A year ago I stole a chicken from a grocery store. I was at the self checkout line and got annoyed that the payment machine was not taking my money so I walked off bird in hand. When I was a kid my father found a pack of gum that I had clearly stolen from a store. He decided to teach me a lesson about stealing by taking me to the store to admit what I had done. Along the way I tried to speak up but my father told me to be quiet. When we got to the local Wawa convenient store my dad showed the manager the gum and before I could make my apology the manager said, “We don’t sell that kind of gum”. I finally got my moment to speak and I explained, “Dad I didn’t steal it from here I stole it from the 7/11”. I may be dishonest but at least I’m honest.
Katie is a lesbian friend of mine who I met during a true bottom in my life. She is the type of friend that takes your call and makes time for you seemingly no matter what. Katie is outgoing and self deprecatingly funny. Romance is the achilles heel to her personality. She has teflon skin and promontory patience when it comes to her professional life, but she is as flimsy as newspaper when romantic approval presses. Katie may be more truly bisexual but she identifies as lesbian. Sexuality is a malleable thing and I’m not the type to argue what shape it is currently hammered into.
Katie decided to try her hand at online dating. Katie considered herself a failure at it for a few reasons. She is impatient, obsessive over perfect texting, and her job doesn’t facilitate the time necessary to be on apps sifting through the pile.
Katie sought my help chatting up girls. I pushed back at first until she physically put her phone in my hand and showed me a text conversation. She asked me what I should message. Instead of counseling her I just sent the stranger a message without her approval. Katie reacted, the perfectionist in her objected needing to overthink everything. This sparked a good hearted yelling match between us. When the reply to my message came in with a strong “LMFAO!!” I was crowned winner. Now the hooks were in me, I could land Lesbians better than a Lesbian. A petty thing the ego is. Katie demanded my temporary help.
The plan: I will log onto her OKCupid, and POF account and cold message prospects for her. The initial goal was that I captain only the early engagement, witty intros, and jokes, flexing an online gift of gab. I would do all the legwork that led up to an actual date then Katie took over. I thought this wouldn’t be too much of a commitment but as it turns out girls love to chat. Some never wanted to meet up, they just wanted to chat… OMG. I had to learn to weed these girls out early. This was my first time engaging with women as a woman so there was a feeling out process for me. At times I would edit myself to make sure I didn’t sound like a guy. OMG, LOL, YAY, I learned quick.
I quickly began to like a few of the girls I was messaging, how could I not? Many conversations were fun and flirty, you know… the type between a lesbian and a guy pretending to be a lesbian? I started to identify as Katie and at extreme moments resented that I didn’t have her body. They liked ME after all, my mind and personality, but they were sexually attracted to Katie’s pictures. Could I body switch? No, that’s Hollywood fiction, this dumbass story is true.
On one date the hand over became complicated due to the difference between the prospect’s experience of online Katie vs in person Katie. For example, online Katie was highly into stand up comedy and could quote comics quite well. Real life Katie didn’t know shit about stand up comedy. What would happen? during a date a prospect would begin to quote comedians such as Mitch Hedburg and say things like “A burrito is a sleeping bag for ground beef” or “waffles are pancakes with syrup traps” real life Katie would look at the prospect crooked.
I received notifications from OKCupid that my profile was one of the most desirable and “liked” out there. Truly I would take this complement personal and through my budding gender identity disorder I would say to myself, “That’s right, I got that good pootie” Further complicating my relationship with my penis.
Real life Katie developed a passivity to our arrangement. I was doing such a good job at courting Lesbians that all she would really do is check out their profile pictures to see if she found them attractive or not. I would get annoyed when she turned down a girl I was chatting with because that meant my good work was getting thrown away. I found myself arguing that a girl was cool or attractive and she should give her a shot.
Which brings us to Amber, whew, what a fine online lesbian! Her and I hit it off immediately. We had similar outlooks on life everything from spirituality to the ability to quote “Last of the Mohicans”. We both painted… Real life Katie isn’t an artist so I had to stay conceptual on this point. I messaged with her daily and nightly. Katie had access to the conversations but they got quit lengthy. We were a chatty couple of girls hard to keep up with! ;) For me this was my best work, I consider Amber the best catch of all the girls I had been messaging. I trumpeted Katie to Amber’s existence. She agreed that Amber was very attractive but did not track how cool Amber the person was nor the significance of the connection we were making. It wasn’t until the first date did Katie realize she was about to meet up with a really attractive girl with weeks of daily messaging to catch up on. Katie grew nervous because she had never actually communicated with this girl before. The date was to take place at a coffee shop and she demanded that I at least be present. In fact, she wanted me sitting back to back so that I could listen in. I accepted for a few reasons. Firstly, I am subversive and how far can I actually push this? Secondly, Katie was there for me during one of my worst periods of depression so I have a lifetime IOU to her. One could also argue that my intrigue for Amber compelled me, which would likely be true.
During the date, Amber approached Katie as a great friend she was finally getting to meet. Katie overly monitored her words so that she wouldn’t be exposed. Right on cue, Katie froze and got awkward in the conversation. Her solution? She pretended to run into me mid conversation, bringing me INTO the conversation with Amber. Look at us, fake Katie, real Katie, real Amber physically sitting around a table getting to know each other. I have never felt a greater high from social engineering. I was a Wizard. I had to bite my tongue from saying “Amber it’s me! So good to finally meet you in person!”. And if I accidentally quoted “Last of the Mohicans”? A death wish! Was history’s worst and most impossible love triangle growing like a sideways flower before my eyes? Real life Amber didn’t fail my endorsements, she was as authentic as I perceived her to be through our messages. It was surreal having her look at Katie the way I looked at her. I had been saying goodnight and good morning to this girl for weeks but I couldn’t say a real hello now. I made a point to mess with Katie during this interaction. Making references to things that only I and Amber know about. Online Katie and I meditate in the mornings, Amber does as well. Real life Katie doesn’t mediate so I sure as hell asked real life Katie if she mediated this morning. Katie knew what I was up to and pushed through the trap. It was surreal, Amber was there to meet ME, she was compelled and intrigued by ME, where was the justice?
Afterwards, Amber and I became friends independent of Katie through connecting on Social Media. This got tricky, what voice do I message with? Do I quote “Last of the Mohicans”? Who am I Lord? It was great that I no longer had to edit myself. I could speak about being artist freely, speak of spirituality, and speak as a male. It was good but I had the sense that it didn’t have the same energy behind it due to the physical attraction only flying one way. The inevitable questions about Katie from Amber surfaced. We met each other through Katie after all. Amber was having a different experience of online Katie versus in person Katie. Some of the questions were hypothetical, “You know when someone contradicts themselves?”. I easily diffused her concerns to keep the charade going.
Katie and Amber learned to date without me. Yay! Me with my gross male body and silly outward genitalia were left out of that part.
Weening Katie off of my communication assistance became a challenge. Katie’s perfectionism and insecurities didn’t just disappear now that she had a real life relationship with Amber. So now I’m truly in the middle. Katie is screening her texts to Amber by me and Amber is talking about Katie to me. My dream was to have Amber give me her phone so that I could text Katie from Amber’s phone then run across town to text Amber from Katie’s phone. In effect Catfish the girl that was having me catfish the girl I was cat fishing her through… Did I get that right? Or in other terms, date myself through two girl’s phones.
Amber and I continued our friendship and my crush on her faded as I became a straight male friend to a Lesbian.
One might expect the lesson of this story to be that deception is bad, lying is bad. I already know that. When I was a woman it was safer and easier to let my heart crush because I had layers of separation, or layers to hide behind. Over the years I developed a self that protected myself from intimacy when engaging with women romantically. As a woman, those protections were set aside because I was someone else. My deceptions freed me to have a new voice. How’s that for a moral of the story?
Katie didn’t learn that deception was bad either. Online dating was a means to meeting someone in person. Her lazy ass got to fast forward to the dating part while I did the legwork. She had to navigate being herself around Amber versus the self that was presented to Amber during online courtship.
Amber got deceived but wound up with a friend and girlfriend so… Bird in hand?
Johnny Catfish