Romance Briefs

Romance Briefs: Online Chronicles - The games people play

If I tell you, I'll have to kill you

She had been playing a game with several guys on the dating site. She was winning of course; her rules, her game. The men didn't know that they were losing, but they all were...at least at this point. She had been in Houston now for about 4 months to do 'the job' and felt it was time to find some suitable man to play with, having not found one on the job.

On her profile there was a selfie which showed a woman with dark raven tresses that fell to her shoulders, smokey green eyes, and a radiant smile. Her profile said "30 years old, moved to Houston 4 months ago to do 'the job'. If you would like to strike up a potential relationship with me, here are the rules: Correctly state why I moved here and what I do for a living. No 20 questions, occasionally, I might allow one, but you must determine the answer by clues I will sprinkle into our conversation. Here's the first clue: I often find myself working on my back."

It didn't take long before she had some takers. As expected, several of the responses came with an all too expected answer from her clue; "You're a hooker".

She had a canned response for these guesses that she would send before she would block the contestant from further correspondence. "If I were, would I risk using a dating site to troll for Johns? You are now officially out of the game."

But, one guy found a way to address the obvious trap without tipping his hand. "Knowing men (being one myself) your clue would illicit the response that you are a prostitute. I'll wager that 50% of the guys came up with that unlikely answer. And when they did, you politely (or not so politely) gave them their walking papers. I would NOT like to be in that group."

She wrote back, seeing that she may have found someone to play her game. She liked the way he looked in his picture, even though it was a bit lacking in joviality. "What about the other 50%?" she wrote.

"Off hand, I have to guess that you're an auto mechanic, plumber or yoga instructor, but I'm not going to take a guess...yet."

She liked the way he was tip toeing around, so she responded "A point for you for not asking a question yet. I notice that you are not smiling in your profile picture. Does that mean that you consider getting a date from a dating site...serious business?" After she hit spend, she decided that this was the guy that she would play with, there was no need to look further. If it didn't work out, she could always return to the responses that seemed to be coming in at the rate of 1 an hour.

"If you're an auto mechanic or a plumber, I'll send you a smiley picture...just to show you that I do have teeth; in case that is your concern." He wrote back.

"Yes, that question did pop into my mind. What if I am a yoga instructor; would you send me a picture of you ooohming?"

"No, you'd get nothing. I'm through with yoga instructors." He wrote back and added a smiley face to make sure she knew he was joking.

"I'm though with them too. I get more than enough stretching in my line of work...sometimes I stretch parts of my body that probably shouldn't be stretched...especially when I'm hanging from my feet."

"Now we're getting somewhere; I can add acrobat to the list. Aren't circuses and Cirque du Soleil performers a traveling bunch? Except for the troop in Las Vegas, you would be moving on after a month or so."

"Yeah, we hang around for a while, break a few hearts and then it's off to the next town." She wrote back. Yes, this was going to be the guy. He was playing the game exactly how she had envisioned it...better, actually.

"I'm voting against acrobat. And...you've completely ruined the plumber and auto mechanic. Why don't you tell me what you do, just because you've decided that you like me?"