I am not an open book.

I am a sketchy book you find by accident... I dunno, taped to the underside of a park bench somewhere. You look around guiltily after tugging it out, but you're too interested to not take a peek.

The cover is innocuous enough; probably some classic literature you vaguely know the story of but haven't really read... but you can tell just from the edges that the contents within are a scrapbook mayhem mess of photos and magazine clippings.

You wonder for a moment; what could be inside? Is this some sort of hidden fetish porn stash? A serial killer's last manifesto? As you lift the cover to peer inside, you half expect to find it hollowed out to hold the shape of a revolver inside.

What do you find? That you can't get to know someone through a book-jacket blurb on a writing website. That self-summary synopses are a honey-pot beartrap of wishful thinking and desperate bias. You realize with trepidation that those claiming to be an open book are trying to sell you something—themselves.

You shove the suspicious book back under the park bench where you found it, brushing your hands on your jeans and trying to shake that sudden unpleasant feeling, that urge to get the hell out of there. A resolve forms within you to message people and get to know them rather than lazily browsing through various people's purported lives. After all, you're an intelligent person, you decide. You can make up your own mind about what people're really like, after you've talked with them for a bit.

Not this guy, though. He gives you the creeps.