My Russian girlfriends are writing me again.

Every morning, and again in the afternoon, when I go to check the spam section of my email, there they are; all those lovely Slavic beauties — Sasha, Svetlana, Olga, Natasha, Lena and all the others with their invitations for me to communicate with them and give them my undivided attention.

The notes are always the same: “Dear jsurratt (from my old email address), my name is (Lena, Sasha, whomever), and I’m from Russia. Five years ago I moved to the USA and I love it here. Came across your photos on Badoo and remembered you because you seem a type of guy I want 🙂

You are hot, smart and sexy 🙂 (news to me). If you would like to know me more, this is my email ellailsec9@rambler.ru write to me and I will send some of my photos. xXx.”

I get these emails and I wonder, “What is it in this graying old Frenchman these lovelies want?”

“Am I that hot, smart, sexy guy they say I am?”

Then I wonder how they saw my photograph on Badoo, a dating-type website where I’m sure all the desperate folks go, and after 43 years of marriage I’m not looking for a new companion. And why should I, when I’ve already got the best. In fact, the only photo of me that has ever circulated is one of me with the former sheriff of Jackson County and former Gov. Haley Barbour shot several weeks after Katrina when it was hot and muggy and I had been out in the heat for the better part of the day covering the Coast’s recovery.

And then I wonder about the girls’ pictures. Do they really represent the real woman or is it a big fraud? I mean, would I really be corresponding with someone who looks like former Russian gymnasts Olga Corbett or Nellie Kim in their glory years? Or does she look more like the great Russian heavyweight weightlifter Vasily Alekseyev in his glory years (or now)?

I also wonder if these girls are really looking for love and companionship, or if they’re just a female version of the Nigerian prince scam out to fleece somebody. Or are these people a bunch of gray haired senior citizens getting their kicks by corresponding with lonely or bored men looking to find a spark to get them going again.

Of course, I’ll never know. I call up my spam, look at the multitude of Slavic sounding female names and think about whoever is writing these notes. For all I know it could be one person, since the notes are all phrased about the same and all of them address me using a business email I haven’t used in almost five years. The author(s) of those notes to me don’t sound like they’re done by technical geniuses.

So every morning, I’ll go to my spam, look at the names and notes, hit delete, and they’ll go away.

John Surratt is a staff writer for The Vicksburg Post. You may reach him at john.surratt@vicksburgpost.com