Let 'em cry up that river of denial

'Sometimes the assholes are just assholes.' --The Hating Game

Maybe it's a week during a global pandemic. Maybe you're having a temper tantrum. Not ferocious but enough that, well...in your head you're shouting 'No, I am not okay! I can't find my book, the charge in my vibrator is gone.  I'm tired and I'm cranky. And I just....aaaaarggghhh.'  How Fortune extends her arms when you realize it is your weekend alone: the children you orbit around and vice versa are at your co-parent's residence. 

You'll have cleaned the house, almost caught up on laundry. You're freshly bathed and moisturized. Maybe you've found the vibrator, maybe you wing it. You're catching up on a freelance gig, 'Foyle's War' on for good measure. It fits your mood.  You'll have recently learned your divorce is final. You remember the idea of sex with other people. You recall a dating website you joined, decide to give it another go now that you are a legitimate free agent. Your list of 'maybes' or 'I could wear that shirt after...' is still there and there and there is one in particular that you'd avoided before. Trouble, your intuition said at the time. And NOT the good kind. But again, it's a global pandemic, there is rain, and you're bored. You don't expect an acknowledgement much less a response. After all, the website is winding down.  But weirdly, not long after you click the little 'heart' there is a message. Enter Trouble - all not- quite 6 feet of him, with words and a knack for provocation - stage right.

Over the next few weeks things get intense. Later, you learn a whole new vocabulary, words like 'loveboming' and 'breadcrumbing.' And so goes modern dating 'Nightmare First Date' tropes and all.

But in those first few weeks, before an afternoon of solid B sex and C- conversation (does any woman ever really enjoy being called a 'cow'? Or being repeatedly lied to, have truths manipulated? When it is so easy to be honest from the starting gate, to pace oneself on one's emotional baggage, why not just stick to light embellishment over outright lies?)

When the encounter takes place, you'll have already made up your mind, despite the warning bells. This is fulfilling a specific biological need and he isn't unattractive, even if the shirt he arrives in makes him look like The Hamburgler, which becomes how you think of the actual fact of him, as opposed to the one he will try and conjure. 

There will be an awkward few weeks after a significant lack of judgement on your part where you will worry that you might be pregnant (it wouldn't be the first time 'casual' bit you in the ovary) and you'll panic, go into oversharing overdrive, whilst drawing up agreements to relinquish parental responsibility in your head. Then you'll stumble across a photo and you'll KNOW what you already knew: the Hamburgler is in fact - if not married, certainly in a long-term situation that is all but the contractual obligation of a marriage. And you'll call it off. 

It becomes an odd pattern and its still Covid-times. The devil you know, etc.  The text exchanges and then an odd photo of him looking like he might be having a stroke followed by a nonplussed silence...months of silence.  After a while, you wonder if maybe the guy is dead so, to distract yourself from the funeral you are en route to, the 9 hour hour flight and 5 hour drive on the other side (and maybe your dying father) you'll Google his name and what crops up is, well...18 months for stalking. 

You'll feel queasy and not just because the article is poorly written.  There was so much more to the lies and subterfuge that you never wanted to know.  It will take a few months, maybe you'll write to the partner, an apology. You'll worry about the Hamburgler's children, about the damage he's done to your own self esteem. Then you'll move on to more relevant things. You'll start put it behind you, start dating again. You'll sell your adolescent home, bury your father,  do the best you can by the people you love.  

Time will elapse.  You'll come back home rattled and raw, not your best self. You'll barely be over jetlag when the Hamburgler decides to drop a note, because apparently sexual predators get out early, even when they publicly state they have no remorse. The lies will continue, you'll fall backwards into a brain fog for a few weeks, until you shake it off, only to come across a buried direct message and because you are you reply - sarcastically but politely. 

It gets weird when The Hamburgler threatens then propositions you, all in the same message. 'I'm going to frame you for stalking. I know how to write a Victim Impact Statement. But hey, if you every want to have sex again, I'm not made of stone.'

Obviously, you politely decline, though you pause to wonder if maybe you couldn't weather a bit of disgust/hate sex with a sociopath.  But you have other things to be bored about. 

A few weeks later, a friend sends you a link to a snippet of social media. And of course, you follow it up. You learn more, the numbers are staggering. Who has this kind of time? How does one manage all of these encounters, the overlap? Who would actually use a lover's photos for a dating profile and say it had been taken by Japanese tourists? Oh, wait...

Time will elapse, life goes on, when unprompted, unasked, uninvited. A mediocre diatribe that would be entitled  'Sheer torture,'  at open mic readings, if it weren't for the shoddy use of double negatives. Unease. 

In the poorly constructed world of the Hamburgler, the ultimate sticking point will be whether he's married. Maybe he's not legally married, but a long term relationship in which he basically battered the poor partner into a shell of her former self, in which they raised children together, well...contractual burdens aside ...

Of course, given that being a 'widower' and being 'divorced' was part of his huckster spiel, who cares?  It's a play that never makes it out of previews, the Hamburgler's Lament.

You discover a potential resource, basically a 'Rate My Teacher' but for dating. It is genius, but also could very easily spiral into the same kind of sad, hurtful damage the Hamburgler engages in.  You can't stop a tiger from being a tiger and there there isn't a way to stop the Hamburgler, his repeated lies, layered triangulating and manipulation tactics. At the same time his unease and embarassment not your responsibility, cher. Just issue that no contact letter, lean into the community of women you've found and know that your instincts were right on the money.