce his wife just yet, because he was heavily involved in politics and her father was an important man who would crucify him if he tried to get divorced. He spent a good half hour trying to convince Gigi that they should meet secretly, and that as soon as he was voted in to whatever position he was after, then he’d be free. Free to be hers and only hers. For God’s sake, did he really believe Gigi would fall for this sad, sob story?

Gigi told herself this was why she hardly ever voted because who could trust politicians! She told him that she was way too special a woman to be a secret in any man’s life and that she was not about to begin with him. He apologized profusely, and said that she did indeed seem to be special, and could he call her once she was divorced? Gigi told him that it would not be a good idea because she would never trust him again. And so she curled up with her dog Caramel, and the two dogs she was taking care of, and as they licked her hands and feet, Gigi told herself that they were way better company than 90% of the men out there.

Once again she cursed David for popping in and out of her life, without being able to make up his mind. No, sorry. Gigi is still not ready to share the chapter about David. Even more than a year after he finally left her, the sound of his name and his voice on the phone (she spoke to him twice after it was all over) could make her heart stop and then jumpstart. A hopefulness would then enter her heart, making her think that maybe he had missed her so much that he was now back and ready to start their life together, But that was never the way it worked out. He had popped back in just to see how she was doing… Men! Are they purposefully cruel? Why is it that even when they don’t seem to want you, they don’t want to let you go to be free to turn to someone else? Oh God, am I trying to figure out men again? Let’s move onto the online disappearances.

Now here Gigi really has forgotten names. Yes. There were that many men who just simply disappeared completely. These are the men who would strike up a communication, and would try to get to know absolutely everything about Gigi. Then it is as if they were suddenly bored and ready to move on to the next flavor on the website. What was annoying, frustrating, and just downright rude was that they never gave off any kind of clue that they had lost interest. One minute they were full of questions to ask and stories to share, and then the next minute they were gone.

Why could these men not simply send a short, but sweet email saying they had met someone else? That they no longer wanted to talk to Gigi? Or that they had come to realize that Gigi was just not quite what they were looking for because she had confessed to her secret love of disco music, and they could just never be with a woman who preferred disco to rock. Or was it that she cried at chick flicks and didn’t really love scary movies? That her favorite color was red and not blue? That she liked Mexican food and not Indian food? What made these men just suddenly turn off? She hadn’t even met them in person yet, so it couldn’t be looks or lack of chemistry. Why did they just disappear, so that she would send an email, then another, then a few more:

• commenting on her day
• on what she’d been doing
• asking them what they were up to
• asking them if everything was ok
• if their dog had died
• if they had been in a serious accident
• if they were deep in a stupid, fricking coma
• if their fingers had fallen off from the black plague now invading Michigan
• if their phones had suddenly stopped receiving a signal from being jammed up their…

Oh God, all this anger could have been avoided by just one simple goodbye! Gigi never even had a chance to get to know these men because they never stuck around for more than a few days. There were some that she even talked to on the phone, sometimes all night long, and they seemed to get along so well. And then suddenly nothing, with seriously not one more word ever heard from them again.

This is when Gigi wished she lived in the olden days of courtesy, before the world of texts and emails, before online IM’s, where it now seems to be okay to just suddenly stop communicating, to walk away from the computer or phone without saying goodbye. We don’t (yet!) do this in person, do we? We don’t just simply stop in the middle of a conversation when face to face with someone, and just walk off without a word. So why and how did it become ok to do this with technology? Have you ever sent a text or instant message, received one back, answered that, and then just waited? Waited for an answer,.. that never came? Would you ever do that in person? You’re talking to someone asking them about their favorite things, and then just stop and walk away to talk to another person in the room? At least at parties we try to politely finish a conversation before starting another one with someone else. You would never go from: “So, what’s your favorite color?” to get absolutely nothing back. At times like these, Gigi wished she could turn her life into a skit from The Holy Grail so that it would go something like this:

“What is your favorite color?”

And if he didn’t answer back, he’d be tossed over the bridge of death? Oh Gigi was a die hard Monty Python fan, and she wished she could toss some of these men over the bridge of death, and have their knees (or other parts of their bodies) chopped off so that it was more than just a flesh wound!

Gigi would never figure out these men who simply disappeared. Those that did, never came back, unlike the men she actually dated who’d disappear and come back. The online world was such a different world from the one she’d imagined as a little girl, watching romantic movies filled with happily-ever-afters. If anyone had ever told her at that time that romance would soon be a thing of the past, Gigi would have never bought that first computer or joined that first dating site. At times she felt so alone, as though this was only happening to her. But then she’d talk to her friends, and she’d find out this was happening to many women (and to be fair, to men as well). The online world was filled with crazy, insecure, confused, people who did not seem to know what they wanted.

And yet… And yet, it was also filled with hopeful people unwilling to give up, thinking the Online Way was the only way, the yellow brick road to happiness, and that if they just kept on looking they’d find that heart, that brain, that courage, and that oh so special home. Sadly though, they would mostly just find men hiding behind curtains, spinning big wheels of deception, making loud noises that sounded better than the truth. Would Gigi ever find her way to that perfect home for her and her man? If only it was as easy as clicking her sexy, little red heels together.

To read Helen Part VIII, see Helen’s Horrors of Dating – Part VIII