The Saga Of Shelley

Okay, that's two days I've showed up at my college around noon to get my U-Pass, the bus pass that every student at a City College of Chicago can receive when they enroll for a semester of 12 credit hours or more, and that's two days that many others and I have been turned away because they gave out tickets earlier and ran out, even though nowhere on the 57, 923 signs around the building displaying the hours that one can get a U-Pass does it say anything about arriving before the earliest hour displayed so that you can get a fucking ticket. Yeah, I'm a little pissed. I considered barging through the doors and demanding to get my pass since I was, you know, actually there during the hours that they ask people to come get a U-Pass. The only reason I would consider something so rude is because it seems like something "Shelley" would do, because she believes that the world owes her anything she wants, or at least she acts like it. So since I have an hour and a half to kill before my first class, and I'm very pissed off, it seems like a perfect time to write about the woman who singlehandedly made me vow to never hand over all that I am to a woman ever again, the Dyke Princess herself, Shelley.

Shelley posted an ad on craigslist.org saying that she was "now taking applications" for men who wanted to be her lover. They had to be confident men who liked bigger women and would have patience and realize that she was rather inexperienced with men but that once she felt comfortable she would be "...open to anything." I came on strong with some response about how she better not be a hooker because her location was the Loop, and the women I saw putting out ads who were in the Loop usually were call girls. She assured me that she wasn't, and she said that I had her attention. So, I continued with the confident, aggressive tone of my e-mails. I could only laugh when she asked if, being a black guy, I had a problem hooking up with a white woman; she actually asked if I had ever been with one before. Her name on her e-mail account was that of a famous character in Chicago movie history, but I didn't know that wasn't her real name until she told me. So it was obvious that she was in love with Chicago and that she was doing all she could to take it in and live it up, as if she was Carrie on Sex And The City. Soon we talked on the phone, and she told me some things about herself that were eye-raising right off the bat. She said that she writes an online lesbian dating advice column. She said that she didn't have much experience with men because she was a lesbian for ten years. The last couple of years, she was in an off-on relationship with a black guy in her hometown of Kansas City. She said that she wouldn't call that relationship dead, that they were still friends and that she still cared deeply for him, but that she was looking for someone to be with while she was here in Chicago going to school. Her mean, angry demeanor had not been shown yet, and neither had my meek, introverted style. We were going to meet for drinks the night of Game 4 of the World Series, but with the White Sox poised to clinch, we thought it best to wait until the next night. She wanted someone who could host because she was living with three roommates, so I invited her to my danger zone of an apartment, and because I was working at CEDA during the day and watching and celebrating the Sox at night, I did not make time to thoroughly clean the place. As a result, my first impression to her was that of a slob, and I'm sure that didn't help what I perceived to be the main problem between us, that she didn't like or respect me. I honestly don't think she would have used me the way she did if I was the strong, aggressive type of guy she thought I would be.

Shelley waited for me outside the Red Line train stop two blocks from my apartment, but she was wearing a black coat and had a scowl on her face like someone had just knocked her upside the head or something. She told me to look for a trench coat but didn't say what color, and for some reason I was looking for a tan or brown coat because that's what my brain thinks when I hear "trench coat." And the one picture of her face that she sent was of her smiling, so silly me thought that she looked like that all the time. (I have rarely seen her smile since.) Add to that the fact that she's not tall, and I actually walked right past her and into the train station looking for a smiling brunette in a brown or tan coat. I came back out, looked at her weird, and stammered, "Shelley?" She didn't seem happy at that. So I don't know what her first impression of me physically was, but she did nothing for me. She was short, her ass was huge, and she had that scowl that looked like she wanted to be anywhere but there. It would have been different if she was smiling and happy to see me. She has a great smile. Unfortunately, I don't bring it out because I'm not the aggressive hardcore nigga she was hoping I would be. She knew that I don't drink, so she actually brought along her own mini bottle of white zinfandel, which was another thing that bothered me. She didn't even want to get to know me, she wanted to loosen up so she could get laid immediately. Once she got over the shock of my messy place, she saw a wrestling book that I had lying around, and she got excited as she told me that her father was a famous wrestler. So with that as a background, after she lost interest in an erotic R-rated Gina Gershon movie I popped in, we wound up watching part of an ECW DVD I have. Somewhere along the way I got up the nerve to kiss her, but on our way to the bedroom, here's the list of things she complained about: The chair she was sitting in while I was kissing her was uncomfortable, the floor on her way to my bathroom was too messy, I didn't prepare the bedroom and put some music on while she was in the john (because I didn't know if she was coming back to watch more of the DVD or what), and once we got in the bedroom, the bed was uncomfortable and I didn't move fast enough to take off her shirt and bra. (And the only two compliments were that I was a good kisser and that my bathroom was clean, but the bathroom comment was an insult because it suggested that she expected shit on the walls and scum in the bathtub due to how messy the rest of the joint was. But I guess I deserved that.) Now, if a man can't get excited after all that scolding, then he must not have a pulse, right?! My head was hurting at that point. After I gave her an orgasm with my fingers (and got scolded because my nails were too long), I tried to give her the real thing, but the combination of her fat, my fat, and the angle we were attempting resulted in no penetration after close to a full minute. She then asked if I was wearing a condom, and because my previous lovers couldn't get pregnant and swore they were clean, I had been going bareback since high school. So I had to run to the living room and open the box of condoms I had bought a year ago in preparation to visit "Jane" in Kentucky before she canceled. The combination of the pressure to perform for a new lover, all of Shelley's cutting comments, being in the dark, and not having applied a rubber in over a decade made my dick start to get softer as I tried to put it on, so I asked Shelley to give me a hand, literally. Her response: "Oh no, you're gonna have to give yourself a hand." It was as if my cock was toxic and she didn't want to touch the damn thing. That was the last straw; my erection went completely away, and for the first time as an adult, I had a woman lying naked in a bed waiting for me to fuck her, and I couldn't.

Shelley came back two days later on a Saturday, but she claimed to be extremely tired from running around shopping and went straight to my bedroom to take a nap. When I tried to cozy up to her, she reminded me that I had a paper to write for a class and basically kicked me out of my own bed. I let her sleep for an hour and a half, did the paper, came back in the room, and got up the guts to kiss her, strip her, and finger her again. She then became the first woman I've ever been with to complain about her orgasm. She said she came so hard that it gave her a headache. With that looming over me in addition to the events of the first night she was with me, when she told me to keep going, I realized that I couldn't, because I wasn't at all aroused. I didn't even bother taking my pants off this time. We watched a movie, then she left. That was the last time she ever came to--or in--my apartment. She explained later that I had to grow some balls and step to her if I wanted her to come back because she was tired of being there when others are down and encouraging everybody in her life. "Right now, the cheerleader needs a cheerleader," is how she put it.

This is where Shelley basically decided that I would be good for nothing other than entertaining her and paying for whatever she wanted, and it's 100% my fault for letting it happen. She stopped pretending that she wanted to be intimate with me. Once, I commented that I had not had a real kiss from her since she came to my apartment, and she got upset because: "I don't have to sit on your lap and shove my tongue down your throat to show you that I like you." In other words, she didn't have any desire to give me a real kiss. We would go out to dinner and I would pay every single time. She claimed that she couldn't even put anything on a credit card or write a check because her credit was so bad, she couldn't get a card or a bank account. She said that she was having trouble finding work because she was afraid of a background check, which would turn up something bad in her past. At least four times she gave me this line about a friend who works at Sprint having a job interview lined up for her in some suburb, but she needed $20 from me to take the CTA and Metra to this interview. The interview never happened; it was always canceled by the manager of the store because new personnel had come in since the last time, and they didn't know who she was, so they blew her off. Sometimes she didn't even make up a story. She just said that she was broke and needed money. She would usually make the comment that she felt like a whore always asking me for money. But she never stopped asking. I resisted the temptation to tell her that she couldn't be a whore as far as I'm concerned because whores actually fuck their clients, but she could respond that she was lying there waiting for me to fuck her and I couldn't. She knew a lot about whores, as it turns out; she claims that her lesbian lover and she used to run a brothel. She wasn't a working girl herself, she says. But she sure knew how to turn on the sympathy when she needed money. That one-week stint she had at my job at CEDA as a file clerk was lined up before she met me; she had been talking to Smart Resources about a gig before I ever came into her life. But once she got let go from that, she seemed to lose all interest in finding work and started concentrating on what she said was the only way she could stay in school and keep living in Chicago, her big score on me, the wimpy nice guy who couldn't say no: She asked me to co-sign a student loan for her.

Shelley had argued with me a couple of times at this point, berating me for not looking happy enough when I was with her, even though she seemed downright disgusted to be with me. Once, we met at a Borders, and I walked ahead of her going down the escalator, and she exploded, telling me that I didn't respect her and the fact that she was "bleeding like a cow," as she eloquently put it, but stuck around downtown to meet me anyway. When I e-mailed her later asking what she wanted from me, she responded, "Nothing. It's obvious you don't want to live life because you're too busy rolling in your own shit." I left her alone and didn't write or call, and wasn't ever going to again after that comment, but she called me four days later apologizing and saying that we should move on because we were both assholes that day. I forgave and hoped that she would start treating me better. Then I remembered that I had told her that I received the tickets for the play Chicago that I bought for her birthday, November 29, and that's why she had to make up with me. So there was always something in it for her when she saw me or called me or said she was sorry for the way she treated me. I saw all this, but I didn't care. That's how bad I wanted a woman in my life. She was at the height of her manipulative skills when she told me she needed me to co-sign the student loan for her. She invited me to her apartment, told me to bring food for her, and broke down while telling me that she can't stay in Chicago if I don't do this for her. "I'm taking a chance on dating you, so please take a chance on me," she said. Then we watched The Godfather, and she cuddled up to me on her couch, put my hand on her breast, and gave me a real kiss for the first and last time since the weekend that we met. How could I say no? Well, I really wanted to, but after spending Thanksgiving weekend trying to figure out the right way to tell her no, I decided that I couldn't tell her no. I didn't want to send a woman willing to sleep with me away, even if it was clear that I couldn't trust her. On the day at her apartment that she asked me for the loan, I asked her what was so bad in her past that she couldn't get the loan or a credit card or a bank account. She said that it was check fraud. I still said yes. She told me many times that she and this guy in Kansas City may get back together someday. I still said yes. No matter how she treated me or what warning signs I saw, I said yes to basically anything Shelley asked me to do. That's how bad I wanted a woman in my life. Several days after I signed the paperwork came the day where I met her, paid for lunch, listened to her say that she was going to invite that guy in Kansas City to stay at her apartment over the Christmas holiday because he needs to get away from his drama at home (after telling me that men can't stay overnight at the apartment because it's a deluxe dorm with dorm rules like no men overnight and no alcohol), and then decide that she was tired and wanted to go home. I told her to go ahead because she got what she wanted from me--a free lunch. She called me a bastard, I stormed off, and I thought that was it. Nope. She called and gave me five seconds to apologize, and of course I did. She couldn't just let me go at that point: The loan paperwork was still in progress and not yet finalized.

Then came the night that changed everything. Shelley claimed to not have a computer in her apartment, but rather, she used the common computer room on the first floor of her building. I don't know what she was doing up at 1:30 in the morning, or if they even let you use those computers at that time of day, but she frantically called me saying that the student loan company had sent her a message in an attachment and that she could not open it on the particular computer she was using. But instead of e-mailing me the attachment as I expected she would, when I turned my computer on, she gave me her e-mail password and let me go in and look at the attachment, which didn't say anything of importance, as it turned out. The e-mail account was different from the one she used to e-mail me, and I fought the urge to see what was in her e-mail and if the password would work on her other account as well. But curiosity got the best of me, and I checked both e-mail accounts one morning and found evidence that she was still corresponding with someone else who responded to her ad, apparently trying to settle on dates that they both had free so that they could finally meet. Ironically, I arranged that trip to see "Torrie" again the weekend after the argument where I told Shelley that she got what she wanted from me, the free lunch. But once Torrie saw my blog and told me off, I canceled the trip, and accepted Shelley's invitation to a drag queen show at her school and dinner at a fancy sushi restaurant, which I paid for of course. Shelley was going to meet this guy that weekend because I had told her that I wouldn't be around, but once I canceled, she had to frantically e-mail him and tell him that she had to cancel with him. So the deceit and trickery was pretty thick between both of us.

On my birthday, Shelley told me to wait at the movie theater for her to arrive at 7P. This was the same day that she received the first installment of her student loan, so I anticipated her paying for the movie and dinner, which she didn't. What she did instead was splurge on a fancy Pulsar watch as my present, which she says is valued at around $200. She put all of her stuff in the seat between us during the movie, saying that she always does that because she's a big girl and she likes her space. (Remember, she didn't mind being close to me on her couch the day that she asked for the loan.) I thought she was happy to see me when she got to the theater because she got her money or because she knew I would be surprised by the gift or because we were going drinking after the movie. "Nothing can wipe the smile off my face today," she said. But when I checked her e-mail again the next morning, I saw that she was happy because she had met someone at 5P either on my birthday or the day before. I don't remember if this was the same guy with whom she wrote suggestive e-mails back and forth that at one point had her saying how horny she was, the guy asking what was on her mind, and her responding: "My mouth your dick." (Remember, she never touched my dick, much less expressed interest in sucking it.) I don't remember if this was the same guy to whom she sent topless pics of herself. (She never sent anything like that to me.) I don't remember if this was the guy to whom she expressed her love of being tit-fucked: "Makes me cum instantly," she told him. (Never mentioned anything like that to me.) Basically, she was fucking several other guys, or at least leading them to believe that she wanted to fuck them, while she was dating me and pretending that she liked me. It was the way that my life has gone that made me check that e-mail account the morning after she gave me such a great gift and we had such a great time drinking and eating and living life. Simply put: I knew that it couldn't be that perfect.

But it was the light that I needed to see. I had to realize that I was only being used by her because I was allowing myself to be used by her. And after spending Christmas weekend having that familiar feeling of being punched in the gut that I had after "Karen" and her bisexual swingers group...and "Sarah" and her leaving me because I didn't humiliate her enough...and "Jane" canceling meeting me after a month of phone sex and "I love you"s...and Torrie dumping me after I arranged to fly to her yet again even though she never came to see me, I finally figured out probably the most important thing: No matter how much of myself I give, I still don't own anyone. Shelley NEVER promised me that she would fuck me and only me. Shelley NEVER said that we were anything more than just two people dating. Shelley NEVER said that we were dating exclusively. As much as I wanted to get mad at her, I had to arrive at a place where I could just let it go, because she's not mine and she can fuck whomever she wants to fuck. I knew from the moment I responded to her ad that I wasn't exactly what she wanted. She wanted a confident guy to take control of her and make her his slut for however long the sex session would last, five minutes, three hours, whatever. She never wanted meek, shy little me, but I tried to be something I'm not. And although I will pay a heavy price for the rest of my life once she defaults on that loan, I came to the conclusion that no matter what I do for a woman, I cannot buy her loyalty, her love, her life. I'm not the owner of Shelley. She can do whatever she wants, and I can do whatever I want. I can't ever give all of myself to someone again, because that leaves me with nothing for myself. This is not what my mother gave me life to do, put it on a platter and give it to any fat white chick who shows me a little attention. I get it now, finally. It's my life. I don't owe anybody anything. I need to do exactly what I want to do at all times, because no one else will do it for me. I can still be the nice guy, because that's my genuine nature. But I cannot give and give and give unless I meet someone willing to give back, and until then, I have to do what's best for Dre.

As for Shelley, she called several days ago to borrow my suit jacket because it goes with the outfit she wants to wear to a friend's bachelor party. It's crazy, but I still have work to do on saying no. At first I said yes, then I remembered that I'm going to a funeral Thursday, so I told her I would get it to her after that, then I told her that I would be with my family after the funeral so I couldn't get it to her after all. That would be the second time I didn't give her something that I told her I would, the first being that night in my bed. But it's okay. I didn't have any trouble in bed giving "Grace" whatever she wanted a week and a half ago, because she's not a using, conniving, manipulative bitch. We all get what we deserve in life.