Charlotte

In the spring of 2006, I had been at a good job for a year and a half, and had lived by myself, in an apartment, for a year. I had also been corresponding with a girl on OkCupid. Her name was Charlotte. Her pictures appeared attractive -- a somewhat stocky woman with short strawberry blonde hair, glasses, freckles. Granted, her face seemed kind of oblong, but I'm not one to be overly picky. As I alluded earlier, I'm a big guy. As long as the women I date weigh less than me, I'm perfectly happy. Basically, that means as long as you're under about 250, we're good to go.

We had e-mailed back and forth, chatted online, and even talked on the phone. She seemed pretty broken up about having given up her virginity to her ex-boyfriend, and obviously had some sort of regret issues about that. I assured her that it didn't make her a bad person, and that I really didn't care. Because really, I don't care. I'm not a virgin, and I don't expect the women I date to be virgins, either. It's not a big deal. It's just sex.

We finally agreed to meet up at a sandwich shop one evening, after I got off work. I arrived at the shop, bought a cup of coffee, and camped out at a table near the entrance, waiting for my date to arrive. As I sat, gazing out the window into the cold spring night, the traffic signals began reflecting off of the sidewalk, wet from that day's steady rainfall. The people outside hustled and bustled down both sides of the street, eager to reach their destinations, all trying to avoid getting drenched by the ongoing spring shower. All except for one large figure, lumbering through the night in a drenched black hooded sweatshirt. The figure slowly made its way to the door of the sandwich shop, its silhouette blocking the green and red glow of the signals in the intersection at the end of the block.

The figure entered, turned in my direction, and removed the sopping wet hood.

"Are you Sam?" asked Charlotte, breathing heavily as she removed her flimsy, yet soaking sweatshirt to reveal her 350+ pound frame.

I acknowledged that I was indeed Sam, and I offered to get her a cup of coffee. She accepted.

As we chatted, it was obvious that she had adjusted the aspect ratio of the pictures on her profile to make herself appear thinner. Again, I want to point out that I have nothing at all against persons of size. I am one myself. However, just as some women do not find me attractive because of my size, I do not find some women attractive because of their size. That being said, I was not going to let Charlotte's weight be the sole determining factor for me. After all, she walked through the cold March rain to meet with me that night.

So we sat and chatted. Well, no, that's not accurate. To call it chatting would imply that a two-way conversation took place. There was no such conversation. Rather, she was telling me about the troubles she had enrolling in a university as a transfer student.

"I went to the admissions office," she said, "and they told me they needed my transcripts from my old university back home, and I said I didn't have them, but they needed to let me in anyway because I already paid the application fees and blah blah blah..."

Sorry, that's the point where I zoned out.

"Good lord, she sure does talk a lot," I thought. "I wonder if she does this on every first date?"

"And then my landlord said I needed to find a new roommate," she continued, "because the old one moved back home, but I can't afford that place by myself and..."

I tried to get a word in edgewise. No luck. She just kept going. And going. And going. A true case of diarrhea of the mouth. Charlotte was a chatterbox. But not in a cute or endearing way. No, she was a chatterbox in the I'm-a-victim-of-the-world kind of way.

"And then," she went on, "I called my daddy and he said he'd take care of it for me."

"Wait," I interjected. She stopped talking. Really? It was that easy? I just had to say "wait"?

"You mean to tell me," I said, "that you, at 25 years old, still call your parents when things don't go your way?"

"Well, no," she said, "just my daddy."

"Oh," I said. And then I told her I had a headache and needed to head home early. "Tough day at the office," I lied.

"Oh," she said, "Okay, let's do this again sometime..."

I told her I'd call. Another lie. I hate lying to women. Or to anyone, really. But I didn't know of a more tactful way out. Sure, she posted less-than-honest pictures. I don't care a lot about that, but it does say something about a person's character. For the record, even though I'm a big guy, I always post recent pictures of myself, including at least one full-body shot. Because if someone is going to turn me down for my size, I want to know right away so I don't waste any more time on them.

Would I have gone out with her if she had posted accurate pictures? I don't know. I guarantee you, though, that her weight was not the issue. No, it was the fact that, at age 25, she still had her dad fighting her battles for her.

If you aren't enough of an adult to handle difficult situations on your own -- because, you know, difficult situations are inevitable in this cluster fuck we call life -- you're not enough of an adult to date me.

I would have done the exact same thing if she were a 110 pound swimsuit model, too. I guarantee it.

A few months ago, I received a fresh batch of matches on OkCupid. Among them was a girl who looked vaguely familiar. But her profile sounded interesting, so I contacted her.

It was Charlotte -- she had lost a lot of weight. So much that I didn't recognize her, and I sent her another message.

She wrote back:

Hi, we've actually met before -- I weighed more and my hair was a different color. We had a date at a sandwich shop downtown a couple years ago, but you begged off and left suddenly and I never heard from you again. My e-mail is...

Clearly she was still interested. However, remembering nothing but the daddy dependence, I chose to respond simply by congratulating her on the weight loss and wishing her well.

People may lose weight, but they never lose daddy issues.