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."

A team effort. There were two of them. I had been dating a committee.

I should have been angrier but the wine had made me weirdly delighted by the audacity of it. I asked if the cousin knew. He said roughly. I asked what would have happened if things got serious, if I ever wanted to, you know, see the sailboat. Sebastian went quiet and then said, "We were gonna cross that bridge later," which told me the bridge, like the boat, did not exist.

I paid for my two-for-one and I left, and honestly, I was laughing in the parking lot. It was such a beautifully dumb scheme. I texted my sister the whole thing from an Uber, misspelling every third word.

Here is the twist that sobered me up faster than any water. The next morning, hungover and cringing, I decided to at least send a polite closure text. Something mature. Something final.

He had already unmatched me. Blocked, gone, vanished. The catfish ghosted me. I found out the man was fake and he was the one who decided I was not worth the trouble. The committee had voted and I was out.

I still think about that cousin sometimes. Somewhere out there is a genuinely handsome man whose face has been on dozens of dates he never attended, charming women through a device held by his weird cousin. I hope the sailboat is real. I hope somebody gets to see it. It will not be me.