Pancakes' Post

Author: Frankie Pancakes

I’m Frank, and I have lousy luck with men. I’m a girl, not that that significantly changes the story. This topic is usually the stuff of comedy routines, but I’m choosing to tell you the singularly most unfunny one, because I’m still scratching my head about it.

I truly do have cracker-jack skills at picking them, and it helps to be colorblind to the particular scarlet shade of relationship red flags. Pretty much a life-long theme; my first boyfriend wasn’t my “first”; my first wasn’t a boyfriend; my object of affectionate obsession wished he had been my first. Quite a bit of boy drama for this awkward late bloomer. College was fun, too. There was the classmate with the little gherkin (he holds the record), the freakishly tall TA with the dick that was too big. I broke up with the sensitive guy who responded to my expressed opinions with “you’re cute” and demanded to know when I was going to be in love with him. (This month’s no good for me, how do you feel about never?) I’ve been dumped on Valentine’s Day by a guy claiming anxiety attacks, blamed for being uncommunicative by a spaz who would bait me into arguments just to upset me for his entertainment. His saliva stank. Seriously, it festered on my pillows, I couldn’t sleep. I was dumped by a 50 year old self-help addict who gave me an ultimatum to seek professional help for clinical depression. The basis for his “diagnosis”? I have a lot of stuff in my apartment. He was crap in bed. Three How to Have Sex books, and he didn’t have a clue. And his cat peed on my side of his bed, and he didn’t feel like changing the sheets, too tired. I cannot make this up.

Lat summer I met a guy at a bar. Sounds bad, but hear me out. Friend of mine bartends on Sundays, super sweet guy, and I felt like hanging out with him for a couple of hours. It is not in my nature to just go to bars by myself, my social anxiety and loathing of strangers prevents it. Bartender is a movie geek, and always has something cool in the dvd players. Another patron at the end of the bar was picking at his laptop and talking with Bartender, and eventually I joined the conversation. Patron stepped out to smoke, and we kept talking when he came back in. He asked me to continue the conversation outside for his next cigarette. Pleasant enough, plenty of common tastes in music and movies. Gainfully employed, homeowner, dogs, actually not sounding like a loser. First red flag was hoisted when he mentioned the pending finalization of his second divorce. Didn’t see it.

Later he asked for my info, and I thought, why not - at least I will have made a friend. We danced around our mutual interest for a week, then met for drinks and wound up cuddling at his place. Second red flag snapped in the wind as he told me he was “broken” and he didn’t understand why I liked him. Overlooked it. I thought, he’s just hurting from his marriage failing, I’d be worried if it wasn’t affecting him. The next two weeks were pretty great, lots of nookie, watching movies in bed, him telling me he was falling for me, that I felt like home to him, that he was broken and was going to break my heart.

The Sunday evening after his divorce was finalized, I called him and he told me to come over. He was drunker than I had ever seen him. He sat me down on the couch and told me he was tired of living with pain (he had a couple of cracked ribs from a collision with another player on his kickball team, and had refused to see a doctor), and the pain from being broken, he was committed to his damage. He looked me in the eye and said he was going to kill himself and there was nothing I could do or say to stop him.

There is a particular warmth to the adrenaline surge you get when the floor drops out from under you, and when it swirls and eddies with the haze of being utterly gobsmacked, it makes your ears buzz, or at least my ears, anyway. I knew he had it in him, I had caressed the vertical scar on his right forearm. Thus began 36 hours of crying, arguing, begging, explaining, reasoning; he told me about his first attempt, being found in the back yard by a friend after opening his veins. He told me about the second time, when he had put the gun in his mouth as he sat in the garage, and the new ammo didn’t fire. He told me the neighbors had his gun, but would give it to him if he asked. He told me I could have his house, and his dogs (they liked me, and he didn’t want his ex to have them). He told me, and this is the most unfathomable, that his closest friends were okay with it. In what warped universe are “friends” okay with someone’s unnecessary suicide, so much so that they are willing to “be there when I do it”? I followed him around, somewhere in there we slept, he called in sick to work, we went to my place and watched a video. He told me not to worry, he wasn’t going to do it now. That was his idea of reassurance. Stop worrying, I won’t do it now. Sometime, just not right now.

I lived with this for a week, no one else knew. How could I tell them? What should I say to my parents, my friends? I lied to them, things were dandy. He kept putting me at ease, not now, later. He continued to torment me. Maybe he’d do it after he served as best man at his buddy’s wedding ( the one who was “okay with it”). Maybe he’d do it on his birthday. Maybe he’d grab a trooper’s weapon at his job. He continued drinking himself into a stupor on weekends, forbidding me to contact him. I finally called Bartender, hating to involve him, but now knowing how to proceed. He told me to call the cops next time he threatened. Then I really did it. I contacted his friend, the suicide supporter. Sent him a message telling him I didn’t know what else to do, that I was not okay with what I was hearing. Got the call that night. Livid. Who did I think I was? How dare I involve his friends in this? (But...you already involved them, they’re so okay with it they’re ready to witness your exit, remember? What the hell.) I was cut off, no more contact, ever. Stunned again, staring at the phone. Did that just happen?

Within a day he was requesting my friendship again, calling me. I was unconvinced. And I finally let my friends know. Lee told me it was emotional abuse, what he was doing, and I felt that adrenaline squirt again. I may lack in self esteem, but never thought it so severe that I might open myself to abuse. Shit. I composed a missive explaining to him how fucked up he was to do that to me, that I had done nothing to deserve it other than enter his life, and he didn’t defend himself.

This is the dumbest part. This is where you lose any shred of respect you may have tenuously held for me. We stayed in contact. I wanted to know. I wanted him to be okay. I cared. I am an idiot. He led me to believe he would get healthy, he was in therapy, he told me the dogs missed me. He kept me at a distance, telling me he couldn’t face me knowing what he had put me through. But anytime I pressed for a little more contact, he would lash out in a serious overreaction, if I couldn’t respect his boundaries, we’d have to reevaluate our friendship, blah blah. He bit my head off a few more times, in between sending me little app gifts on facebook. Then I got the email one morning, “check your messages” on myspace. He was sorry, he didn’t mean for it to happen, she was just a friend at first, but he was in love. In love. I told him fuck you for doing this during the week so it affected my work.

And that was it. No more contact. And I really didn’t feel like getting out and running that risk. I got sick, and lost some weight, and then began walking every day, for miles, walking away from that nightmare. Haven’t run into him around town yet. Pretty sure I’d throw up if he spoke to me. Not a lot of interest since then, one fella this spring, but it didn’t end well. I know you’re shocked. It appears that the menfolk of this planet can fly more red flags than an Olympics opening ceremony, and I’ll still be willing to give ‘em a chance. I’m such a slow learner.