A few years back, during one of my J-date subscriptions, I came upon Ryan’s profile. I don’t really remember who reached out to whom first, but I do remember that he lived in the tri-state area, was reasonably good-looking and everything was spelled correctly in his profile. This was probably at the point in my life when those three characteristics were all I needed to see a future with anyone.

One thing led to another, and Ryan called me for the first time. Being a white boy from Queens that worked in the financial industry, I didn’t expect him to speak like he had grandiose swagger. It was like his thuggish-ego grew as the conversation progressed. And then…this happened:

Ryan: So yeh…u wanna chill on Saturday afternoon?

Me: That could work, what time were you thinking?

Ryan: Well I got practice in Queens at 2…so…

Me: What kind of practice?

Ryan: Oh, I do music…kind of like a hip hop spoken word thing over these tight-ass beats…

Me: Wow, that’s cool…

Ryan: Yeah, Imma make ya listen to it and you’re gonna need to put a towel on the seat of your chair, you’ll like it so much…

Me: ….towel? Oh.

Ryan: Yeah, it’s hot, yo…So I’ll text ya after 4 on Saturday, aight?

So he texted, and I never answered. Probably because I was scrubbing down all my chairs, still nauseated by his metaphor.

Follow-up: As I was perusing J-date for more productive dates, I noticed Ryan’s photo on more than one profile. As a matter of fact, in a period of 3 minutes, I found him listed on 3 different profiles, with different ages, occupations and vague descriptions in each one. I put in a complaint to the J-date support team to stop Ryan’s abuse of the profile system. If I put a stop to just one girl from having to speak with him, I had done my job.