Every now and then, Brian Quass becomes aware of a scam being perpetrated in the northern Virginia area by unethical individual(s) and makes the details available on this Web site in the hopes of preventing gullible locals from being taken in. The following is the latest such reprehensible scheme to come to the attention of the ever-vigilant webmaster.
Notice of Scam
Introduction A young woman with apparently well-rounded thighs and a so-called 'winning smile' has been making the rounds of the pubs in downtown Alexandria, posing as a warm-hearted woman in search of a solid future with a reliable husband. If you see her, do not -- I repeat: DO NOT -- buy her a drink. She will only break your heart.
Description She is wearing ostensibly 'cute' cowboy boots, close-fitting blue jeans (probably Calvin Klein), and a white t-shirt with the phrase 'Ride 'Em, Cowboy' embroidered along the back in a somewhat hard-to-read cursive script made of silver sequins. Her favorite drink appears to be Coconut Rum and Watermelon and she likes to talk about her family's place back in West Virginia, which is apparently located at the foot of a mountain near the old logging town of Cass.
How the scam works The woman will appear, as if by accident, at a seat beside you at a bar, where she will attract your attention by remarking favorably on your apparently 'sturdy looking' shoulders and your supposedly 'buff physique.' At first, you will attempt to shrug off these seemingly immoderate accolades (notwithstanding their purely technical accuracy, of course) but as you turn toward the flatterer with that very purpose in mind, you will be so struck by the fundamentally god-like beauty of the apparition in question that you will almost certainly end your demurral in mid-sentence, concluding, "uh... uh... uh..." like a flustered schoolboy who has just been asked by an angry teacher why he just threw a paper airplane out of the classroom window. ("Uh...because...teacher... because...
Sigh!
")
The scam can now play out in various tawdry ways, of course, but generally speaking, the woman will now invite you to walk along the nearby Potomac River waterfront with her (after tactfully suggesting to you that you get her an apparently 'traditional' ice cream sundae at Pop's) because she, quote-unquote, wants to hear all about your no-doubt fascinating life. (Oh, yes, of COURSE she does!)
Unfortunately, by now, you're drunk: partly thanks to the pint of Guinness that you absent-mindedly threw back at O'Connell's Pub not 10 minutes ago, but mainly because you have finally gotten up the nerve to place your right hand beneath the shoulder blades of this apparent goddess and you are now running a set of seemingly mischievous fingers up and down her admittedly smooth and arching back (up and down, up and down...)
Well, you can imagine how this ends, folks:
You sit down at the very next park bench (ironic, in retrospect, for its cinematic location under a faux vine-wrapped gas lamp
*) where you feed deeply on the liquid sunshine of her suddenly prophetic eyes, beholding there, as in a spirit lamp, a family of six around a picnic table in a backyard near a river, with a dog (apparently a beagle) sporting merrily along the water's edge, worrying a group of mallards that had probably been loitering nearby for a handout. But wait? Who's that at the head of the picnic table, elbows propped up proprietarily on either side of his plastic plate full of chicken legs and pork beans, atop the red-and-white backdrop of a checkered plastic tablecloth? It's YOU! There you are at the head of the table, toasting your wife and (let's see: 1, 2, 3...) four unusually well-behaved children (except for the youngest boy, alas, who appears to be spreading peanut butter on his big sister's new dress, so far unbeknownst to her).
To make a long story short, the scheming vixen in the allegedly 'cute' cowboy boots has won your heart so entirely now that you're already thinking of marrying her!
But, like we always tell potential scam victims:
If it seems too good to be true, it probably is....
Because two weeks later, during a similar rendezvous in the self-same park (under the self-same faux vine-wrapped gas lamp, in fact)...
the discussion turns, alas, to... health care, of all things!
It turns out that she is a strong proponent of government-sponsored health care, while you, in your turn, harbor a variety of misgivings about increasing government involvement in that area.
What happens next can vary, but the woman will usually stand up indignantly as this point, lay her ice cream sundae down on the bench beside her ideological opponent (i.e. YOU) and let loose with some noisy and highly inappropriate platitudes about the obligation of Society writ-large to care for its 'weakest members.' You, of course, will have none of this: You tell her in no uncertain terms that the best way to care for the most people in a society is to have a thriving economy, and you tell her that her government plan is custom-designed to keep everybody from thriving!
"Oh, yeah?" she will probably respond at this point, tossing her head back contemptuously and angrily rearranging the tresses that are suddenly blocking her increasingly jaundiced view of her new political nemesis (i.e., YOU!)
"Yeah!" you will probably say, feeling a very strong (if admittedly childish) temptation to stick your tongue out at the 'wretch,' as you now somewhat uncharitably think of her (because by now you're both obviously livid, of course).
To make a long story short, she clacks off down the cement sidewalk in an indignant staccato, vowing never to see you again, the glittering silver sequins on the back of her apparently one-off t-shirt now reminding you of your first meeting in the bar two weeks ago when you all but plighted your troth to this (alas!) political heretic!!!
Ahem.
Fortunately, you've only lost a couple weeks out of your life and maybe 20 to 25 Andrew Jacksons.
But all scam victims are not so lucky: In many scams of this kind, the victim is often persuaded to marry the woman before he realizes that his politics differ from hers in some very fundamental ways, indeed.
Variation In a variation on this scam, the seductress will seduce a liberal love-interest and then turn around and gall him with her latterly evinced penchant for conservative causes, which, naturally enough, old lover-boy thinks of as anathema, telling himself: "I've been fooled: stupidly fooled!"
*the gas lamp is 'faux', although the vine itself appears to be real
c.2010
Brian Quass, Alexandria, VA USA
