The Long and Short.
Women are callous bitches. This is a fact we all know. We don't fall in love the way men do.
I ended up dating this guy, lets call him Psychotic Loser. Actually, we'll call him Sam, for brevity. Obviously I didn't want to date a guy who might be summed up in those few words, but you know how men will have sex just to get laid? Women, and I'm not the only one, will have sex just to be polite. The end result is the same for both sexes: one of the party wants to chalk it up to a drunken impulse and forget the whole thing ever happened, and the other falls desperately in love and becomes a stalker.
Okay, that might not be the result every time...
Anyway, like I said, I was dating this guy against my will because I didn't know how to get out of it without being rude, basically I was just stringing him along to the benefit of neither. Every time we went out for a beer, or ran into each other at the store or something, I had this feeling like you might have if you were on the ground, watching someone else plummet from an airplane, and they think they have a parachute but you know they actually don't. Like, "Oh. This will not end well."
Sam and I were having lunch. It was a special occasion, so we were over at Denny's. Special Occasion meant he had a coupon there. And today is going to be the day the jumper reaches for that rip cord, and I already know what's coming next. He launches into the confession scenario, tears streaming into his Zesty Nachos, they're getting all soggy. The waitress is afraid to come to our table so I can get any more coffee. The long and short of it is, if we can't be together he doesn't have anything left to live for and he's going to do himself in. In that situation, I do the only thing I can do. Real slow, I reach under the table. I pull out my cell phone, and I delete his name.
.
I could happpily burn my cell phone tomorrow. A cell phone is something your boss invented so he could call you when you're at the beach and ask you to come into work. If I don't answer my phone it's because a) I'm busy, or b) I just don't want to talk to you. And there are some people out there I never to talk to. For instance:
I never want to talk to that guy who keeps calling me at the crack of dawn, pretending to be some one I know. The first time he called it was Christmas morning, and I assumed it was some one from back east, who forgot about the time difference in Hawaii. I answer the phone thinking it's my grandfather, he's like "Hi sweetie! How are you?"
"I'm fine, how are you?"
"I'm good. I'm real good." At this point I suspect I may have been mistaken. He says "I miss you."
"...Oh..."
"What are you wearing right now?"
It's Christmas. It's Six AM. What the fuck. I saved his number and programmed it as "Don't Answer."
"Never Answer Ever" is I guy I met at the pub who told me that if he were going to murder someone he would bludgeon them to unconsciousness, drown them in a bucket of salt water, and throw the body in the ocean, because it's always the lungs that give away the homicide. Good to know.
I met "Answer Not" in college, and he wrote me a love song, which he performed a la DeBergerac, at Three AM, about wanting to pick my flower.
And "Do Not Answer" is this little dude, Lachino, who picked me up when I was hitch hiking into Lahaina to get my liquor card for work. Should I have been out hitch hiking? Probably not. Should I give my phone number to weird and lecherous Mexicans? No. But I've never had any talent for lying, even about my phone number, and especially when I'm getting a ride with some one I definitely should have let pass me by. I try to be as placating as possible. Call me a weak willed woman, but I prefer the term "Not a Judo Master."
So Don't Answer, Do Not Answer, Answer Not, and Never Answer Ever are all already taken. I have to change Sam's name to No Respondo. The waitress finally works up the nerve to come over, so I quick try to be all nice, like, "Oh, Sam...don't say that..." because I don't want to be caught out as a bitch in public. Real sympathetically I mouth the words "check please," and the waitress nods like she knows exactly what's going on. And she probably does.
I magnanimously let Sam pick up the tab, lest I increase his distraught feelings of rejection. We can't even use the coupon because he cried all over it and it's waterlogged. I get him out to the car and with a pat on the back I take off like I'm Batman, like you look the other way for a split second and he's gone. Batman gets away with that because he doesn't have a cell phone. Batman doesn't get text messages. And he sure as shit doesn't give his private number out to crazy ass stalkers like some sort of moron. I start getting text messages like "Woke up coverd in puke. Stil alive. unfortunately."
Unfortunately indeed.
This guy is trying to make me feel bad. And he's right. I should feel bad. Because there is a better way to deal with this situation than ducking behind the papaya display when I see him at Foodland. I'm convinced that if I wear my sunglasses and walk really fast that he won't recognize me. If I were a better person I would have just told him to fuck off from the beginning, and I would not be getting these text messages:
"Saw u @ foodland. wnt home n swallowed a bunch of pills. didnt work." Or:
"A taker takes and walks away, never looking back, thinking only of thierself. thougt u were dif. thougt u cared."
Well, Sam, I maybe would care if you weren't being a whiny little bitch. I mean, I get it. This guy is so upset that he really wants to end his life.
That might be a little more convenient for me.
Yeah, I maybe could have made some better choices. I was new to the island, I didn't have any friends, I put up with him for as long as I did because I needed to feel like I had some semblance of a life here. And also, he had that coupon. But it's not like I could turn back now, say "I'm sorry I was a callous bitch but I still hate you, don't call me." Right now there's really no way out of it without making it even worse.
After a while he stopped leaving me vicious voice mails, the text messaging eventually stopped. This was good news for me. But I noticed that I didn't run into him at Foodland any more, or anywhere else. No one I talked to had seen him, and none of out mutual acquaintances had heard from him at all. It had all seemed like some annoying joke at the time, and that's how I treated it, but when you get right down to it, this is a person who came to me for help, in whatever form, and I completely blew him off, to the point where I didn't even know if he were still alive. If his texts were anything to go by, he had, actually, already tried to kill himself.
Then I finally saw him over at Starbucks. Sipping his Starbucks coffee, eating his Starbucks Perfect Oatmeal. I almost killed him myself, that liar.
Instead I vowed to become more callous, more heartless, with every passing day, because look what being polite will get you! Just a bunch of bullshit. For me it isn't a difficult resolution, I was already like that to begin with.
I ended up dating this guy, lets call him Psychotic Loser. Actually, we'll call him Sam, for brevity. Obviously I didn't want to date a guy who might be summed up in those few words, but you know how men will have sex just to get laid? Women, and I'm not the only one, will have sex just to be polite. The end result is the same for both sexes: one of the party wants to chalk it up to a drunken impulse and forget the whole thing ever happened, and the other falls desperately in love and becomes a stalker.
Okay, that might not be the result every time...
Anyway, like I said, I was dating this guy against my will because I didn't know how to get out of it without being rude, basically I was just stringing him along to the benefit of neither. Every time we went out for a beer, or ran into each other at the store or something, I had this feeling like you might have if you were on the ground, watching someone else plummet from an airplane, and they think they have a parachute but you know they actually don't. Like, "Oh. This will not end well."
Sam and I were having lunch. It was a special occasion, so we were over at Denny's. Special Occasion meant he had a coupon there. And today is going to be the day the jumper reaches for that rip cord, and I already know what's coming next. He launches into the confession scenario, tears streaming into his Zesty Nachos, they're getting all soggy. The waitress is afraid to come to our table so I can get any more coffee. The long and short of it is, if we can't be together he doesn't have anything left to live for and he's going to do himself in. In that situation, I do the only thing I can do. Real slow, I reach under the table. I pull out my cell phone, and I delete his name.
.
I could happpily burn my cell phone tomorrow. A cell phone is something your boss invented so he could call you when you're at the beach and ask you to come into work. If I don't answer my phone it's because a) I'm busy, or b) I just don't want to talk to you. And there are some people out there I never to talk to. For instance:
I never want to talk to that guy who keeps calling me at the crack of dawn, pretending to be some one I know. The first time he called it was Christmas morning, and I assumed it was some one from back east, who forgot about the time difference in Hawaii. I answer the phone thinking it's my grandfather, he's like "Hi sweetie! How are you?"
"I'm fine, how are you?"
"I'm good. I'm real good." At this point I suspect I may have been mistaken. He says "I miss you."
"...Oh..."
"What are you wearing right now?"
It's Christmas. It's Six AM. What the fuck. I saved his number and programmed it as "Don't Answer."
"Never Answer Ever" is I guy I met at the pub who told me that if he were going to murder someone he would bludgeon them to unconsciousness, drown them in a bucket of salt water, and throw the body in the ocean, because it's always the lungs that give away the homicide. Good to know.
I met "Answer Not" in college, and he wrote me a love song, which he performed a la DeBergerac, at Three AM, about wanting to pick my flower.
And "Do Not Answer" is this little dude, Lachino, who picked me up when I was hitch hiking into Lahaina to get my liquor card for work. Should I have been out hitch hiking? Probably not. Should I give my phone number to weird and lecherous Mexicans? No. But I've never had any talent for lying, even about my phone number, and especially when I'm getting a ride with some one I definitely should have let pass me by. I try to be as placating as possible. Call me a weak willed woman, but I prefer the term "Not a Judo Master."
So Don't Answer, Do Not Answer, Answer Not, and Never Answer Ever are all already taken. I have to change Sam's name to No Respondo. The waitress finally works up the nerve to come over, so I quick try to be all nice, like, "Oh, Sam...don't say that..." because I don't want to be caught out as a bitch in public. Real sympathetically I mouth the words "check please," and the waitress nods like she knows exactly what's going on. And she probably does.
I magnanimously let Sam pick up the tab, lest I increase his distraught feelings of rejection. We can't even use the coupon because he cried all over it and it's waterlogged. I get him out to the car and with a pat on the back I take off like I'm Batman, like you look the other way for a split second and he's gone. Batman gets away with that because he doesn't have a cell phone. Batman doesn't get text messages. And he sure as shit doesn't give his private number out to crazy ass stalkers like some sort of moron. I start getting text messages like "Woke up coverd in puke. Stil alive. unfortunately."
Unfortunately indeed.
This guy is trying to make me feel bad. And he's right. I should feel bad. Because there is a better way to deal with this situation than ducking behind the papaya display when I see him at Foodland. I'm convinced that if I wear my sunglasses and walk really fast that he won't recognize me. If I were a better person I would have just told him to fuck off from the beginning, and I would not be getting these text messages:
"Saw u @ foodland. wnt home n swallowed a bunch of pills. didnt work." Or:
"A taker takes and walks away, never looking back, thinking only of thierself. thougt u were dif. thougt u cared."
Well, Sam, I maybe would care if you weren't being a whiny little bitch. I mean, I get it. This guy is so upset that he really wants to end his life.
That might be a little more convenient for me.
Yeah, I maybe could have made some better choices. I was new to the island, I didn't have any friends, I put up with him for as long as I did because I needed to feel like I had some semblance of a life here. And also, he had that coupon. But it's not like I could turn back now, say "I'm sorry I was a callous bitch but I still hate you, don't call me." Right now there's really no way out of it without making it even worse.
After a while he stopped leaving me vicious voice mails, the text messaging eventually stopped. This was good news for me. But I noticed that I didn't run into him at Foodland any more, or anywhere else. No one I talked to had seen him, and none of out mutual acquaintances had heard from him at all. It had all seemed like some annoying joke at the time, and that's how I treated it, but when you get right down to it, this is a person who came to me for help, in whatever form, and I completely blew him off, to the point where I didn't even know if he were still alive. If his texts were anything to go by, he had, actually, already tried to kill himself.
Then I finally saw him over at Starbucks. Sipping his Starbucks coffee, eating his Starbucks Perfect Oatmeal. I almost killed him myself, that liar.
Instead I vowed to become more callous, more heartless, with every passing day, because look what being polite will get you! Just a bunch of bullshit. For me it isn't a difficult resolution, I was already like that to begin with.