The Catfish Had a Cousin, a Fake Boat, and a Whole Committee

I want to be clear that I do not usually drink much on first dates. But I was nervous, and the restaurant had a two-for-one thing, and by the time my date arrived I was, let us say, ahead of schedule.

His profile name was Sebastian. Tall, dark hair, a jawline you could open envelopes with, a photo on a sailboat. We had matched on an app and talked for two weeks and I had, in that time, constructed an entire future involving that sailboat.

The man who sat down was not on any sailboat, ever. He was fine -- pleasant, even -- but he shared roughly nothing with the pictures. Different hair, different build, a solid decade older. My wine-brain looked at him and said, out loud, before my sober brain could intervene, "You're not Sebastian."

He froze. "I am Sebastian."

"You are a Sebastian," I said, gesturing with my glass in a way that knocked over the pepper. "You are not that Sebastian. That Sebastian has a boat."

Now, sober, I would have smiled politely and excused myself to the bathroom and left through a window. But two-for-one had made me brave and stupid, a combination that occasionally produces truth. I kept going. I asked him whose photos those were. And maybe because I was clearly not going to let it go, or maybe because he could tell I was in no state to be dangerous, he told me.

The photos were his cousin. His actual cousin, who was, in Sebastian's words, way more photogenic than me but a terrible texter. So Sebastian had built a whole strategy: cousin's face to get the match, his own personality to keep it. "I'm the funny one," he explained, a little proudly. "He's just the looks. It's a team effort."