Perhaps I’ll have a ceremony to celebrate my Singularity (a cobbled-together of something akin to’singledom/hilarity’) because whatever the Universe might think it’s been doing lately by throwing me encounters I haven’t expected and therefore treat as unexpected delights, is definitely in the habit of curve-balling these terrible aims.
Exhibit One: A perfectly nice gentleman with whom I genuinely considered I had a connection based on mutual intellect, humour, interest and all manner of other socially accepted norms, whom I once accidentally snogged (for which I humbly, hastily apologised with regrets) slowly becomes a kind of besotted stalker-type person who, not content with being sent numerous messages asking him to desist from any future contact, keeps creepily popping up in my lifeline and begging me to reconsider our friendship. I ask you, though, what kind of ‘friendship’ can be salvaged from such ruins? I once thought this man was intelligent but if he thinks something like the fun that we used to have (before he kept asking if he might be allowed to touch me: “I’m a tactile person; I’d ask the same of anyone”: would you though? Would you say to any other friend you’re sitting with in a cafe, when they slide their sleeve up as it’s a bit warm in there: “I must say I don’t think I’ve ever seen the skin on your forearms before” would you? Really?) can be all of a sudden recaptured and reproduced after hearing such (yes, creepy) utterances, then his intelligence greatly diminishes in my opinion.
A fortnight after he followed me home and backed me into the middle of a road because he clearly couldn’t understand what a woman backing away meant, which again led to me informing him (sternly I thought, I even mentioned the Police) I wanted NO further contact, he strolls nonchalantly into the cafe where I’m about to lunch with four other people (we’re already sitting down) and beseeches–there’s no other word for it–for me to change my mind, to learn to trust him again, that I have him “all wrong”. And luckily, because I am with four other people, after they’ve intervened, he finally leaves. I’ve never felt the blood drain so noticeably from my face in my life. And just as I’d begun a kind of ‘healing process’ as well; I’d been very very low in the preceding weeks, because the end of any relationship, however creepily it might have ended, affects me deeply.
So, on to Exhibit Two: Out of nowhere comes a Facebook friend request from somebody I don’t know. I respond with: ‘how do we know one another?’ because I’m a cautious gal. He tells me we belong to a couple of the same vegan groups on FB and he noticed I originally hail from Bedford – as does he. We start chatting about places we remember, films we’ve seen, books we’ve read, find we have the same sense of humour and dislike of harming animals, we both write poems (loosely speaking) and message for six hours, culminating in my bravely telephoning him to continue our discussion to see how we might progress this new-found connection. We make a date for coffee in a fortnight, and I’m so (hesitantly) delighted that I reach out and tell my friends in the FB singles group I belong to.
Then it starts getting weird.
‘Good luck, as long as his name isn’t *insert HIS name here* one lady comments. And then all the blood drains from my head. I’ve had this feeling before. Very recently. It does not bode well. I respond with actually, yes, that’s him and she urges me to ring her without delay. We chat and that’s when I discover the truth: that *Insert Name* is actually some kind of sexual predator who gets his kicks out of ‘picking off’ (I love that term, it’s sinisterly succinct) single vegan ladies and systematically using them for his own ends (sometimes at the same time or at least overlapping) and some of whom remain emotionally damaged by his selfish deeds.
He uses the same cheerful, innocent, compelling chat on every lady he selects, which includes a ‘confession’ of his dark past which he hasn’t spoken to anyone about for “over twenty five years” which would cause the hardest of hearts to reach out to him. God, he must get so bored with the same old lines. Or else this is how he gets through life; having nothing more substantial to do than invent another one, harming innocent, caring people in the process.
It turns out there’s even a separate group for those who’ve been the unwitting victims of his online/in-person perpetrations. He’s a sleaze-bag and not even a particularly attractive one (I’d been working out how to let him down when we met if there weren’t those sparks one requires) so I guess I’d call that A/nother Lucky Escape.
If I believed in Him Upstairs, then I’d say He needs to get Prime or Netflix or something because He’s clearly short of entertainment Up There. If delivering me these peculiar types of persons is his way of highlighting the fact that I am generally affable, patient and obliging, then He has outmanoeuvred His sense of credibility with these two.
Things are meant to come in 3s, aren’t they? In which case, I can/’t wait for Exhibit Three.
Debs J Cooper 