The Real Mr. Sticca

I have explored nearly every method of dating known to modern woman: match.com, eharmony, nearly every other dating website, personal ads (I only answered one--didn't place one), meeting someone at work (SO not recommended!), and speed dating. On the whole, my experiences have not been too bad; however, they are quite regularly, hilarious. I count myself pretty lucky in that regard. Not all modern daters emerge unscathed.

While checking my email the other day a message from a guy that I had one date with almost two years ago (yet he continues to spam me with "funny" forwarded emails)caught my attention. Usually, I don't even read his messages before deleting them, but for some reason this one peaked my curiosity. The subject line read, "The Real P. Sticca."

I opened the message and the first line read, "This message is not from P. It is about him." From there, the woman writing the message launches into a description of how she was searching for a good man to love, and how that search had led her to P. I thought perhaps it was going to be one of those sappy online dating success stories just waiting to be featured on an eharmony commercial. I was wrong.

Apparently she had been dating P for a while, had introduced him to her three-year-old daughter, had opened up her heart to the possibility of love, etc. But P was not on the same page. P was reading an entirely different book. Therefore, she had decided to do the opposite of an eharmony commercial and let the world know exactly what kind of man she had found online in P.

The woman had suspicions about P's fidelity, so she did the only thing she could do: searched his computer for incriminating evidence. She found an Excel spreadsheet with at least 80 women listed, ranked, and categorized. This was not, according to the woman, your typical little, black book with names, contact info, and possibly a few stars next to his favorites. It was a checklist with things he had done to and with each woman; notes like "new boobs" "psycho" "rebound" "nice but maybe too old" "fatter than pic"; and categories such as Heavy Rotation, On the Outs, Unf---able, Desperate Measures, etc. ranking the status each woman holds in his world. The title of the spreadsheet was "New Meat SLC."

I have to disclose that this guy was no prize. I did not have any interest in seeing him again, and only didn't block his continual forwarded emails because I am lazy. He wasn't the worst person I have met online, but he was the worst of all things in my dating criteria: short. Maybe this exercise in labeling and categorizing women was his defense mechanism for having to stand on tiptoes to see eye to eye with the women he meets. He was pretty aggressive as well, which turned me off immediately. I was never unclear as to what his intentions were.

This poor woman; however, (probably less bitter and cynical than I)was taken in and felt that ultimate betrayal of not only unrequited love, but deception. I have also been deceived in matters of love, and I know the sting. I have to admire her quick action to unmask the creep and destroy any future rendezvous P had in mind for those of us on his list. I, too, have felt the undeniable impulse to administer a public form of humiliation as punishment for catching a boyfriend cheating on me. I have wanted to buy a billboard with his picture and warn women to stay away; blanket all the parking lots he frequents with fliers about his deepest secrets and prominently display an aerial shot of the balding head he was so insecure about; take out an ad in all the local papers listing his sins against me and others (again, featuring the bald shot), write letters to his children letting them know who their father is and encouraging them to find different a different role model for masculinity.

But I did not do these things. I did not want to give this man one more spec of my time, energy, heart, or soul. I liked to think of myself as mature and having achieved some level of transendence over petty revenge scenarios. I was getting the best revenge: living well, moving on, dating much cuter and younger men with full heads of hair. But my glee at receiving this woman's email makes me wonder if I have just been kidding myself. Even now, I feel a rush of pleasure as I imagine plastering the bastard's bald head all over the place with a public service announcement to all women: Take heed! Meet the REAL Assface (as I have referred to him ever since).