If there’s one thing I’ve dreamed of since I caught my first glimpses of TV hosts Jules Asner, Brooke Burke and Samantha Brown, it’s being on television. Not to play a character (although, if given the chance … ), but a real, beautiful, healthy person standing before the camera speaking her own words. I’ve got it all planned out in my head — I’m traveling the countryside and staying in lavish hotels, stating why this is the BEST place ever and you simply MUST visit and spending afternoons falling asleep to heavenly body massages from shirtless men with bronzed bodies and washboard abs and … OK, that’s not yet where I’m headed in life, but I am going to be on TV.

It started on Facebook. I spotted Rochelle Herman’s post about a new Sarasota-based reality show called “Master Daters.” Without even knowing the premise of the show, I told her to sign me up. After confirming that, yes, I would be at Ceviche Thursday night to meet my “faux date,” I started wondering, “What the heck is a faux date?” I knew it involved dinner, wine and hopefully an attractive, brainy male who I might swoon over, but at the time I didn’t really consider the other factors involved: the man who would dangle over our table what looked like a fishing rod with a microphone attached to the end; the spotlight out to get revenge on my eyes; and, of course, the cameraman, who would announce that he’d turned the camera off several times only to leave it rolling, hoping to catch stories I didn’t intend for my TV-land audience to hear.

My faux date was a sweaty situation. I can almost promise you that Ceviche employees deliberately turned the heat on just to make me uncomfortable to the point that I actually felt sweat trickle down the back of my legs.

Rochelle briefed me on what was about to happen with master dater Gerry Healy. He’d ask me some questions, I’d answer and then he’d analyze my dating skills. Sounded easy enough. However, I caught myself losing my train of thought several times and going off on random tangents and unnecessary stories, but there was so much confusion — lights, camera, action and people gathering around to watch — that at that point I just hoped whatever I said on camera actually made sense. About halfway through dinner, a guy I had a crush on in the ninth grade stepped out of the elevator, raised his eyebrows and gave me a what-are-you-up-to? grin.

Rochelle started the show hoping to help people become better daters, asking the master daters to point out what their dates are doing right or wrong, whether it’s excessive makeup, stinky underarms, poor dressing skills, etc. I was kind of hoping to pick up a tip or two (not that I have any of those issues), but Gerry really couldn’t come up with anything bad to say about me. Even when I fessed up the worst of my traits — I’ve got such bad time-management skills that when I was younger and my mom used to drive my to school, I’d run so late every morning that she’d already be sitting in her car laying on the horn when I was just pulling open the shower curtain — he didn’t think it was a big deal.

One question plagued my mind throughout the evening, though: What qualifies this so-called “master dater” to be a master of dating? The response I got when I finally asked: “I’ve been on thousands of dates.” And — get this — he’s been on 40 dates within the past year. At least he's getting in a lot of practice time, although, if that's what it takes to be a “master dater,” I think I'll leave that job to him!

In the final minutes of the show, Rochelle presented me with such a colossal bouquet of red roses — I felt like I’d just won the Miss America pageant. Gosh, it’s so difficult to be a star. ☺

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