Throughout my campaign to paint "Karen" as a whore who lied and kept her secret sex life private on purpose, I relied on all of the circumstantial evidence to affirm my accusations. The facts as I saw them were, she was on the front page of a swingers website topless posing with her also-topless friend who Karen told me was a remorseless woman who cheated on her husband; she was named on the website as a moderator of the swingers club; she had her own portfolio on the adult photography site owned by the large black man who took the pics; she said on her own personal ad that she was partial to large black men; and a different woman told me that the photographer often took pussy from his subjects as a perk or payment. All of that added up to Karen being a swinger/slut/liar, although I never actually saw her having sex with someone else. I always thought that Karen took some perverse pleasure (or "pure bbw pleasure," as was one of her handles) in denying everything to me in subsequent e-mails despite all evidence to the contrary. She didn't explain why she hid the pics and the club from me, a man she was supposed to be in love with and dating exclusively. She said that she was only a moderator for the swingers club, not a participant, and she claimed to have never cheated on me. But the things happening in my marriage have made me admit something that I never wanted to admit: Maybe there's a sliver of a chance that Karen was telling the truth.
When I last talked about my marriage, I was stunned to find myself being accused by my wife of jacking off in bed next to her and disturbing her sleep. No matter what I did, I couldn't convince her that I was not doing that. Eventually, I had to concede that maybe I was doing something resembling that in my sleep, but I only gave that concession because she kept insisting that she saw my dick hanging out multiple times and that she wasn't imagining things. But I never took my dick out on purpose, nor could I remember waking up with my dick out, and that's something I think I would remember. Well, a few months ago, my wife informed me that I would have to start sleeping in the guest bedroom because she couldn't get a good night's sleep with all of the activity happening on my side of the bed. So we have been switching off between one of us sleeping in the bedroom in the queen-size and the other sleeping in the guest bedroom in the twin-size. We go three or days in our respective rooms, then we switch off for three or four days. It's not my idea of a great arrangement, but I agreed to it in order to keep the peace.
There have been several incidents recently that once again make my wife believe that I'm being dishonest and hiding things. She pointed to a time where I held up a t-shirt in an awkward way while she spoke to me, which made her think that I was in the midst of jacking off and trying to hide it from her. She believes that there have been several times where she entered the room while I was on the computer and I made a sudden movement to try to hide something that I was viewing. And she thinks that I can hear her footsteps on the carpet and that I've been getting up and blocking the doorway so that she can't come in the room and see what I'm hiding, whatever that may be. I could run down the list and defend myself against every accusation, but the bottom line is, I don't lie to my wife and I don't hide things from her. A few days ago, I decided to put a naked woman as my computer wallpaper, and because I didn't feel like having the conversation and defending it from my wife, I tried to hide it when she came into the room. But she saw it a minute later when she returned. That is the only time I tried to hide something from her. All of her other beliefs that I've been hiding shit are all in her head. I know that if I were in her shoes and saw all of the circumstantial evidence, I'd also be upset and thinking that my spouse is lying to me. But I'm not.
This morning, she told me how anxious she has been about the whole situation, and that she didn't sleep last night because she couldn't stop thinking about it. She cried and said she didn't know how much deception she could continue to take from me. I went from stunned to angry because this was something I could not control no matter how hard I argued. If truth and honesty is the rock that keeps marriages strong, I'm screwed because I keep offering her that rock and she keeps rejecting it, which is bad enough, but then she gets mad because I don't offer her that same rock. So I offer it again, and she rejects it again, and then gets mad because I don't ever offer her that rock. And around and around we go.
And it dawned on me in the shower that this has similarities to what Karen and I went through. I could not believe that I was being accused of something constantly and couldn't defend myself even though I knew I was telling the truth, and isn't that what Karen claimed was happening? That I was using circumstances to accuse her of something that she claimed she didn't do? And in that instant, I finally, for the first time since the whole Karen thing happened, had to admit that there's a chance she was being honest. No one in my position would believe what Karen told me, just like no one in my wife's position would be inclined to believe me. But I know what I'm saying is true! I can't make my wife believe it, but I know it, if no one else does. Maybe Karen saw how passionately I believed the circumstances in the four-page e-mail I wrote her and decided to not try to convince me otherwise. Maybe that's her personality. Maybe it was different because we weren't married or even living together, and the effort to convince me of her truth wasn't worth it to her. Better to cut ties with a seemingly unhinged, angry person, she thought. And I really hate conceding victory to Karen because in my mind, she's been the most evil wench on the planet ever since that night that I found her swingers website, and that hatred of her consumed me and drove me to the psych ward, but then helped elevate me and push me to be the best I can be at whatever I do just to shove it up her cunt proverbially and show her that she didn't destroy me with her lies and deceit. But what if it was all a mirage? What if I cast Karen as the evil wench unjustly? What if the worst she did was keep the swingers club and the pictures a secret just because she didn't know how to approach me with that side of her life? What if she really did serve only as admin help for the club? What if she took the pics for her own self-esteem, or just as a lark? What if circumstantial evidence all added up to show me something that really wasn't? Sounds nuts? Sounds like I'm being naive? Well, I wouldn't believe it either, except it's fucking happening to me RIGHT NOW.
I offered a counseling session with the pastor who married us, so we're doing that tomorrow morning. I don't know what else I can offer. My wife's laid down her viewpoints on the issues that are keeping us separate. She doesn't care if I am masturbating, she doesn't care if I am looking at naked pics of other women, she just wants me to be honest about it. It might be easier if I would just do those things instead of continuing to deny the little circumstances that seem to her like I'm lying. That's what's so frustrating. She's the type that understands people and men in particular, and she doesn't want to be the nag that jumps down my throat if I want to enjoy porn, and I really appreciate that because I do like to enjoy porn occasionally. I don't have any problem at all telling her when I watch porn or what kind of porn I like to watch. We're trying so hard to be a dynamic, contemporary couple who let the other live their lives. So why does she keep thinking that I'm hiding things from her? It's incredible, but Karen might understand the issue better than I can explain it. My head is spinning. Seriously. I might owe Karen a huge apology someday, and I never, ever thought I'd say that.
Showing posts with label karen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label karen. Show all posts
Monday, October 29, 2012
Monday, October 10, 2011
Some Things Never Change
I decided to start this wedding week by looking up Linda's Big Connections, the website where I met "Karen," to see if she was still making herself a part of the social scene amongst fat people in Wisconsin. And sure enough, she's still on the message boards, still has pics of herself taken at the Milwaukee dances, still has a drink in her hand at all times...the only different things about her are that she's bigger and she wasn't surrounded by ugly black men like most of the pics of her at various social outings. Kinda sad to think that she's still stuck in her little world as she approaches 40. But also kinda funny.
In other news, the programs are printed, our officiant has given us a notarized form detailing our pre-marital counseling which gives us a deep discount on the marriage license, and I can't get my sore tooth removed surgically before next Monday, which obviously is after the wedding. I was hoping to not have to eat and drink on one side of my mouth on my big day, but that's what it looks like I'm going to be doing. My trip to the sleep clinic last night went well. They put me under the oxygen mask all night, which meant that I had to sleep on my back, and I was wired up again. But I think I could get used to the mask. Having air forced into my nose is very weird at first, and I couldn't open my mouth to speak because speaking and having air forced through your nose just doesn't work well together, but so long as I relaxed and didn't try to speak, it was all good. One hiccup earlier today: I guess it's my first car accident, although no one else was involved. I blasted the car's left tire off a curb because I never saw it, and the hubcap is hanging off. Don't know how much to fix that, but it may have to wait until I get my bonus in a few weeks.
In other news, the programs are printed, our officiant has given us a notarized form detailing our pre-marital counseling which gives us a deep discount on the marriage license, and I can't get my sore tooth removed surgically before next Monday, which obviously is after the wedding. I was hoping to not have to eat and drink on one side of my mouth on my big day, but that's what it looks like I'm going to be doing. My trip to the sleep clinic last night went well. They put me under the oxygen mask all night, which meant that I had to sleep on my back, and I was wired up again. But I think I could get used to the mask. Having air forced into my nose is very weird at first, and I couldn't open my mouth to speak because speaking and having air forced through your nose just doesn't work well together, but so long as I relaxed and didn't try to speak, it was all good. One hiccup earlier today: I guess it's my first car accident, although no one else was involved. I blasted the car's left tire off a curb because I never saw it, and the hubcap is hanging off. Don't know how much to fix that, but it may have to wait until I get my bonus in a few weeks.
Monday, September 01, 2008
It's Been 5 Years...
...since I responded to "Karen's" personal ad and started my own personal hell. I felt blue all day Friday and couldn't figure out why, and then I realized, it's Labor Day weekend, and that's when I was bored enough to respond to Karen's online ad in 2003. But there's a silver lining, and it's my girlfriend. See, I was going to write a long sad post about how I wish I could be free of all thoughts concerning Karen considering it's been five fucking years. I was going to wonder why I still think about why she did what she did, why I still get a muscle twitch in my gut when I see in print any variation of her name or the town of Mukwonago, WI or any writings about the topic of interracial dating and marriage, why do I still want to pour bleach down her cunt, and when if ever I was going to get over the whole damn thing. But after work last night and all day today, my girlfriend has been playing text tag and e-mail tag with me, writing suggestive notes telling me how much she thinks about pleasuring me, getting me all hot and bothered. And she managed to take my mind off Karen completely. I don't know if she meant to do that, but I suspect she did. Friday night, I explained to her how frustrated I was at my inability to put Karen completely out of my head, so she knew how tortured I was all weekend. I bet she started flirting with me through text trying to make me think of something else. And boy, did it work. I had a very fun day sending dirty messages back and forth with her. There's a lesson in there somewhere about appreciating what you have in your life instead of ruminating about the garbage you've been through previously. And there's also a lesson about letting the people closest to you know how special they are to you. I surely would have been in another deep depression today if not for my girlfriend. But she loved me enough to make sure she occupied my thoughts and not some demon from my past, and she doesn't know how much that means to me.
Saturday, June 23, 2007
Thursday, October 13, 2005
Happy Singles Awareness Day?
Just heard someone describe Sweetest Day, which is this Saturday, as "Singles Awareness Day," and that couldn't possibly be more accurate. I usually feel alone and desolate sitting here every night by myself, but tonight I feel downright sick, and Saturday is partially to blame. My family wants to drag me out of the house Saturday for some bowling outing, but not just any outing, a twosomes outing where apparently the couples showing up, in a twist, will have to team up with someone they draw out of a hat as a bowling couple. How cute. I haven't totally decided to go on this outing yet. The only thing worse than isolating myself in my apartment for Sweetest Day is being out among a bunch of kissy-face couples while I sit there, so I have to decide if the lure of bowling and seeing a few people I used to bowl with every Sunday is worth the pain of watching everyone around me enjoy life with a loved one, which it seems I will never get to do again. Melodramatic I know, but it sure feels like I'll never be with a woman again. Usually you're either kinda close to starting something with someone or actually in a relationship at all times; I don't feel like I'm even close with anyone.
You know the last time I spent a Sweetest Day with a loved one? Fucking ho-bag "Karen" two years ago. "No one ever gave me flowers for Sweetest Day," she wrote me in an e-mail the next morning, thanking me for a great time. I've been thinking about her again lately, wondering who she's fucking now, if she's giving him the same quiet little innocent girl act in bed or if she's actually making a sound with him during sex, whether I'm ever going to run into her again. The changing of the seasons from summer to fall may always remind me of her because that's when we started dating in 2003. At least I have not gone back to her fake Yahoo profile to see if she's updating it still. I've been tempted of course, but I feel like that part of my obsession is behind me, probably because I was so powerless to do anything while I watched her live her life. Unless I was going to go up to Wisconsin and do something about it, it did no good to stay abreast of her every move. I'm still curious, but it's not as bad as it used to be. The two-year anniversary of our first date passed several weeks ago, and I didn't even realize it. But I knew that with time the hurt from being screwed by her wouldn't sting so much. In five years, perhaps, I won't wonder at all who she's fucking. I'll always think about her, but I won't always care about her.
Very brief comment about the controversial call in Game 2 of the ALCS between the White Sox and Angels: The ump blew the call, the ball never hit the dirt, and it pisses me off because the Sox were playing so shitty those first two games that it now seems to the world like they can't win a pressurized playoff game unless the retarded umpires help them out. It wouldn't surprise me if they didn't win a game this weekend while they wait for another horrible call to take the pressure off. They haven't executed in eighteen innings of baseball so far in the ALCS, and they've wasted one and nearly two excellent starting pitching performances to boot, and now they get to play the next three games in Anaheim, where they have never played well. Oh well, it was a nice run. (The above passage can be interpreted by sports geeks only. If you're confused, it's sports, don't worry about it.)
Small piece of good news finally: I got a letter seemingly indicating that I will be receiving some assistance this semester and next semester from financial aid for my college classes. The letter said that the figures shown were "estimates," so I still don't know exactly what's going on, but I'm going to wait a couple more weeks for them to clarify what this "estimate" thing means, and if I don't hear from them, I'll go up to the financial aid office at school and try to get some answers. I'm having no problems at all with my two classes, and when I pass them, that will make 28 credits so far, or as Cassandra says, the end of my freshman year, which makes perfect sense because if it takes 120 credits for a bachelor's degree, then 28, give or take a class, is about one-fourth of the way through. And I'm so desperate to find something to be proud of in my pathetic life that I'm almost welling up sitting here thinking about being one-fourth of the way to a bachelor's. Maybe it's a good thing that I'll never get another date again--I've always gotten so nervous before meeting someone new, and if it worked out well enough that a wedding date would be set, I'd be so anxious leading up to that day that I might not make it. I'm an emotional mess when it comes to achieving my goals. That's how my desire works, always has. When I want something very badly, I can hardly handle receiving it or coming close to receiving it. The 1990 spelling bee saga--I labeled a 30-second video tape of the local news coverage of my city title win "My Greatest Achievement"--is a perfect example of how I handle succeeding at something that I badly want to succeed at. I'll talk about it in my next post.
You know the last time I spent a Sweetest Day with a loved one? Fucking ho-bag "Karen" two years ago. "No one ever gave me flowers for Sweetest Day," she wrote me in an e-mail the next morning, thanking me for a great time. I've been thinking about her again lately, wondering who she's fucking now, if she's giving him the same quiet little innocent girl act in bed or if she's actually making a sound with him during sex, whether I'm ever going to run into her again. The changing of the seasons from summer to fall may always remind me of her because that's when we started dating in 2003. At least I have not gone back to her fake Yahoo profile to see if she's updating it still. I've been tempted of course, but I feel like that part of my obsession is behind me, probably because I was so powerless to do anything while I watched her live her life. Unless I was going to go up to Wisconsin and do something about it, it did no good to stay abreast of her every move. I'm still curious, but it's not as bad as it used to be. The two-year anniversary of our first date passed several weeks ago, and I didn't even realize it. But I knew that with time the hurt from being screwed by her wouldn't sting so much. In five years, perhaps, I won't wonder at all who she's fucking. I'll always think about her, but I won't always care about her.
Very brief comment about the controversial call in Game 2 of the ALCS between the White Sox and Angels: The ump blew the call, the ball never hit the dirt, and it pisses me off because the Sox were playing so shitty those first two games that it now seems to the world like they can't win a pressurized playoff game unless the retarded umpires help them out. It wouldn't surprise me if they didn't win a game this weekend while they wait for another horrible call to take the pressure off. They haven't executed in eighteen innings of baseball so far in the ALCS, and they've wasted one and nearly two excellent starting pitching performances to boot, and now they get to play the next three games in Anaheim, where they have never played well. Oh well, it was a nice run. (The above passage can be interpreted by sports geeks only. If you're confused, it's sports, don't worry about it.)
Small piece of good news finally: I got a letter seemingly indicating that I will be receiving some assistance this semester and next semester from financial aid for my college classes. The letter said that the figures shown were "estimates," so I still don't know exactly what's going on, but I'm going to wait a couple more weeks for them to clarify what this "estimate" thing means, and if I don't hear from them, I'll go up to the financial aid office at school and try to get some answers. I'm having no problems at all with my two classes, and when I pass them, that will make 28 credits so far, or as Cassandra says, the end of my freshman year, which makes perfect sense because if it takes 120 credits for a bachelor's degree, then 28, give or take a class, is about one-fourth of the way through. And I'm so desperate to find something to be proud of in my pathetic life that I'm almost welling up sitting here thinking about being one-fourth of the way to a bachelor's. Maybe it's a good thing that I'll never get another date again--I've always gotten so nervous before meeting someone new, and if it worked out well enough that a wedding date would be set, I'd be so anxious leading up to that day that I might not make it. I'm an emotional mess when it comes to achieving my goals. That's how my desire works, always has. When I want something very badly, I can hardly handle receiving it or coming close to receiving it. The 1990 spelling bee saga--I labeled a 30-second video tape of the local news coverage of my city title win "My Greatest Achievement"--is a perfect example of how I handle succeeding at something that I badly want to succeed at. I'll talk about it in my next post.
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
Premonition?
My friend Cassandra tells me that the dream I had last night is a premonition that "Karen's" lifestyle of taking men's hearts and breaking them is about to catch up to her. I don't see how even if Karen is about to go down (not by my hand) I would find out about it, but I guess we'll see. The dream shook me so that I had to call Cassandra when I woke up even though she was in the middle of getting ready to go to work. I had Karen on my mind because Sunday night she updated her Yahoo profile with the notice that she "got a new tattoo...pics to come later in the week." My current dilemma makes it more pathetic than ever that I'm checking up on Karen, but I'll talk about that shortly.
In the dream, I'm still working at the Chicago Board Options Exchange, which gave me the opportunity to read the newspaper every day because I didn't have to pay for it. I don't read the paper now. But I was reading the paper in the dream, and I read one day about a murder in Milwaukee. Didn't think anything of the person arrested for it because I had never heard of her. Then the next day, I read that a second person has been arrested in the murder: Karen. I was shocked. That night, a phone call came at 3A, but it was a co-worker that I had fooled around with before. I figured she maybe wanted to talk about Karen, but true to her real-life nature, the co-worker wanted to talk about herself and some problem she was having. I hung up. The next day I knew I wanted to find Access Hollywood or some tabloid show so that I could make some cash from this. "Yeah, the Milwaukee killers...I know one of them, very intimately. I'll talk for $20,000, take it or leave it." But before I left home, I saw the film of the arrest of Karen on the news. She didn't look like herself. She had lost a considerable amount of weight, and she had straight black hair, which may have been a wig because Karen once told me about getting drunk on a cruise and putting on a wig as part of the drinking. But she was harried and didn't look like the Karen I had been with. I remember getting so close to the TV to check the area codes on the phone numbers on the signs of the surrounding businesses because I couldn't believe they were in Milwaukee arresting Karen because it didn't look like her at all. And then I got too close, and all of a sudden I was part of the arrest. Yes, I became one of the arresting officers. And I got off a zinger worthy of Law & Order before I woke up. I was putting the cuffs on her, and she said that I was hurting her wrists, to which I responded: "Come on baby, you and I both know that this ain't the first time you've been in handcuffs, so just relax like you do with your other niggers, and it won't hurt so much." Then while I read her her Miranda rights, I woke up with chills.
Cassandra says that I became part of the arrest because I was so eager to be a part of the downfall of Karen that I put myself on the scene, "like Fat Albert going into the TV in the movie," she said. I don't know how I'm going to see this supposed fall from grace of Karen, but boy, if it does happen anything like I dreamed, then I will never doubt spirituality or karma again. I hate dreaming about people that I want to see but I can't. And I don't even want to see Karen to be with her again, just to see her, just to see that she's still alive so that I don't happen to miss her eventual demise, which would be one of the best days of my life. Apparently I'll see her new tattoo soon, so that will have to do. When I was dating her, she mentioned wanting to get something Chinese to signify sisterhood as a tribute to her sister. Since I found out about her lies, I've vowed to someday get something in Chinese that says the equivalent of "Karen sucks dick" or, if they don't have a translation of Karen, just "K sucks" or "K is bad." Scar my body with the memory of a whore? Why not? She scarred my heart forever.
And yet I am getting better. Doesn't seem like it I know, but I am. For one, I am now about 95% sure that I'm going to be a mouse and never go up to Milwaukee or Brown Deer or Lake Geneva or wherever this bitch lives and get my revenge. I've discovered that most of my hurt from what happened does not come from Karen herself betraying me. It comes from being betrayed by my first white lover, which is what Karen was; I met "Sarah" a few weeks after I first slept with Karen. You see, after not dating at all for six years after breaking up with "Giselle," my high school girlfriend and the first and so far last black woman I've ever had sex with, when I got up the guts to meet Karen I thought that she was the exact woman that I was looking for when I decided to date a white woman. She didn't give me any lip, she didn't have an attitude, she was loving, caring, and she seemed to think that I was the shit. Yes, the lack of communication and sometimes distant behavior from Karen were red flags, as was the DUI. But those I ignored in order to keep my fantasy alive. And when she asked me to move up there with her after I told her that I was soon losing my job, I was in heaven. I thought this woman was going to take care of me, welcome me into her family (she said she was gonig to introduce me to her parents several times, but never did), show me a peaceful, serene way of living, and most of all, would never hurt me or belittle me like Giselle and just about all other black females in my past did. I mean, for God's sakes, I gave Karen a cheesy poem I had written, and she acted like it was the most profound piece of literature she had ever received. She kept telling me every time I did something small, like bring her roses or a birthday present or a poem, that she wasn't used to being treated so well, or that no one had ever done that for her before. So I thought that I was going to be the big black man in her life, her king, not ruling over her but the object of her innermost desires and wishes, and she my white queen, the center of my world. And when I found out that it was all a mirage and everything she had ever told me was a fucking lie, I lost it. Not just my sanity, but my hopes and dreams and, most importantly, my ability to trust. It's not Karen that I miss. It's the first white woman to treat me like a king that I miss. But realizing that made me see that I can't make Karen pay for doing that to me. It's not her fault that I picked her as the first white woman I loved and trusted. It's my fault. Karen is not attractive. Karen does not have a great personality. Losing Karen was not a great loss to me. Losing that dream was.
I said that my relationship issues highlight how little Karen means to me currently, because she has nothing to do with the decisions I am going to have to make. The "white queen" in my life right now is "Torrie." Why? Um, I don't know, because she doesn't go running when I approach like everyone else does? Seriously, I've known for the duration of our "relationship" that Torrie and I aren't very alike. She's a smoking, drinking, bisexual freak who happened to flirt with me in an online group, and after being screwed by "Jane," I called her flirt and, without knowing what her deal was, raised her and dared her to meet me for a weekend of no-strings sex. And because we haven't had any friction between us, despite her attempt to dump me once because she didn't know if she could commit the time to me, we've stayed together, despite never once actually committing ourselves exclusively to each other. I stepped up the intensity by inserting love into the equation, but did I do that because I really felt it for her or because my insecurities made me believe that I had to do so in order to keep her interested? Or maybe it was to keep myself interested? So anyway, that's where I stand, in a long-distance relationship not because I sincerely want forever with Torrie, but because I don't want to be alone, even though I am alone, waiting for her call every other day or so, talking about nothing because we don't have anything to talk about. Even when we talk for two hours like we did Saturday, I come away feeling like she's just trying to justify herself to me so that she doesn't look like the desperate, lonely woman that she is. And still no love back to me, even as a friend.
Enter "Laurie."
Laurie is a lady on the very same site where I met Torrie that I have been chatting with for a few weeks. She has been trying to convince me that I am a "damn good man" and that I should want the world for myself because I deserve it. She also has insisted that she will make the trip to Chicago to spend time with me when she gets the free time and the money. And she thinks I am attractive, and she says that she needs a "teddy bear" to make her feel safe and comfortable, and she wants to get physical with me. I have a hard time believing in her and trusting her. Why? It's simple: She's slender, blonde, and attractive. In what alternative universe would a slender, blonde, attractive woman have any desire to fly to Chicago to meet a fat black dude with no money? But she says that she feels like we could be soulmates, based on our similar histories dealing with the loss of our parents, and our similar histories dealing with lack of self-esteem, and our similar histories dealing with lying, backstabbing ex-lovers. (At least I don't have to work with mine; Laurie had an affair with her married black supervisor, and despite the affair being over she's still at the same job, fueling her desire to go away somewhere when she can afford to, somewhere like Chicago, for instance.) We chat every day, and every time we chat I feel something pulling me toward her, as if she possesses that love and caring and nurturing that I have been looking for all my life. Personality-wise, I can't remember feeling so strongly about someone. She has such a strong spirit, and she's such an optimist. It couldn't help but rub off on me if we were to spend time together, and goodness knows I need a positive person in my life. But it's too much to spend time with her and not become physical; I just can't imagine seeing someone so attractive sitting across from me, and she thinks that I am special, and I can't take it to the next level. I bet we would be great lovers too. My dilemma is that Torrie hasn't done anything to deserve me cheating on her and lying to her, but she hasn't done anything to deserve being dumped either. If I look at the raw situation and take out my feelings of a deeper connection between me and Laurie, what I would be doing is taking what Torrie and I have, a great sex life but a lot of distance, and trading it for what might be a great sex life but might not, and a lot of distance. Doesn't seem to make much sense. My deeper dilemma is that fate has not been on my side for the first 30 years of my life. I haven't been very lucky with my decisions. Simply put, it's a "seems to good to be true" situation. Without doing anything to improve myself, except going to school but I didn't meet Laurie in school, I have met the woman that can take on the task of making me feel good about myself, nurturing me, building me up, making love to me and not just having sex with me, thinks that I will be the man that she wants in her life, and she's attractive, and she's not over 200 lbs, and she's not already married or a parent, and she can actually have kids, which Torrie cannot. Oh, and she loves the same smooth jazz artists that I do, and she wants to start a fantasy football league with me. Come on. If I start seeing Laurie and let Torrie go, all I can see in the future is a line of excuses sometime next year as to why she can't see me, work, money, etc, while she starts spending more and more time up there in Detroit, where she lives, with someone else, someone more like a real man than me, someone actually in shape, someone with, you know, a job. And finally, a big break-up as she explains to me how fate simply said that she and I weren't meant to me, but she just knows I will recover from this to see my real potential and never settle in a relationship again. Meanwhile, she's off to be with her new soulmate, and I'm all alone. Again.
The funny part is, there is nothing she can say to guarantee that it won't shake down that way. All the spiritual feelings she has, all the good feelings she has about me and how I can be the man that I want to be, all of that doesn't guarantee that she won't someday wake up and look at my love handles and my pot belly and my breasts and think, "Wow, I can do much better than this." Hell, she might say that the first time we sleep together. And what I have now with Torrie may not seem like much, but at least she accepts me in her life and in her bed, and that's better than what I have with Laurie right now. I have nothing with Laurie right now. But I do fear that I could be passing up something with Laurie that would be more special than Torrie, or Sarah, or Giselle, or obviously Karen, or anyone else that I could ever hope to convince to be with me romantically. Basically, if I let Torrie go to give Laurie a shot, I will be unleashing the love and trust that I have held back ever since I let it go onto Karen and got burned for it. Can Laurie handle that? What if she can't? Then what do I do? Why do I almost come to tears every time I chat with Laurie, as if I have never chatted with someone who knows me so well? What if I never meet anyone as special as Laurie again? If I stay loyal to Torrie, what if Torrie lets me go after a while because she finds her soulmate? Hell, what if I'm just a man-ho and I get with Laurie and meet someone else that thinks I'm a damn good man? What if I can't trust anyone deep enough to commit to her monogamously? I haven't been sleeping well lately with all these questions swirling in my already mixed-up mind. I'm going to have to step up and be a man and make some hard decisions real soon, and whether they are the right decisions or not I'm afraid I won't know until it's too late to do anything about it.
In the dream, I'm still working at the Chicago Board Options Exchange, which gave me the opportunity to read the newspaper every day because I didn't have to pay for it. I don't read the paper now. But I was reading the paper in the dream, and I read one day about a murder in Milwaukee. Didn't think anything of the person arrested for it because I had never heard of her. Then the next day, I read that a second person has been arrested in the murder: Karen. I was shocked. That night, a phone call came at 3A, but it was a co-worker that I had fooled around with before. I figured she maybe wanted to talk about Karen, but true to her real-life nature, the co-worker wanted to talk about herself and some problem she was having. I hung up. The next day I knew I wanted to find Access Hollywood or some tabloid show so that I could make some cash from this. "Yeah, the Milwaukee killers...I know one of them, very intimately. I'll talk for $20,000, take it or leave it." But before I left home, I saw the film of the arrest of Karen on the news. She didn't look like herself. She had lost a considerable amount of weight, and she had straight black hair, which may have been a wig because Karen once told me about getting drunk on a cruise and putting on a wig as part of the drinking. But she was harried and didn't look like the Karen I had been with. I remember getting so close to the TV to check the area codes on the phone numbers on the signs of the surrounding businesses because I couldn't believe they were in Milwaukee arresting Karen because it didn't look like her at all. And then I got too close, and all of a sudden I was part of the arrest. Yes, I became one of the arresting officers. And I got off a zinger worthy of Law & Order before I woke up. I was putting the cuffs on her, and she said that I was hurting her wrists, to which I responded: "Come on baby, you and I both know that this ain't the first time you've been in handcuffs, so just relax like you do with your other niggers, and it won't hurt so much." Then while I read her her Miranda rights, I woke up with chills.
Cassandra says that I became part of the arrest because I was so eager to be a part of the downfall of Karen that I put myself on the scene, "like Fat Albert going into the TV in the movie," she said. I don't know how I'm going to see this supposed fall from grace of Karen, but boy, if it does happen anything like I dreamed, then I will never doubt spirituality or karma again. I hate dreaming about people that I want to see but I can't. And I don't even want to see Karen to be with her again, just to see her, just to see that she's still alive so that I don't happen to miss her eventual demise, which would be one of the best days of my life. Apparently I'll see her new tattoo soon, so that will have to do. When I was dating her, she mentioned wanting to get something Chinese to signify sisterhood as a tribute to her sister. Since I found out about her lies, I've vowed to someday get something in Chinese that says the equivalent of "Karen sucks dick" or, if they don't have a translation of Karen, just "K sucks" or "K is bad." Scar my body with the memory of a whore? Why not? She scarred my heart forever.
And yet I am getting better. Doesn't seem like it I know, but I am. For one, I am now about 95% sure that I'm going to be a mouse and never go up to Milwaukee or Brown Deer or Lake Geneva or wherever this bitch lives and get my revenge. I've discovered that most of my hurt from what happened does not come from Karen herself betraying me. It comes from being betrayed by my first white lover, which is what Karen was; I met "Sarah" a few weeks after I first slept with Karen. You see, after not dating at all for six years after breaking up with "Giselle," my high school girlfriend and the first and so far last black woman I've ever had sex with, when I got up the guts to meet Karen I thought that she was the exact woman that I was looking for when I decided to date a white woman. She didn't give me any lip, she didn't have an attitude, she was loving, caring, and she seemed to think that I was the shit. Yes, the lack of communication and sometimes distant behavior from Karen were red flags, as was the DUI. But those I ignored in order to keep my fantasy alive. And when she asked me to move up there with her after I told her that I was soon losing my job, I was in heaven. I thought this woman was going to take care of me, welcome me into her family (she said she was gonig to introduce me to her parents several times, but never did), show me a peaceful, serene way of living, and most of all, would never hurt me or belittle me like Giselle and just about all other black females in my past did. I mean, for God's sakes, I gave Karen a cheesy poem I had written, and she acted like it was the most profound piece of literature she had ever received. She kept telling me every time I did something small, like bring her roses or a birthday present or a poem, that she wasn't used to being treated so well, or that no one had ever done that for her before. So I thought that I was going to be the big black man in her life, her king, not ruling over her but the object of her innermost desires and wishes, and she my white queen, the center of my world. And when I found out that it was all a mirage and everything she had ever told me was a fucking lie, I lost it. Not just my sanity, but my hopes and dreams and, most importantly, my ability to trust. It's not Karen that I miss. It's the first white woman to treat me like a king that I miss. But realizing that made me see that I can't make Karen pay for doing that to me. It's not her fault that I picked her as the first white woman I loved and trusted. It's my fault. Karen is not attractive. Karen does not have a great personality. Losing Karen was not a great loss to me. Losing that dream was.
I said that my relationship issues highlight how little Karen means to me currently, because she has nothing to do with the decisions I am going to have to make. The "white queen" in my life right now is "Torrie." Why? Um, I don't know, because she doesn't go running when I approach like everyone else does? Seriously, I've known for the duration of our "relationship" that Torrie and I aren't very alike. She's a smoking, drinking, bisexual freak who happened to flirt with me in an online group, and after being screwed by "Jane," I called her flirt and, without knowing what her deal was, raised her and dared her to meet me for a weekend of no-strings sex. And because we haven't had any friction between us, despite her attempt to dump me once because she didn't know if she could commit the time to me, we've stayed together, despite never once actually committing ourselves exclusively to each other. I stepped up the intensity by inserting love into the equation, but did I do that because I really felt it for her or because my insecurities made me believe that I had to do so in order to keep her interested? Or maybe it was to keep myself interested? So anyway, that's where I stand, in a long-distance relationship not because I sincerely want forever with Torrie, but because I don't want to be alone, even though I am alone, waiting for her call every other day or so, talking about nothing because we don't have anything to talk about. Even when we talk for two hours like we did Saturday, I come away feeling like she's just trying to justify herself to me so that she doesn't look like the desperate, lonely woman that she is. And still no love back to me, even as a friend.
Enter "Laurie."
Laurie is a lady on the very same site where I met Torrie that I have been chatting with for a few weeks. She has been trying to convince me that I am a "damn good man" and that I should want the world for myself because I deserve it. She also has insisted that she will make the trip to Chicago to spend time with me when she gets the free time and the money. And she thinks I am attractive, and she says that she needs a "teddy bear" to make her feel safe and comfortable, and she wants to get physical with me. I have a hard time believing in her and trusting her. Why? It's simple: She's slender, blonde, and attractive. In what alternative universe would a slender, blonde, attractive woman have any desire to fly to Chicago to meet a fat black dude with no money? But she says that she feels like we could be soulmates, based on our similar histories dealing with the loss of our parents, and our similar histories dealing with lack of self-esteem, and our similar histories dealing with lying, backstabbing ex-lovers. (At least I don't have to work with mine; Laurie had an affair with her married black supervisor, and despite the affair being over she's still at the same job, fueling her desire to go away somewhere when she can afford to, somewhere like Chicago, for instance.) We chat every day, and every time we chat I feel something pulling me toward her, as if she possesses that love and caring and nurturing that I have been looking for all my life. Personality-wise, I can't remember feeling so strongly about someone. She has such a strong spirit, and she's such an optimist. It couldn't help but rub off on me if we were to spend time together, and goodness knows I need a positive person in my life. But it's too much to spend time with her and not become physical; I just can't imagine seeing someone so attractive sitting across from me, and she thinks that I am special, and I can't take it to the next level. I bet we would be great lovers too. My dilemma is that Torrie hasn't done anything to deserve me cheating on her and lying to her, but she hasn't done anything to deserve being dumped either. If I look at the raw situation and take out my feelings of a deeper connection between me and Laurie, what I would be doing is taking what Torrie and I have, a great sex life but a lot of distance, and trading it for what might be a great sex life but might not, and a lot of distance. Doesn't seem to make much sense. My deeper dilemma is that fate has not been on my side for the first 30 years of my life. I haven't been very lucky with my decisions. Simply put, it's a "seems to good to be true" situation. Without doing anything to improve myself, except going to school but I didn't meet Laurie in school, I have met the woman that can take on the task of making me feel good about myself, nurturing me, building me up, making love to me and not just having sex with me, thinks that I will be the man that she wants in her life, and she's attractive, and she's not over 200 lbs, and she's not already married or a parent, and she can actually have kids, which Torrie cannot. Oh, and she loves the same smooth jazz artists that I do, and she wants to start a fantasy football league with me. Come on. If I start seeing Laurie and let Torrie go, all I can see in the future is a line of excuses sometime next year as to why she can't see me, work, money, etc, while she starts spending more and more time up there in Detroit, where she lives, with someone else, someone more like a real man than me, someone actually in shape, someone with, you know, a job. And finally, a big break-up as she explains to me how fate simply said that she and I weren't meant to me, but she just knows I will recover from this to see my real potential and never settle in a relationship again. Meanwhile, she's off to be with her new soulmate, and I'm all alone. Again.
The funny part is, there is nothing she can say to guarantee that it won't shake down that way. All the spiritual feelings she has, all the good feelings she has about me and how I can be the man that I want to be, all of that doesn't guarantee that she won't someday wake up and look at my love handles and my pot belly and my breasts and think, "Wow, I can do much better than this." Hell, she might say that the first time we sleep together. And what I have now with Torrie may not seem like much, but at least she accepts me in her life and in her bed, and that's better than what I have with Laurie right now. I have nothing with Laurie right now. But I do fear that I could be passing up something with Laurie that would be more special than Torrie, or Sarah, or Giselle, or obviously Karen, or anyone else that I could ever hope to convince to be with me romantically. Basically, if I let Torrie go to give Laurie a shot, I will be unleashing the love and trust that I have held back ever since I let it go onto Karen and got burned for it. Can Laurie handle that? What if she can't? Then what do I do? Why do I almost come to tears every time I chat with Laurie, as if I have never chatted with someone who knows me so well? What if I never meet anyone as special as Laurie again? If I stay loyal to Torrie, what if Torrie lets me go after a while because she finds her soulmate? Hell, what if I'm just a man-ho and I get with Laurie and meet someone else that thinks I'm a damn good man? What if I can't trust anyone deep enough to commit to her monogamously? I haven't been sleeping well lately with all these questions swirling in my already mixed-up mind. I'm going to have to step up and be a man and make some hard decisions real soon, and whether they are the right decisions or not I'm afraid I won't know until it's too late to do anything about it.
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
Lost
I'm sitting here at my computer on a day off from school, and I feel completely lost. I'm trying to see a side of my life where things are going okay, and I don't see one. I already know my personal life is shit. "Karen" keeps updating her Yahoo profile with meaningless stuff like "I got extensions...lol," teasing me as if to indicate that I have no business still checking her profile, which I don't. "Torrie" and I are about to have The Talk, because a long-distance relationship where only one person makes the effort to see the other can't continue without The Talk to see where everyone stands exactly. And considering my past luck with dating, I don't expect The Talk to have a happy ending. And where will that leave me? Checking Torrie and Karen's profiles until the day I die?
The academic side of my life I suppose is going okay, but it's going very slowly and it has no future for now because I don't have the money to take any classes this fall. My friend Cassandra explained to me how much she's paying in student loans and how long she has to pay it, and fuck, there's no way I'd be able to pay off that kind of money. She tries to make it sound okay by telling me that she would never have her $41,000 per year job if not for her degree, so it's paying for itself. I remind her that this is me we're talking about, so a job paying that much ain't in my future no matter what degree I have. And as further proof, I present my dad, proud owner of a business degree for over 30 years and still living like a homeless person. Success just isn't part of my makeup, unfortunately. That's part of why what Karen did still hurts after 16 months. Stupid me finally thought that I had succeeded in finding a good quality woman that loved me and found me attractive. I should have known better.
My unemployment benefits are about to run out, so I attempted to bring in some income with online gambling. No surprise that didn't turn out well. I deposited $1,000 into my sports betting account from my credit card over the past month, and I won a few bets and built my account up briefly, but soon enough my usual bad luck caught up to me and wiped me out. Even worse was my poker luck. I finished ninth in a 700-person tournament online a few weeks ago, and that turned my $5 entry fee for that tournament into about $110. There's nothing in that account now either. All the tournaments that I've entered since I've been bounced early from them, even the ten-man single table events that theoretically would be much easier to win than a 700-person marathon. I mean I have been knocked out with some great fucking hands too. For instance, and this will sound like a foreign language for non-poker fans, but in one tournament my two down cards were a pair of 7s and of the four community cards out there, one was a 7 and one was an 8, and the other two were lower cards. That means that I have three of a kind. So when I go all-in, putting all 1,200 of my chips on the line, and two different people with more chips than me also go all-in, I figure I'm screwed because to go all-in, these people must have good hands, and if either of them have a pair of 8s, then they have a better hand than me. They both had the same two down cards, a 5 and a 6. That means that they went all-in not because they already had a good hand--they actually had nothing--but because they hoped that the last card in the community would connect their 5 and 6 to the 7 and 8, giving them a straight, which beats my three of a kind. The 4 or the 10 would do it, but if neither came, then they would both have lost all of their chips and been knocked out of the tournament by betting on a straight draw that didn't come. That's insane, to put all your chips on the line even though you don't have so much as a pair! Of course, they were playing against me, so the last card was indeed a 10.
So, here I am, still trudging along but completely lost as to where I'm going to end up. Even those who aren't where they want to be at least have a sense of direction. I feel like I have nothing right now. I spent the last year with a doctor trying to find a way out of the maze that is my mind. The only thing I found was my money missing after every session. So fuck that. But I'm feeling more and more desperate for something to change as I approach 30 years old. I feel like I should have something to show for making it that far. But I won't have a wife, I won't have a family, and unless I knock off a bank, I won't have anything of substance. I might not even have a job or a place of my own. And every night I go to bed, I'm wondering: When does it get better? Or does it ever?
The academic side of my life I suppose is going okay, but it's going very slowly and it has no future for now because I don't have the money to take any classes this fall. My friend Cassandra explained to me how much she's paying in student loans and how long she has to pay it, and fuck, there's no way I'd be able to pay off that kind of money. She tries to make it sound okay by telling me that she would never have her $41,000 per year job if not for her degree, so it's paying for itself. I remind her that this is me we're talking about, so a job paying that much ain't in my future no matter what degree I have. And as further proof, I present my dad, proud owner of a business degree for over 30 years and still living like a homeless person. Success just isn't part of my makeup, unfortunately. That's part of why what Karen did still hurts after 16 months. Stupid me finally thought that I had succeeded in finding a good quality woman that loved me and found me attractive. I should have known better.
My unemployment benefits are about to run out, so I attempted to bring in some income with online gambling. No surprise that didn't turn out well. I deposited $1,000 into my sports betting account from my credit card over the past month, and I won a few bets and built my account up briefly, but soon enough my usual bad luck caught up to me and wiped me out. Even worse was my poker luck. I finished ninth in a 700-person tournament online a few weeks ago, and that turned my $5 entry fee for that tournament into about $110. There's nothing in that account now either. All the tournaments that I've entered since I've been bounced early from them, even the ten-man single table events that theoretically would be much easier to win than a 700-person marathon. I mean I have been knocked out with some great fucking hands too. For instance, and this will sound like a foreign language for non-poker fans, but in one tournament my two down cards were a pair of 7s and of the four community cards out there, one was a 7 and one was an 8, and the other two were lower cards. That means that I have three of a kind. So when I go all-in, putting all 1,200 of my chips on the line, and two different people with more chips than me also go all-in, I figure I'm screwed because to go all-in, these people must have good hands, and if either of them have a pair of 8s, then they have a better hand than me. They both had the same two down cards, a 5 and a 6. That means that they went all-in not because they already had a good hand--they actually had nothing--but because they hoped that the last card in the community would connect their 5 and 6 to the 7 and 8, giving them a straight, which beats my three of a kind. The 4 or the 10 would do it, but if neither came, then they would both have lost all of their chips and been knocked out of the tournament by betting on a straight draw that didn't come. That's insane, to put all your chips on the line even though you don't have so much as a pair! Of course, they were playing against me, so the last card was indeed a 10.
So, here I am, still trudging along but completely lost as to where I'm going to end up. Even those who aren't where they want to be at least have a sense of direction. I feel like I have nothing right now. I spent the last year with a doctor trying to find a way out of the maze that is my mind. The only thing I found was my money missing after every session. So fuck that. But I'm feeling more and more desperate for something to change as I approach 30 years old. I feel like I should have something to show for making it that far. But I won't have a wife, I won't have a family, and unless I knock off a bank, I won't have anything of substance. I might not even have a job or a place of my own. And every night I go to bed, I'm wondering: When does it get better? Or does it ever?
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
The Saga Continues
Yep, more "Karen" news...
Last week, the day after I wrote to her new fake Tawanda Yahoo account, which said she was single and going to Mexico in September and asked "Wanna come?" to anyone in general, she changed the profile to read that she was in a long-term relationship and removed all references to her new SUV, her new house, and her cruise to Mexico. If she really is in a long-term relationship, then she seduced her latest sucker even quicker than she seduced me, because she just put an ad up on April 23 under her real name on the singles site where I met her. Or, more than likely, she was frightened by the fact that I know her new alias and instead of closing the account like she did when I busted her last year, she decided to try to scare me off by indicating that there is a man with her now, so I better watch my step. Ooh, I'm really scared. Then Sunday night she updated the profile again to say that "we" are all moved into the new house and settling in. She also changed the name of the town she's living in. That's fine. She can create all the stories she wants under whatever profile she wants. It doesn't change anything.
Now for the most unbelievable twist, something I never would have imagined. A few months ago I joined a website called bbwhotornot.com (they recently changed their name to ratingbbw.com due to mean people apparently hacking the previous domain). I don't even remember how I came across the site, but it's just one of those hot-or-not sites where strangers put up their pictures and wait for other strangers to click on a number between 1 and 10 and rate them, except this site is specifically for fat men and women. I already know that I'm not hot, so you can guess why I joined: To see if Karen was on there, since it's a site right up her alley. She can show how big of a whore she is and attract a new clientele that she already knows is attracted to big girls. Well I never found a profile of her on there. But I put a picture up for the hell of it about a month ago, and last night, for the first time since the beginning of the month when my computer crashed, I was looking over the profiles of the women who rated me (you can choose to be put on the list of people who rate someone, whether you rate them good or bad, or you can choose to rate anonymously). Way back on June 7, someone who looked very familiar rated me "average." It wasn't Karen...it was "Rhonda," the ho-bag friend of Karen that went out with us on Valentine's Day last year with a date that wasn't her husband, because the husband kept calling her cell phone wondering where the fuck his wife was on Valentine's Day and she and Karen kept laughing at him. Rhonda is the "official" reason that Karen claims to be promoting lesbian bbw websites, because she's just helping her friend Rhonda after Rhonda helped her out of her "abusive marriage." Rhonda is the person that Karen is sitting next to half-naked on the front of the bisexual bbw website that sent me into the psych ward last March. So you see how big of a role Rhonda played in the history of me and Karen--a very big part. And to know that she already knew that I was on this site, and probably informed Karen, was another big shock in a long line of big shocks. All those anonymous jackasses that have talked shit to me in the comments section of this blog--they may very well be Rhonda and Karen and friends, because there's a link to my Yahoo profile on my ratingbbw.com profile, and in my Yahoo profile, there's a link to this blog. I never intended for Karen to see this blog. I never meant for her to know just how much she hurt me, and I never meant for her to have any kinds of heads-up for when I finally decide to go up there and make her pay for what she did to me. Every time I have ever wrote to Karen, it was using the e-mail address that I initially used when I met her, one that I never update. And it gets worse. The kicker: You can put three or four different pictures under your ratingbbw.com profile. Guess what the third picture under Rhonda's profile is? Yes, that very same picture of her and Karen half-naked and smiling that I saw that fateful Friday, March 19. I never fucking thought I'd see that picture ever again. And now that I have, I can't stop thinking about it.
My mind has been racing ever since last night. How much does Karen actually know and when did she know it? Why did fate make me see that Goddamn picture again after I thought I had purged it from my mind? Did Rhonda even bother to tell Karen about my ratingbbw.com profile? Is it just a private joke between me and Rhonda? Or are they now torturing me through these retarded "anonymous" comments? Why can't I just quit this life and go to another one? Why do I get the feeling that Karen and I will keep finding ways to be intertwined until the day I die? Or the day she dies, whichever comes first?
Last week, the day after I wrote to her new fake Tawanda Yahoo account, which said she was single and going to Mexico in September and asked "Wanna come?" to anyone in general, she changed the profile to read that she was in a long-term relationship and removed all references to her new SUV, her new house, and her cruise to Mexico. If she really is in a long-term relationship, then she seduced her latest sucker even quicker than she seduced me, because she just put an ad up on April 23 under her real name on the singles site where I met her. Or, more than likely, she was frightened by the fact that I know her new alias and instead of closing the account like she did when I busted her last year, she decided to try to scare me off by indicating that there is a man with her now, so I better watch my step. Ooh, I'm really scared. Then Sunday night she updated the profile again to say that "we" are all moved into the new house and settling in. She also changed the name of the town she's living in. That's fine. She can create all the stories she wants under whatever profile she wants. It doesn't change anything.
Now for the most unbelievable twist, something I never would have imagined. A few months ago I joined a website called bbwhotornot.com (they recently changed their name to ratingbbw.com due to mean people apparently hacking the previous domain). I don't even remember how I came across the site, but it's just one of those hot-or-not sites where strangers put up their pictures and wait for other strangers to click on a number between 1 and 10 and rate them, except this site is specifically for fat men and women. I already know that I'm not hot, so you can guess why I joined: To see if Karen was on there, since it's a site right up her alley. She can show how big of a whore she is and attract a new clientele that she already knows is attracted to big girls. Well I never found a profile of her on there. But I put a picture up for the hell of it about a month ago, and last night, for the first time since the beginning of the month when my computer crashed, I was looking over the profiles of the women who rated me (you can choose to be put on the list of people who rate someone, whether you rate them good or bad, or you can choose to rate anonymously). Way back on June 7, someone who looked very familiar rated me "average." It wasn't Karen...it was "Rhonda," the ho-bag friend of Karen that went out with us on Valentine's Day last year with a date that wasn't her husband, because the husband kept calling her cell phone wondering where the fuck his wife was on Valentine's Day and she and Karen kept laughing at him. Rhonda is the "official" reason that Karen claims to be promoting lesbian bbw websites, because she's just helping her friend Rhonda after Rhonda helped her out of her "abusive marriage." Rhonda is the person that Karen is sitting next to half-naked on the front of the bisexual bbw website that sent me into the psych ward last March. So you see how big of a role Rhonda played in the history of me and Karen--a very big part. And to know that she already knew that I was on this site, and probably informed Karen, was another big shock in a long line of big shocks. All those anonymous jackasses that have talked shit to me in the comments section of this blog--they may very well be Rhonda and Karen and friends, because there's a link to my Yahoo profile on my ratingbbw.com profile, and in my Yahoo profile, there's a link to this blog. I never intended for Karen to see this blog. I never meant for her to know just how much she hurt me, and I never meant for her to have any kinds of heads-up for when I finally decide to go up there and make her pay for what she did to me. Every time I have ever wrote to Karen, it was using the e-mail address that I initially used when I met her, one that I never update. And it gets worse. The kicker: You can put three or four different pictures under your ratingbbw.com profile. Guess what the third picture under Rhonda's profile is? Yes, that very same picture of her and Karen half-naked and smiling that I saw that fateful Friday, March 19. I never fucking thought I'd see that picture ever again. And now that I have, I can't stop thinking about it.
My mind has been racing ever since last night. How much does Karen actually know and when did she know it? Why did fate make me see that Goddamn picture again after I thought I had purged it from my mind? Did Rhonda even bother to tell Karen about my ratingbbw.com profile? Is it just a private joke between me and Rhonda? Or are they now torturing me through these retarded "anonymous" comments? Why can't I just quit this life and go to another one? Why do I get the feeling that Karen and I will keep finding ways to be intertwined until the day I die? Or the day she dies, whichever comes first?
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
A (Long) Saturday Stroll
PREFACE: To those "anonymous" readers sick and tired of hearing about my obsession with "Karen," I will talk more about her later in this post. If you're not interested, don't read. There's millions more interesting blogs online. You don't have to trash mine if it's really that bad.
I participated in a walk-a-thon for sickle cell anemia on Saturday, June 11. Sickle cell anemia is what killed my mother, and I have sickle cell trait, meaning if I created a child with someone else with the trait, that child would be at risk for the disease. It's a very painful disease; my mother was in a tremendous amount of pain all her life. I wonder how she ever went through childbirth, especially my big ass. But anyhow, I never participated in the fundraiser because I didn't want to be so close to something associated with the death of my mom. But last year, when Karen did what she did to me, I decided to go just to hang out with my family, since it became obvious family was the only group of people I could trust, and also to introduce them to "Sarah," who was at the time my girlfriend. I didn't participate, but this year I signed up for the walk, and I can't see a good reason why I wouldn't do at least that much every year from this point on. (There are jog and bike portions as well, but I'm not in shape to jog, and I can't ride a bike.) Now, I didn't come close to walking to the end of the path--this thing started at 35th on the lake and extended down the lakeshore to 69th, and in the heat of the noon sun, I managed to get to 47th and back--but at least I did something. I've realized over the last few years, even before I met that whore Karen, that a lot of my fears about dating and marriage and relationships stem from the simple fact that I'm scared to death to give my love to a woman only to watch her abandon me, which is how I felt when my mom died in 1986, when I was ten years old. And now, walking in this fundraiser, in a way I acknowledged her death, which is something I've always been loathe to do, and I felt like maybe I was on my way to properly grieving her loss and moving on, which is something I feel like I've never done. I "talked" with my mom throughout the walk, and she encouraged me to keep going, even though on the walk back I had to stop several times just because the benches looked SO enticing. But I kept going, and despite how tired I felt throughout the walk, one of the first thoughts I had once I made it back was that I expect to go farther next year now that I've had a little taste of what I have to do. I'll discuss everything to do with my mother in my next post. Maybe it will help explain why mentally I am in the place that I am.
I think my uncle, my mom's brother, was extremely pleased to see me participate, since he organizes part of the fundraiser and never saw me be a part of it in the years past. On the drive back afterwards, he said something that almost made me choke up. He told me that I remind him of my mom in that we were both very sensitive to how others perceived us, me because of my weight and her because of her delicate condition. We both were self-conscious about relationships. I found that hard to believe because my mom was such a beautiful and intelligent woman. My uncle told me that she settled for my dad, an overweight, sloppy man by anyone's standards, because she was afraid that she would be alone, just as I have settled for evey woman I've ever dated because I am afraid of being alone. But, he said, he hoped I would be patient and do what my mom didn't have a chance to do--find a person with as big a heart as me, because, just like my mom, I have a very big heart and I deserve someone who matches it. I think that's one of the things that's keeping me from jumping off a bridge right now. Somewhere deep down in my heart, I still hold out hope that someone will come into my life that realizes that I am a good man, while being a good woman in her own right, a good woman that's not living an alternative life and not lying to me or herself. My mom went through hell to give me life. I'm hoping to do what she wanted, which is to be in a partnership with someone who values me and herself. It ain't looking good right now, but I guess I'm still holding out some hope.
My father and I, speaking of my sloppy dad, had banana splits on Father's Day this past Sunday. Because he beat me as a kid, and because he can be rather embarrassing sometimes, I've always hated every second I've spent with him. But we had a long chat about my situation with Karen, and he gave me some advice beyond the "Women are crazy" spiel he usually gives. I told him that I'm having a very hard time with the fact that I don't have the balls to go up to Wisconsin with a bottle of bleach and a funnel because it means that it's okay for Karen to do what she did to me because she got away with it without any retribution from me. I feel that it means that anyone can fuck me up the ass and it's all good because I'm going to let them. He pointed out that it doesn't mean anyone can do that to me, just one person, and no matter how unfair it is, it's better to let her get away with it because the alternative is showering with a bunch of horny men in the federal prison before they stick a needle in my vein. My dad has a way with words. I told him that I had already considered all the ramifications of going up there and killing Karen, and that I'm close to accepting them if it means that at least she didn't get away with screwing me. He said that I can't do that, because then she'd really be screwing me. I was trying to install my printer back on my computer all day Sunday, and because I had two papers due Monday morning, I had to get it done, but the installation disk simply wouldn't cooperate. Yet I stepped out of the apartment to spend a couple of hours with my dad, and if I hadn't, then he wouldn't have called his brother in Florida, his brother the computer whiz, and his brother the computer whiz wouldn't have told me, the computer boob, that I can go to the website of my printer's maker and download the drivers onto my computer, therefore installing the printer without having to beg and plead with the installation disk, and I wouldn't have done those two papers by pulling an all-nighter and finishing my work around 5:30A Monday. So, and I never thought I'd be saying this, thanks dad. My father, actually good for something. Go figure.
And now for the latest Karen news: I e-mailed her new phony Tawanda account Monday morning "congratulating" her on the good news about her new house and car that she wrote on that account. She replied to me that evening. She continued to insist that I misunderstand everything, that her appearing on a bisexual BBW website half-naked next to her best friend wasn't what it looked like, she was just helping her friend promote the website, but she's not into that at all. Oh, okay. She told me that she still thinks about me, but that we were "doomed from the beginning," whatever the fuck that means, and that my angry letter to her the morning after I found out about her destroyed any future between us, but that "I wish you well." I know exactly what she's doing. She's trying to make me pause and think that she really is a misunderstood woman who just wants to help promote her friend's wild lifestyle but isn't really involved with it. Every second that I pause and wonder if she's really not the bitch that deceived me and ruined my life is another second that she has bought herself to keep deceiving and living the life she wants to live, breaking hearts and destroying anyone stupid enough to love her along the way. That's why I feel like a decision has to come from me very soon, a decision on which direction I am going to choose--to let her go and let her get away with what she did, attempting to move past her and ignoring the fact that she's going to keep on truckin' as if what I felt and what my family felt when we found out about her doesn't mean shit, or to go up there and defend myself and my family against this human waste and let her and every other woman know that you can go around fucking with other guys and getting off scott-free, but I cannot allow you to do that to me and get away with it. I have to choose which way to go now. I can't keep going the way I'm going, saying I'm going to get past her but knowing that all I think about when I am awake is wondering what guys or girls she's persuading to think that she's a sweet, innocent girl and if she feels any remorse for crushing another person's heart, and all I think about when I'm trying to sleep is how good it would feel to hear her last breath before I break her neck or choke her out. It's time for me to decide, for good, for once and for all, finally, will I be a man or a mouse?
I participated in a walk-a-thon for sickle cell anemia on Saturday, June 11. Sickle cell anemia is what killed my mother, and I have sickle cell trait, meaning if I created a child with someone else with the trait, that child would be at risk for the disease. It's a very painful disease; my mother was in a tremendous amount of pain all her life. I wonder how she ever went through childbirth, especially my big ass. But anyhow, I never participated in the fundraiser because I didn't want to be so close to something associated with the death of my mom. But last year, when Karen did what she did to me, I decided to go just to hang out with my family, since it became obvious family was the only group of people I could trust, and also to introduce them to "Sarah," who was at the time my girlfriend. I didn't participate, but this year I signed up for the walk, and I can't see a good reason why I wouldn't do at least that much every year from this point on. (There are jog and bike portions as well, but I'm not in shape to jog, and I can't ride a bike.) Now, I didn't come close to walking to the end of the path--this thing started at 35th on the lake and extended down the lakeshore to 69th, and in the heat of the noon sun, I managed to get to 47th and back--but at least I did something. I've realized over the last few years, even before I met that whore Karen, that a lot of my fears about dating and marriage and relationships stem from the simple fact that I'm scared to death to give my love to a woman only to watch her abandon me, which is how I felt when my mom died in 1986, when I was ten years old. And now, walking in this fundraiser, in a way I acknowledged her death, which is something I've always been loathe to do, and I felt like maybe I was on my way to properly grieving her loss and moving on, which is something I feel like I've never done. I "talked" with my mom throughout the walk, and she encouraged me to keep going, even though on the walk back I had to stop several times just because the benches looked SO enticing. But I kept going, and despite how tired I felt throughout the walk, one of the first thoughts I had once I made it back was that I expect to go farther next year now that I've had a little taste of what I have to do. I'll discuss everything to do with my mother in my next post. Maybe it will help explain why mentally I am in the place that I am.
I think my uncle, my mom's brother, was extremely pleased to see me participate, since he organizes part of the fundraiser and never saw me be a part of it in the years past. On the drive back afterwards, he said something that almost made me choke up. He told me that I remind him of my mom in that we were both very sensitive to how others perceived us, me because of my weight and her because of her delicate condition. We both were self-conscious about relationships. I found that hard to believe because my mom was such a beautiful and intelligent woman. My uncle told me that she settled for my dad, an overweight, sloppy man by anyone's standards, because she was afraid that she would be alone, just as I have settled for evey woman I've ever dated because I am afraid of being alone. But, he said, he hoped I would be patient and do what my mom didn't have a chance to do--find a person with as big a heart as me, because, just like my mom, I have a very big heart and I deserve someone who matches it. I think that's one of the things that's keeping me from jumping off a bridge right now. Somewhere deep down in my heart, I still hold out hope that someone will come into my life that realizes that I am a good man, while being a good woman in her own right, a good woman that's not living an alternative life and not lying to me or herself. My mom went through hell to give me life. I'm hoping to do what she wanted, which is to be in a partnership with someone who values me and herself. It ain't looking good right now, but I guess I'm still holding out some hope.
My father and I, speaking of my sloppy dad, had banana splits on Father's Day this past Sunday. Because he beat me as a kid, and because he can be rather embarrassing sometimes, I've always hated every second I've spent with him. But we had a long chat about my situation with Karen, and he gave me some advice beyond the "Women are crazy" spiel he usually gives. I told him that I'm having a very hard time with the fact that I don't have the balls to go up to Wisconsin with a bottle of bleach and a funnel because it means that it's okay for Karen to do what she did to me because she got away with it without any retribution from me. I feel that it means that anyone can fuck me up the ass and it's all good because I'm going to let them. He pointed out that it doesn't mean anyone can do that to me, just one person, and no matter how unfair it is, it's better to let her get away with it because the alternative is showering with a bunch of horny men in the federal prison before they stick a needle in my vein. My dad has a way with words. I told him that I had already considered all the ramifications of going up there and killing Karen, and that I'm close to accepting them if it means that at least she didn't get away with screwing me. He said that I can't do that, because then she'd really be screwing me. I was trying to install my printer back on my computer all day Sunday, and because I had two papers due Monday morning, I had to get it done, but the installation disk simply wouldn't cooperate. Yet I stepped out of the apartment to spend a couple of hours with my dad, and if I hadn't, then he wouldn't have called his brother in Florida, his brother the computer whiz, and his brother the computer whiz wouldn't have told me, the computer boob, that I can go to the website of my printer's maker and download the drivers onto my computer, therefore installing the printer without having to beg and plead with the installation disk, and I wouldn't have done those two papers by pulling an all-nighter and finishing my work around 5:30A Monday. So, and I never thought I'd be saying this, thanks dad. My father, actually good for something. Go figure.
And now for the latest Karen news: I e-mailed her new phony Tawanda account Monday morning "congratulating" her on the good news about her new house and car that she wrote on that account. She replied to me that evening. She continued to insist that I misunderstand everything, that her appearing on a bisexual BBW website half-naked next to her best friend wasn't what it looked like, she was just helping her friend promote the website, but she's not into that at all. Oh, okay. She told me that she still thinks about me, but that we were "doomed from the beginning," whatever the fuck that means, and that my angry letter to her the morning after I found out about her destroyed any future between us, but that "I wish you well." I know exactly what she's doing. She's trying to make me pause and think that she really is a misunderstood woman who just wants to help promote her friend's wild lifestyle but isn't really involved with it. Every second that I pause and wonder if she's really not the bitch that deceived me and ruined my life is another second that she has bought herself to keep deceiving and living the life she wants to live, breaking hearts and destroying anyone stupid enough to love her along the way. That's why I feel like a decision has to come from me very soon, a decision on which direction I am going to choose--to let her go and let her get away with what she did, attempting to move past her and ignoring the fact that she's going to keep on truckin' as if what I felt and what my family felt when we found out about her doesn't mean shit, or to go up there and defend myself and my family against this human waste and let her and every other woman know that you can go around fucking with other guys and getting off scott-free, but I cannot allow you to do that to me and get away with it. I have to choose which way to go now. I can't keep going the way I'm going, saying I'm going to get past her but knowing that all I think about when I am awake is wondering what guys or girls she's persuading to think that she's a sweet, innocent girl and if she feels any remorse for crushing another person's heart, and all I think about when I'm trying to sleep is how good it would feel to hear her last breath before I break her neck or choke her out. It's time for me to decide, for good, for once and for all, finally, will I be a man or a mouse?
Sunday, June 19, 2005
The Return Of Tawanda
My computer is fixed, apparently virus-free and complete with an upgrade to Windows XP, thanks to my buddy "Drew." I'm afraid to reinstall my printer because it took forever to install it right the first time, but everything else seems to be working properly. So what was the first thing I did once I got back online? I noticed that I still had that site saved under my old profile where I first met "Karen," and remembering that the last time I went to that site she had posted a new personal ad, I gave in to my curiosity and went to see if she had posted anything else since. She certainly has. She did the exact same thing she did when we were dating--she created a new profile under the name Tawanda and posted a different ad under the alternative section advertising a Wisconsin bisexual BBW Yahoo group. The bitch just won't quit, and of course she shouldn't quit since it's her life and she can do what she wants with it. That don't mean I have to be happy with it. Under her new Tawanda Yahoo profile, she says she just bought a new house and SUV (she told me her next car would be an SUV when we were dating) and that she's headed on a cruise to Mexico in September, and she asks, "Wanna go?" as if anyone out there can join her if they accept her and her dirty, slutty ways. I think I'm gonna be sick. I've got schoolwork to do, so I'll come back some other time and talk about my attempt to participate in a walk-a-thon, and I'll try to talk about stuff other than what my cumsponge of an ex-girlfriend is doing. But right now, my hands are shaking and I want to cry, if you'll excuse me.
Sunday, May 29, 2005
Update via Google
I just Googled "Karen's" real name and found out that in September of last year, someone with her name and birthdate (11/10/72) reported a rock busting the windshield on her '03 Ford to the cops in Wisconsin. Yep, she drove a black Ford when I dated her. Don't know how to feel about this one. Sure, it's some bad luck for her, so I should be thrilled, but I can't help but wonder, was this a purposeful rock through her windshield? Did she not learn anything from screwing me up the ass and wound up doing it to someone who reacted worse than I did? Will the rock stop her? If not, will my next Google produce her death certificate? More questions than answers I guess, which is why I shouldn't be Googling her in the first place.
And yes, I know of all the things she's doing at midnight on a Saturday night, Googling me ain't one of them. Yes, I know I'm pathetic. I have no reasons for my actions, just a very unhealthy obsession with that woman. It is what it is.
And yes, I know of all the things she's doing at midnight on a Saturday night, Googling me ain't one of them. Yes, I know I'm pathetic. I have no reasons for my actions, just a very unhealthy obsession with that woman. It is what it is.
Saturday, April 23, 2005
"Looking for someone who can compliment me..."
The following is from a personal ads board online. It was posted today by "Karen," the woman who broke my heart last year:
"I am looking for someone who is strong emotionally and mentally. Someone who can take care of themselves but also enjoys when their woman does things for them. Someone who can support themselves and takes pride in the work they do. Someone caring and supportive and not afraid to show their feelings. Someone who knows how to communicate and likes to be social. Someone who is open minded and nonjudgemental. If this sounds like you email me so we can talk.
**Specifics**
Age Range: 32-38 yrs. old (could be a little flexible)
Race: Open but partial to African American
Appearance: Open but once again partial to men who are NOT thin and are bald
NON Smokers ONLY
**************************************************
About me....I am divorced, 32, white, No kids, live in Milwaukee, 200 pounds (thick)
Your pic gets mine"
So there you have it. She lied about the other garbage that she does when she posted her ad in September 2003, when she caught me, and now she's at it again. This is the same board that I met her on, and it's also the same board where, using a different name and profile, she advertised for her bi BBW swingers club that she thought I would never find out about. After I got over the initial shock of seeing her posting a personal ad again on the same board, I had to laugh at the content. Doesn't she seem so innocent and such an upstanding citizen? Isn't it noble of her to want "someone who is open minded and nonjudgemental"? Until you realize that she wants someone "nonjudgemental" so that when she does tell him that she's a slut who fucks strangers for kicks, instead of reacting angrily like I did, he will say, "That's ok honey. I understand. I won't judge you for lying to me and whoring around. I still love you." I'm sure that's what she would have loved for me to say to her. And because I cared for her so strongly, I almost did say that.
I have no idea how I'm going to handle the rest of this weekend knowing that the whore whose actions landed me in a psych ward for a week is advertising herself yet again. I realize that it's my fault for continuing to visit that singles website, and I realize that I wasn't visiting that site looking for a date myself; I kept going back there specifically looking to see if she would have the balls to come back there again. She did. I can't explain why I kept going back. I guess it's something where I felt like I was keeping tabs on someone I loved but couldn't contact, since she refused to answer my phone calls the last time I tried to talk to her, last summer. Since her swingers site is no longer at the web address that it was before, and since the bbwphotography.com website where she got those pics taken no longer exists, I thought going back to the site where we met would be the only way to keep track of her. But why do I have the need to keep track of her? Maybe I'm obsessed. I admit it. Maybe I am obsessed with Karen and will continue to be for a long long time. I don't know. All I know is I feel very empty right now knowing that she will have a boatload of big black men at her beck and call, and there ain't no way that I could be one of them because she won't let me back in her life now that I know the truth about her. And of course I wouldn't want to be back in her life now knowing what kind of person she is, but the part of me that still loves her wants to be there more than anything else in the world, and that part of me is screaming in agony right now.
"I am looking for someone who is strong emotionally and mentally. Someone who can take care of themselves but also enjoys when their woman does things for them. Someone who can support themselves and takes pride in the work they do. Someone caring and supportive and not afraid to show their feelings. Someone who knows how to communicate and likes to be social. Someone who is open minded and nonjudgemental. If this sounds like you email me so we can talk.
**Specifics**
Age Range: 32-38 yrs. old (could be a little flexible)
Race: Open but partial to African American
Appearance: Open but once again partial to men who are NOT thin and are bald
NON Smokers ONLY
**************************************************
About me....I am divorced, 32, white, No kids, live in Milwaukee, 200 pounds (thick)
Your pic gets mine"
So there you have it. She lied about the other garbage that she does when she posted her ad in September 2003, when she caught me, and now she's at it again. This is the same board that I met her on, and it's also the same board where, using a different name and profile, she advertised for her bi BBW swingers club that she thought I would never find out about. After I got over the initial shock of seeing her posting a personal ad again on the same board, I had to laugh at the content. Doesn't she seem so innocent and such an upstanding citizen? Isn't it noble of her to want "someone who is open minded and nonjudgemental"? Until you realize that she wants someone "nonjudgemental" so that when she does tell him that she's a slut who fucks strangers for kicks, instead of reacting angrily like I did, he will say, "That's ok honey. I understand. I won't judge you for lying to me and whoring around. I still love you." I'm sure that's what she would have loved for me to say to her. And because I cared for her so strongly, I almost did say that.
I have no idea how I'm going to handle the rest of this weekend knowing that the whore whose actions landed me in a psych ward for a week is advertising herself yet again. I realize that it's my fault for continuing to visit that singles website, and I realize that I wasn't visiting that site looking for a date myself; I kept going back there specifically looking to see if she would have the balls to come back there again. She did. I can't explain why I kept going back. I guess it's something where I felt like I was keeping tabs on someone I loved but couldn't contact, since she refused to answer my phone calls the last time I tried to talk to her, last summer. Since her swingers site is no longer at the web address that it was before, and since the bbwphotography.com website where she got those pics taken no longer exists, I thought going back to the site where we met would be the only way to keep track of her. But why do I have the need to keep track of her? Maybe I'm obsessed. I admit it. Maybe I am obsessed with Karen and will continue to be for a long long time. I don't know. All I know is I feel very empty right now knowing that she will have a boatload of big black men at her beck and call, and there ain't no way that I could be one of them because she won't let me back in her life now that I know the truth about her. And of course I wouldn't want to be back in her life now knowing what kind of person she is, but the part of me that still loves her wants to be there more than anything else in the world, and that part of me is screaming in agony right now.
Thursday, April 21, 2005
Floating
The metaphor for how I feel when I tell people about the level of loneliness I go through on a daily basis is that I feel like I'm floating through the atmosphere, not grounded at all and not having a home or base, just out there among the stars, nonexistent to all other beings. Here are the most recent events to help contribute to that feeling:
1. Not that I have a lot of male friends (three), but every one of them has a girlfriend, and it makes me want to vomit. Not that they aren't good guys and don't deserve a woman, but shit, how many times am I going to be in a situation where I'm having dinner with a friend and his girl is there snuggling with him and I'm just sitting across the table twiddling my thumbs? What a helpless, frustrating feeling it is to hang out with a friend and his girlfriend without a date of my own. I went through it twice in the last couple of weeks. I went out three weekends ago to my friend "Drew's" house and on Sunday morning at a restaurant for brunch it was Drew, his girlfriend, my best friend "Ronnie," his new girlfriend who he had known at the time for a week, and my lonely ass just sitting there. Not fun. And Drew's girlfriend is barely an adult, so she's asking all these personal questions trying to figure out what's wrong, but she's not old enough to realize that what's wrong is I'm not attractive and not rich, simple as that. Then the weekend that "Jacob" was here for his big-money baseball fantasy draft, he and his girlfriend and I went out to dinner with some friends of his. This dinner always took place when he visited town, but with just us guys. Now there's a woman there. I tried to invite a female friend to join me because I was feeling so inadequate, but of course the friend wasn't able to. I was diplomatic in these situations, but the reality is, there aren't many things more uncomfortable than being around the same guys that I used to bitch with about how much we hated women, and now there they are with a woman, and I'm all alone, so somewhere along the way they stopped having a problem dealing with women. I on the other hand still don't have a clue.
2. "Torrie" still refuses to keep in touch with me or inform me about her plans to join me at the Kentucky Derby the weekend of May 7. I haven't heard from her in several weeks. I tried to call her recently and left a voice mail, but her response was in text message and said that she had no time to talk to me because her two nephews are both in the hospital and her work schedule and the hospital visits are taking up all her time. It would have taken her less time to call me and tell me that, but just like when she tried to dump me via e-mail, it takes guts to speak to me live, and apparently she has none. But it's all my fault, because she tried to dump me but I laid a guilt trip on her and she rescinded. So she basically tried to tell me in so many words that I am not a priority in her life, and I didn't listen because I was too wrapped up in the drama of being abandoned again. But what's worse, being abandoned or being told that you're not being abandoned and being abandoned anyway? And people wonder why I feel like I'm from another planet. All this time that Torrie is spending between family and work is of course understandable, but it doesn't explain why there hasn't been one time where she calls before she goes to bed for the night and says: "Boy, things are really crazy right now. I haven't had time to think hardly. But I just wanted to say that you're on my mind and I want to thank you for hanging in there and being there for me. It's something that I'm not taking for granted, and I really do appreciate it. Well, I'm tired, so I'm turning in. Take care honey, and thanks again."
Nope, too busy to do that.
3. And with Torrie apparently unavailable for Kentucky Derby weekend, it means that I have had a hotel room reserved in Louisville for an entire calendar year and now that the time is here, I will be going to share that room with...wait for it...absolutely nobody. I originally reserved it right after I came back home from the Derby last year, because it's so hard to get a room in Louisville for Derby weekend, and because I had so much fun with "Sarah" that I just knew we'd still be together at this time next year and we would love to go back. Of course, Sarah and I are no longer, but think about what I have to offer: A two-night weekend in Louisville for an event that over 150,000 people attend live every year, and even if you weren't into horses, a two-night weekend with a young, virile black man, no holds barred, for free. Now think about the 492 trillion websites on Yahoo and such promoting dating black men and how many women are members of these sites. And not one of these women want to take advantage of this with me. Not the women in Louisville, not the women here in Chicago, not anywhere in between can you find a woman willing to make this trip with me. How fucking pathetic is that? Oh, and it gets better: Ronnie, knowing that I have an empty room and knowing how hard it is to find a room anywhere near Louisville for Derby weekend because, after all, he's the person that took me to the Derby the first time I went two years ago, now wants to take that room for him and his new girlfriend and split the costs with me. In the words of an ex-lover when she asked me what I was thinking standing over her with my dick hanging out and I responded that, duh, I wanted to put my cock in her mouth: "That's not gonna happen." There ain't no way I'm spending Derby weekend watching any guy and girl cuddling all over each other and I don't have anyone to cuddle with. Even if I had someone, it wouldn't happen because, duh, I'd want the room to be empty for me and my lady. And Ronnie has done a lot for me over the years, driving me here and there because I don't have a car, helping me move a couple of times, but plain and simple, if he wants a hotel room in Louisville for Derby weekend, he needs to reserve one well in advance, just like I did. I'll spend the whole weekend alone before I share a room with a couple. Period.
4. I got up the courage to ask someone out on a date for the first time in years. Yes, a real live person, not a profile on an internet dating site. She laughed and said no, of course. In the many weeks that we have talked casually during class, I've never heard a reference to any kind of social life, and when I asked her Monday what she did over the weekend, she said "Nothing, just rented movies with my family." I followed up by asking if she'd want to go see a movie this weekend. She giggled and said, "No thank you, I've got plans." Now, I'm not going to say that there's no way that this person that has never mentioned a social life does not have plans this weekend. She may be going to a relative's birthday party or something. But here's my point: She now knows that I want to go out with her. If she wanted to go out with me, would she not suggest going somwhere at a different time than this weekend? Sometime when she doesn't have plans? But there was no follow-up of the sort from her, just a laugh and a rejection when I dared mention that she could see a movie with me. A few people have told me to ask her whether she was free to see a movie with me some other time. Those people apparently don't feel the humiliating sting of rejection very often. How many ways am I supposed to ask this girl to go out with me before I realize that she doesn't want to go out with me? I could paint her into a corner and find out when she's not busy and say, "A-ha! There is a point in time that you could use to go out with me." But now she has to come up with a different excuse, and that's not comfortable for her or for me. I tried, she shot me down, that should be the end. If I keep coming at her even after being rejected, that's just pitiful. I have a little pride, not much, but a little.
So that's where I stand mentally, just kinda floating around wondering when I became so different from other human beings. Oh, and there's a shot of anger thrown in too: I was reading posts on the message board where I met "Karen," and she's still posting there. I had to read her talking about how proud she is to be a fat girl and how she accepts herself. I resisted the urge to bust her out by posting: "But how proud are you to be a bisexual BBW swinger, and how proud are you that you don't tell your boyfriends about it until they find your secret website, and even then you don't explain yourself, you just ignore them like they don't exist???" I'm coming to grips with the fact that I may go the rest of my life wanting nothing more than to turn her upside down and pour bleach into her cunt. Some things just can't be smoothed over, no matter how much counseling or time I receive.
1. Not that I have a lot of male friends (three), but every one of them has a girlfriend, and it makes me want to vomit. Not that they aren't good guys and don't deserve a woman, but shit, how many times am I going to be in a situation where I'm having dinner with a friend and his girl is there snuggling with him and I'm just sitting across the table twiddling my thumbs? What a helpless, frustrating feeling it is to hang out with a friend and his girlfriend without a date of my own. I went through it twice in the last couple of weeks. I went out three weekends ago to my friend "Drew's" house and on Sunday morning at a restaurant for brunch it was Drew, his girlfriend, my best friend "Ronnie," his new girlfriend who he had known at the time for a week, and my lonely ass just sitting there. Not fun. And Drew's girlfriend is barely an adult, so she's asking all these personal questions trying to figure out what's wrong, but she's not old enough to realize that what's wrong is I'm not attractive and not rich, simple as that. Then the weekend that "Jacob" was here for his big-money baseball fantasy draft, he and his girlfriend and I went out to dinner with some friends of his. This dinner always took place when he visited town, but with just us guys. Now there's a woman there. I tried to invite a female friend to join me because I was feeling so inadequate, but of course the friend wasn't able to. I was diplomatic in these situations, but the reality is, there aren't many things more uncomfortable than being around the same guys that I used to bitch with about how much we hated women, and now there they are with a woman, and I'm all alone, so somewhere along the way they stopped having a problem dealing with women. I on the other hand still don't have a clue.
2. "Torrie" still refuses to keep in touch with me or inform me about her plans to join me at the Kentucky Derby the weekend of May 7. I haven't heard from her in several weeks. I tried to call her recently and left a voice mail, but her response was in text message and said that she had no time to talk to me because her two nephews are both in the hospital and her work schedule and the hospital visits are taking up all her time. It would have taken her less time to call me and tell me that, but just like when she tried to dump me via e-mail, it takes guts to speak to me live, and apparently she has none. But it's all my fault, because she tried to dump me but I laid a guilt trip on her and she rescinded. So she basically tried to tell me in so many words that I am not a priority in her life, and I didn't listen because I was too wrapped up in the drama of being abandoned again. But what's worse, being abandoned or being told that you're not being abandoned and being abandoned anyway? And people wonder why I feel like I'm from another planet. All this time that Torrie is spending between family and work is of course understandable, but it doesn't explain why there hasn't been one time where she calls before she goes to bed for the night and says: "Boy, things are really crazy right now. I haven't had time to think hardly. But I just wanted to say that you're on my mind and I want to thank you for hanging in there and being there for me. It's something that I'm not taking for granted, and I really do appreciate it. Well, I'm tired, so I'm turning in. Take care honey, and thanks again."
Nope, too busy to do that.
3. And with Torrie apparently unavailable for Kentucky Derby weekend, it means that I have had a hotel room reserved in Louisville for an entire calendar year and now that the time is here, I will be going to share that room with...wait for it...absolutely nobody. I originally reserved it right after I came back home from the Derby last year, because it's so hard to get a room in Louisville for Derby weekend, and because I had so much fun with "Sarah" that I just knew we'd still be together at this time next year and we would love to go back. Of course, Sarah and I are no longer, but think about what I have to offer: A two-night weekend in Louisville for an event that over 150,000 people attend live every year, and even if you weren't into horses, a two-night weekend with a young, virile black man, no holds barred, for free. Now think about the 492 trillion websites on Yahoo and such promoting dating black men and how many women are members of these sites. And not one of these women want to take advantage of this with me. Not the women in Louisville, not the women here in Chicago, not anywhere in between can you find a woman willing to make this trip with me. How fucking pathetic is that? Oh, and it gets better: Ronnie, knowing that I have an empty room and knowing how hard it is to find a room anywhere near Louisville for Derby weekend because, after all, he's the person that took me to the Derby the first time I went two years ago, now wants to take that room for him and his new girlfriend and split the costs with me. In the words of an ex-lover when she asked me what I was thinking standing over her with my dick hanging out and I responded that, duh, I wanted to put my cock in her mouth: "That's not gonna happen." There ain't no way I'm spending Derby weekend watching any guy and girl cuddling all over each other and I don't have anyone to cuddle with. Even if I had someone, it wouldn't happen because, duh, I'd want the room to be empty for me and my lady. And Ronnie has done a lot for me over the years, driving me here and there because I don't have a car, helping me move a couple of times, but plain and simple, if he wants a hotel room in Louisville for Derby weekend, he needs to reserve one well in advance, just like I did. I'll spend the whole weekend alone before I share a room with a couple. Period.
4. I got up the courage to ask someone out on a date for the first time in years. Yes, a real live person, not a profile on an internet dating site. She laughed and said no, of course. In the many weeks that we have talked casually during class, I've never heard a reference to any kind of social life, and when I asked her Monday what she did over the weekend, she said "Nothing, just rented movies with my family." I followed up by asking if she'd want to go see a movie this weekend. She giggled and said, "No thank you, I've got plans." Now, I'm not going to say that there's no way that this person that has never mentioned a social life does not have plans this weekend. She may be going to a relative's birthday party or something. But here's my point: She now knows that I want to go out with her. If she wanted to go out with me, would she not suggest going somwhere at a different time than this weekend? Sometime when she doesn't have plans? But there was no follow-up of the sort from her, just a laugh and a rejection when I dared mention that she could see a movie with me. A few people have told me to ask her whether she was free to see a movie with me some other time. Those people apparently don't feel the humiliating sting of rejection very often. How many ways am I supposed to ask this girl to go out with me before I realize that she doesn't want to go out with me? I could paint her into a corner and find out when she's not busy and say, "A-ha! There is a point in time that you could use to go out with me." But now she has to come up with a different excuse, and that's not comfortable for her or for me. I tried, she shot me down, that should be the end. If I keep coming at her even after being rejected, that's just pitiful. I have a little pride, not much, but a little.
So that's where I stand mentally, just kinda floating around wondering when I became so different from other human beings. Oh, and there's a shot of anger thrown in too: I was reading posts on the message board where I met "Karen," and she's still posting there. I had to read her talking about how proud she is to be a fat girl and how she accepts herself. I resisted the urge to bust her out by posting: "But how proud are you to be a bisexual BBW swinger, and how proud are you that you don't tell your boyfriends about it until they find your secret website, and even then you don't explain yourself, you just ignore them like they don't exist???" I'm coming to grips with the fact that I may go the rest of my life wanting nothing more than to turn her upside down and pour bleach into her cunt. Some things just can't be smoothed over, no matter how much counseling or time I receive.
Monday, February 14, 2005
Valentine's Day Thoughts
I won't even pretend to wish everyone a happy Valentine's Day. I'm usually all alone on this holiday celebrating the ability of everyone else in the whole fucking world to find a mate, and today was no exception. Sure, I sent a card to "Torrie" and received a virtual card from her (but only after I told her I was mailing her a card), but I didn't get to spend the day with her or anyone else. My bed as usual will be empty tonight. Selfish? Goddamn right. If I don't feel for me, who the fuck will?
I did kiss a woman on the cheek, a woman whom I fell in love with years ago when we both worked at the Chicago Board Options Exchange. This woman, "Yasmine," happens to be taking classes at the same school I am, and I saw her a couple of weeks ago when I was buying books across the street from the school. I almost fainted. I had not seen her in three years, and I did not expect to ever see her again. This was not a romantic rekindling of a prior affair, however. My love for Yasmine was always gently rebuked and never returned, the proverbial banging my head against a wall. She was too nice to tell me that she wasn't interested in me, but the truth is, she wasn't interested in me. Five years of chasing her should have told me that, but again, I was in love. In a way I never have felt as strongly about a woman as I did about Yasmine, and it was just so ironic that after five years of giving her roses and cigars and cards on Valentine's Day and getting nothing in return that I finally let go of her in my heart so that I could make room for the women that would use and abuse me over the last couple of years, and now that I've been mentally beaten down, here she is, on Valentine's Day, back in my life, if only for a four-minute conversation about nothing. But at least I no longer think that I'm going to convince her to give me a chance. I know damn well that nothing will ever happen between us, and I've accepted that. I'll have the entire pathetic Yasmine story in my next post.
I did not sleep all weekend, and I think it was because I knew Valentine's Day was coming, and at this time last year I was in that great cosmopolitan town of Mukwonago, WI, giving jewelry and poems and flowers to "Karen" and watching her respond not with glee or gratification but with the statement "Oh no, please, no more gifts!" Wow, honey, I'm glad you appreciate all I'm doing for you. I was talking to a friend about my lack of rest concerning this anxiety, and she responded, "I can tell you still love her." I've thought a lot about that, not just recently, but last year when all the drama happened. I've come to the conclusion that I never loved Karen. I am not feeling anxious because I was in love with Karen. I'm feeling anxious because I was in love with the concept of Karen. The concept was that she was a nice, sweet, quiet, demure, intelligent white woman who accepted my advances, thought I was attractive, and wanted me to be a part of her life. I should have known that was too good to be true. But that was my mindset at this time last year. As I laid down to sleep with Karen in her bed in Mukwonago, WI, on Valentine's Day night, I was thinking to myself, I'm moving up here soon to start a new life with Karen, one that will result in marriage and children in the future. And I couldn't have been happier, even if I wasn't really attracted to her, even if she was lousy in bed, even with the gaps in logic that made me suspect her before I ever found out what kind of pond scum she was. She was my dream personified, and I thought that my personal life was finally settled.
That's why I can't sleep. A year ago, everything was perfect on Planet Dre. Then the 10.0 quake tore up my world. Maybe five years from now I won't feel so bad when this time of year rolls around. Right now, I feel like someone ripped up my stomach from the inside. Happy Valentine's Day indeed.
I did kiss a woman on the cheek, a woman whom I fell in love with years ago when we both worked at the Chicago Board Options Exchange. This woman, "Yasmine," happens to be taking classes at the same school I am, and I saw her a couple of weeks ago when I was buying books across the street from the school. I almost fainted. I had not seen her in three years, and I did not expect to ever see her again. This was not a romantic rekindling of a prior affair, however. My love for Yasmine was always gently rebuked and never returned, the proverbial banging my head against a wall. She was too nice to tell me that she wasn't interested in me, but the truth is, she wasn't interested in me. Five years of chasing her should have told me that, but again, I was in love. In a way I never have felt as strongly about a woman as I did about Yasmine, and it was just so ironic that after five years of giving her roses and cigars and cards on Valentine's Day and getting nothing in return that I finally let go of her in my heart so that I could make room for the women that would use and abuse me over the last couple of years, and now that I've been mentally beaten down, here she is, on Valentine's Day, back in my life, if only for a four-minute conversation about nothing. But at least I no longer think that I'm going to convince her to give me a chance. I know damn well that nothing will ever happen between us, and I've accepted that. I'll have the entire pathetic Yasmine story in my next post.
I did not sleep all weekend, and I think it was because I knew Valentine's Day was coming, and at this time last year I was in that great cosmopolitan town of Mukwonago, WI, giving jewelry and poems and flowers to "Karen" and watching her respond not with glee or gratification but with the statement "Oh no, please, no more gifts!" Wow, honey, I'm glad you appreciate all I'm doing for you. I was talking to a friend about my lack of rest concerning this anxiety, and she responded, "I can tell you still love her." I've thought a lot about that, not just recently, but last year when all the drama happened. I've come to the conclusion that I never loved Karen. I am not feeling anxious because I was in love with Karen. I'm feeling anxious because I was in love with the concept of Karen. The concept was that she was a nice, sweet, quiet, demure, intelligent white woman who accepted my advances, thought I was attractive, and wanted me to be a part of her life. I should have known that was too good to be true. But that was my mindset at this time last year. As I laid down to sleep with Karen in her bed in Mukwonago, WI, on Valentine's Day night, I was thinking to myself, I'm moving up here soon to start a new life with Karen, one that will result in marriage and children in the future. And I couldn't have been happier, even if I wasn't really attracted to her, even if she was lousy in bed, even with the gaps in logic that made me suspect her before I ever found out what kind of pond scum she was. She was my dream personified, and I thought that my personal life was finally settled.
That's why I can't sleep. A year ago, everything was perfect on Planet Dre. Then the 10.0 quake tore up my world. Maybe five years from now I won't feel so bad when this time of year rolls around. Right now, I feel like someone ripped up my stomach from the inside. Happy Valentine's Day indeed.
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.
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.
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