Wishful Fishing
It began innocently enough — but then, most things do.
I must confess I still get a little thrill when a young woman, or someone masquerading as a young woman, contacts me over Instagram. It gets my attention. It takes me back to when I’d watch out my bedroom window for the postal truck to stop at our mailbox. When I saw that very girlfriendly, sometimes pink, envelope thrust into the box, it literally sent my spine tingling.
This isn’t the same, but the spine tingles, a little, all the same. “She” calls herself Afleshiana, and her photo shows her looking shyly at me, boobs kind of scrunched together so they resemble a derriere. (Of course, there’s a shirt over them, but a fella can use his imagination, right?) She says she lives in San Francisco, which would mean she’s rich, but I don’t think she really lives in San Francisco because she claims her bedroom window overlooks Lake Erie. But I let it go. I like to think of corresponding with someone who lives, or at least pretends to live, in San Francisco.
Our beginning was inauspicious:
“Hello, how was your day? How long did it take you to create this beautiful oil painting? It’s really beautiful.”
(I had just posted a photo of a painting of a sunrise, or maybe a sunset or whatever. A horizon.)
I thanked her and asked what she liked about it.
“Full of nature, this sky, this sunset. I love nature so much that I usually paint the sea and sunsets!”
“Well, let me see one.”
She quickly sent me a photo of a painting. “This is my work. How do you feel?” It was as if she’d thought she’d given me a drug.
“Ah, a surrealist,” I wrote, testing her knowledge of art history.
I think there were mountains depicted, but they seemed as if made from cake batter. It made me hungry.
“Yea.” So she did know art history!
“It’s quite powerful,” I lied, “but I would inject the sky with more drama.” The sky over the cake mountains looked like she’d used Koolaid and a mop.
“I have a feeling you’re a guru.”
“Ha, not a guru,” I wrote, suddenly feeling wise and modest. “I’m sixty, and have been painting since I was 18.”
“Wow, you’ve been painting for 42 years.”
“So you’re a mathematician too.”
“No, I’m from China. It’s very easy to count in China.” I furrowed my brow. “It’s great to connect with a guru like you.” I unfurrowed my brow.
I waited.
“Not painting today? Or is painting your job?”
My turn to lie. “Painting is mostly my job. I also play music and write.”
“This is great,” she erupted. “I love music that is cozy and quiet. My name is Amy. What is your name?”
“Greg,” I texted. “My ex-wife’s name is Amy too.”
“Then you can call me by my real name. Afleshiana.”
“Afleshiana.” I had never heard that name before.
“China has a large population, so there are a lot of people who have the name Afleshiana,” wrote Afleshiana.
I did a Google search. Nope.
Then came the pictures of food. A yellow muffin and a cup of coffee.
“That’s not enough for an adult’s breakfast.”
“That’s enough for me. It’s just breakfast. Whenever I have time, I cook myself some breakfasts. Do you generally like to eat out or cook for yourself?”
“I like to cook for others.”
“Sounds like you’re a great cook, too. I love to cook my hometown’s food, which is Chinese food.’
“That’s more like it.”
“lol, how do you normally eat? What will you be having for dinner tonight?”
I didn’t know.
“How will you lose weight if you don’t eat dinner?” What? “Get some exercise after you’ve eaten enough, it will help you lose weight.”
“Okay.”
“Here’s what we’ll be cooking tonight, a beef stew with red potatoes, a winter vegetable soup, fried celery.”
”Looks great.”
“Yes, it’s very healthy and nutritious. I’ll keep my body nutritionally balanced. After dinner, I also usually like to do a yoga practice. I’m so used to it that I have a yoga session after every dinner. I usually play badminton.”
While I thought about that, she sent another photo.
This must be how she says goodnight, for I did not hear from her until the next morning.
“Good morning. How did you sleep last night?”
“Not so good because of my condition.”
“Why are you having a condition?”
“Because I thought I could earn your sympathy.”
“You have all my sympathy!”
“Well, you haven’t heard the whole deal yet. I feel guilty I haven’t yet told you this, but I weigh 330 pounds.”
There was a pregnant pause.
“And that’s why sleep is hard, because I have sleep apnea.”
Finally she wrote back: “I feel so bad now sending you those pictures of food.”
“It’s okay. They did make me kind of go on a eating bender. But I don’t think they’re reason I slept poorly.”
The pauses between my messages and hers were getting longer.
“I’m sending you what I’m writing,” I wrote. “I hope you won’t take any of it personally.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yeah, that’s what I said.”
“Is it really okay I’m writing a story about us?”
“Let me read it and I will tell you if.”
The way that last sentence ended caused me some discomfort, like things were left hanging. Like I was left hanging. Maybe that’s the way women like us. Keeps us interested.
I went to the gym and watched some women exercising. It took my mind off the betrayal of my story to my new friend. I wondered if these women were as nutritionally balanced as Afleshiana. If she was half as nutritionally balanced as these women, I might wish to break my sex drought and proposition her. But with my weight perceived as 330 pounds, I knew there was little hope of my proposition being accepted.
It was a bit of a conundrum, and on the way home I ordered and ate a torta. While chewing it, I checked my Instagram messages. I had told Afleshiana something about wanting to have sex with my ex-wife.
“Why?’
“Why?”
“Yes, why. Why would you do that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I try to sabotage every good thing that happens to me.”
I went home and tried to read A Confederacy of Dunces. Couldn’t get into the lead character. Kind of full of himself and clueless.
When I checked Instagram again, there were three messages waiting for me.
(1) “I’m still mad at you, but want to keep talking.”
(2) “I have to tell you I’m not a young woman, but a man of 43. I live in Cleveland.”
Nothing about the story I sent her.
(3) “Downtown Cleveland.”
That explained why she, now he, could see Lake Erie. It also explained why her, now his, messages were as aggressive as they were. Women, as I’ve experienced them, tend to want to be pursued. So it made total sense this was a fella.
“Since you’ve leveled with me, I want to level back with you. I don’t weigh 330 pounds.”
“What is your weight.”
“Five stone and forty.”
Long pause.
“Well, that seems about right. In that case, I am not a man, but a woman again!”
“Well hooray! We’re back in business.”
While she looked that up, I thumbed through my mail. Charter wanted me back. Then Afleshiana wrote.
“So we can start over and be good for each other?”
“Sure.”
“What did you have for dinner?”
“I made burgers for my ex-wife and her son.”
“Good!”
“But they didn’t eat them. So I wrapped them up and brought them home.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. What a fucking bitch she must be.”
“Are you sure you’re a woman?”
“Fuck yeah. I mean, yes, darling.”
“Darling?”
“Yea, darling.”
Now I wasn’t so sure, and I struggled to make my next message suitable for both sexes.
“The weather was nice today.”
“I don’t care about the weather. I care about you.”
“Thanks.”
“Do you live with your ex-wife?”
“No.”
“You don’t have kids yet?”
“I have two kids from a previous marriage. One is a juggler and rides a unicycle and the other makes erhus.”
“Play the erhu? I actually heard someone in America play the erhu?”
“Are you asking me?”
“Asking you what?”
“If you heard someone in America playing the erhu.”
“Play the erhu?”
“Are who?”
She thought about that and sent me another text.
“My friends and I use WhatsApp because it provides great privacy for our chats.”
“That’s good. There are always those who want to home in on the chats of others.”
“Home?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s not hone?”
“No. Hone means to burnish or whittle something down to the desired size or form.”
“What is burnish?”
“To rub something until it reaches the desired consistency.”
“Are you propositioning me?”
“No.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I don’t want you to hone my sex organ.”
“Well I would like to see what you look like.”
I sent her my Facebook profile picture.
“No, I can’t stop thinking about what you said yesterday. This makes me uncomfortable, so I think this is a misunderstanding, and we can maybe get through a video.”
“I can’t remember what I said yesterday, but the last thing I want is for you to feel uncomfortable. We can continue this some other time when you’re feeling better.”
We agreed we’d continue to converse on Instagram. It made sense, because she could see my paintings and gush about them, lifting my oft-fragile ego enough to do more. She’d essentially become not my muse, but my portal to a different audience.
After that agreement, the exchange screeched to a halt until I wrote, “How many old men do you converse with?”
“Not too many.”
“Five?”
“More than that.”
“Fifty?”
“Less than that.”
“Well, I’d like to be put in touch with some of them if you don’t mind.”
“Why?”
“Just to see what kind of fella you have to deal with.”
She sent me three names: Steve Dininno, Jeff Price and Harley Patton.
I found Dininno:
What a dick, I thought. I sent him a text via Instagram: “Hey Dininno, I hear you’re one of Afleshianna’s dupes. Please advise I will find you and hurt you if you continue to correspond with her.”
I wrote pretty much the same to Price and Patton.
Then Afleshianna wrote.
“What did you say to Steve?”
“That he’s too old and perverted for you. That he should not only cease, but desist. You know, just run of the mill stuff.”
“You have him very worried.”
“He should be.”
She changed the subject with another picture of food. “This is really good. It’s tomato and egg noodles. Maybe you could try it.
“First, fry the eggs, and then the tomatoes fried juice and then put out and set aside, the noodles cooked to drain the water, noodles in the heat of the time to add a small spoon of oil, a little salt, a small spoon of soy sauce, a small spoon of water starch, and then the eggs and tomatoes into the mixture, mix well.”
“But I just got up.”
It was the next day. My wife’s birthday. We almost had phone sex last night. What is happening to my divorce?
There was a new message on my Instagram. Steve Dininno.
“So who are you to tell me what to do?”
“Greg. Greg Benson. I’m telling you only what to stop doing.”
“What do you think I’m doing?”
“Letting yourself be enticed by a minor.”
“So that’s a crime?”
“In my book.”
He stopped texting me at that point. I sure can type tough when I want to, right?
Afleshianna was my next converser.
“So you’re getting rid of my….”
“Customers?”
“No.”
“Clients?”
“Steve is a nice guy. He gave me enough money so that I could go on a cruise last year.”
“Where did you go?”
“Las Vegas.”
“Must have been a bumpy ride.”
“?”
“Was Steve with you on the cruise or did he just meet you in Vegas?”
“How did you know? Do you know Steve?”
“I feel I do now.”
“This is extremely uncomfortable, Greg.”
“I blame Steve for that.”
“I texted him first. It’s not like he pursued me.”
“Takes two to tango, though.”
“You know that expression?”
“Sure.”
“Do you know how to actually tango?”
“Of course!”
“Teach me then.”
“We would need to have video talk for that.”
I uploaded Whatsapp to my phone, accidentally buying an electric toothbrush and some slippers in the process.
I was excited that I would finally know what he or she looks like, if she did in fact look like anything.
A face came onto my cell screen. My mouth gaped. It was the face of an adolescent girl. “Wha…?”
She said nothing.
I recovered enough to deliver a rebuke. “Aha! So, it turns out it is you who is not what he or she has claimed. All throughout our interaction, it was my identity that was at issue. When all along, it was you who deceived me.”
The girl’s face looked at me with sympathy. There was a knock on my door. It was the police. They took me away. Brought me here.
And that’s all I know. Thus ends my testimony. I have the text exchanges to prove it.
The detective stood up and said, “I’m not interested in that. I’m interested in getting you off the streets.”
“I’ve never been on the streets.”
A judge would later sentence me to two months in the slammer. I learned a lot in there.
