Bait and Switch

Many years ago when I was acting, I traveled some distance to an audition, which turned out to be an aggressive sales pitch for professional headshots. As such deceptions go, it took a very long time to spin the web. I was standing, half-listening, clutching my backpack for fear of the director/saleswoman extricating my checkbook by means of telekinesis, when she said to me, "You are very photogenic. Have you ever considered modeling?" (No, I have never considered modeling for many reasons. Among those is the fact that I am five feet tall. Not "five-foot-something." FIVE FEET. Period.) She was so cloyingly earnest, so serious: at that moment, I realized that passive resistance was futile. I had to escape.

It is the small price to pay for living in the world, to be subjected to schemes. There is the long, rigorous job interview in which it is slowly revealed that there actually is no employment opening. Sincere young men have engaged me in conversation and then tried to sell me magazines I do not want. Respectable-looking, well-dressed people have asked me for directions, then demanded money or told me how Jesus came into their lives.

I remembered that phony audition this week, after I had a preliminary phone conversation with a potential internet date. I answered an ad for a man who described himself as intelligent, articulate, funny and warm. And he was. We chatted for over an hour about our interests, what we are looking for in a partner, our former spouses, our reading habits.

The plot unfolds, then thickens. Finally, there is the denouement, where the ruse is revealed. And then, there is the moment of truth where you have to either buy the magazines, so to speak, or slowly back away and run like hell.

That is exactly what happened. I was enjoying the conversation, the easy banter, when a creeping realization took hold. What I thought was friendly give-and-take was intended to finalize a transaction of a very different sort.