My first hit-on

But maybe he has a great personality?

I got mail. Exclamation point.

Mail from Dale. The man pictured on the right. 

Okay, more jocosity.

Seriously, the image to the right does bear an unsettling resemblance to the “real” Dale [this is the first and last time I’ll put “real”[[and its variants]] in  quotation marks. We’ll assume that, like goodness and beauty, reality is relative.].

The note from Dale did have its charm. He got the literary allusion in my online dating moniker, Bathsheba Everdene [heroine of the Thomas Hardy novel and my languishing screenplay of that novel].

Then again, perhaps “charm” is too kind an adjective for his note. It did contain  words, I'll grant that.

Words that make him sound beyond dorky. And he looks like Mr. Potato Head. It’s the mustache. And the ears. And the apparent lack of a torso. I don’t think I could have sex with a man without a torso.

Which leads me to ask:

1. Is using the online screen name Bathsheba Everdene a good idea?

Answer: Too soon too tell. Four weeks isn’t so long a time—not in my timeline of deprivation.

2. Must I really post a photo with my profile?

Answer: Dale is my first hit in the 4 weeks I’ve been online.

3. Must it really be a picture of me?  

The first in a series of “Some major do’s” in Online Dating for Dummies is:  “Avoid even a hint of deception….We online daters are a highly suspicious lot. Our baloney meters are set to MAX”  [p. 124].

But why should I take the advice of a book that considers a “don’t” a “major do”? Or whose authors pride themselves on their “baloney meters.”

I like baloney.