The one from the Internet.

 

When I was new to the Internet, I would sit online and chat happily to anyone who wanted to say hi. It didn’t occur to me that in the main, people who randomly chat to young women online and then invite them out for drinks are a little odd. Or they were back then, when the Internet was not as widely used as it is today. Meeting people from the internet was largely the same as going to a Star Trek convention.

I “met” a man called Paul, who lived about an hour’s drive away, I think. We would chat online when I was bored and had nothing better to do. As I say, I was new to the internet and the whole chatting online thing was a complete novelty. He seemed nice enough, and offered one day to drive up to town and meet me for a drink. I agreed, despite the fact I had no idea what he looked like, and he didn’t know what I looked like either. He had my mobile number (oh, how naive I was, to give my number to a complete Internet stranger!) so we agreed to meet in town at around 8 one evening, and he would call when he arrived. I got dressed up in a shiny new black top, and went and sat in the pub with my dad and his girlfriend. I didn’t tell them I was off to meet a complete stranger; my dad would have chained me to the chair to keep me from going! So my phone rang, and I told them I had to bail because I had a date, and off I went to meet him. I found him standing next to his car in the car park, a lot taller and chubbier than I had imagined. I am quite short. This did not bode well. We said our hellos, rather awkwardly, and went to the nearest pub.

I think I was only about 19 at the time, and hadn’t had much experience of meeting up with men I barely knew in dark car parks – actually something I still don’t have much experience of now. The conversation was awkward to say the least. All I remember of that evening is him sitting on a stool at a table that made him look like a giant. He had shaggy mousy brown hair that looked like it had once been a pudding-bowl classic. There was nothing wrong with him, he seemed nice enough, but I really didn’t fancy him, and wanted to get away from this nightmarish situation as soon as I could! After a couple of drinks I said I had to get home. He offered me a lift, and I offered some hastily thought-up excuse as to why that was a bad idea, and then left after a very awkward hug in the car park.

I thought that would be the end of it. We’d met, we obviously hadn’t clicked in a romantic sense; perhaps we would remain friends and chat online from time to time. How wrong could I be? It seemed I was the only one who noticed the distinct lack of spark in our meeting. When I got home I received a message saying it had been lovely to meet me, he liked me even more now that he’d seen how gorgeous I was in person. I didn’t know how to respond. I’ve never been very good at turning people down; I worry about hurting their feelings or making them cross with me. I thought perhaps I’d not given him a fair chance, perhaps I’d missed something and he was actually really sexy and gorgeous. You know when you meet a guy, and he’s lovely, and kind, and he treats you nicely, and he’s always well presented and always smells nice, and always holds the door open for you, and you think, oh if only I fancied you, you’d be my ideal man and we could walk off into the sunset together. But I never fancy those ones!

So I agreed to meet him again, just to make sure I hadn’t missed something. This time he offered to get a take away and come to my house. Alarm bells should have rung – do not invite someone you met on the Internet and do not know, to come to your home. But as mentioned before, I was young and stupid and hadn’t done things like this before. I also had a friend at work who regularly met men online and had them come into work to meet her – at which point she would come running into the kitchen with a panicked expression, asking to exchange name badges with someone so that this week’s man didn’t recognise her. She also had a habit of meeting up with men late at night, and having sex with them in their cars, or in other public and quite inappropriate places. In comparison, I thought what I was doing was quite sedate and acceptable. So he came round with a curry, and we sat in my bedroom and ate it. Why my mother didn’t make us sit at the kitchen table, or even allowed me to invite a man none of us knew into the house, is beyond me. It’s entirely possible I lied to her and had her believing he was an old school friend or something.

I don’t recall anything other than him turning up with the curry. I know I knew instantly that my first appraisal of the situation had been correct, and that the rest of the visit was spent with me carefully avoiding eye contact or any sort of touching, before finding a way to usher him out of the door. The following week he sent me a CD he’d made me, full of mushy love songs with not-so-hidden meanings. It made me cringe.

He was, I must say, a very nice bloke. He didn’t try anything inappropriate (other than another embarrassingly awkward hug goodbye on the doorstep) and did not make me worried for my safety, with him now knowing where I lived. He wasn’t creepy or anything, I just didn’t fancy him. And I didn’t have the heart to tell him.

I don’t recall what happened next, and do not appear to have written much about him in my blog or diaries. I assume I must have eventually told him I didn’t fancy him, and didn’t want to see him again. And then he got whiney and very self-pitying. Nobody ever likes me, why don’t you like me, what did I do wrong, is it because I’m too fat, poor me, nobody loves me, I’ll never find a girlfriend. On and on it went, every time I went online, there he would be, whining and moaning and begging me to see him again. He told me I was the girl of his dreams. I told him to shut up. He said, “You don’t want me because I’m ugly.” I said, “I don’t want you because you’re wet and irritating and have no self-respect.” Then I told him to go away and come back when he’d grown up. This is the way I dealt with unwanted attentions from men when I was younger. I didn’t have the self confidence to be able to just say, “Look, you’re a nice guy but I don’t fancy you” so I would fob them off with bad excuses until their pestering became unbearable, and then I would lose my temper and behave like a royal bitch. Needless to say, he did go away, and we’re not still in contact.

The slightly unstable one

He was in my college History class, and he made me laugh constantly. He was always joking about, and I was in awe of him. He was a couple of years older than me, and knew my older sister from school. I don’t recall how, but I started spending time with him, hanging around town between lectures, going to the pub after college (or instead of college). It turned out we had quite a few friends in common. One night we were out drinking, and either I missed my last bus home, or he told me not to bother catching it; I could stay at his place. He set up a mattress on the living room floor for me. In the morning we went to a park on his estate and sat on swings and chatted. He asked, “Will you go out with me?” I said yes and felt like a ten-year-old. Then I caught the bus home. A few days later he invited me round to his house for a meal; he was going to cook for me. I caught the bus into town, and he met me and we walked to his house, at the top of a hill I didn’t recall being that steep when I was drunk. We walked largely in awkward silence, except for the occasional joke. He had a habit of rambling in a slightly deranged way when faced with an awkward situation. I forget what he cooked, but I do recall it involved refried beans, which I’d never had before. We sat in his living room watching Jerry Springer on the TV, sitting in arm chairs either side of a coffee table and drinking Martini because I'd mentioned to him once that I liked it. Even when we were both drunk it was still quite uncomfortable. That night I slept in his room, but we barely kissed. We were both stupidly shy. The next morning I was sick and hung over, and he felt bad for having fed me so much booze. I was mortified and left soon after.

We went to the cinema one evening, and watched Titanic. We were both cynical teenagers though, and far too cool to cry at the sad scenes. We just sat there feeling terribly uncomfortable, like two cardboard cut-outs of people.

I don’t recall us doing much else together. At half term he went to Kent with his friend for the week. It was Valentine’s Day during that week, and he apologised for not being there to spend it with me. He posted me a card with a hologram heart on the front, and a note inside about me having a nice day without him there to spoil it for me. I thought perhaps he'd misunderstood the point of Valentine's Day and was rather disappointed that for the first time in my life I had a boyfriend on Valentine's Day, and he wasn't here to fuss over me like men did on TV. I decided to completely ignore the facts: we were the world's most awkward couple and this was clearly not love's young dream. At the end of half term week, he was supposed to come back to town. On the day he was due to come back, he called me and said he was staying in Kent for a few extra days, and asked me to call his work for him in the morning and tell them he was sick. I agreed, and the following morning called and lied my face off about his having been up all night with a stomach bug.

When he came back, I didn’t see him before college started again. We met up in our History lecture. Things were weird between us, but that was because we’d not seen each other for a week. Or so I thought. After our lecture he asked if I wanted to go into town. We walked into town, and then he said, “let’s sit on this bench here...” We sat there, watching the ducks in the river, and he told me that the reason he’d stayed in Kent the extra few days was that he’d met someone, a girl. And he really liked her, he wanted to give it a chance because he thought this could be his chance for happiness. I sat there in silence. I remember him saying to me, “shout at me, call me a wanker, just do something!” But I was too horrified to speak. I’d called his work and lied for him, so that he could spend extra time with this other girl. Instead of being angry with him, I was crushed. I liked him, but he didn't want me. I was clearly ugly and unlovable and would die alone. I went home and cried.

After that my history lectures were like torture for a while, until he made me laugh again and  all was forgotten.  We still skived from college together, but now we did it in a big group of people; we’d all go back to his house and watch 15 To 1, or Jerry Springer.

About two years later, when I was going out with one of his friends, he apologised to me for the way he’d treated me. I joked about him breaking my heart, and he got a bit upset; I had to tell him it wasn’t a big deal. The truth is he did break my heart, but I didn't think I'd really been worthy of him any way. I think it's safe to say I had major self esteem issues.

After that, we were friends on and off for a few years. From time to time he would leave town in a big furore, where he was moving on to bigger and better things, and would never return again to this hole of a city, he was leaving forever to find his fortune in a much better place... and then a few months or even a year later, I’d bump into him in the street and he’d be back living at his mum’s. We always got on though, and would go out for a drink and have a laugh. Years later when my father died, he sent me a card with a very lovely and genuine message in it. He came to the wake to support me and I'll be eternally grateful for that. I’ve not seen him for a few years now though; maybe he’s actually moved away more permanently.

Tesco Boy

This was the first boy I ever properly called my boyfriend. I think we were together for about a month. He was a few years older than me, and had a car, which obviously made him instantly appealing. He was a lovely boy, very pretty, with very nice hair. I met him at a friend’s birthday party in a tiny village in the arse end of nowhere He lived at the opposite end of the village to the friend. We spent the whole night away from the rest of the party, kissing in a gazebo in the garden.

After that, sometimes he would come to my house in the evenings, we would spend a couple of hours kissing in my room, and then he would leave. Some weekends I would stay at my friend’s house and a whole group of us would hang around together, bored and looking for something to do in the day time, before he drove me home on Sunday afternoon.

After a while he stopped calling me, and when I called him his sister would tell me he wasn’t home. I drove my friend mad moping around, asking her what I should do, whether he’d said anything to her, whether he didn’t like me any more. She knew as much as I did, but she also knew that he worked Wednesday evenings at the supermarket on the trading estate outside of town. So that Wednesday after school we walked into town together, and then we walked out the other side of town, in the rain, and up to Tesco. We wandered around the store but he wasn’t on any of the checkouts. She said maybe he was in the petrol station, so we went over there to pester him. We went in and bought a couple of bottles of drink when we saw that he was behind the counter. He said hello, but little else. I was distraught. When we came out of the petrol station we saw his car in the car park, so I left a note on the windscreen. I have absolutely no recollection of what it said, but he was clearly unmoved by it; I didn’t hear from him again.

About six years later, I got an email from him. I think we’d both been included on an email forwarded by a mutual friend. It turned out he was working at a shop in town, so I visited him on my lunch breaks from time to time, and we became friends of sorts. He apologised for the way he’d treated me and I told him it wasn’t a problem – it was too long ago for me to have held a grudge. After a while, our mutual friend was back from university for a weekend, and I went to her house in the tiny village. A group of us went out for a drink to catch up, and he was there too. It was nice to just hang out as normal people, rather than him being my ex. I think he’s married now. We’re not really in touch, but we’re Facebook friends. You know how these things are.