Prologue: I work for a tech company that provides a free gym membership, so there is a lot of overlap between those two spaces and this story is about a woman who I know her from both of those places. I had seen her around and talked with her occasionally, but I wouldn’t say we were deep friends, at least not back then.

I thought she was beautiful, both inside and outside, but I suspect some men might not have agreed with my assessment, I want to be gentle here, she had what I would call a slight defect, her jaw jutted out and off to one side and well, you will understand.

I never saw her with anyone and no “special persons” photos on her desk. But some people do not feel comfortable for various reasons to share personal photos at work.

One day I noticed I had not seen her in a while and I asked a co-worker if they had seen Natasha around lately, does she still work here?  They said she had gone out on benefits leave for a couple of months. I didn’t think too much about it and hoped she was OK.  When she came back, and I saw her, she was a different person. She had clearly had cosmetic surgery on her face, I barely recognized her. I thought, oh, I see, she went and had some work done. I felt bad for her, but I thought, well, good for her, I hope it makes her happy. She was now I would say very attractive. Some of the men in the office said something behind her back that she went from a 2 to a 10 or something to that effect. I did not hear that directly, but it had been relayed to me.

Well, I sure hope she finds love I thought. I really wanted to talk to her about it and find out what made her want to make such a drastic change in her life, I suspected it had to do with finding love. I admit, I maneuvered myself at the gym a few times to be in position to have a casual conversation with her, on the exercise bike, or I saw her in the canteen and asked if I could join her. She was nice, I liked talking to her, she had a wry sense of humor and a subtle smile that betrayed perhaps an inner pain I thought.

She seemed to disappear off the map for a while, but when I saw her on TV, I really wanted to talk to her. Eventually I saw her at the gym, and I just went up to her and told her about my writing project and she agreed to an interview as long as her identity was obfuscated. Here is her story in her voice.

Natasha’s Story:

Hi, my name is Natasha, I am a 36-year-old woman, I travel quite a bit for my work and have not had much luck at finding love. Well, there was one time, earlier in my life, when I was 26 and I had just finished grad school. I was so excited to be finally out on my own to explore the world. I dated a couple of men, but it always seemed to end up that they just wanted sex, or I would find out they were running around and dating many other women. It seemed so difficult for me to find love.

So, a couple of years ago, I decided to try online dating, I knew a lot of people who had found love that way. That’s how I met Tom, he was so sweet, so intelligent and handsome. Cute and handsome, what do they call it now, “cutesome”, he was that. We dated for a while, and I had such high hopes.

He had a way about him, and I was taken by how much he seemed to adore me. We dated for a while, he took me places, fun places, we went on a trip together, he even took me to a formal ball that his company was putting on.

This went on for almost six months, it was a glorious six months. But one day, he vanished, ghosting they call it. I called a couple of times and texted, but just crickets in return. I knew I had been ghosted. OK, but could he just tell me why? What did I do?

It took a few months, but I got over it, that was really the closest I had come to something I would call love, but I didn’t know why it ended. Between work travel and everything else, I was having a hard time meeting someone. I decided to try online dating again. I reactivated my profile online. After a couple of months, I had barely had even one response. And the responses I had gotten were not very flattering.

I tried a different dating site, but I was not having a lot of luck. I asked a close friend of mine what she thought, and she told be the old joke about online dating “The odds are good, but the goods are odd.”

I told her the odds were not working in my favor and how few hits I was getting. We were on the phone, and she said to text her a link to my profile, and she would take a look and maybe give me some hints. She was always dating someone, and she was using the same online dating service as me and I thought perhaps she knew the secret to getting more responses.

We hung up and I had not heard from her in a day or so and I called her to see what she thought. She got very quiet and tried to brush it off and change the subject. I sensed there was something. Was she going to tell me I’m ugly?  I know I am not the prettiest girl around; I get it but certainly there would be someone for me?

She said, “I can tell you the truth and it will hurt your feelings and I will regret having done it and feel terrible, but as a friend I will if you insist, or we can drop it and talk about other things and then I will be able to sleep tonight.”

I thought, yikes, what could it be, do I look like a mass murderer or something?  She explained to me that there is a web page called hogfarming.net (this is not the real web page, but there are ones like it out there).   I went to it, and it was a web site where men would find the ugliest women they could find on the internet dating sites and post the links on this web page with all kinds of horrible comments. Ugh, I had heard about those things in college where fraternities would have “hog night”, it is so cruel. I dodged such silliness throughout college, but I had gotten trapped by that same horrible cruelty on the internet. I should have known better, I thought. I searched for myself and sure enough, I was in there a number of times. Not from Tom though, but I suspect some insensitive person perhaps had forwarded the link to him embarrassing him. I don’t know if it was that or something else still to this day.

My girlfriend was right, it did hurt me deeply. I called her back and thanked her for telling me and I told her that I loved her and to please not to lose any sleep over having told me. I appreciated knowing it and I was going to take my dating profiles down.

She mentioned that there is a process to have yourself removed from that site but it is very long and difficult and there are others like it so it would be nearly impossible to clean your internet tracks away completely. I researched it online and she was correct, there were companies that claimed, for a price, they could do it for you. But for all I know they take your money and do nothing. No, I had had my belly full of the internet.

For a long time after that, I just shut down emotionally. I didn’t date, I didn’t even try. I just focused on work, pushing myself to exhaustion so I could sleep. My schedule was work, go to the gym, dinner, sleep, work, rinse and repeat. It paid off, and I got promotions and more money. But not love.

Over time as the pain faded, I tried dating on and off. But it was difficult, finding someone now my age, mid-30’s that would be interested in me seemed now to be a lost cause.

One day I saw an article online about a woman who had cosmetic surgery done and how it changed her life. Before that, she didn’t think the looks were that important but had been self-critical of her own appearance so sought out a specialist. She said that it gave her self-confidence and made her happy.

I researched it online and found several doctors in the area and made several consultation appointments online with their offices. Over the next few weeks, I met with different surgeons who took pictures of me and proposed various changes to my nose, my jaw and cheeks. They would say, shave this bone here and an implant there. Then they would show me a computer-generated photo of how the new me would look. Then they would give me some information to read and a cost estimate and a waiver that I would have to sign with all kinds of cautions about the risks.

I knew the risks, if you get a bad surgeon, you can end up looking like a monster. I researched online and studied the various options. Eventually I settled on one particular surgeon who had the best ratings, he was not cheap, and he was in the Bay area. It was going to be expensive; I would need to get a place down there to stay at perhaps an extended stay inn or something.

But the cost was not the issue for me, I had the money, I could easily afford it. The issue would be the time off from work. I had a ton of vacation time banked, I was constantly having to take a day here or there to keep from losing it but, since I had no personal life, I never had anything to use it on and would end up staying home and watching one movie after the other.

I went to my boss and explained to him I needed to take six months off and so I would need to use all my vacation and some unpaid leave. He said OK, are you doing something fun, I hope?  I decided to be honest, everyone was going to figure it out sooner or later anyway. I explained it to him, he looked shocked and frankly like he felt sorry for me. By this time in my life, I admit, I was feeling a little bitter about the hand that life had delt me and that I had to go through this to find happiness. I felt like saying something like so no fucker, it will not be fun, it will be incredibly painful so just give me the goddam time off and go fuck yourself. That was what I was thinking but I simply said, “So, is it OK for me to schedule that much time off?” He said that he would make the arrangements and have someone to fill in for me but just asked if I could spend a week or two training the temporary replacement. I said sure no problem. He also said that he would talk to HR and see if they could work it out so I could go on short term benefits which would mean I would get paid for the time off.

That was actually really nice of him, it would save me a lot of lost salary. Later he called and told me that if I had a letter from a psychiatrist saying it was for mental health reasons, they would give me paid time off. I considered simply quitting and going and doing this and then going back to work later at a different company. But why should I, again my bitterness of that phase in my life I felt like they owed it to me so fuck them, yeah pay me bitches; that’s how I felt.

So, I called the office of the surgeon I was using, and they gave me a reference to someone that provided that service for them. They said that is a very common request and the doctor they gave me as a reference provided such letters routinely. I called his office and he even said he would do it over zoom. I called to make an appointment. During the “session” he just asked me a series of questions like, do you hear voices, do you feel suicidal, do you have any feelings that you want to do harm to someone else. I wanted to say to that last one that I wanted to strangle Tom, but I answered all his questions the way I suspected I was supposed to. He transferred me to his office, I gave them my credit card info, and for $400 I had my letter that would be worth, well, easily $200K in salary.  Totally worth it I thought.

The day finally came, I put the out of office reply on all my email and messaging and blocked off my calendar for 6 months. Goodbye work, hello grueling pain and misery. I had found a nice Airbnb near the surgeon’s office and basically moved in. It was furnished so really; I just flew down with a couple of suit cases and my laptop. What else would I need? 

It turned out not to be nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be, of course, surgery is never fun and there were several of them. But the pain killers they gave me worked great and I did what I always do on “vacation” and streamed a million movies. By the time the last procedure came around, I already could see I was going to be pretty for the first time in my life. Once the swelling and bruising went down, I could see it. Airbnb had a kind of home gym set up with bike and weights and a TV, so I would work out when I was feeling well enough and started eating better and lost weight too.

I was enjoying this new city. I toyed with the idea of quitting my old job and moving down here and starting over. Toward the end, everything had healed up pretty well and the slight bruising I had I could easily cover with makeup. I would go out, shopping or just site seeing San Francisco. I even went into a few bars by myself. I was noticing that I was getting looks from men, I mean, real looks. And a couple even hit on me at the bars. I was thinking, this is going to be a lot of fun.

Then I read an article about “quiet quitting” where people were not quitting their job, they just started doing the minimum. I had just streamed that old movie “Office Space” with Jennifer Aniston who place a waitress at a place that requires you to wear a minimum of 15 pieces of “flare” meaning buttons or other such silliness. Her boss points out to her, she is doing the minimum, don’t you want to be like Tommy over there, and they show this dweeb being all super positive and his work uniform is covered with this flare crap. I thought, no, I do not want to be like that anymore, I have earned the right to have fun. They have gotten plenty out of me over the years, it’s my turn damn it.  So, I decided, let those assholes at work talk all they want, I’m going to finally fuck! I decided right then and there, I’m going to fuck, a lot. I had time to make up for.

I went and looked in the mirror, I thought, yeah, I think I look a little like her. The next day I went to a salon and told them to cut my hair to look like Jennifer Aniston, they asked me which vintage, not batting an eye they had obviously had that request before. They showed me photos and I picked one. They put some highlights in my hair and did as I had asked.  Later I went to Macy’s and had my makeup done by a colorist and makeup artist and I think they picked up on the look I was going for.

When I got home, I was nervous about my first day back at work. I had all new clothes; I had lost weight. I looked at myself in the mirror and thought to myself, damn I look hot! And I also decided that my nickname would be Nati. I’m going to insist everyone call me that, fuck them, they are going to see what I did, they are going to talk about me behind my back. Fine, here, I’m giving you an assignment, learn my new nick name. I changed it on the company web site. I also changed my email and messaging and everything. Now I’m Nati, hot bitch, eat it you assholes who said I was ugly. Time to reverse things, now I’m beautiful on the outside, and I’m going to be a bitch on the inside. It is payback time. You are probably thinking you want to stick it in Tom’s face, no, not even worth the effort now. Nope, if I see him, I will not even look at him, not even acknowledge his existence.

Now, assholes, you want to post my picture on one of your misogynistic web pages? Is there one like hotbitchsluts dot com or something like that? Because that is what I’m going to be from now on.

Work went about as I assumed it would, surprised looks on people’s faces, a few people making nice comments like oh you look great! I love your new nickname. So good to have you back. Blah blah. I gave everyone a halfhearted half smile and said little to acknowledge their banal banter.

I would go to work and the gym, a few men would look and talk to me, but these were all the same ones that looked away from me before. No, I do not want to have anything to do with them.

And, my quiet quitting was going magnificently, since the temporary person had been doing my job for me for six months, he was completely trained, and my boss had said he was going to keep him on for a month or two until things “got back to normal” whatever that meant. So, I decided to just do nothing and let temp dweeb with all his pieces of flare do it all. Nope, I was doing the minimum, if my boss asked me for something, I would do it, half assed, or not at all unless he asked twice, then give it to dweeb and tell him to do it and of course, the over achiever was happy to do it. I wouldn’t even say anything about it to my boss. And he didn’t say anything to me either, remember, I’m crazy, I have a letter from a psychiatrist saying so. If they fire me, and that gets brought out, they are fucked, and he knows it and he does not want to deal with it. So, temp dweeb becomes my permanent dweeb that does my job for me. Nice.

So, here I am with a full-time job making over $400K a year to do nothing. Hahaha, I deserve it. But I’m bored now, and the second part of my plan was to fuck, a lot. So, I decided to go to those dating sites with my new look and post a new profile.

I called my best friend, the same one that had clued me in that I was a featured star in the hog farmers web site, yeah her. We are good friends, and she works at the same company and saw this all go down. She said I looked awesome, but I sensed she now felt like I had the upper hand, before she was the pretty one and I was the ugly friend she was helping out, I got that, but she was a good friend and the one person I was not going to be a bitch to. So, I tried to be as humble as I could with her. She told me that she thought it sucked that I had to go through all that but if it made me happy, she would support me no matter what. I felt like telling her, this doesn’t make me happy it makes me even more bitter and spiteful when I see how superficial people are about it. But I didn’t say that. I thanked her and asked her what the scuttlebutt was around the watercooler. I never asked her that when I was going through it, I hardly talked to her. I called her a couple times but told her I was too grumpy from the pain. But really, I just didn’t want to talk to anyone.

She proceeded to tell me that the word somehow had gotten around that I was out on short term disability and that I had an incurable disease and did not have long to live. That was the rumor. I started laughing and asked her how in the world that had gotten started. She said she had no idea. People had asked her, and she didn’t know what to say because well, she was keeping my confidence, so she just told them she couldn’t talk about it but that just fueled it even more.

I told her I was thinking about trying online dating again. She asked me why; you don’t need to now that you are so pretty. I told her, you do it and you’re pretty. I think she liked that I said that and seemed to soften a little. It seemed like our friendship was finding a new footing, perhaps one a little more equal. It is funny how one’s personal appearance does affect your interpersonal relationships. I think when you are as ugly as I was, people tell you appearance doesn’t matter. But they are just saying that to try to make you feel better. And, I had stupidly believed them for a long time.

But now, I know better, it permeates every aspect of your life. Even at my job, now that I’m pretty, people do not bother me with questions about technical issues anymore. I used to be that go to person that knew all the answers on the technical front. Now, everyone assumes I’m stupid and know nothing. But cool! I love it, I have dweeb to do my job and a boss who pisses his pants at the thought of dealing with me because of the letter! Ha, so I have all the time in the world to fuck as many hot dudes as I want. And they are going to pay for everything, dinner, trips, no more splitting the check.

My girlfriend said I should use that final head shot that the plastic surgeon took of me for my dating profile. I thought that’s terrible advice. Why would she say such nonsense. I decided she was a worthless advisor. I set up an appointment to have head shots and photos taken professionally. I hired a guy to do it and he took a bunch of pictures in his studio, and we went to various spots around town, and he took pictures that seem to show me out having fun and doing things. I had told him I was looking for pictures for my online dating profile. The guy was obviously gay and very nice and told me I was so beautiful and photogenic why would I need that. I told him I wanted to increase my odds and that I wanted to fuck a lot of dudes, that I was super horny these days. He loved it and laughed and said, “right there with ya girlfriend”, I thought that was cute.

Later I got a link from him to a private web repository of all the photos, they looked fantastic, I looked like a super-hot fun girl about town. 

I set up my new account and put a bunch of those pictures in there. I was thinking about that ridiculous rumor that had been going around at work that I was about to die. So, I don’t know what came over me, I just put down in the profile description that the doctors told me I had an incurable disease and that I only six months to live, and my dying wish was to be loved, really loved deeply, romanced by my knight in shining armor. Shit like that. I was cracking up. Six months, the same amount of time I had taken to have my transformation done. So, I titled my posting, “Six Months to Love”.

I went to bed and went to work the next day. Now that I really had nothing to do at work, I would go to the gym, go shopping, surf the internet. Basically, just goof off all day. I checked the company web page and they had under the “you” tab where you could request remote work. Oooh, I checked it out, they had an option I could put in for only two days a week in the office, I picked Tuesday and Wednesday. I figured I could go on trips whatever. If someone emailed me or messaged me something, with my phone I could just forward it to my flare dweeb to handle it. Perfect. My boss approved it almost immediately, I was thinking he was probably glad to be rid of me. If they had had a full-time remote option, I am sure he would have approved that. But I also guessed at this point he could care less if I came in on those days and I fully intended not to.

I decided to check the dating app and see if I had any good prospects, it had been a couple of days and I thought surely by now there would be a few. I was not just shocked but stunned to see thousands of responses!  That seemed completely crazy to me even with my newfound beauty.

I called my friend and told her, she said, “Dude, I was just going to call you, you were on fucking good Morning America TV show, they were featuring your ad about how this beautiful woman with six months to live wants to be wined and dined to make her dying wish of feeling truly loved to come true”

I said, “What, are you fucking shitting me!!!” I pulled up their web page and there I was, prominently displayed, poor me. She said, “What were you possibly thinking!” I told her it was a goof, she told me that rumor and I just thought it was funny. She said, “Oh my god, what are you going to do when people find out.” I jokingly said, “Well, I have six months to find out, maybe there will be a miracle cure for me all of a sudden, like there was a miracle cure for my ugly, in a way, what’s the difference really.”

I think she heard some of my bitterness and frustration with life coming through. She told me she thought I should probably take it down and it will all blow over. She was right of course, but I thought, well, maybe leave it a couple more days. But then my phone was ringing off the hook, all kinds of media people wanted to interview me.

I started going through all those thousands of “volunteers”, a lot of them said, “I saw your ad on Good Morning America and so I went to the app to look for you. Are you really that beautiful, I don’t understand why someone has not already swept you off your feet a long time ago.” Shit like that.

But then I started reading through some of them, some were so beautiful, saying things like I look at your picture, is that really you? My god you are so beautiful, I do not know why you have not found love, it would be a great honor for me to come and love you and make you happy and try to fulfil you last wish. I am wealthy and I can take you places, show you the world. Quit your job, come away with me.

I was thinking, ha! I already quit basically, just they will eventually “fix the glitch” (another Office Space reference you can look up later).  And if they do fire me who cares, maybe by then I will marry some super wealthy jet setting hot looking dude.  I will tell him they gave me stem cell transplants and I’m cured. I was researching online for my story line.

Now, I was shifting my plan from being a slut and sleeping with every man I can get my hands on to being a gold digger arm candy for some super rich dude. Why the fuck not, the world owes that to me I figured. I’m getting too old to have children, now 36, but I look 27 from all the work and I have kept my body in shape, I could do it, I’m sure of it.

Now that I’m no longer burdened with a job, even though I am getting paid full time pay, I can do anything I want. I decided to accept those invitations to go on TV and I did a couple of the interviews. My long-time best friend, she was pissed at me. I told her my whole plan. She told me I was crazy and should see a shrink. I reminded her I already had a letter to that effect, remember?  She started distancing herself from me, I said good riddance, you have been giving me crappy advice anyway.

I started dating the guys that responded, but only the ones that I vetted out that were really actually rich and not bullshitters. I have about 10 of them going. So glad I quit-Not-quit my job. One guy flew me to Maui on his private jet and he had a home on the beach front. Ha! nice. Another guy flew me to Paris for a week. I didn’t even need to take any vacation time! Hahaha, just like I planned, an email would come in and I would just use my phone to forward it to flare dweeb and I was off on cruise in the Mediterranean with another dude. Was I fucking them? You goddam right I was. I was fucking their brains out. And they were paying for everything. I didn’t have to spend a dime.

It was amazing. One guy took me to some gala in New York and introduced me and people knew who I was, the dying chick this rich fucker is banging. It was like extra cachet for him. I was having so much fun and I just thought, hey, this is a fun ride, I don’t even need to marry any of these dillweeds, I have the perfect reason not to. I didn’t need money; I was getting free money from those fuckers where I technically still work.

I took down my ad, saying oh, I have met Mr. Right, yeah, Mr. Right #1, #2, #3… and so on. I was having the time of my life. Finally making up for all those years of people saying mean things behind my back, dis-ing me without even knowing me. I figured the world owed me this.

Eventually I decided not to contact any more of them and shut down “operation six months to live”.  It sort of blew over because, these types of feel good stories run their course, people move on and forget about it. The rich dudes tire of the coolness of making the dying chick happy crap.

I’m still technically working for that same company, I really don’t care if they fire me or not. If they do that’s fine, I have a ton of money saved up and have invested, I’m not sure I ever really need to work again or not. Maybe, if something interesting comes along. I’ve been looking, I see a few things, I think it is not really fair what I’m doing, and I will move on, having collected my fair share of the “dues”, truthfully, I probably already exceeded that.

I never found true love with my scheme; the rich dudes were just as superficial as everyone else. I read a few nice emails from some nice guys that weren’t rich. But the whole thing was built on a big lie. It is all behind me now. I put it all in the rear view along with the bitterness and anger. I dunno, maybe I felt like I got my revenge on the world or maybe just got tired of being a bitch, whatever. Time to move on from that. It was childish I guess.

So, I am still searching. From now on, I’m sticking with honesty and hope for the best.

Epilogue: After she told me her story, I asked her if we could stay in touch via email or chat now and then on the phone if I don’t see her around just to check in on how things are going. She agreed. We still email each other from time to time and catch each other up on our travails.

I want to add, that I think she overstated the “quiet quitting” aspect, I know she was an incredibly dedicated person for so many years, and knowing the company and her boss, I’m sure they realized perfectly well that she was going through a deep personal crisis, and they were giving her some space to deal with it. In my opinion, space she had well-earned and certainly the disability benefits as well. She did the right thing after a few months and moved on. She quit her job officially and moved to the bay area and found work that she enjoys and is making a fresh start. I know that her former co-workers wished her well.

After her 15 minutes of fame blew over and she was making that fresh start in the bay area, she emailed me that one of her respondents had emailed her which by then was months after the whole thing had blown over and that he wanted to talk. I called her immediately to get more details.

She told me he was one of the ones she had filed under “Rich but no fun.” Apparently, she had sorted them out into categories like that. He had emailed her and asked her how she was doing and if she was happy now and if maybe they could talk on the phone. She told me that she went back and found his original response, he had not offered her any free trips or large gifts but had offered to pay for any experimental treatments or medical expenses to try to save her life so she could live on to experience true love rather than a contrived one as a last wish.

She said they had talked on the phone, and she apologized for her deception. He told her that he was so sorry that she had to experience such humiliation and cruelty online, he knew about the hog farmer thing, and he had seen pictures of her before. She told me that, in a way she was relieved, here is a guy where it is all out in the open.

She said that he told her he was glad she was OK and doing well and wondered if they could go meet for coffee and talk more. It turned out he also lives in the bay area and is a tech entrepreneur.

She said she was meeting him that weekend and to wish her luck. She said she was very nervous about it and wasn’t sure what to say and asked me for advice.

I told her that I do not give advice because frankly I’m terrible at it and then I told her that the only thing I could think of is very cliché and to just be yourself. She laughed and agreed it was a cliché but said, it was still pretty good advice.

I definitely wished her luck. I don’t know yet if her story will have a happy ending, but perhaps there is still hope for that. The gentleman that reached out to her sounds like a really good person. I have my fingers crossed for both of them!

I used the fake names in this story, I am sure someone who is tech savvy could perhaps dig it out somehow. Please don’t.