Thursday, December 30, 2004

What's It Like?

What's it like to be beautiful?
To look good and be adored?
What's it like to receive attention?
I'd like to know

What's it like to be with someone?
Someone who is there for you?
What's it like to have an actual partner?
I'd love to know

What's it like to not be alone?
To go through life cared for and appreciated
What's it like having companionship?
I'm dying to know

They say you must love yourself
Before anyone else can
But they don't say what it's like
When no one else cares
When you don't matter
To the rest of the world

If love were shelter
I would be homeless
If love were clothing
I would be naked
If love were food
I would be starving to death

I'd like to know
I'd love to know
I'm dying to know
I'd give anything to know

What it's like
To be loved

Wednesday, December 22, 2004

A Year Older

Today I turn 29 years old. Yikes.

Next year I will turn 30. With nothing to show for my life.

Now, that's no one's fault but mine. I realize this. It's still depressing as hell, but I know that we all get out of life what we put into it, and I haven't put shit into my life. But with the impending loss of my job and the full load of classes that I will take next semester, I am moving forward and making strides in an attempt to make something of myself. I may come up short ultimately, as usual, but if I don't put forth the effort how will I know?

This is turning into the year of sweeping the trash out of my life. It started with the Karen situation in March. Then I put my trust in Sarah's hands, and got squashed for my efforts. I fooled around with a woman I worked with this summer, and I bought her a present for her birthday a few months ago. Today, I got absolutely nothing from her. Not a gift, not a "Happy Birthday," not a fucking word. And we saw each other several times, so we didn't miss each other. I was a little hurt, a little disappointed, a little angry. What I wasn't was surprised. When I made the decisions to lay down with these walking vermin, I knew what I was getting into (except with Karen), so any bad results that occurred should not surprise me at all. We're not talking about women with great personal histories. And hell, I don't have much luck either, so the combinations were combustible from day one.

So in 2005, my resolution is to stop associating with people who I know are pieces of shit and expecting my efforts to treat them with respect and dignity to be appreciated. Karen? Obviously out of my life. Sarah? She called today, but I didn't answer or call her back. For what? As for the woman at work, I never plan to speak to her again. I have to surround myself with quality people if I expect to have a quality life. It's hard enough to focus and stay straight. It's much harder when your support group consists of whores and dirtbags and selfish people who care about no one but themselves.

My next blog will be after I return from Lexington for New Year's with Jane. Wish me luck.

Sunday, December 19, 2004

Peaks And Valleys

Some good news and some bad news came my way this past week. First, on Tuesday when I showed up for class, the head of the English department took me aside and asked, "Would you be (insert my full name here) by chance?" I said yes, very warily. I didn't know who he was when he asked. But he introduced himself and informed me that my exit essay had been chosen as the best out of all the students at my junior college, which is a little like saying that I was voted best looking man in a room full of hockey players. But I was still pleasantly surprised, especially considering that I didn't write the essay thinking that there was any kind of prize attached. He asked me to come back to school the next day to receive a prize for achieving this feat. I wavered, because Wednesday is not a school day for me and I was not interested in showing up for whatever "honor" was being bestowed on me...until he informed me of the $500 prize. Of course I was there with bells on the next day.

I walked into a room full of teachers. The English department had gathered in a room for their Christmas party, and this was the room I was told to come to when I got off work. It was a very humbling scene. All the teachers congratulated me one by one, some telling me that my essay was so good that they were passing it around to the other members of the faculty. Then I found out that the money was actually a scholarship in the name of a former English teacher at the college who died, and his sister, tears in her eyes, told everyone how much her brother meant to her and told me how proud he would be of my work. Then an empty envelope was given to me in the name of presentation, because the actual check had not been signed by the proper authorities. I said a couple of words, mostly how speechless and honored I was, then I shuffled back to my seat as if embarrassed by the attention. The check should be waiting for me when I come back after the Christmas--oops, winter--break. By the way, the essay was my answer to the question: "How does physical appearance affect how you look at yourself and how others look at you?" I had so much to say about that subject that I went through the five sheets of paper originally given to me and asked for one extra.

The award made me wonder where I would be if I had tried to attend college right out of high school. My grades were atrocious and my concentration was the same, so I honestly don't think I was ready for more school when I graduated high school. So I have been working at the same job for the last ten years while basically waiting to win Powerball so I wouldn't have to worry about education. But that never happened. Now that I have started school, it has been fun and rewarding. The three credits I received for passing English 101 may not seem like much, compared to the 60 I need for an associate's degree or the 120 I need for a bachelor's. But because I actually enjoyed the 17-week journey while I earned those, I am looking forward to what else I will learn while I pursue more credits. I will not be expecting more rewards for my writing, however. Perhaps I am a good enough writer where I will receive more accolades in the future. But for now, I need to enjoy the experience and make sure that I keep my concentration level high.

Speaking of that job I've had for ten years, that's the bad news. As you know if you read my previous post concerning what happened between me and "Karen," I have known that my position was being eliminated since October 2003. Friday morning, I learned that the end should be coming on January 7. Of course, me being the lazy fuck that I am, I have nothing lined up after I am let go. I have heard of receiving unemployment, but I know nothing about it. From what I hear, it won't pay nearly as much as what I'm making, not that I am making a lot now. This leaves me three options: Stay out here by myself and try to find work, get a roommate, or move back to my uncle's cramped house, where he, his wife, and their two teenage boys reside, in order to save money. I don't think I am moving back to my uncle's house; it's just too difficult to adjust to living with those many people after living alone for seven years. Plus, where would I host the houseguests with bags of dildos who blow me twenty minutes after meeting me? I don't think I want to look for a roommate; all the people I know I wouldn't want to live with, which leaves the rest of the world, who are all strangers. I don't deal with strangers well. Guess that leaves wasting my settlement check from my layoff on rent.

Notice how I did not consider moving in with "Jane" as an option. Yes, everything is still going well between us. We still talk every night, and usually every morning. But I have learned my lesson from Karen and "Sarah." I am not going to make plans to share a place with a woman until I feel like I really know her. This may take a few years of long-distance dating. Oh well. I'll be damned if I get screwed over again like those other women did to me. It's less than two weeks to the first meeting between me and Jane. I want this more than anything else in the world right now. We seem to be separated at birth, our personalities are so similar, and I absolutely cannot wait until we spend that weekend together to see how we mesh in real life, not just over the phone. But I will not expose my heart to Jane, no matter how much I think I am in love with her. It may not be fair to her, and it may hurt her that I seem to keep an air of distrust when dealing with her. But I swear the next woman to lie to me or let me treat them well all summer only to dump me because I don't apply clamps to her nipples and humiliate her, I don't know what I will do. I have to protect myself. No one else sure the fuck will.

Speaking of Sarah, she sent me a birthday card and wrote that she hopes I get all that I wish for. (My birthday is December 22.) It's taking all my self-control to not call her and curse her out. All that I wished for was one woman to treat me right and let me treat her right. And for several months she was okay with being that person. Then she started longing for those wonderful nights handcuffed on someone's kitchen floor with a ball gag in her mouth.

By the way, I heard that she is supposed to be moving up here to a suburb near me. I wonder what master she met that lives up this way? Stay tuned...

And if I don't get a chance to do it personally, happy holidays to all of you. I hope you all get what you wished for.

I'm going to go hang myself now or swallow some bleach or something...


Tuesday, December 07, 2004

My History (2nd In A Series)

This is the story of a relationship I had with a woman I met online. I'll call her "Sarah."

I saw Sarah's profile when I was bored and surfing a singles website one Saturday. This was in late 2003, when I was feeling so worried about where the relationship between me and Karen was headed that I went looking for someone else. No, I had not found out about Karen's other life yet, but there was just something not right about her. A long-distance relationship can work, but it's very hard when there's no phone calls or contact between the two parties, except for every other weekend, and that's only for a few hours sometimes. It's no excuse for me looking for something else, but that was my reasoning, and I'm not sorry.

Sarah's profile said that her hobbies were "sex, sex, sex," and she had pictures that sure made it seem like that was all she thought about. Finally, I thought, someone desperate enough to perhaps fuck me. And she was in the state, another plus. Her pics were very blunt, she had both her breasts in her hands in one pic and was holding them up on display, and another pic had her nipples being pinched by clothespins. For some reason the pics made my dick instantly hard, and that's exactly what I told her in my first e-mail to her. I guess I've always been attracted to women who have no inhibitions about their body. That certainly described Sarah. We flirted through e-mail for a few weeks, then she let me see her on her webcam, and her lack of inhibition continued as she would often set the webcam on the floor and proceed to show me everything about her. And I mean everything.

Soon we were talking on the phone, very suggestively of course, and despite me having had sex with Karen at this point, I decided to invite Sarah up to my apartment. This was a four-hour drive for her, so I was feeling very good about things, seeing that she had talked to me and still wanted to meet me. She would tell me in the days leading up to her coming here exactly what she planned to do to me when she got here. I couldn't wait. Finally, on a Tuesday, she met me outside my apartment after I got off work. I had the next day off, in case things worked out well. And work out well they did: Twenty minutes after we met, Sarah was between my legs adjacent from me, giving me oral sex...and swallowing every single drop. She even brought a bag of sex toys with her to continue the fun as long as she wanted. No doubt about it, Sarah knew exactly what she liked and what she wanted to do, and I was loving it.

Sarah visited several more times, including on my birthday, December 22nd, when she helped me wrap Karen's Christmas gifts in between sessions of fucking me. It was a perfect scenario for me. Sarah loved having sex with me, she was disease-free and unable to get pregnant, she loved giving me oral sex, and she was insatiable in bed. There was honestly no reason I could find to stop seeing her, Karen be damned. She was even fun outside the bedroom. Sarah had a small-town personality to her, having been born in Kentucky and living in the relatively small Springfield, IL, and it was a refreshing change from the arrogant bitches I worked with in the city of Chicago. She really seemed to be enjoying life, and I was enjoying it more and more every time I saw her.

In fact, I was enjoying it too much. Once the new year came and plans intensified between me and Karen for me to move to Milwaukee with her, I started withdrawing from Sarah because I wanted to make it easier on myself when I left the area and stopped seeing her. We had not spoken in several weeks when that Friday came that I discovered Karen's swingers website. After calling my best friend and expressing my shock, I called Sarah, but got no answer from her cell phone. Then I talked to Sarah's daughter online, desperately looking for someone to talk to. She let Sarah know that I needed to talk to her ASAP. Sarah called that evening, I told her the story, and she drove the four hours the next morning to my apartment and spent the entire weekend with me, consoling me, fucking me, going to a comedy club with me to get my mind off things, and going bowling with me so someone could be there with me when I broke the news to my uncle, who was a teammate on my bowling team. I will never forget Sarah being there for me that weekend, dropping everything to come up here and make sure I wasn't alone. Who knows what I would've done if I didn't have her there with me.

This began a serious relationship between Sarah and me. Sarah became sort of my rescuer, the person who was there for me in my worst moment, my best friend, lover, and the only thing I had in my life to hold on to. This may have been a lot for a promiscuous woman such as herself to take on, but she did. She visited on most of her two-day breaks from her job, driving up here sometimes right after work at 10PM, arriving at my apartment at 1AM or 2AM and staying until the morning she had to return to work two days later. She would drive me to my job in the morning and then take off for Springfield, only having a brief rest period until she started work at 2PM. We told each other that we loved each other, but I would preface it by saying that it wasn't the same type of love I had for Karen. It was the love and appreciation I had for someone who was always there for me, whereas the love I had for Karen was the be-my-wife-and-mother-of-my-children type. I wasn't sure if Sarah resented that, but she did make it clear that she wasn't expecting to be in love with anyone ever again, and she was being a good girl and not sleeping around especially for me. Of course, after what I had just been through, I had to reason to trust her, but I wanted to.

Sarah told me the weekend that she came here after my breakup with Karen that she would be there for me and do anything for me, and I immediately jumped on the occasion to ask her if she would let me move to Springfield with her. She said yes. I spent a weekend down there with her getting a feel for her apartment and the town, and I liked the quiet atmosphere. I was looking forward to going there and starting over, just like I was looking forward to moving to Milwaukee and starting over. But I didn't intend to be in a monogamous relationship with Sarah. I never had that in my mind when I met her, or after we slept together, or at any point. And as a result, the beginning of the end of our relationship came when her 22-year-old daughter, "Elaine," started flirting with me. Elaine was engaged, but she didn't let that stop her from giving me a big hug when I met her and Sarah on my first trip to Springfield and later pecking me goodbye on the lips in front of Sarah. I honestly didn't think Sarah would have a problem with me sleeping with her daughter, especially considering I wouldn't be the first man to have had them both. But on the Monday after Sarah and I returned from a weekend in Louisville at the Kentucky Derby, where we had a wonderful time and seemed to be as together as ever before, Elaine's flirting became heavier, and when I chatted with Elaine on the computer the day after the Kentucky Derby trip, Sarah's irritation was palpable. A joke I made about Elaine having a dick (no, she didn't, just some bad joke by me) turned into Elaine actually typing in the words, "No I don't have a dick, but I have a pussy. It's wet for you." And when Sarah saw this, well, it was time to talk.

Sarah informed me that whatever relationship we were supposed to have, casual, serious, whatever, she would not feel comfortable with me starting to see her daughter when I'm supposed to be moving in with her soon. I understood, and put the brakes on anything physical happening between me and Elaine. But a convergence of events would tear at the fabric of that agreement between me and Sarah. Elaine was supposed to come visit friends near Chicago that Thursday and made plans to come see me, just as friends. On Tuesday, Sarah returned to Springfield. When Thursday came, Elaine's fiance found out about her plans to see me and expressed his outrage. Elaine then called in tears and told me that she was not coming to see me. The next day, Elaine informed me that a man that Sarah had a long sexual history with was staying at Sarah's house, and the smell of alcohol was in the air. Sarah claimed to have quit drinking. What's worse, Sarah stayed up past midnight one night with me telling me how she kept telling this same man to leave her alone, that she wasn't interested in seeing him anymore, but that he kept calling and she didn't know what to do. Among my advice was to ignore him or to call the police. Not among my advice was to let the fucker into her house and get drunk with him for two days, right after she spent a great weekend in Louisville with me. But I really didn't mind if she fucked him. My problem was with her telling me how special our relationship was and how she didn't want me to see her daughter, but it was okay for her to see this guy, whom she admitted was nothing more than a fuckbuddy.

I was livid. I didn't even want her daughter for a good reason other than she wanted to fuck me, and I never turn down a woman that actually wants to fuck me. It was just the principle of her asking me to respect what we had, then disrespecting it herself. She admitted he was there with her when I called, but claimed that they weren't doing anything together, which I would never believe because of how much she told me she didn't want anything to do with the guy anymore. Why else would she decide to let him back into her life if not to fuck her? That's all he could do, according to her. I angrily threw insults and accusations at her until...wait for it...this nigger grabs the phone and tells me that they really weren't doing anything together and that he's such a morally upstanding person that he wouldn't lie to me, even though he had a girlfriend he was stepping out on at the time. I felt like the biggest fool in the world that night, and honestly, for the rest of the summer, because I knew she had fucked him but didn't have the concrete proof. I wondered why I had to always meet these types of women, that lie and cheat and have no respect for me, until I realized: Hey, I was lying and cheating on Karen when I started seeing Sarah in the first place.

At that point I decided to accept whatever happened because I deserved it for being such a dick that I slept with Sarah despite dating Karen. So for the rest of the summer, I backed off and let Sarah be, and we went out when she could make it here to Chicago and enjoyed ourselves, and still had plans for me to move down there when my job let me go. The last time we went out, I thought I really did a good job of trying to make her happy. I bought concert tickets for an artist that she really liked, but she had her teenage son for the summer and didn't want to leave him alone in her Springfield apartment, so I rented a hotel room for two nights and had them both up here as my guests. We enjoyed the concert, then went out to dinner the next night. I thought everything was going well.

So, of course, because this is me we're talking about, it all came apart soon after. I had always known that Sarah was bisexual and into BDSM. Well, she started asserting herself more and being more confrontational after discovering a BDSM club in her area where she met other people who enjoy that lifestyle. She had always felt that she was weird and felt alone because of her love of pain, but with this group of people, she was no longer alone, and she gained the confidence to tell me that my loving and caring ways weren't what got her off. Soon after, she went to Milwaukee for a weekend to visit a man who was a foster brother for a brief time during her childhood, when she went from foster home to foster home. When I talked to her that Saturday afternoon, she couldn't stop talking about this guy's wife and how "sweet her pussy is." She didn't call me at all that night, the first night since we became serious that she didn't call. I didn't sleep at all that night. I knew that she was fucking this woman, and probably the man, too. The next day when I asked her what she was doing the night before, she expressed shock that I would think that she would fuck her foster brother. I asked, "So all weekend you haven't done anything sexual with anyone?" Her response: "Well, I ate his wife out. Twice." I asked if she thought this was cheating on me. She said no, because it was with a woman. I vehemently disagreed, and the next weekend, after a week of arguing, she dumped me, claiming that she just didn't want me moving in with her because she needed her space. When I offered to do anything to stay with her, she showed just how much she wanted to get rid of me by describing in detail a night she had spent with a man she met in this BDSM club. Electric shock, nipple clamps, ripping her pubic hair out by the roots, making her sleep all night naked on a cold kitchen floor, making her go to the bathroom on newspaper in the corner...and at the end of all this she said, "And I loved every minute of it. I got off on it. I love to be humiliated. Is that the type of woman you want to be in love with?" And because I didn't want to lose her, I told her that I would accept her in any way she wanted, bruised, battered, whatever. I told her that I understood what she wanted, and I didn't care. She said, "You don't understand me. You never will understand me."

Most people would love to meet someone that would accept them under any conditions. Sarah? She came to my apartment two days later, picked up her personal belongings, and left. I cried pretty hard that weekend. She said she did too, but why? She was getting exactly what she wanted. She was dumping me. She was ridding herself of the albatross of a monogamous relationship, which she never wanted because that's not what got her off. She would be free to fuck anyone she wanted, the man she claimed she wanted to get rid of, her foster brother's wife, her foster brother, her daughter, whoever.

And I was all alone. Again.

Wednesday, December 01, 2004

No Turning Back

It's official. On Friday, December 31, at 5:50P, United Airlines Flight 6885 will leave O'Hare Airport here in Chicago and go nonstop to Lexington, KY, and I have a ticket to be on it. I shall meet Jane at the airport and she will drive us ten minutes to a nearby Comfort Inn hotel, where I have reserved a room for two nights.

I am so fucking scared.

I don't know this girl from Joe Blow, I've never even seen a picture, and I'm getting on an airplane for the first time since 1990 to meet her? What the hell is my problem? Do I need love that much? Am I really that needy? And, most important, can I get a full refund on that plane ticket if I should come to my senses in the next thirty days?

Actually, I have no intentions of backing out now. I can't be wrong about every woman I date. One of them has to actually turn out to be human, right? And we speak every night, and every morning, and even when I call when she's not expecting me to, she always picks up the phone and talks and tells me how happy she is to hear me. So if she's a lying bitch like everyone else I've ever gone out with, she's doing an even better job of hiding it than Karen.

But I'm not turning back now because I can't live my life not trusting everybody. That's no way to go about living. I can't shoot down every opportunity that comes my way just because it might not work out. That's a good way to ensure that I grow up lonely and bitter, which I may still do anyway. But I have to explore the things and people that interest me, and just hope that things turn out happy in the end. Wish me luck.

A woman I dated this summer, "Sarah," would argue my opinion that everyone I've ever been with was a lying bitch. She may not have lied to me, I will admit. All she did was listen to me beg her to stay with me and tell her that she was all I had and all I wanted and that I would accept her in any way that she wanted, and respond by telling me that I never understood her and never will. Huh? It was a big mess, and I'll explain it in my next post.

Until then...

Wednesday, November 24, 2004

Thankful

For my family, always there for me regardless of my stupid decisions.

For my health; although I'm a big man I'm a strong man and I hold my own.

For my friends, willing to ignore my many faults and hang around me anyway.

For anyone like Sunshyn, Cassandra, my playmom Cheryl, and even Meredith, who tell me the truth about myself and show me how good I am...or what an asshole I am.

For "Jane," who makes me believe in love again.

For the franchise mode on my video games, so I can feel like I'm accomplishing SOMETHING in this world.

For the NBA, NFL, MLB, and college sports; without them I would spend my nights watching reality TV and losing brain cells.

For Britney Spears, Tara Reid, Jessica and Ashlee Simpson, Paris Hilton, and Anna Nicole...women whose complete lack of talent and intelligence make me appreciate real women even more.

For Giordano's Deep Dish Pizza...the next best thing to sex.

For the CTA, cause owning a car in this city must be fucking hell and so far I haven't had to find out.

For life. It is beautiful, it is precious, and it belongs to each of us. Let's take full advantage of it while we can.

For love, which everybody needs.

For anyone who cares to read this. I appreciate you more than you could possibly imagine.

Tuesday, November 23, 2004

Remove Foot From Mouth

I must immediately backtrack now and ignore my previous post concerning the lady I was talking with on the computer. For, you see, we have fallen in love.

Whether it happened because one or both of us is insane and desperate for love and understanding, time will tell I suppose. All I know is I have never felt a connection with someone as strong as I feel with "Jane." Jane was too shy to call me before last Sunday, November 14, but when she finally did, I talked to a woman with a voice of honey and a spirit so strong I felt I could reach through the phone and touch it. And I'm not a spiritual person at all, folks. Not even close. In the week and a half we have talked since, Jane and I have bonded and told each other things we both never thought we would tell a living soul. She was so heartbroken after the breakup of her relationship with her daughter's father that she had shut her feelings down and given up on love. She was devoting all her time to her infant. And I, of course, was adrift as usual.

I think we need each other. I think we were intended to come together at this point in our lives, after the end of relationships we both thought would be forever. I know what I bring to the table after going through the events of the past year. And that is a healthier outlook on love and relationships. You see, if Jane and I somehow don't work out, I will be fine. I have so much more self-confidence than before, when I met Karen. I thought when Karen and I broke up that I would never love anyone again. It was just too hard on me, and love shouldn't be hard on anyone. It should be a wonderful experience that enhances an already fulfilling life. Karen was my life. That's the difference.

I want nothing more than Jane to become a part of my life, to welcome her into my world with open arms and show her that from this day forward she now has someone she can rely on and believe in. But if the day comes when she doesn't want that any longer, I will let go, shrug my shoulders, and continue the search for the one who understands me and wants my love. I now realize that my heart doesn't belong to Jane or Karen or my high school girlfriend or the hundreds of other women I have attempted to share it with over my lifetime only to be told "You aren't man enough for me" or "I think you're a really good person, but..." or "I think we should just be friends." My heart belongs to me. And I'll be damned if I have picked up the pieces to it after having it shattered by Karen so that I can give it to someone else to jump on and trample. I do love Jane. I already feel that strongly about her. But, if she's just pretending to love me back for some reason, I'll be okay. I won't be alone forever. I'm too fucking good to be.

Saturday, November 13, 2004

My History (1st In A Series)

This is the story of a relationship I had last year with a woman who I met online. I'll call her "Karen."

Since I'm very shy, I don't go out to meet people, so if I date at all it's women that I meet online. That's because online I can tell the woman upfront how big I am, what my hobbies are, etc., and she can decide whether she wants to reject me before we meet, which is much more preferable to being rejected face to face. So Labor Day, 2003, I'm surfing online personal ads when I come across one from a woman living in Wisconsin looking for a black man over 200 lbs. with a shaved head, which was her "weakness." Well, I'm a black man over 200 lbs. with a shaved head, so I decided to contact her.

Karen and I chatted through e-mails for about a month before I decided to try to get up to Wisconsin to meet her. Our first meeting was at a women's pro football game in Kenosha, WI. Why there? Because my friend got a job broadcasting those games, and I could tag along with him going up to Kenosha and coming back. Karen actually lived about 45 minutes away from Kenosha, but she agreed to come down to meet me because otherwise we weren't going to meet unless she came to Chicago. She looked exactly like her picture, except her hair was brown in the picture and now it was blonde. She was 5'4", about 200 lbs., with glasses, and she seemed even more shy than me. She quietly sat through the football game, saying almost nothing, then she, my friend, and I went to a restaurant afterwards and had dinner. At the end of the date, which I thought didn't go well because she seemed so bored all night, Karen gave me a long hug and a kiss on the lips, which shocked me. I guess she liked me more than I thought.

We met the exact same way a couple of weeks later, and at the end of this date, we kissed in the rain for almost five minutes. So everything seemed to be going well. Our e-mails were getting steamier, and if there wasn't much we seemed to have in common outside the bedroom, it was becoming clear that we were interested in finding out more about each other in the bedroom. So, predictably, on the third date, Sweetest Day, when I took a Metra train to Kenosha without my friend, Karen and I went back to her house, watched some rented movies, and made love. We took too much time the next morning, so I missed the train back to Chicago, and without any complaints she drove me all the way back home, a two-hour drive. She thanked me with lots of kisses, and she wrote the sweetest e-mail the next day saying no one had ever given her flowers for Sweetest Day and that night was "like a dream...I'm asking myself, is this really happening to me?" I thought I was falling in love.

Karen kept doing things to make me believe that she really was in love with me, small things like having my favorite soda at her apartment when I visited, and large things like surprising me with expensive tickets to a wrestling match for my birthday. Around this time I found out that my job was being eliminated soon, and when I told Karen this, she immediately started dropping hints about how nice of a city Milwaukee was. I asked her if she wanted me to move in with her so soon, and she said yes. I had a nagging feeling that it wasn't a good idea, but because I wanted to be in love and I thought she was in love with me, I agreed to move up to Milwaukee with her as soon as my job let me go. Of course, my family wasn't thrilled about this when I broke the news on Thanksgiving. But I felt so much like Karen was the one I had been waiting for my whole life that I invited her to spend Christmas with me and my family. She drove to my apartment, I gave her the stuffed animals that she had been hinting she wanted for Christmas, then we drove to my uncle's house and spent a beautiful Christmas Day with my family. Once my folks saw how over the moon I was about her, and she seemed to be about me, they eased up on the worries that we were going too fast.

The first sign of trouble came when Karen didn't call or e-mail me for New Year's. This after she asked me no less than three times what we were doing for New Year's. Actually she never called me in the entire six-month relationship. Maybe that was the first sign of trouble and I didn't realize it. When she did write a week later, she claimed she was at her parents' house. No explanation for why she kept asking me to make plans, then disappeared for a week. Around this time she started being too busy working to meet me on the weekends, so I only saw her once between Christmas and Valentine's Day. And oh, what a strange Valentine's Day it was. It was on a Saturday, and that whole week she was on a cruise, so if we were doing anything for Valentine's Day I didn't know because I couldn't get ahold of her. That afternoon I e-mailed her asking if I should be preparing to come up to Wisconsin, and she wrote back telling me yes, leaving me wondering just when the hell she planned to let me know this. It was a strange evening because we met a friend of hers I'll call "Rhonda" who was married with kids and didn't mind letting everyone know that the guy with her as a Valentine's date was neither her husband nor the father of her kids. The poor dude, neither one of us knew the sick web we were in that evening. It was just dinner and dancing, maybe three hours, but it felt like eternity with that woman. I gave Karen two different Valentine's Day presents in addition to roses, and when I pulled out the second gift after we got to her place she cried out "No, no more presents!" Nice reaction. More quiet sex followed, which was normal, she always made almost no sound during sex, as if she was waiting for it to be over with. The next day she literally slept until 3PM.

I wonder every day what would've happened if I hadn't been bored and surfed the singles website where I met Karen, but one day I did that, and I came across an ad from a woman named Tawanda Lou Benton advertising a BBW (big beautiful women) swingers and sex club in southern Wisconsin, complete with a link to the Yahoo group formed by the leaders of the group. Curious, I clicked the link. The front page of the Yahoo group had no pictures, but the text read, in part: "Our moderators, Karen, Rhonda, and Linda, will be happy to assist you with any questions." Hmm, I thought. The Karen and Rhonda I know are both BBWs, both live in Wisconsin, and Rhonda is a swinger and isn't the least bit ashamed of it. Wouldn't it be crazy if this is my Karen doing this shit, and I never knew? So I applied to join the Yahoo group, just to get in to see the messages on the message board and look at the profiles of the moderators and make sure in my crazy little mind that this wasn't my Karen. My first application was denied. My second application was denied. I used a different e-mail address and applied again, and again I was denied. The last time I ever saw Karen was on a Tuesday, about three weeks after Valentine's Day and about two weeks after I first saw the ad for this swingers website. I asked Karen of she had any weird fetishes that she had never told me about. She said no. I asked her if there were any surprises that she would have for me once I moved in with her, sexual or otherwise. She said no. I was this close to bringing up the website by name to see her reaction but I didn't. The last thing she ever said to me after I kissed her neck goodbye was, "Thanks for getting me all worked up."

Three days later, that Friday, I went to the swingers site after I came home from work. Instead of the usual front page, a new picture had been placed on the front page. It was Karen and Rhonda, in a photographer's studio, looking seductively at the camera, wearing no clothes. I almost fell out of my chair. After pacing for an hour not believing what I was looking at, I called Karen. No answer. I left a message asking her to please call as soon as possible. I guess I wanted her side of the story before I totally lost it. I waited all evening. No call. I wrote a one-sentence e-mail: "All I want to know is, why lie to me all this time?" Instead of calling me, she left an e-mail response the next morning: "I don't know what you're talking about, but believe what you want."

I called again, but again no answer. I then pasted the link to the website and e-mailed: "THIS is what I'm talking about." I don't know how long that e-mail was, but it contained such choice words as: "What kind of sick game were you playing on me?" and the sentence that made me cry while I typed it: "I let you meet my family you fucking whore!" She never responded to the e-mails or the voice messages. I was admitted into the group that same Saturday morning, and I got to read the posts she had left over the two years she had been running the site. Seems she's always had a fetish for black men with shaved heads. It also seemed that she didn't enjoy her Christmas with my family. A member of the group asked her what she got for Christmas. Her response: "A glimpse into my future...and a great big headache."

My mental breakdown was gradual. Every day I came up with more and more elaborate ways to physically hurt this woman. Every night when I went to bed I couldn't get to sleep. My gut felt like someone had blown a grenade up in me. I didn't eat as much, couldn't stop thinking about her, and when someone got me to laugh or tried to cheer me up, I wouldn't be able to do it for more then three seconds. It was like I had lost my ability to enjoy anything, even the things I usually enjoyed. Finally, two months later, sick and tired of thinking about nothing except how many ways I wanted to kill this woman, I checked myself into the Stone Psychiatric Institute at Northwestern Memorial. I stayed there a week. I learned ways to cope with my concentration level and to stop obsessing about the situation. I went on antidepressants. Now, eight months later, it feels like such a distant memory. Sometimes I still feel myself thinking of Karen and starting to become angry again, but instead of simmering all day, it fades. But the one problem I still have and always will is what I could've done to see it coming. People tell me that I can just take a lesson from it and move on. Exactly what lesson should I take? Don't trust anybody? Don't trust anybody I meet online? Don't trust women? Don't trust white women? Don't believe it when someone tells me they love me?

The only thing I learned is that anyone who says they know that their partner is faithful and would never hurt them is an imbecile. All humans are capable of hurting the ones they are close to. And some even get off on it.

Thursday, November 11, 2004

Something Seems Familiar

Just checking in between classes at school. There was a teachers' strike that cost us three weeks of classes, so just being in school is something in itself. I'm flying through English 101 with straight As, which those who know me can testify will only make me more paranoid about how bad the higher levels of English will kick my ass. Speaking of paranoid...

I am in the middle of yet another online relationship, and as I will explain in later posts, the others haven't exactly gone well. This one has all the makings of disaster. The woman is about ten hours away from me, in eastern Kentucky. She claims not to have a picture, and says she's very shy and cautious because of the bad relationships in her past, which we all have. But she's not shy when it comes time to talk about sex. I have found out in the two weeks I've "known" her that she likes to give head, she prefers giving head to black men because it's more exciting, she has fucked ten guys in her life, the father of her one-year-old is so old he has a daughter her age (26!), and she thinks about me when she masturbates...but we've never met. Can you say psycho, boys and girls? But she's so shy that she refuses to call me even though she has my phone number. And when I suggested that I come down for a visit, she almost broke her computer typing so fast to tell me that she's not ready to meet me so soon. So I'm already resigned to the fact that this has no future. Hell, since she won't talk to me, I still don't know if this is even a woman.

Well my next class is about to start, so I suppose I should attend it. You may not know yet what happened in my past online relationships that was so bad, but this should tell you how bad it was: I spent a week in a psychiatric institution earlier this year in the aftermath of one woman who almost singlehandedly destroyed me. What the fuck happened? I'll tell you in my next post.

Until then...

Saturday, November 06, 2004

Feels Like The First Time

I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing.

Now that that's established...

I am a single black male, 28, living in Chicago. I am a ball of emotions and opinions, and boy, do I have a lot of them. From being a large person (the last doctor's visit said 370 lbs. but I sure don't fucking feel that big) to being a black man to being a clean and sober individual to being a person with some common sense, I have many unique qualities that enable me to experience, well, some fucked-up shit. And some fun, where I can find it.

For instance, tonight the best friend whose ex-girlfriend I fucked a few weeks ago but don't have the balls to tell him that and I are going to a riverboat to play a little poker. You know how guys are, we don't share our feelings or talk about how good in bed their ex-girlfriend is, so I don't ever anticipate telling him about that or this blog, for that matter. He's not into blogs, anyway. The only way he would read this is if it was linked to the Yahoo profile of some psycho chick with a prison record.

So with that, I will log off now. I'll update every so often, mostly when something happens that makes me wonder what planet I really came from, cause I sure don't feel like I'm from Earth. Thus, the name Planetdre. Any feedback at all would be more than I get on a daily basis, because I'm not rich and I don't look like Denzel, so no one ever pays me any attention.

Until next time...