How come no one wants to fake date me?

My friend thought her boyfriend was cheating on her, having noticed an email from Badoo, an online dating site. I knew he wasn’t. Her boyfriend regularly writes her love poems that rival Shakespeare and the suspicious message was seen in his spam between emails offering penis enlargements and naked pictures of Natalie Portman. Isn’t she pregnant?

Anyway, despite my reassurances, she was still worried so I had no choice but to provide her with empirical evidence of his fidelity. I created a fake online profile and scrolled through every single man on the site between the ages of 35 and 45.

Fake me may not have had a picture, or a real name for that matter, but she did have a couple of lines about herself. She was down-to-earth and fun, liked watching sports but knew better than to talk during a game. She  hated people who hated carbs and could probably win a Junior Mints eating competition. She recognized the importance of pretty underthings. She was adventurous but easy-going, spontaneous but undemanding. She just wanted someone to laugh with.

My friend’s boyfriend was obviously not on the site and the two were able to joke about her new relationship jitters. With things happily returning to normal, I forgot I had ever logged on. I forgot until I got an email from Badoo a couple weeks later advising that Peter K, 36, wanted to meet me. Taking a look at Peter’s profile, fake Wendy was unimpressed. Real Wendy though was really mad. In three weeks, the only person who wanted to meet fake me was a man who posted pictures of himself with glow sticks around his neck and who joked about living at home with his parents!? And he was neither a dog person, NOR a cat person!? Do you mean to tell me that in all these weeks, out of all these men, the only person who wanted to fake meet fake me was creepy Peter K!? I felt so rejected!

Granted, I have little experience in the dating department. A young bride, I have only been on one blind date (on which I was so nervous that I somehow told him that I was once crowned “Shitface of the Day” at overnightcamp, an award given each morning to the camper who looked the worst before showering. With curls like mine I was a shoo in! Regardless, I have no idea how it possibly could have come up in conversation).

I may be timid and self-conscious. I may be incredibly awkward and unable to make eye contact. I may have really funny bedhead in the morning. I am fine with all those things. What I’m not fine with is being a bad writer. I love writing. I want to make writing my life’s work, and I could only get one fake date based on it! My fake bio was way better than all those, “what can I say about myself?” or “this is my first time trying this” or all those bios by Angels, LoveMamas and CrazyLegz. Legs doesn’t have a Z! Plural words end in S and, while I’m at it, sexy doesn’t have three X’s either.

This has been terrible for my self-esteem. I originally felt bad for forgetting about fake me’s profile, but felt much worse that it didn’t much matter because no one was fake wooed anyway. The Real Wendy though has learned a valuable lesson: if I’m ever going to post an online profile again, I should probably include some sexxxy pictures of an expecting Natalie Portman.