Reality intrudes on that picture-perfect fantasy

Having left my heart in my hometown of “ugly people” (as reported about Philadelphia by Travel & Leisure Magazine) for the “beautiful people” of Los Angeles decades ago, I dismiss this unfair slap in our collective faces, the ones evidently only our mothers could love. Besides, the issue of beauty will be rendered moot when we get to genetically choose our looks. Supermodels won’t be any more super than anybody else. Tyra Banks won’t be able to ramble on about the balls of her feet, because her audience won’t care that her parents’ genes boogied in all the right places. Thanks to their pre-chosen genes, the balls of their feet will be just as beautiful.

Too much beauty could become boring and lead to sensory overload. Witness nature’s bounty. When’s the last time you heard somebody exclaim, “Hot tree!” Not that I don’t love trees. (Why, I feel guilty chopping one down to create the paper that goes into the business card I take to a bar and give to a woman, who tosses it in the shredder.)

I was feeling decent enough about my Philly-bred mug the day an attractive woman responded to my picture on yetanotherdatingsite.com. But then . . . she asked for a second photo. Hmm. I should be able to post another frozen image of an attempt to appear carefree. She later e-mails back the prefabricated rejection, “Not enough in common.” Apparently, she would have gone out with “first photo guy,” but not “second photo guy.” She would have cheated on the second me by going out with the first me. The nanosecond that was captured in the first picture was the entire time she felt compatible. Our “marriage” would have lasted a nanosecond before she filed for an annulment: “Sure, we were compatible the first nanosecond. But he’s changed.”

I was all set to meet another whose profile pic I liked, before visiting the site again and noticing a big change. Gone was the image of the new object of my fantasies. In its place was one from this millennium. Her phone voice I’d been applying to the original picture now made an uncomfortable leap to the new one, in which she resembled the mother of the woman in the first picture. I was mourning the loss of somebody I should have met during the Reagan administration. No wonder the Datsun in the background looked so new. It was new!

The odds against a connection on a semi-blind date are lofty enough. Did she really think posting a photo that so blatantly misrepresented her appearance would decrease those odds? Did she finally update it out of some sense of obligation?

The big question: If I’d met this woman 20 years earlier, circa the first picture, would I have bonded, and still been attracted to her all these years later? The bigger question: What now? I wanted to cancel. I’m less age-conscious than your average guy. But when somebody tries to get away with dramatically rolling back her odometer on you, you don’t need a date. You need a lemon law.

My next inclination was to Google-image Andy Rooney and switch my puss with his, in hopes that she’d revisit my profile pre-date. Choosing not to aggravate Andy, I posted a picture of my uncle, a fine looking Philadelphian, whom I could conceivably resemble (if I do say so) . . . in 2033. That should send her a message.

She called the next day. She sounded different, not just because I now pictured her differently. She sounded more interested. Had she revisited my profile? I didn’t want to know. I canceled.

For my aunt’s sake, may this ship that passed in the night never run into my mother’s brother in the City of Brotherly Love.

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