Back in “Stupid Crush“, I told you to remember something we’d round back to.
It’s been a long time coming but lemme tell you about someone I’d like to call Creepy Neighbor Guy.
Some facts before we get into the story:
1. He’s married.
2. He has two sons.
3. He’s fifteen years older than me.
4. He and wife are both bitches who perfectly deserve each other… (Okay this last one’s an opinion, not a fact, but hey when you get to the end of the story you’ll know why I think this).
The first break I came home from college, this jackass hit on me. Mind you, at this point I was eighteen so there was nothing illegal about it. Have to give him credit for at least waiting. In spite of how much of moron he is, he was clever enough to avoid legal trouble. I’d known him only since I was sixteen, not six so it wasn’t even one of those “it’s creepy because he’s older things”. And we know my policy on age gaps. (If you don’t though, go ahead and read “He’s Older? So What?“) Not gonna lie though, the fact that he waited, as clever as it was only adds to the creepy factor in hindsight.
At first I thought he was just messing around. He was calling me hot, flirting with me, but it was the funny kind of flirting that happens between friends so I figured there was no ill intent on his part.
I had a laugh. Thought he was a perfect moron and he said some really dumb shit. But I had a laugh. It was a game at first. I’ll admit that. I’ll also admit that to my own moral code, I wasn’t doing anything wrong.
Sure, I flirted back. Why the fuck wouldn’t I? Hello, people, I’m me. I flirt with every fucking human being that I think is hot. It’s how I’m wired. Everyone knows it. But it’s a matter of ‘look, don’t touch’. Have some fun with stupid banter then leave it at that.
And it’s not like I’m in the only one. I have this one friend who was in a committed and happy relationship but both her and her boyfriend are super flirtatious people and they flirt with everyone and neither cares. Because again, they have a ‘look, don’t touch’ policy.
But then he started talking to me about sex.
Even then, it was more of a “asking about my experiences” kinda thing. So I told him the same stories I’ve told so many of my friends and he told me about his porn habits and how he fucked his college girlfriend before he met his wife.
But a couple days into all this, I had the sneaking suspicion that there was more on his mind. Mind you, from the second he started discussing sex, I made it clear that I don’t wanna and that if he or anyone else ever touches me (in a sexually invasive way) without my consent, I will call 9-1-1 in five seconds flat. And he promised he wouldn’t and he remained loyal to that promise. He didn’t even shake my hand without my permission after that conversation. Maybe that’s why I thought there was some integrity in him. That all this really was a joke to him like it was to me.
Parallely, he started telling about how his wife was an abusive bitch, how she hits and scolds the children, curses him out. I have zero tolerance for women like that. I like intelligent women who use logic and words and don’t go yelling and scolding and hitting. And I had heard her say some ugly things to her son a couple times, not too bad, but I guess they were bad enough that it seemed like he might’ve been telling the truth. If I had to say on a scale of 1% to 100% how much I believed him… 10%?
I had no concrete proof. But, either way, I did have proof that he definitely had some issues with his wife by that point.
A little more time passed and we hit a point in which the way he started steering the convo went from asking about each other’s dating and sexual history and joke flirting to him showing actual interest in wanting to do something.
I asked him what his intentions with me were straightdforwardly and he admitted this: “I want to have sex with you if you want.”
I’m not gonna lie – I laughed. A lot.
Wasn’t gonna happen in hell, but I was flattered. I thought he was a moron. But I was flattered.
I put two and two together at this point: 1) he obviously has issues with his wife’s temperment and 2) he’s expressed overt interest in wanting to sleep with me which meant 3) he wants to cheat on his wife because he’s feeling neglected and abused.
Or at least I thought that’s what it was.
Now, I’m a huge fan of Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna. I told you in “Old, Hot & Spicy” that it’s my favorite Shah Rukh film. I’m all for people deciding they’ve had enough of their current partners because there isn’t the same emotional connection there used to be or they thought would be there. A fan of cheating, however? No. In the movies, it’s glamorous, it’s scandalous, it’s wild and fantastical. In real life, it’s the mark of a coward who’s too scared to say “I want out”. Or in some cases, the mark of a coward who’s too scared to tell their partner they’re polyamorous and want to try an open relationship. And these are only a few of the reasons people cheat. There are a bazzilion more.
And I went poking and prodding because my psychology-studying, detective-show-watching brain said there’s something else going on here.
So I played the hypothetical game:
I asked him: “Let’s say I say ‘yes’ for a second. I’m personally not the kinda gal who can get physical without an emotional connection. I might fall for you. What then? Would you tell your wife? Would you leave your wife? Would you kick me to the curb? What’s going on here?”
Note that this is paraphrasing. The screenshots I took of these convos are stuck somewhere deep in my Google drive and I got no clue which folder they’re in.
And that’s when he tells me the following: “[Insert his wife’s name here] is my lifeline.” This however, is verbatim. And this was Strike No. 1. The only thing worse than cheating is cheating on someone you still love or at least claim to.
And I was like what the absolute fuck? Then why the fuck are you trying to cheat on her?
And that’s when he told me the following (also verbatim): “Her body doesn’t suit my sexual needs.” Translation: She’s fat.
This was Strike No. 2 (because he fat-shamed his partner) and 3 (because he’s fucking hypocrite because he’s fat too).
So I told him, bro, I ain’t interested in sleeping with a married man who’s still in love with his wife just ’cause he’s horny and he ain’t getting some goods at home. I’m here to talk as a friend, an unofficial therapist, whatever. But don’t flirt with me, don’t sext me, don’t proposition me for sex. I scoffed and said if he wants to so badly cheat on her, he should go find a prostitute. I was being sarcastic. But I think that went over his head. His response came in and not gonna lie, again I laughed like crazy when I read it: He said he’d rather not spend the money just to get STDs… I mean… Facts, I suppose.
Anyways, because I am everyone’s impromptu relationship coach, I told him if he’s really in love with his wife and he ain’t satisfied in bed, he should be telling her that so they can find a way to solve the issue.
He went on to tell me she was lazy, doesn’t care about exercise, blah blah blah blah blah.
But I told him that that was his problem and then I slowly ghosted him and then blocked him for a while.
But this experience taught me one thing, that sometimes even if we find someone intially attractive physically, once their personality goes bad, the attraction fades. Or at least it does for me. This is when I realized I was demisexual.
I kinda wanted to tell his wife what he did but I didn’t know how she’d react and quite frankly I didn’t trust her and I had zero obligations to her or anyone else so I moved on. Brushed it off. He was nothing more than an annoyance and a moron who I could make fun of my friends and professors and therapist and on dates. I did however warn two of my close gal friends who lived in the community to be careful ’cause who knows? What if they were his next mark once they turned eighteen? But apart from that, I moved on.
I’d been through worse in my life than being propositioned by a married man who just wanted sex and was claiming he was still in love with a wife who he was fat shaming while he himself was fat.
My dad was still in the hospital, my mother was holding her sister who had a job and family in another state hostage at our home for company, and my brother was extremely upset because hospital COVID protocols deemed he couldn’t visit my dad because he was too young at the time. I had monitored online final exams while stuck at home with never-ending noise. My novel-in-progress was still in-progress and I’d hit a writer’s block because I had no access to creative writing workshops anymore. My best friend was still stuck in a different country and I hadn’t heard her voice in years. And both the guys that I was actually into at the time… well, neither of them wanted to be with me and one of them even found a way to break my heart for the umpteenth time.
Yeah, I had more important things to worry about.
