Looking out from my computer screen was the fully clothed Vatan, a goateed 30-year-old lazily rocking back and forth in an office chair in California. He was cradling the phone to his ear and holding a pink and purple dildo at eye level.

"Can you do it?" he asked.

The shaft in his hand started gyrating according to the movement of my mouse over a control panel on my screen.

"Yes!" he said.

Encouraged, I then made the dildo's pronglike "clit tickler" (shaped like bunny ears) pulsate. Then I wiggled the head again.

A moment of odd pride enveloped me. How many women can say they've been a dick?

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Meeting people on the Internet was nothing new to Walters, who had spent her high-school years talking to people all over the world in chat rooms. "I remember feeling like people were pretty straightforward about themselves when we'd chat," she said. "They didn't seem to be pretending they were something they weren't."

So when the first guy who contacted her through JDate revealed on his profile that he was only 5-foot-3, Walters assumed he was telling the truth.

"I'm 5-foot-5 so I thought it wasn't that big a difference," said Walters. "I thought I could deal with it."

The pair made a date to hang out at his house. But when Walters arrived, the 30-year-old who came to the door resembled an Oompa Loompa. "He was maybe 4-foot-11," Walters said. To be polite, she spent hours with him playing Trivial Pursuit -- a friend was supposed to give her a "rescue call" but then forgot. When Walters finally wrangled her way out of his place, her date presented her with a sweatband he had made out of a tube sock and a teddy-bear decal. "It's awful," said Walters, now 24. "But I haven't thrown it out. I keep it as a reminder of how bad online dating can be."

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