And now for something completely different....

I admit it. I've dabbled in online dating. It's a discouraging world. You find someone appealing, you write, you even see that they checked you out....and nothing. One of the first ones I got brave enough to contact was this absolutely, positively adorable single dad. I mean, gorgeous! My age, with kids the same ages as my kids. He wrote a good paragraph. Literate is always nice. So, I sent my little introduction and waited. And waited. And waited. And gave up, and moved on.

One night, I'm chatting away with pals on Messenger and I get a new message. It's from adorable single dad. He apologizes for not answering sooner. We have a little chat, but it seems stilted to me. He was nervous. But I needed to go. We promised to chat later.

Any bets on whether that happened? No takers? None? Hmm, yeah. You got it. Silence.

That was last summer. A lot has happened since then, dear diary. I've written to and heard from others. I've let the profile go stale. I've dated without it. Some guys have been nice, and some have been real jerks. It's a crap shoot, I'm tellin' ya.

But what happened the other day really took the cake.

It started as a request to be added as a "Friend" to my Yahoo 360 profile. Okay, that's cool. The request came from a female username, but when I checked out the profile, it was a man. A man who crossdresses. Now, I'm a "to each his own" kind of person, so I don't mind at all being online pals with a crossdresser. It's like having a gal-pal to chat with, except we don't talk about men. And they like pantyhose a hell of a lot more than I do.

We have had some great chats the last couple of days. Our kids are the same age, but he has one more than I do. He's not married, and not gay, but prefers to approach women as his alter-ego, so there's no surprises. I was honest with him - I don't know that I can go down the intimate path with this because I can't imagine doing the whole role-switching thing in the bedroom. Seeing my man in prettier clothes than me is just not a turn-on for me (as you can probably guess). But I can be a good friend who is discreet with his secret, because this is a small, conservative town.

Still, it is an odd experience to discuss what shops have the best bras and panties, with a guy who actually wants to go shopping for them. He even knew a few places I didn't, where you can get all manner of...uhm...intimate wear. And accessories. A very enlightening conversations. He said he'd like to hang out with me, like a regular gal-pal, doing the little spa-night kind of things women tend to like to do. Again, he reiterated, he's not gay, but enjoys being "feminized" and connecting with that side. That was a new term to me. I told him we'd have to see about all that....

Yesterday, though, he finally shocked me. It's not easy to do that.

I was wrapping up the conversation, and he said, "I bet there's something you didn't know you knew."

Now, I'm a big trivia buff, so I thought that's what he was getting at. I bit.

"What's that?"

"Do you know what I look like?"

His profile doesn't show his face. It shows a bustier and pantyhose, but no face. Understandably. So, my answer was, "No, I don't. I haven't seen your face yet."

He said, "Yes, you have."

I stopped, staring at my screen, then out my office window. Honestly, I half expected some professor to come wave at me. This is someone I already know? I started getting nervous.

"Have I?"

"Yes, and I'm already in your 'Friends' list."

I sat quiet for a moment. He didn't wait for my response. He gave me his "real" ID.

I just blinked at the name. It was gorgeous single dad, from a few months ago. The one who wrote once and never again.

"Oh wow!" I said online. "I remember you! You're sooooo cute."

To the air, I actually said, "Holy CRAP! No FUCKING way!" and in Dhor's words, "Shit fire and put away the matches!"

And I have to admit, it made me a little sad. Looking at his picture (and he is, no kidding, completely adorable!), there's all kinds of things a woman thinks of doing with him...and none of them are what he wants done....