Words: Rory McClenaghan 1st November The stands are packed with women. My life as a bargain-bin Cyrano de Bergerac began in with a Craigslist ad. I was living in Buenos Aires, barely scraping a living and at least six years too old to be on a gap year.
I applied. As a test I had two hours to write an email from him to each of them. Looking back on what I wrote now, I have no idea how I got the gig. Steve was an American guy in his mids who was living out his entrepreneurial dreams against the backdrop of a favourable dollar-to-peso exchange rate. He also had a tic which involved placing his outstretched hand flat against his face then slowly dragging it downwards, squishing his nose and dragging his cheeks down to expose his lower eyeballs.
Steve let me in on the inner workings of the machine and my place within it. The clients, at that time all straight guys, paid a monthly subscription. In return the company would write a dating profile for them, supply them with lists of potential matches and handle the correspondence with those women for as long as the client wanted. That could be anything from making the first move on a dating site, to coaching them up to the moment they walked down the aisle.
And boy could it get negative. As an opener, I learned to get used to such hostility. I was writing for four or five guys at any one time. I never had any direct contact with them, but I did get a little fact file on each, covering their personality and what their preferences were when it came to women.
This was weird. These women had no idea their words and looks were being assessed not only by a potential suitor, but also by a poorly paid hack in his bedroom.
