Thursday, February 13, 2014

Not Of To A Good Start


So my latest foray onto gay dating is my worst yet.  I am not sure I can take many of these.

Over the course of several days JC emails and texts were showing that he was more and more interested in me.  I was actually allowing myself to put the warning signs to the side and think about the posiblities.

Did I mention the warning signs?  There were a few.
JC claimed to have a successful business he inherited from his father.  On his emails he included an auto signature with a link to his LinkedIn profile.  If you don't know, LinkedIn is like Facebook for business people.  So with the link there, I clicked on it.  I found a fairly typical profile.  It listed his current business, a past employers, and where he went to school.  Then I noticed the odd thing.  He had no connections.  Zero.  That was odd.  The whole point of LinkedIn is to make connections with other professionals.  Even if you don't make any effort at all, anyone who has been working with others for any length of time will have connections.  People will seek you out, even if you don't seek them.  (My linked in profile has over 500 connections and I rarely log in.)

Then I searched for him on Facebook.  I found him right away.  He has zero friends and his profile on Facebook was created only 3 weeks eariler.  No pictures.  No status updates.  No shared links.  No nothing.  

These to things together are pretty odd.  I mentioned it to T and he thought there could be a perfectly reasonable explanation for this and I was making too much of it.  I should just keep talking to him and getting to know him.  

OK.  So I did.  

Then I it happened.  I was expecting it all along.  It was almost a relief.

He was out of state taking care of his elderly aunt when a lucrative business deal fell in his lap.  He had been telling me about it for days.  He was very excited.  It was the biggest one he had ever had, and even better it would be closed quickly because his customer was in a bind.  The day he was going to close the deal he texted me that morning telling me he was going and as soon as the deal was done, he would be heading back so we could finally meet in person.  

That was the last I heard from for the day.  I texted him several times with no reply.  Until the next morning.  I got a text.

"I am upset and in a bind.  I really don't know what what to do."

I knew what was coming.   To make a long story short, he "overestimated" his costs on the deal and was a few thousand dollars short.  He was looking everywhere for the money.  He put up his house for money.  He used all he capital in his business.  He tapped all his lines of credit.   He even borrowed from his elderly aunt, but he was still a few thousand dollars short.  

If only there was someone else who could loan him a few dollars.  

"Well, JC," I said, "Good luck.  Let me know when you get it all worked out and can come back.  I'm very excited to meet you in person.  I have to go into work now.  Talk to you later."

Guess what?  I have not heard from him since.

I guess he thought I was some lonely old fag with some money in the bank and I would do anything for the chance at love with an attractive younger man.  Well, he was wrong about one thing.  I don't have any money in the bank.

Oh well.  Back to being ignored on Match.com and wishing that T would come to his senses.

2 comments:

RB said...

Was he Nigerian or Russian? Lol

TwoLives said...

Scams like this on legitimate dating sites are becoming common.

What's interesting is how much time he spent trying to set you up.

If you haven't done so already, you should report the profile as fraudulent to the dating site.