Yahoo! Personals - A Crazy-Making Affair With Katie M; Or Why Online Personals Can Be Dangerous

Ok, so I'm taking a time out from Mel Gibson to tell you this story that just happened to me yesterday. I -- like a lot of other people -- have a Yahoo! Personals Ad. I decided to take a friend's advice and "get out there and try" rather than, well, not trying at all and have things just happen.

Which can be fun at times.

At any rate, for those of you who are familar with Yahoo! Personals, people can respond to your ad or you can send a message to someone you want to meet. Well, in this case, I got a message from a woman named Katie who lives in Oakland as I do. What was most interesting about her message-out-of-the-blue was that it read "If you like nerdy women with muscular legs, you won't be disappointed."

I'm not kidding. Of course, that got my attention.

So I replied with a short "let's talk" message and about a week went by. So I chimed in one more time before I determined if I should "punt" on the idea of meeting her. Then, she wrote back that she was working a lot -- seven days on, then seven days off -- but she wanted to meet me. Katie suggested that I leave her my number so she could call me.

So I did. Yesterday, she called. Well, actually, she called three times. Katie and I were playing phone tag, but the point is that she really went all out to meet me. Cool.

So we finally talk on the phone and are having a great conversation. We were so into the idea of meeting that I suggested since we were notn far from each other, we meet at a local coffee shop called "Gaylords." So, I got into my car and headed over there. Once in the neighborhood, I found a parking space and parked the car.

I noticed Katie right as I walked in. She was at the counter ordering tea. She's tall, with a nice short blond hair cut and a good athletic build -- she wasn't kidding about the legs! She's in about her mid 30s, but could pass for younger than that with ease. Let's put it this way, even though I saw only a picture of her face, it never occured to me that I would not be able to pick her out with ease; I did.

We exchanged greetings, got our teas -- I liked what she ordered, so I got the same -- and went outside to a table. From the start I was having a great time and so was she. We talked about all kinds of things, and after a time I did make it clear that I liked her, and she returned the comment. Not bad for a first meeting.

So we walked down to Cato's Ale House and had beers and talk about her folks, her rowing, and my love for movies and being on this screening committe for a major film festival, and all kinds of stuff. Good chemistry, I thought. In fact the conversation and flow was going so well, we made plans to get together for dinner at my place the following week, Monday.

She said that she was getting a little tired -- it was after 10 and she's an early riser. So we left Cato's and walked up the street where my car -- and the way to her place -- were. No, I didn't think she was going to invite me in so soon. Not at all.

So we stopped at the corner of Piedmont and Monte Vista and as I went to hug her, she planted a great kiss and you bet I didn't resist that one. Wow. It was nice -- ok, I admit it was a little out of sync because it was both fun and unexpected, but kisses get better with time and it's not like this was bad. So after the long kiss goodnight, I realized that while she gave me her cell phone number, I didn't have her email, but after my trying to spell it the right way, we decided to just leave our communications to the phone.

Then we kissed again. "See you Monday!!" she said.

Nice.

Now, of course I was happy; who wouldn't be? Monday's not far away so I had to make some arrangements and figure out what I was going to make for dinner. I was excited.

The next day -- which was today -- I sent a simple message of thanks and that I'd see her Monday.

What I go back -- about 8 hours later -- was both weird and hurful. "I don't know how to be nice about this..." she wrote. And proceeded to write that we didn't have good chemistry. That's a crock. If you'd filmed us together, you'd have thought otherwise.

Give the evening and the hug and her kiss, I called to ask what was going on. No answer. It was a direct contrast to the evening before, and it was -- and is -- very scary. See, absent an explaination. Without a phone call. I have no idea of what happened.

What I gathered however is that she was being less than honest with her emotions and that's dangerous. It's sociopathic to fake an emotion or feeling to another person. She had me totally fooled. Plus, she was the person who was interested in me, or so she lead me to believe. She even told me I was what she expected. Go figure!

Everyone I've talked to says two things: 1) What she did was terrible, and 2) she was being dishonest. The guy at the Payless store said he'd want to know what was going on in her mind. My Mom -- visiting me from Georgia for my birthday -- think's she's "bipolar." "Why else would she do that, and then treat you this way?" The comments go on and on.

At one point I thought -- since she picked me out -- that perhaps this was something she did where she targeted black men who seem interested in interracial dating and played these mind games on them. I could be right. Whatever the case, everyone agrees that online personal sites seem to be a place where some people take out their problems on others.

What bothers me about Katie is that she's not far away from me, and so our paths will cross. At this point, my feeling is to say nothing. Her actions were confusing and hurtful and most uncalled for.

I suppose I could decided not to trust a woman I meet on Yahoo! and I may be right, or more to be point, I know I can't trust Katie right now. But I hope she realizes that -- if this is some normal practice for her -- it's dangerous. She could be emotionally phony with the wrong man -- a person with a bad heart -- and the results would not be good. I pray she realizes this. It could be she's too far down this path of game-playing to understand that it's terrible to do.

Hey, if you're a professional, nice, kind guy who's Black, beware out there -- there are some women who just want to be mean to you just because you don't fit a stereotype.

Now, that perception I just expressed above was told to me by a good friend of my Mom's last night: "Some white girls are looking for you as a black man to be stupid, and Zennie, you don't fit that." Mom's friend had a term for it called "Missionary Pussy" and gets it's form from the idea that a European American woman may be of a mind and quirk in her thinking such that she's looking for a kind of Black man who seems "downtroden" or just not one who reminds her that there may be things he knows that she doesn't know -- smart, in other words. I thought this was ridiculous at first, but then I let it roll around in my head a few times...

Hey, you laugh, but this is how some of our Black elders think, and who's to say they're not correct?

The bottom line is I don't know what was on Katie's mind -- maybe using Yahoo! to find guys to play head games with is her form of entertainment, since she doesn't have a television set -- but as long as she doesn't say what was on it, she opens herself to all kinds of assumptions about her character, and that's too bad for everyone, especially others on Yahoo! Personals.