Don’t be jealous, I don’t mean to brag, but unattractive, ill-bred losers think I’m super-hot. They flood my Match.com mailbox with winks and messages. Sometimes they stop me on the street and ask if they can “holler at me” for a minute. It’s not easy being so highly coveted by the undateable, but I guess I just got it like that.

Why is it that men (especially BM) with so little to offer are always the most aggressive in their approach? Once I made the mistake of making polite conversation with one of the custodians in my building and he wouldn’t leave me alone for weeks. He must have thought his unappealing looks, baby’s mama drama and suspended driver’s license made him irresistible because he kept cornering me in my office and harassing me for my phone number. I was one day away from telling him to take his sorry, good-for-nothing monkey ass back to the zoo he escaped from when thankfully he was transferred to another building.

Is it wrong that I actually get offended when this same type of low quality of men contact me online? Do they really think that I might be interested or do they just completely ignore what I’ve written in my profile? Of course some DUDs (Definitely Unworkable Dudes) are crafty enough to maneuver themselves into a date. I’m sure you may have heard of (or experienced) many online dating horror stories, but I’ve found they can usually be avoided by establishing a few guidelines:

#1- Looks can be deceiving. The first thing I learned the hard way is not to reply to profiles without photos or that say “ask me for my photo.” I believe you either agree to meet on an even playing field here or you need to get out of the game. I just recently broke this rule with a guy who played professional basketball in Europe for years and now ran his own sports agency. I should have been more skeptical of the photo he sent that looked like it was taken during his college hey days. In person he looked more like Cee-Lo Green than Michael Jordan. Maybe he thought I’d be so dazzled by his paycheck that I wouldn’t even miss the gun show he was giving in his photo, but he was wrong.

#2- Keep your expectations low and bring your wallet. I find it easier to get back into my skinny jeans than getting an online match to plan the first date. If during the planning stages he says “we can work the details out later” that usually means he’s either going to cancel or postpone the date indefinitely. And don’t be surprised if a date asks for to pay your share of the bill, especially if you come across as the “independent type.” I understand that an internet date is a shared emotional and financial investment and no one wants to waste their time or money on someone you may never want to see again, but personally I think it is proper etiquette for the man to pay for the first date if he intends to get a second.

#3- Don’t judge a book by its cover, but read between the lines. When was online dating in my thirties, I started seeing a much younger, Islamic, vegetarian social worker. After a few ho-hum dates with IT professionals who liked to describe themselves as “laid-back,” I thought I could use a change of pace. Oddly enough, our relationship ended not because of our age gap or the cultural and dietary differences, but because he became supercritical about my appearance. I realized it was over when he accused me (me!) of dressing too casually one afternoon when we ran into one of his friends. When I go out for the evening I put a great deal of effort to look chic and sexy, but I am not doing full makeup and stilettos to go shopping at Best Buy.

#4- Don’t hate the player, hate the game.  The truly sexually deviant don’t waste their time meeting women without making their intentions clear upfront. A player, on the other hand, might surmise that if you’ve resorted to online dating, you could be desperate for sex and he’s willing to go on a couple of dates to find out.  One of my online dates actually showed up with an overnight bag. Another time I thought I was really vibing with a new co-worker over a large bottle of wine after a particularly stressful week. He seemed genuinely interested in getting to know me and he admired the things that were unique and special about me that I had sometimes considered to be flaws . . . and then he told me he all about his lovely wife and kids.

Occasionally, I still get blindsided by the mind-boggling audacity of BM who take the interracial dating thing so personally. As an experiment, I change my headline to “BF interested in IRR with like-minded individual” to see if it would get more attention from non-black men. What I got was a message from a BM that said, “Oh. That’s what [my screen name] means. You’ll be a [fantasy] for the white man. I get it. Plantation life all over again. Fuckin bitch.” I could have told him to go fuck himself because obviously no one else wanted to and that his invectives just reinforced my reasons for dating out, but I didn’t bother. I just don’t understand all where all the anger comes from.

But the rainbeaus really need to step up their game. So far all I’ve got is one WM who sends me the same “good afternoon” text message weekly but won’t bother to make a phone call and a hot musician who winked, but won’t (or can’t) respond to my email. I got a great email from a super cute Puerto Rican in NYC who wrote “you have the most contagious smile I’ve ever seen! It’s like being at the carnival or blowing bubbles when you were a kid- you can’t help but break out into a huge grin!…your just soooooo far away!”

Come on, it’s not like I live in Antarctica.  Am I expected to do all the work around here?