TTSOML #243: Moving In With "The Hedonist"

While the legal drama was ongoing, the situation at the single Dad's place was wearing thin. The kids, who one of the neighbors called "feral", were going through a lot as they began seeing their biological mother again, after she'd abandoned them for quite some time. So they were acting out more, even though they were glad to see their mom. What was true in their case, is that they'd all been old enough to remember her leaving and they could process she was supposed to come to visit, and was local, but chose not to. Then, I had over $100 disappear from my bag. I don't know who did it, but I just asked the Dad about it, and he thought I was accusing HIM, and I wasn't. I was only asking if he'd seen it anywhere. Then his friends were out-of-control and he wanted me to leave ASAP as his girlfriend had given him an ultimatum that I had to be out or SHE was out.

So, big drama.

I had, by that time, met someone at a local bar, during the day actually, or summer's eve, which was still daylight, and while I was reading books by Christopher Hitchens. I now sort of wonder if it was a set up or what. I still don't know what to think about the whole situation or the guy even, except that nothing was what it seemed to be.

I don't know if he even liked me at all or not, even though he claimed to, because it was a lot of weird mind games. And lies.

With the other places I'd stayed, I knew they weren't immediatly connected to anything about me, or so I figured. But this other situation, I sort of wonder about. For one thing, I'd been in the town for awhile and people knew which bar I went to. I would go and have maybe one drink every now and then and talk to people.

I was very interested in the writings of Hitchens at that point, and had expressed dismay that no one else, at least in that area, even knew who he was.

All of a sudden, I'm sitting at the bar, after taking my books with me, having walked a distance with them in hand. I set them to the side and ordered a salad or some seafood, or maybe it was both. In came this guy, who I didn't notice much at first until he expressed shock I was reading Hitchens.

I was shocked he knew Hitchens. What I didn't know, at that time, that he was a consummate atheist. Not just so-so atheist, but die-hard, "I HATE RELIGION! and those stupid religious people!", or, so he said. I sometimes wondered exactly which parts of his life were an act, and which parts were not.

I wondered if he was married, or not. I wondered if he was actually Canadian, or not. I wondered if he was involved in the mob, or not. I wondered if he was undercover police. I wondered if he was a bona-fide gigilo. I wondered who the hell he was. One thing was for sure--he liked putting on an act.

He wore a Frank Sinatra style hat and clothing sort of from the 1950s. Oh, I also wondered if he was some kind of border patrol or homeland security, or really just a regular security guy who wanted to be all these other things.

Discovering his Adult Friend Finders profile put quite a lot of things into perspective. But I didn't find out about this until the end.

I thought we had made a really good and unique connection, as did, supposedly, he. He said he had a spare bedroom and was thinking of renting it out but said I could stay there until I was on my feet. He knew where I was living, with those kids, and said it just wasn't right. But then he said he really, really, liked me and wanted to "date" me properly and didn't know how it would be if I was a roommate.

Well, he found out, and I certaintly found out a lot too.

Basically, my things were thrown out at the single Dad's house with no notice and he announced his girlfriend was moving in the next day. Nice way of telling me.

So I called this guy up and moved in. I think all we'd done was make out. He said it was the best, most passionate making out he'd ever experienced and that he'd never been so turned on, so fast. He said he forgot it could ever be that way. On my part, well, I'd had a little bit to drink.

But, I moved in and I still hadn't been with anyone for years, since I became pregnant with my son. I thought we had an intellectual connection, even though I wasn't especially attracted to him physically. I went out with him a couple of times, and then, things happened, and I have to say the making out was better than the rest of it. But, because I don't like to move around with men, I thought maybe something would develop and I was extremely stressed out and hadn't had sex in a very long time.

But it got weird. As soon as it happened, he was cold-shoulder and weird about things. He told me he was half Italian, half Irish and that these photos of girls were his nieces. I kept thinking they were his daughters. He had a letter from one of the girls on his fridge, "To Santa"...or actually, it was cut out from a newspaper ad she had placed to Santa. I just wondered.

He claimed he'd been almost engaged to this one girlfriend but she was Christian and it just didn't work out because he realized he was more atheist than he knew at first, and was annoyed by her Christian books lying around. He told me he had only a high school education, but he was reading philosophy books, classics, and atheist stuff. And a lot of history and military history.

He worked at the foreign trade zone of an oil refinery in Blaine, Washington. He was supposed to be regular security, but I wonderd, because he was in the foreign trade zone area where ships come in, and it's more restricted.

I felt that while he claimed to be wanting to help me get on my feet, he was playing mind games and messing around with me. He became, almost overnight, critical and cold, and I began to wonder if he was gay, bisexual, or just lying about not going out with other women. He had been raised by a Lutheran mother he said, and I believe his father had been Catholic. Italian Catholic, I assume, because his last name was Italian.

I even wondered if he was some kind of drug dealer, because he'd disappear and go places without explanation, and it didn't add up. He also never kept any unopened food in his house. He only ate from bottled or packaged food that was individually wrapped or contained and never ate leftovers. His water and juice and soda came from individual bottles, and every food item he had or bought, was wrapped, except for a couple of apples I guess. Which doesn't have to mean anything, but if it was opened by me, like a bag of peanuts, he wouldn't eat it.

Then, he was throwing up in the bathroom without explanation and I found blood spatters once, on the tub and cabinet.

He claimed he'd been interested in me, but thought I was more of a go-getter and that I was an atheist. I had never told him I was an atheist.

At any rate, he gave me a key to his place, and didn't charge me for things, but then was trying to get me to move out ahead of when he'd said I would move. He also said he'd found his mistress, to me once. So of course I wondered if he had a wife. He also came up with this NY or Boston accent a couple of times, it slipped out, intentionally or not, and I called it, and then he'd say oh, he spent a couple months there once. I've never heard of a long-standing accent that develops and is retained after living a location for "a couple of months".

He seemed protective and concerned about me on one hand, and then on the other hand, he was a weird-o. He also knew how to pronounce a lot of foreign words correctly, which was odd for someone who was only a high school graduate, and he subscribed to a lot of political magazines: the economist, the nation, and a bunch of science and pharmo-and oil mags, and newsweek, and a bunch of other things.

So I was using his computer at first and then there were major problems on it and he blamed me. I've no doubt it WAS my fault, indirectly, because someone was obviously hacking again, and no matter where I went, it happened.

I actually really liked him, but he kept pushing me away, and he would even say, "Why do I push you away?" and I got tired of it.

He helped me get a job at the oil refinery and it was a job in the door to find something else in there. It was pretty safe, because it was fully secured, and the people working there, in general, were good people. I liked working with all the guys and thought the refinery was interesting. He wanted me to work FT and I tried, but my body was breaking down and I don't think he believed me at first, that I had all these injuries.

Because of the throwing up and the blood, I wondered if he was killing people, or they were being killed and he was trying to save them, or he was doing cocaine, or what. He later claimed he had pancreatic cancer, but then he later denied it, so what the hell.

The other thing which was weird, and not funny weird, but scary weird, was that he gave me a pair of flannel pants to wear to bed, which were the same ones or same styel as the kind Mike Tancer had given me to wear, a few years earlier. The exact same pattern. He also gave me slippers which were the same kind Tancer had been wearing when I first met him (it was a pajama party at a dance club). Also, this guy had a copy of the same book I had, which I'd shown Tancer at my house once, of forests. And then, towards the end, after sleeping with me once, he left out a copy of the Headless Horseman or whatever that book is, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" which Tancer had referred to often at the time I knew him and some people after that made references to this book and I wondered why. He left this in a place where I would find it, with a placemark for the Legend, and this wasn't anywhere near Halloween. It was summer.

There was something I couldn't trust about this guy, but I didn't know what it was. Then, on top of that, I found out he was sleeping around. I typically didn't nose around in other people's things. Not once did I go through the bedrooms of the woman I stayed with, or the single Dad's bedroom. I respect the privacy of others, in general. But my curiousity got the better of me and I went to the computer history file one night.

I found links to a lot of British sites. Which reminds me, I wondered if he was a spy for the UK too. He was reading a LOT of news stuff from the BBC and other UK publications. Very prodigious reading for a high school graduate. And he loved that stupid show (sorry), "Black Adder".

I think it also crossed my mind once that he'd relocated to the West Coast after the planes crashed in NYC. My room, the guestroom, was full of NYC Yankee baseball stuff. Prior to working at the refinery, he'd worked at an Italian restaurant in Bellingham, near the harbor.

In addition to the british newsstuff, which he seemed nervous about my discovering and tried to brush off with a seeming nonchalant comment one day (after he probably realized I'd had a look), I found some clips of porn and his Adult Friend Finders.

I was lucky enough that I found a link which went not to just the profile which the public could read, but the master profile, where even more info was located, such as the time and dates of subscription renewals.

GO WOMEN EVERYWHERE!!!! YEeeeessS! We will find you OUT, cheaters.

I found out, this guy had an active account, and had been active before and after he met me. He was never serious about me, despite his comments to the contrary. AND, he described himself as a SWINGER, and not just any old swinger either. He had marked all these boxes for things he liked to do, and it was completely different from how he was with me and what he said he liked.

For one thing, too, he was open to orgies, 3-somes, some stuff with men watching, married or unmarrieds, and he was into some BDSM as well (which was certaintly never anything he shared with ME). He also had written he was willing to travel to Portland, Oregon; Everett, Washington; Seattle, Washington; and Vancouver, B.C. for these activities. Actually, I think he said he travelled frequently and had "business" in these areas. I thought to myself, "These are all field offices for the FBI. Except Vancouver, B.C...Hmm".

Then I also found out, he'd done some swinging in Portland, Oregon. If it's true, it's possible he "swang" in Tancer's circles, if Tancer takes after his Dad and is a swinger too. I don't know.

The other weird thing, is that this guy told me his Meyers-Briggs personality profile was something other than what he'd listed on AFF. He was TWO different PEOPLE and he didn't want ME to know which, what, or who he really was. Either that, or he was just unbalanced and created more drama for himself than necessary, to alleviate his own concerns about leading a boring life.

On AFF, he listed himself as an ESTJ or ENTJ (can't remember). To me, he said almost the opposite. Oh, and his title for his profile included the word "Hedonist". And his face is right out there in the OPEN, for everyone to see, and he's standing behind the kitchen bar with a pottery barn style green swatch of pine, and he's wearing a cable knit sweater and holding a thick ceramic coffee mug, with a smile on his face.

I found evidence of ongoing contacts with women, with outgoing "winks" and whatever, and messages. The guy was a dishonest hook-up FIEND.

He took me out to a club or bar once or twice, and there were guys there that seemed to know him. After I talked to a group, they all looked at him, and one said to him that I was the dangerous one or he was going to be in over his head with me or something.

DAMN STRAIGHT.

Oh, and he was a leftie. Left-handed and liked to draw. I guess he had a bunch of artwork but I never saw any of it. He mainly worked with pen and pastels.

When I met him at the bar I asked him to draw something on the napkin and he drew a glass half-empty or half-full I don't know.

His mother was in the picture and his Dad was either dead, supposedly, or out of the picture. His uncle, he said, was a police officer, when I told him he had a cop personality once.

So anyway, hedonist, willing to travel. It is possible he was hooking up with Ms. Wellbaum even. LOL. He might even know Paul Cassel. I mean, come on, how big is the national swinging community anyway?

He did tell me about a couple of his experiences once, when I was with him, but he lied about still being involved in it.

And then I caught him with the waitress/bartender from town, the same one who had been so friendly to me and given me a pair of hot pink pants (which I never wore). I came home unexpectedly because of migraine, and Lo! and behold! her car is parked in his spot, and she's dressed up with her hair done and I noticed a cop car parked across the street too, with no cop in sight. I'll bet you anything, there was either a little sexcapade going on with a local officer, OR, if it's true nothing ws going on, as he claimed, something else undercover. But he was putting things off on me, like I was imagining things and then I found his AFF profile.

He had military dog tags for someone, on his dresser, and a gun, but I never saw where his gun was. He had a case for it, which I saw, and I saw bullets, but no gun.

Towards the end, he acted sometimes like he liked me. He would cave in, it seemed, and he said he loved me once, and then tried to deny it. He said, "I love you" and it wasn't to get me into bed. I don't know if it was another mind game. He also said, once, "You found your sugar daddy" but then he'd be so distant and here I am wondering if he's dying of cancer and then he says no he's not.

Whatever.

He seemed to want me to be careful, at least to some degree, and wanted to know where I was going if I left. I told him, one day, he was going to wake up and I would just be gone. This was after he'd pushed me to my limit. Then he once claimed I hadn't been honest with him, about who I was, and I said yes I had and I'd kept nothing from him, and then I let it fly out, "Well I didn't you YOU were a self-professed HEDONIST!" to which he stared and then started on some intellectual defense of what the vocabulary word "hedonist" really means.

The only other weird thing he said was, after he told me he had pancreatic cancer, he couldn't "feel things" anymore, and felt numb. He said he'd practiced putting a gun to his head, and if the timing was right, he would do it, at end of life. After that, he tells me he doesn't have cancer. He tells me instead that his mother thinks he's bipolar (this is so weird because in some ways he sounds like the guy I later met in D.C., after I left.)

At any rate, I was a little depressed I'd broken my streak of celibacy for that. It wasn't worth it, to me. I wasn't looking for a fling. It wasn't humiliating to me, in any way though, because for one thing, I'd been under the influence when I was first with him, and then secondly, he'd lied, and thirdly, I never fell for him. I was never in love with him or distraught by anything he did. I ascertained he was playing mind games and I was right about that, and not only that, I know he was somehow connected to Tancer or other people from Abbey litigation stuff from Oregon. The only time I'd be embarrassed for something, is if I'd fallen for something when all signs were clear I never should have, and that's not what happened. I tried to be good to someone who wasn't honest with me, and there's no shame in that. I always find these people out eventually, but I think the point was, for them, to try to get me involved, and then "let her know" by putting out signs later, to just screw with my head. I didn't panic or feel out of control. I just thought, "What an asshole" and had guessed ahead of time he was maybe connected. A reason I thought it possible, was how he wanted to keep me from the computer when I was about to challenge what was happening in the courts. When I see someone trying to distract me from taking care of important things, it's a giveaway. I think he wanted to fuck with me, not just body but head, but the problem for him was that I was realizing what was going on and just played along anyway. Which may make some people happy, if they think I don't know what's going on, but when you know, and choose to go along in order to make a better discovery, it's your choice, and you're not exactly a victim in that situation. You're in control more than they think.

As for all the "I thought maybe he was..." I am mainly just having fun and joking around. The facts are true though, about things he said and did.

There are a lot of things that can be done to a person, but none of them matter if they don't get you at the core, where your spirit is, or your soul. If you can easily brush them off, they never "had" you to begin with. Some people understand this. You can look like you're putting up with a lot when deep down, you're assessing things and using a situation partly to your advantage. This guy was actually abusive, or tried to be in some ways, and my way of making HIM pay was to pretend I didn't know and STAY at his apartment without paying rent FAR longer than he wanted me to. And I was so nice and sweet to him, he felt too guilty and worried to do anything about it. Although I hadn't started out with the intention of "using" him, as soon as he got weird, I had my own motives and agenda and used it against him as much as anything he tried against me. I played the innocent naive girl.

I forgot to add a couple of other bad things I found out about him. Well, one thing that was a little odd at least, was that he asked me one day, in the morning, if I had "remembered" anything from last night. I said no and he seemed pleased about it. He said, "You don't remember being in here?" and I said no and he laughed and said he could have sworn, and then said he must have been dreaming but he hadn't been sure. I don't know if I was slipped something, or if I had been sleepwalking, or he was just talking nonsense.

The other thing I remember, was that after he told me he practiced putting a gun to his head, I told a bunch of people at work what he'd said, because I thought it was disturbing. That, on top of the blood in the bathroom and stuff. I started thinking he was just doing cocaine, but I never saw him do anything. But after I told people at work that he'd said he practiced putting a gun to his head, HE told me he was going to file for a concealed weapons permit with the local police.

Weird.

Oh! I forgot. There's more, about when he took me downtown, and about when I found him IMIng this woman next door...Oh, and how he was trying to pimp me out too. Okay, real fast, when he took me downtown once, I had my cell phone with me, and I don't know how someone knew what my location was, but I hadn't had blatant harassment from people hanging out of their cars, mocking me, for a long time. But when he took me downtown, he asked later where to pick me up and I told him one location, but stayed in another location, or moved, and I didn't tell him right away. So it was like I said, "Okay, you can pick me up at the _______" and instead of being there, I was across the street. After I told him this, about 3 or 4 cars drove by with people (20s to maybe 30s) checking out that location, and then when one of them saw me eating outside on the other side, they all circled back around the block and came by with the whole harassment thing. But they had thought I was at the location I told him I was at, so it seemed to me that someone was picking up on what I said over the cell, or he was telling someone. It was a little odd.

Then, a different time, I went out with him and he told some guy to for me, and he said it pimp-style, and then when he wanted me to work at the refinery, he kept saying to me that there were a bunch of men there who were divorced or going through a divorce and that they might want to hang out with me. Then, I met this beautiful older French woman, randomly, who lived at the townhouses, and she invited me in to try out her computer because I couldn't get a connection, and right then, I'm in her apartment which is decorated in a chic Parisian style (but with a ton of mirrors and silk sheets and everything sort of like a boudoir) and what comes on her screen? An IM from a "Mike Carillo". I don't know, but the guy I lived with, his name was "Mike Carilli". It seemed to me, very possible that the person IMing her was the guy I lived with but she said this guy was just a "landlord" or something. It was kind of weird.

I'll write about that in just a minute.

Oh, an addition, is it odd that a man would be more worried and nervous you'd discovered he read the BBC than he was you'd discovered AFF? He went so far as to say, that evening or the next day, in a casual but nervous-trying-to-be-nonchalant way, that he just liked to look at the BBC sometimes because it had more of a worldview. Why was he trying to justify reading the BBC?

When I was shot in the butt with the beebee gun, too, the only person who knew I was going on a walk and which direction I was going, was him. I told him I was going for a walk and he asked which way I was going. 15 minutes later, I was shot in the butt by a coworker and a Canadian. Could have been coincidence.

The other thing about him, he loved everything about the Roman empire. He had a lot of books about Rome and it was his favorite material. The movies he turned on for me to watch were all mob movies. The Godfather, and other ones (the one with Sharon Stone).

I didn't take off though, not until after Judge Hotchkiss cut me out of a hearing after telling me I had to be pro se. Then I left, the very next day.