queen of the crazies, part 2

As you can imagine, I was shocked and quite frankly, scared.

I immediately text The Ex to tell him and ask him why she would do that and what to do. Here is the background that I was given. (If you hate detail, skip it.)

He met her at a party through some friends sometime in mid-September, and very intoxicatedly listened to her sob stories and made out with her a bit. The week that followed consisted mostly of her following him around everywhere he went, and him not wanting to be an asshole so allowing this to go on (I never said he wasn't a pushover). Eventually he fessed up and told her he didn't feel that way about her.

That evening, as they hung out at one of their friend's houses drinking, she sobbed through self-harming threats and locked herself in the bathroom with a butcher knife she found in the kitchen. With everyone panicking, he finally broke in through the window and found she had been making small, deep cuts in her thigh. Whether or not they were in the shape of his name is still in question.

This behavior continued for a week or so before the whole group of friends unanimously decided she was not ever to be invited to any social function ever again, and she eventually left them alone for the most part, but the suicide-threatening phone calls at 3am didn't cease on his end. He refused to talk to her besides the times she swore she was sitting there with a knife. After awhile, he refused to talk to her, period. So, the phone calls stopped.

'Til one day, a couple weeks later, when he got a phone call from Crazimort (oh! I promised an explanation of her name. All of the girls in his social group were very much into Harry Potter at the time, and after saying 'she who must not be named' every time they referred to her, they came up with something more efficient.) who was sitting outside his front door. Did I mention she lived 45 minutes away? She swore up and down that she was "all better" and holding two bottles of expensive Pinot (I know, never a good excuse, but we learn from our mistakes) pretty much insisted that she come in and "talk."

As I'm sure you have guessed, talking led to drinking, and drinking led to blacking out (worsened by the fact that she hardly drank any at all but poured it very generously for him), drinking led to touching, and touching led to, as he surmised the next morning as he put the pieces together, sex. (If you're not humming Portions For Foxes at this point, something is wrong.) When I say pieces, I mean waking up naked in a bed with a girl (also naked) who's completely obsessed with you, and as you eye the floor frantically for a condom wrapper said girl telling you that you didn't use one, and now she is "worried." And she tells you she'll take a morning after pill. (Boys: If this ever happens, watch her swallow it.)

Five days (I kid you not) go by before she calls him in a panic because she is pregnant. No, really! I had no idea that there were pregnancy tests that could tell you that soon! Ugh. So being a young, naive, terrified 19 year old boy he believes it. As this horror unfolds, he begins to question her, asking if he can go to doctors visits with her or see some paperwork, which she aggressively denies and produces some papers clearly printed off the Planned Parenthood website, respectively.

Which brings us (almost) up to speed, when I met her on Halloween (a month and a half after their first meeting) as she professed her "pregnancy" as loudly as her need for a cigarette. So fast forward to when the Ex and I start talking, and he is telling me this and I'm trying to process it and figure out what to do about the 16 missed calls.

I listen to the voicemail, in which she very sweetly says, "hey it's me! Just calling to say hi. Oh, also I have a question for you. Can you call me back when you get a chance? Thanks!"

So I, fearfully if we're going to be honest here, IMed her instead. She starts unloading her version of reality, fit for a TV movie, where she thought that she and I were destined to become best friends, but now I've betrayed her by liking the guy who has impregnated-and-then-abandoned her, and now we'll never have that chance. Then she's telling me how she's very much in love with him and that he's in love with her too, but he's using me to try to make her jealous; that they have some "issues" to work out but that they're going to be getting back together, no doubt about it. She explains that the pregnancy was on purpose, because they want to start having children together already. Then she transitions into a description of how awful a guy he is and how he's out to lie, cheat and steal (and impregnate, I guess), and how he's plotting to do that to me too. She tells me how needy he is, and that's why she broke up with him. She ends it with a grotesque description of the abortion she's going to get to terminate the fetus he "helped" to create. In short, she goes through every nutcase story in the book, though none of them matched up. Unfalteringly, I let her know that I appreciate her concern but I will figure things out for myself, and proceed to block her screen name. (And also the 5 more she uses to IM me after said blockage.)

He calls me later, and tells me that although he isn't 100% (or even 10%) sure that she was really pregnant, he wanted to do the "right thing" so he met up with her at a coffee shop to give her the $400 it cost for her (fake) abortion that she had supposedly had only minutes prior. He reasoned that at least this way, it was off of his hands and we could be rid of her for good.

Or could we?

My Achy-Breaky Heart

I know it's been a long time, you guys. But alcohol has fueled a pretty honest blog post, and I hope you can enjoy it while it lasts.

My heart aches for Erwin. I know it's been awhile, and I should have moved on. I know I've been out with other guys. I know he's only human. But I still haven't been able to get over him.

I know what he did was no dice, but I also know that he was pretty damn incredible and I wonder if I'm going to find another like him.

A girl can dream. Sigh.

Not Dating the Danish (ie Douchebags)

Sidenote: I went out last night to my favorite local dive, The Goathill. It was packed and 90% guys as usual. Despite my lowkey outfit (black t-shirt, jeans, flats, and a ponytail... not my usual outing attire) I was getting a ton of attention. I said hi to the friend I was meeting up with, and went to the bar to stand in the long line (all men) for a drink. As they turned around and noticed me, they kept letting me go ahead of them, 'til finally I was behind a group of three guys. The loudest of them (with some sort of accent) stopped what he was saying midsentence when he saw me and grabbed my arm and pulled me up to the bar. With slurred speech, he asked the bartender (about 5 times) for "a vanilla vodka and cranberry." (I won't say no to a free drink, though what I really wanted was a Hefewiesen.) He said cheers in Danish and handed me what he called a "Pantydropper." I thanked him, apologized that it wouldn't work on me, and went back to my friend.



I learned years ago not to date the Danish. Now I'm sure they are not all bad, but after a few examples of Douchebagginess I think I've accepted they are just not for me. Here's a prime example.

I met Von in the library my sophomore year of college. He told me how he thought I was beautiful and wanted to take me out, and at this point in my dating career a little compliment could go a very long way; I agreed, and we made plans for that weekend. Though I wasn't particularly attracted to him, I hoped he had potential.

We met up for shopping (his idea) which was really just walking around downtown and him pointing out all the stores he recently spent large amounts of money in. He didn't ask me a single question, and interrupted me every time I tried to speak, mostly with examples of how much money his family had. By the time he took me home, I was almost jumping out the car window.

In the days that followed, he would text and email me, telling me how great of a time he had and how he couldn't get his mind off me. I finally said very bluntly that I thought he was really full of himself and didn't want to see him again. He apologized profusely and promised that if I gave him another chance, things would be different. I conceded.

Three days later, he picked me up for a romantic dinner in Montecito. He dressed nicely, opened every door, asked me all kinds of questions, and was more of a gentleman than I had ever gone out with at that point. This time around, by the time we got back to my house I was aching for a goodnight kiss.

My best friend M, who had been my very first friend in college and literally the closest thing to a sister I have ever had, didn't like him from what I had told her the first time. She was protective and what I always described as not only my best friend, but also my sister, lawyer, and bodyguard. I finally talked her into accepting that we were dating after telling her how amazing he was the second time. They met one evening after lots of convincing, and she agreed that he wasn't quite as bad as she had expected. Even still, she didn't understand the attraction, telling me that he wasn't even cute. (Thanks, girl.)

Naturally, we started dating. He lived two blocks from our campus in a nice house on the ocean. We spent days at the beach, went out to great meals, took day trips, and he even took me back to Solvang to meet his family (yes, they actually live in Danishville... I know). He bragged to all of his friends about his new girlfriend, told me how thrilled he was to be with me, that he was going to plan something amazing for Valentine's Day (over two months away), and even gave me his passwords to his email account for some reason (which I never thought to check).

Somewhere around two months into the relationship things started to turn. When we would go out to eat, he would surprise me with having "forgotten" his wallet (despite the fact that he knew I was barely getting by) and started making rude jokes about me around his friends. One night at dinner (another one I was duped into paying for with the $25 I had left in my bank account), he made some stupid comment about how if I wasn't happy with him, maybe he'd just go date my best friend M. Flustered and angry, I snapped back, "she isn't even attracted to you." He laughed. "Are you sure we're talking about the same M?"

A few days later was Valentine's Day, the night before which I was at her house, close to tears and telling her how the relationship was going downhill at a fast pace. "If he doesn't perform a miracle tomorrow, I'm going to end it," I proclaimed. We'd had plans to get a room at a bed and breakfast in Solvang, but after the plans changed, he would now already be there hanging out with his friends, and I would drive up to meet him (almost 2 hours away) for the night, where we'd be staying at his parents' house since they were out of town. How romantic.

Even still, the next morning I packed up my overnight bag, put together the feeble Valentine's gift and card I was able to get him, and kept trying to call him to get directions. Finally he called me back, and when I picked up the phone, he said this:

"Look, I've been thinking, and this just isn't working. Let's not fool ourselves here, we both know this relationship isn't going anywhere. Why waste this holiday with someone I don't even want to be with? It just doesn't make sense."

I was so much in shock that I walked out into the living room where my roommates were watching TV, and put one of them on the phone to verify that I wasn't hallucinating. She cussed him out and hung up on him. As much as I was furious, I wasn't sad. I didn't cry. I called M and went over to her house to vent. She seemed even more upset than I was. We logged into his email (the first time I had ever used that password) to see that he had written an email to a friend of his two weeks prior, saying he was over me and was going to dump me. He had actually been planning to do it like this. She had all kinds of ideas for retaliation. "Let's go key his car! We should put sugar in his gas tank. Or egg his house. What a fucking asshole." (Like I said, best friend and bodyguard.) I turned down her ideas, wanting to stay on the high road. But just for laughs, we changed his name in my phone's contact list to "Danish Douchebag."

For the next few days, she would constantly ask me how I was doing, if there was anything she could do to help, or get back at him, or if I needed anything. By the following weekend I was over it and out partying with my friends, when I ran into her cousin. I called her to tell her, no answer. Unusual, but ok. We talked for a long time and I (drunkenly) tried to call her again, no answer. We went to another party down the street, I called her on the way, no answer. Since she and I talked on the phone about 50 times a day, this was strange. About 45 minutes later, I got a text message from her. "Sorry, I'm going to sleep, I'll talk to you tomorrow." Wtf, right? So of course, I call her again. NO ANSWER. Now I'm getting frustrated. She texts again, "my phone is about to die, I'll talk to you tomorrow." So I write back, "M, what is your deal? I have to talk to you!"

Two minutes later, I got a text message. Not from her number, but from "Danish Douchebag," that said "I didn't want to tell you like this, my phone died. I'm sorry. We're going to sleep. We'll talk about it tomorrow." I may not have cried on Valentine's Day, but I cried this time. In fact, I bawled. I cried so hard I couldn't see, and had to be escorted out of the party and back to my house, and I cried the whole way home. I wrote her an email when I got home about how heartbroken I was over the loss of my best friend. She wrote back the next day with some stupid response about how it wasn't her fault that they were "meant to be." We wrote back and forth a few more times, each one I sent a little more crushed, and each one I received a little more ridiculous.

On a whim, I logged into his email account again. I knew that password would come in handy someday. And there were all the emails we had exchanged, forwarded to him and sitting in his inbox.

It took me 5 days to get over him after he dumped me, less than 5 for her to pounce on the asshole (possibly even less than that, quite possible they started hooking up before he broke up with me), one month before he dumped her too (big surprise), and three years before I could bring myself to talk to her again. And even still, we won't ever be friends like we were then.

Moral of the story, I've written off Danish Douchebags for good. Save your Pantydroppers for another girl!