Ever since I had to clean all the adult movies off my hard drive I've been really lonely around here. That's when I spotted her, you know, on eBay. It's the latest thing. Do a search for "Imaginary Girlfriend" and you'll find usually a half dozen or more girls on there offering to pretend to be your girlfriend for a week or a month.

They'll send you letters, write you email, send you a picture to put on your desk, and even talk to your friends or parents on the phone if you want. At the end of the month she can break up with you however you like, usually in a really awful way so you get bonus sympathy from your friends.

Since I wasn't having much luck dating lately, I figured I'd give one of these imaginary girlfriends a quick try. That way my friends would stop teasing me and my parents would get off of my back.

I thought I was a loser for trying it. But if losing was an iceberg, I was only shaving the top of it.

Anyways, I won the auction and my new "honey" and I started making plans. First she sent me some photos -- beautiful, long dark hair, pearly smile, twinkling eyes. Very nice. Then we started emailing one another about how we were supposed to have met, etc. We finally settled on a chance encounter outside the Whattapretzel in the mall.

But after a couple of days, when I was prepping her to talk to one of my friends on the phone, it seemed really clear there was a disconnect. She hadn't played a single videogame in her life! No, not even an old Nintendo. Not even Space Invaders or Pac-Man, man! I couldn't believe it. "My friends would never buy that," I said.

So I tried to prep her on the finer points of videogames. I gave her links to download free game demos. I gave her homework. "I want you to Download Enemy Territory, and I need you to spend half an hour camping the Würzburg Radar," I said in an instant message.

"Camping?" she asked.

"And I need you to send me an email saying that the new America's Army is teh 0wn."

"The what?"

"teh 0wn."

"The own."

"With a zero."

"The ... 0wn?"

"You spelled 'teh' wrong."

At that point, my telephone rang. It was her on the other end. "Listen, uh, I don't think this is working out. You know, between you and me," she explained.

"We just need to work at it a little more, baby!" I cooed.

"I need my space," she pleaded. "I think we need to auction with other people."

"You're DUMPING me!?"

"I'll give you your money back," she said. "In fact, I'm even putting extra money in your account ... never talk to me again."

This puts me in the unique position of having had a completely random stranger pay me not to date her.