If I didn't have bad luck, I wouldn't have any luck at all

Sometimes I think I must have been Josef Stalin or some other evil bastard in a previous life, because I sure as hell seem be getting punished in this one.

First a little back story. I have a bud who was a big fan of Craig's List, the on-line dating/apartment hunting/job searching marketplace. Except he never used it for apartments or jobs.

I was always simultaneously fascinated and repulsed at the whole thing. It just seemed sort of cheesy, meeting a total stranger from a Web site.

He hung up his Craig's List cleats a few years ago, but kept urging me to try it. “Give it a shot, it's fun, you never know...”

Well, I finally broke down. I mean all the kids are doing it, right? And you know me, I always like to jump on the bandwagon...about five years after something has peaked. I call it market research.

I also asked myself: Can this really be any worse than, say, meeting a sloshed stranger in a bar?

Well, the answer to that is apparently – yes. Yes, it can be.

Anyway, I put my little ad on line. Nothing too crazy, sort of cute, I thought. Some nice wordplay. I can turn a nice phrase once in a while, ya know.

Then, the next morning, I open my mailbox, and sure enough, there's a whole bunch of replies. Not bad.

Well, first, my adviser had told me to ask for a picture, and if a girl doesn't send one, that's a big red flag. There were a few without pix, so I eliminated them. (Of course, with my luck, the perfect girl was in that batch, never to be met now because she was too cheap to get a goddamn digital camera or a scanner.)

I digress.

Ok, then I'm looking through the responses that did have pictures. And, to be honest, none were jumping out at me. Yes, I can be shallow as hell (I totally admit it), although some say I simply have unrealistic expectations of what's out there – and thank you, Sarah, for that dime store analysis.

Actually, I like to think it's just that I don't want to settle.

But, seriously, there was no one in these responses I would have looked at twice in passing on the street, or if I saw her in a bar.

And then I open this one email and Hello! Bing Boing! - there is a face staring back at me. Gorgeous. I mean absolutely stunning. This is a 9 out of 10. In fact, this is a 9.3. And that's high praise coming from me. Did I mention I'm shallow as hell?

I read the little note with it. It was just a few sentences, which I will reprint here, in their entirety.

“I liked your ad. I'm TG. If you're interested, write back.”

Hah? TG. What's that, I'm wondering? Is it her initials? Does it mean Thank God?

Not a clue.

Then I remember there is a web site that defines all those abbreviations and the cutesy lingo people feel compelled to use on these things.

So I click merrily over there and start looking for TG.

SWF, I know that one. BBW, oy, not for me. (Shallow, remember). Ah, there it is.

TG.

Transgender.

In the immortal words of Austin Powers: “It's a man, baby!”

That, my friends, is my luck in a nutshell. One reply with a gorgeous face, and it's a goddamn guy.

Not that there's anything wrong with it, as they say, but just not my cup of tea.

I also got a little pissed, frankly, because my ad was in the standard Male Seeking Female section, not the wacky Anything Goes section. So this, er, guy? girl? must have been trolling through, answering some ads, and hoping the guy getting the mail wouldn't know what TG meant, and wouldn't bother finding out, and then he/she could no doubt seduce him with his/her wiles after a few drinks.

And, frankly, it could happen. If the voice was as good as the face, I don't know if more than say 2 out of 10 people would realize this was a TG. And I've seen women with Adam's Apples before, too, by the way!

Anyhoo, thus begineth and endeth my little Craig's List experiment.

I'm staying with the wholesome, age-old, traditional way of our forefathers - meeting some drunk chippy in a bar while Bon fucking Jovi blares over the sound system.

Or else having my friends continue their ongoing, semi-sadistic scheme to fix me up with every single Miss Wrong in the Manhattan white pages.

And sometimes Brooklyn.