I matched with an Australian pilot on Facebook Dating. His opening message was, “Hello sexy lady.”
So naturally, I was suspicious immediately. Not alarmed. Just skeptical. There is a particular kind of man who arrives in a conversation already acting as though the two of you have history, and this one came in at cruising altitude.
Within a few messages, he asked where I had been hiding all this time. Then he called me babe. Then he asked for my number because texting would be easier. Then he asked if I had WhatsApp.
Of course he did.
By then, I was already fairly certain he would disappear by the next day. He was too smooth, too familiar, too much too quickly. I did not think I had stumbled into an international love story. I did, however, think I had stumbled into something extremely entertaining.
So I kept answering.
A few minutes after we moved to text, he opened with, “Hello girlfriend.” We had known each other for approximately the length of a commercial break.
Then he asked if I missed him.
“For sure! Been a rough few minutes since we last spoke,” I told him.
He sent a giant heart emoji.
This was going beautifully.
He told me he lived near Philadelphia, had flown into Rochester the night before, and could come see me anytime.
“I’ll come pick you up and steal you away.”
Again, I was not swooning. I was mostly fascinated by the confidence of a man who had known me for fifteen minutes and was already speaking as though we had a joint calendar.
We talked about dating for a while. He announced that physical attraction was probably the most important thing to him. I told him attraction mattered, obviously, but communication and a sense of humor mattered a lot to me too.
This difference in priorities would ultimately prove irrelevant, since we were apparently already several dates into a relationship that had existed for less than an hour. I did, at least, confirm one thing: he really was a pilot. I looked him up using his phone number, and that part checked out.
So the man was real. The relationship was where things got fictional.
At one point, he described himself as “too spicy and too fast.” That was probably the most accurate thing he said all night.
Then he asked: “So when do I get to have you in my arms?”
I asked if he had been in Rochester for work. Yes, he said, but because he was a pilot, it would be easy for him to come see me. He could fly in on his days off.
I told him most of my free time was on weekends because that was when my kids were with their dad.
He immediately had a plan: “Hmm let’s plan for a weekend then.”
Okay.
Then: “Friday night to Monday morning!!”
I stared at my phone.
Friday to Monday.
This man had not yet spent one single minute physically in my presence, and apparently we had skipped dinner and gone directly to a three-night stay.
“Friday to Monday?! 😂 You haven’t met me yet. Let’s see if you survive a first date first. You may think I’m weird.”
He was undeterred.
At one point, he gave me a checklist of what he wanted in a woman, which was apparently mostly variations on "be hot."
“That is… quite the checklist,” I told him. “Good thing you’re being evaluated too.”
He informed me that he was “the most beautiful man in Philly.”
Good to know.
By this point, we were no longer having anything resembling a normal dating conversation. We were participating in some kind of speed-run relationship simulation, and I was sticking around largely because I wanted to see how much further he could get before bedtime.
Eventually, he sent me a video from the cockpit while heading to Roanoke.
Again: actual pilot.
He asked if I was going to sleep.
I said yes.
“Oh so by the time I reach the hotel you’ll be asleep.”
We had now reached the stage of our relationship where my bedtime was apparently relevant to his hotel arrival.
We had still never met.
The whole thing was so absurd that I never believed any of it. Not the “babe.” Not the “girlfriend.” Not the idea that this stranger was actually preparing to fly into town and spend Friday through Monday with me.
I already knew how this story ended. I was not wondering whether he would disappear. I was mostly wondering whether he would make it to morning.
So I went to sleep.
And the next day:
Nothing.
No pilot.
No “hello girlfriend.”
No discussion of Friday night.
Absolutely no Monday morning.
Our entire relationship had managed to go from hello sexy lady to a three-night weekend and back to complete strangers in less time than it takes to book a flight.
Turns out the only nonstop service he was offering was straight from “girlfriend” to gone.
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