A person’s online profile picture is worth a million dates only if their photograph measures up to what they look like in real life. Essentially, that’s what draws you to a virtual stranger to begin with, right? Looks.

What a disappointment it is when a prospective date doesn’t live up to your expectations, when you see them in the flesh for the first time. It’s even more disturbing when they turn out to be downright ugly or an unacceptably and shockingly hefty, large American.

Such is the case with a guy I like to call “Fatso” for an obvious reason. Judging by his photograph, he didn’t look skinny but I would never think in a million years he’d end up anything close to morbidly obese in person. I mean, during our web chats, he didn’t flirt like a fat guy by any account. He seemed to have all the confidence in the world. He was witty, charming, funny and despite the fact he was just average looking, it was ultimately his personality that enticed me enough to go out with him.

We agreed to meet at a restaurant he vowed was absolutely incredible and one of his very favorites. He told me in advance not to mind the ambiance since this was a place where the food reigned supreme despite the décor.

Set inside a Japanese mall, I took the escalator up to the third floor as per his specific instructions. On my way through the mall, I noticed I was the only non-Asian person around which I thought was a very good thing – now, it wouldn’t be too hard to figure out who I was about to meet.

I was a bit early (which is unheard for me) but I didn’t know the area and figured better safe than sorry. I stood atop the escalator looking down, waiting for my Prince Charming to ride on up. But instead, what I got was a very humungous version of everything but Prince or Charming. I knew it was him instantly. Firstly, he was the only other white person in the mall and secondly, when he said, “Hi I’m Phil”, that pretty much gave it away.

Forty-five minutes away from home and starving to death downtown L.A., I figured I might as well indulge in a meal with fat, I mean Phil. I tried to hide my disappointment which was really tough considering I began to feel slightly insecure that his breasts were larger than mine.

Did he not think I would figure out he was way heavier in real life than on the interweb? There’s only so long one can keep up the whole façade. Really and truly, it’s impossible to hide such a thing as obesity, isn’t it?

What Phil did was blatantly misrepresent himself, no question about it. As the yakitori kept being delivered by the truckload to our table, my anger surged to a red flag level. I began to lament and berate him in my mind. Who was he to lure me to a strange part of town in order to dine with a sumo wrestler? Speaking of sumo wrestlers, a little Japanese kid even came by looking for an autograph and we had to send him away from us… “Sorry kid, not this sumo wrestler. I know he looks like Umono, but no.”

To make matters worse, all throughout the meal Phil talked only about food, telling me about all the amazing places he’d eaten around the city. He told me where to get the best burger, best Brazilian BBQ and what diner had the best fries in South Central. “I’ve eaten at all those places,” he told me. “I believe you,” I thought.

My appetite dwindled as I watched him shove skewers in his mouth by the stick load and fight with his fork to get as much food onto it as possible. Even more so, I was turned off by the fare Phil proceeded to order. Intestines, liver, heart – sure, it was an exotic Japanese menu but what happened to all the normal non-vital organ meats on the menu like chicken breast per say?

“You really have to try the pulled pork,” he insisted. I misunderstood what he was saying to me and got defensive right away with this one. “There’s no way I’m giving you a hand job in this restaurant or ever, never ever at all,” I retorted with a look of complete shock on my face.

“I meant pork, as in pig,” he replied, very matter-of-factly. “Oh, pig. Right,” I was slightly embarrassed but that soon turned into disgust again.

See, I’m not strictly kosher or anything, but given the fact that we actually met on a Jewish dating site, his insensitivity to whether or not he assumed I obeyed strict Judaic dietary law was distasteful and ignorant. “Jews don’t eat pig,” I reminded him. Then, curiosity got the best of me.

“What is pulled pork anyway? Do they pull and poke the pig before they kill it?” I teased, trying to make light of the situation. In shock, he stared back at me as if I were a complete idiot. “Are you serious?” He laughed. “It’s a method of preparation in which the shoulder cut of the pig is cooked using a low-heat. Cooking over extended times at lower temperatures, the meat becomes tender enough that its weakened connective tissue allows the meat to be pulled or easily broken into individual pieces. You know what I mean?” My eyes bulging out, staring in disbelief, all I could say was, “Uh huh.”

I barely ate a thing and nursed a small bottle of sake throughout the meal, listening to his tirades on McDonalds which I was surprised to learn he wouldn’t touch with a two-foot pole.

At the end of our meal, Phil insisted we split the bill. “I don’t pay for girls on the first date,” he told me. “So should we just go Dutch?” “Dutch? Screw that,” I thought. Calculating one bottle of sake in my head, I threw down eleven bucks and got up from the table. “That’s for my bottle of sake and a piece of undercooked chicken,” I said, ready to bolt. He protested, “You can’t do that. “When you split a meal with someone, you don’t calculate dimes and nickels over who ate more than who.” Then, he added, “I’m sorry but that’s the polite thing to do.” After a moment of silence, he could tell I was upset but didn’t care. He added, “Just saying.”

Hands on my hips, unable to hold back a guffaw, I really let Phil have it.

“You want to talk about impolite? Let’s talk about it, dude. You clearly ate way more than I did and that’s seriously impolite to do on a first date. And speaking of rudeness, you may want to update your profile picture.”

“So I’m a few pounds heavier in real life than in my photo,” Phil retorted. He knew! Phil knew he was fat! “A few pounds?” I asked, sarcastic. “Okay, so I’m lonely and just wanted a date,” Phil looked down ashamed. Half of me wanted to shake my head and away, forget this incident ever happened and tell all my girlfriends the guy stood me up to avoid further discussion about this horror-date. The other half of me felt like I needed to say something to make Phil feel better.

“Look,” I told him. “There are plenty of girls who dig a guy with a few extra pounds. I’m just not one of them. But you’re a real nice guy,” I lied. He wasn’t nice. He was mean to me during the pulled-pork explanation during which I found his tone short of sincere. But there was no need to drive the guy’s ego into the ground. “Really, I mean it,” I said with a poised expression that should have won me an Oscar for best lead actress. The truth is, Phil shouldn’t go around tricking girls into thinking he’s anything other than what he is: an overweight guy who’s embarrassed about it. But that’s his fault – not mine. Point is, if you want to meet the right person for you, you’ve got the be the right person for them up front. No hiding behind computer screens. No expecting a few dozen extra pounds to be no big deal at the mercy of a personality that fails to measure up anyway. Just be yourself and be patient that the right person will come along. That being said, patience is worth its weight in dating.

I went back to the Japanese yakitori joint on another date months later and knew exactly what to order, courtesy of Phil. In that sense, our meeting served a purpose in the grand scheme of things in my life. Furthermore, Phil was right about every restaurant recommendation and for that, I’m thankful today. Tomorrow, I’ll likely loathe him after I eat a plate of truffle oil fries at Josie’s in South Central.

Do you think I was overreacting?

The guy had everything – good looks and charm, a brand new BMW, a great job. I knew instantly, my mother would be happy with this one.

On our first date, he took me to a pricey, trendy restaurant in the Valley. I’d been there before but for the sake of keeping things fresh, I told I hadn’t. I definitely didn’t want to tell him that just last week, I went there on another first date with another Internet prospect that turned out to be a total dud.

This time, unlike last week with the guy I now refer to as “Penny Pincher”  I could order anything. There was no suggestion for splitting a main dish. This new guy didn’t scrutinize me for wanting a second martini on a Wednesday. In fact, he had two too.

At the end of the date, he said to me, “I usually don’t do this but since we really hit it off, I have a black tie event tomorrow night and wonder if you’d like to go with me?” Would I like to? Was he kidding? I’d love to! It would be my first ever Hollywood black tie event and with a gorgeous, Jewish guy my mother would love too. I told him maybe. A girl has to play hard to get. I told him I had an exam the following day at school and wanted to make sure I got enough studying in. This of course was a lie but fed into the scheme of making myself seem only somewhat available.

I called him first thing the next morning and said, “Yes, I’d love to go.” And it was everything I thought it would be. A multiple course set dinner, an elegant crowd inside a posh hotel.

Now I normally hold off sleeping with a guy for at least three dates but after this Cinderella-type affair, I figured why not. We went to his place afterwards and got to it, kissing while getting each other undressed. But alas, the sex was way below par. I’ve had bad sex before but this was inexcusable. No passion. Nowhere near making any sort of impact on the Richter scale. It was bland at best and I wish we’d never done it.

So we tried it again, a few nights later. This time was even worse. The guy couldn’t get it up for more than a few seconds. I tried to be nice and pretend like it was me and not him but I knew it wasn’t. I’d never had this experience before. Ex-boyfriends still tell me how they’re attracted to me. I know I’m  not the problem. But this was Mr. Perfect minus one point for bad sex.  At the very least, he deserved another chance. Who knows? This could have been a fluke strike out.

The shock I was about to encounter with this “other chance” however is something I’ll regret until the day I die. The visual image still haunts me. On attempt number three, when Mr. Perfect took off his boxers, what was I about to see? There’s no way to prepare oneself for something like this.

Right there, above his penis, a perfectly shaped piece of hair known in porn vernacular as a “landing strip”. In my opinion, he may as well have gotten a Brazilian. That would be way less offensive than a heavily manicured hair patch that he’d obviously spent considerable time attending to hours before meeting me. Why did he think I would like such a thing? It was a perpendicular Hitler mustache and I definitely wasn’t going to go anywhere near it. At least, not with the lights on.

Much to my chagrin, even in the dark, Hitler couldn’t stand on his own. On my way home that night, I took a detour and took the scenic route because I do my best thinking in the car. I weighed the pros and cons of continuing to try to date this guy.

Pro: he was handsome and successful. Con: his penis was flaccid and incompetent. Pro: he took me to nice restaurants and complimented me. Con: I got drunk and horny at all of these restaurants and couldn’t look at his poor penis when it came down to it. Pro: maybe things will get better. Con: things never get better.

I knew what I had to do. Ignore his calls, emails, messages on Facebook. How could I tell him the reason I didn’t want to date him is because his penis just wasn’t working? There’s no nice way to relay this to any guy. So I made sure that conversation would never have to happen.

That is, until one lonely night at midnight, I was on the computer and he showed up on instant messenger asking me how I’ve been. The question seemed innocent enough so I replied, “Busy. Very busy. School is whipping my ass.” He asked if that’s why I never returned his calls and so I said, “Exactly. It has nothing to do with you. I’m just focusing on school and stuff.”

He asked me to go out for dinner with him that week and since I had no other prospective dates lined up over the next few days, I agreed. We went out for Mexican food to a restaurant I’d been to but again, for his sake, so he could feel unique and interesting, I told him I’d never been. After dinner and two margaritas later, I guess he wanted to assert his manhood or his humble penis was finally ready to prove itself, we had some relatively good sex. Not amazing, but good. And most surprisingly, Hitler Dick was gone. He was cleanly trimmed, just the way I like it.

Were we back on track? I skipped back to my apartment after seeing him to the front door. Minutes later, he sent me a text message from his car asking me out the following evening for dinner again.

This time we went to a new restaurant I’d never been to. But after dinner, we were about to go to a place we’ve both been to several times before. Impotency land. And even worse: Hitler Dick was back. And I wondered. Was there some kind of connection between Hitler Dick and impotency? And was this something I cared to philosophize about even further? When he called the following day, I didn’t pick up the phone. I didn’t want to get into any conversation about it. There was just too much to say and no right way to say it. So I ignored him and we’ve never seen each other again or spoken since.

Every now and then, the image of Hitler Dick pops into my mind though – just the penis and its mustache. I struggle to force it out and sometimes it’s hard and damn near impossible. It’s a lot more difficult to forget a morbid visual like that than it is to forget an entire person. Forgetting a person is easy if they’ve made no real mark of making a difference in your life for better or worse, personality-wise.

But images last a lifetime and it’s something you have no control over. Nobody can forget having seen Hitler Dick up close after having seen it. Which brings me to a final thought and I hope to never think of it again. Maybe the reason Hitler Dick did that to his dick is because even though his personality wasn’t out of the ordinary or truly stand-alone memorable, at least after having met him and attempted to forget him, his existence lingers in their memory of those women he’s met through his penis, for better or for worse. For me, it was for the worse. But hey, somewhere, some women might dig a nice penis mustache.

Do you think I was overreacting?

There’s nothing wrong with being a trust fund baby. Let’s face it, I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t want to be born shitting into golden diapers or receive a diamond-studded tricycle at age three. Big bucks in the bank, jet-setting on a whim, anywhere, anytime, fancy restaurants and couture – the prospect of it all rouses complete and utter awe.

So when I found out the dude was Trump-rich, naturally, I was ecstatic. We spoke on the phone after a series of email banters back and forth and penciled in a Saturday night date. This typically goes against my strict strategy of making someone worthy of a “Saturday” only after they’ve proved themselves previously on a lesser important night of the week. But remembering his financial godliness, I figured at the very least, I’d have a nice night out.

We met at a hoity-toity resto where he was about to pay for a pricey meal that included everything one would expect from foie gras to crème brulee, not to a mention a hefty-priced bottle of vino.

The conversation flowed with relative ease right from the start which was a relief. First, we covered the basics, like where we both went to school, places we’ve traveled and whatnot. All the boring but expected stuff.

Over the appetizer cheese plate we got all the essentials out of the way. Yet, we still managed to find things to talk about during the main course albeit, nothing out of the ordinary interesting. General news of the day just to show we’re both in the know of what’s going on in the world.

Everything seemed to be going well except for one little problem…

All throughout the meal, I couldn’t help but wish he was better looking. It’s not that he was repulsive. It’s more like he was stuck in some indiscernible time warp where Engleburt Humperdink and Ed Grimley somehow morphed into one person. The hair was an insult to men who can grow it. Completely un-styled and devoid of any personality, that was just icing on the skull.

Now, I’m sure the conservative suit he was wearing cost more than my entire wardrobe all together but sadly, it spoke volumes of monotony and insinuated the communication between us was dry for a reason.

You could imagine my surprise when dessert arrived and the guy mentioned something along the lines of, “if we end up together, you and I will have to be completely honest and devoted to one another.” As I recovered from choking on my water, I asked him what he meant by that. After all we’ve only just met!

He proceeded to tell me about girls he’s dated in the past, who only wanted him for his money and how his father is the ultimate screener to attest to whether the woman in his life is genuine or a gold digger.

“So he’ll pay for everything. We can go on vacations and I’ll buy you diamonds. You’ll have it all. You just have to be loyal to me.”

Why is he coming on so strong? What is wrong with this guy, I wondered.

“The last girl I went out with started asking me for things. So I called my dad to ask him what he thinks I should do. And he said, ‘get rid of her.’ And so I did. Because I listen to everything my dad says.”

And then the check arrived.

As we walked out of the restaurant, buddy carried on with another story a man should never tell a woman, no matter how long they’ve been dating, never mind just two hours after meeting.

Apparently some girl hadn’t been as attentive as he would have liked while out on a date the other week. Allegedly, he stepped out of the bar to phone his father and tell him about the lack of attention he was receiving from said girl. His father inquired, “Have you ordered anything yet?” To which he replied, “No. But she had a martini when I got here.” His father asked, “Where are you now?” He answered, “Out front of the bar”. Without a pause, his father said, “Run. Go. Get out of there.” And he did. Just like daddy told him to.

Why he was telling me this story, only he knows. But then he added the, “if we end up together, you’re going to have to be an attentive wife. That’s all I ask for from a woman.”

Deep breath. Internal thought process: “Buddy. This is a date. Not a marriage interview. Had I known that we were going to get married by the end of the night, I would have at least worn better underwear, assuming the honeymoon would follow. But really? You’re still on about this whole ‘if we end up together’ idea? I had to remind myself the cards were all in my hands at this point. Whether or not we were to wed depended entirely on my own volition and when, again, that too would be on my terms.

He put me in a taxi and paid the driver in advance, a sum I don’t know. When I got home, he sent me a text message to make sure I arrived safe.

Undressing for bed, I reassessed the situation. Maybe this guy wasn’t that bad after all. Possessive, pushy, borderline ugly, a daddy’s boy – yes. But a bad guy? Not in the least. He was obviously a caring person and perhaps just insecure. At least, he deserved another chance. So that’s why when he asked me for dinner four minutes later for the following Saturday night in a subsequent text message, I told him yes.

All week, we exchanged unnecessary messages and phone calls in order to update each other on our boring days at work.

When Saturday rolled around, I wasn’t exactly “missing” this guy’s presence in my life all that much. I didn’t know what we’d talk about. After all, I already know what he’d eaten for lunch every day this week. This constant interaction between us had done the opposite of make me excited about our impending date. It felt more like a parole meeting, for him to make sure I show up on time and act according to his wishes.

On Saturday afternoon, I went to Long Beach with some friends and anyone knows heading back to the city from Long Island on the weekend can sometimes take longer than a cross-national flight. On my way home, from my friend’s car, I phoned the guy to ask if we could reschedule. Obviously, I lied a little and said I was on the train so didn’t know when I’d be home and didn’t want to keep him waiting. His response?

“That’s very tasteless of you. You just ruined a good thing.” And hung up. Had I just been dumped by a guy I’ve only had one date with and who married me that very same night, metaphorically? Obviously, his dad would not approve of what I did, I thought. Breaking a date with his son? Inconceivable!

No big loss, I reassured myself while staring out the window at the Manhattan skyline. He was terribly ugly anyway and the thought of banging him had me throwing up a little inside.

A week later, in the middle of the night, my phone kept beeping to indicate a text message. I turned it off because who the hell would call me at such an indecent hour? In the morning, there were like nine texts from “Daddy’s Boy”.

The first berated me for cancelled our date the week before. The second reiterated that very same point. The third mentioned something about how I’m not pretty enough for him anyway. The fourth proclaimed he was going on some sort of date the following night and “she’s probably a lot better than you”. After that, I didn’t really bother with the last few texts. I could see where this was going.

The following night, same thing. But instead of multiple texts, just one. The next morning, when I checked it, the text said something along the lines of “I’m glad it didn’t work out between us because I just met someone way hotter and smarter than you.”

Smiling at the incredulity of it all, I blew upon my fingers, dusting them in preparation to text back: “I’m very flattered that you were thinking of me while boning another chick. Have a nice life.” I haven’t heard from him since nor do I expect to. What could he possibly do or say to me now? I didn’t really have a choice either. I had to reply in some way or another. Sure, I may have bruised his ego by rejecting one Saturday night date with him but I would not stand to be told I’m less than hot from someone with a face like his.

Then I wondered, did he really meet someone all that great and if so, would she return his amorous advances? Or, would she be like me, completely freaked out and the subject of hostile texting a week later? Staring up at the ceiling, thinking my last thoughts about this, I couldn’t help but chuckle at the notion that he didn’t even meet anyone. Perhaps, daddy just told him what to say to me to make himself feel better. It was either that or he’d just met the ultimate gold digger meaning that sooner or later, daddy would intervene and tell him “she’s no good, son.”

Either way, if daddy looks anything like buddy, I’m just glad not to be sticking around to see what junior will look like. Because all the money in the world can’t make up for the fact that underneath, I’d be married to a possessive troll with daddy issues.

Do you think I was overreacting?