Love in the blogosphere

The lizard prince of Mordor contacted me again after an absence of 3 months, on, somewhat appropriately, Friday 13th June. We wrote to each other via our blogs due to a mutual interest in Madeleine Mccann. We first met in February. After some power play by him about me driving all the way to Mordor (the other side of London) whilst I tried to negotiate a central London meeting, he agreed to meet me in a Hampstead pub. We eyed each other, having only communicated non-visually up to this point, and what we found was not bad. I knew him. Already. Not really but somehow. I knew what he was into, sexually. (A bizarre psychic talent of mine). He painted himself as a loser and went to the toilet every 10 minutes. I wondered if he had a disease. He smelt sour, the result of too much fast food and alcohol. In other words, he was gloriously dissolute, a Withnail type character.
On our second meeting, this time at his end of town, he downed Guinness and talked brilliantly, cutting a swathe through topics: the genius of Shane Warne, Mary Magdalene, the Fatima shrine, the beauty of Daniel Day Lewis… Attracted, despite myself, I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the glistening trails of snot where he had wiped his nose on the sleeves of his fleece. He boasted of the size of his penis (no idle boast it turns out, the guy is hung like a donkey). We left the pub and walked to my car. There was a parking ticket attached to the windscreen. A portent?
His flat looked new, unlived in, like a show flat. Things were still in boxes. By the window, there were 2 chairs and a strange orange dried flower arrangement (given by his mother, I checked, no doubt in a maternal attempt to add a sense of home to the place) and no toilet paper. Staggering slightly, he then peed in a beer glass. I recoiled and shouted at him. It showed a lack of respect. “I’m a woman in the flat of a man I do not know, and that behaviour scares me.” Especially, I thought, when he had two bathrooms in his flat, one en suite. I was about to tell him what I really thought of him when he disarmed me by saying:
“Don’t hurt me”.
“Why would you care what I think?” I asked.
“Because you are my friend” he pleaded and buried his face in my bosom.
At that point, I have to admit, I melted. His little punk rebellion faded into insignificance. Reader, I slept with him on the second date. We devoured each other.
In the morning I drove away, confused, shocked. As the day wore on, I grew ever more anxious. What’s going to happen now?
I wanted to meet him that weekend, to talk face to face. To get to know him, not just his opinions and his learning. He mucked me about. Never saying yes, never saying no. Which is hard when you have to make arrangements so that your child is not around. On Sunday night he called me on Skype, drunk, sexy, commanding, with his gravelly stutter. He lied and I knew it, saying he was at church that morning and then seeing his mother on Mothers day. I did not call him on his lie, for I was embarrassed or scared that I would not see him again.
The lizard prince is half Jewish, half Mormon. An odd combination. His Jewishness is an obsession, part of a love/hate relationship with this side of himself. His Mormonism, I was later to find out, was the result of a thwarted relationship with a 17 year old Mormon girl, and his ‘conversion’ by her father, was an attempt to get into her good books.
Half getting the come-on and half getting rejected, my natural impatience with any kind of ambiguity led to me driving over to his house a couple of days later, to get clarity. I have a good sense of direction and I remembered where he lived. I even parked in the correct parking spot! I had also previously mentioned that I had good dowsing skills and had once found an ex-boyfriends whereabouts. He was freaked out, he wanted to know if I had found him that way. Although he is interested in the occult, he fears and respects it. I have asked several times for his exact birth time and he refuses, despite his interest in astrology.
As soon as I entered the flat, he pulled me into the bedroom. Which was fine by me. I couldn’t stop thinking about the sex with him. But after a couple of hours, he asked me to leave. Upset, I said “Look, was this just a one night stand? I’d be hurt but just tell me, then I know where I stand.” “No, but you need to chill out, relax, take it slowly. Don’t be childish.” he replied. Fair enough, I thought, and I rather liked his paternal style, though he is much younger than me.
He walked me to my car, I felt like crying. I can’t do casual. I can’t do chilled either. I resolved to try though. Later that day, he emailed me saying ‘Look I do want to see you again, so dry your tears’. Happier, I tried to play it his way, but it was agony, holding back. A couple of weeks later, I emailed him to say that I was going to be in his area and did he want to get together? He agreed but then didn’t make any specific arrangements. I turned up at his flat, bottle of wine in tow, to be greeted by a sleepy lizard Prince in boxers, he blinks:”I’ve been asleep, I guess I forgot to make a time and place”. We talked on his tiny leather sofa and drank the wine. At one point he grabbed me and we slipped into passion. In his bedroom I noticed a woman’s handbag with a Wizard of Oz design upon it. “Who does that belong to?” I asked. “It’s a present for this blogger I am going to visit in New York soon”.
“Is anything going on between you two?” I asked peering at him. “Well, I’ve only met her once. And I’m staying in a hotel”.
That night he talked about his life, his relationship with his parents, his brothers’ problems, his depression and suicidal feelings, his experiences of swinging, gay and trans sex. If he thought he was putting me off then he was wrong. He had mostly gone out with Asian and black women(odd when he also claims to be a racist supporter of the BNP). But in fact he’d never really had a proper relationship. He’d only left home 2 years previously and he was in his 30’s. It was Tuppy Owens, who runs the Outsiders club(who I feel should be made a Dame of the Empire, due to her charitable sex work for disabled people), who advised him to leave home. He did seem to have a conflictual and cold relationship with his mother. He blamed his parents for many things but depended on them also. Listening to him talk made me realise how far I had come, that I had in fact grown up somewhat.
At 4am I realised he had left the room and was in his study, at his computer. He jumped a little when I opened the door and covered his computer screen. (I now worry if he was talking to the New York woman.) I got back in bed and read one of his books. He doesn’t like people touching his stuff though, and took it off me as soon as he returned, placing it in exactly the same position on the floor again. At 6 am, he said “I’m going to have to kick you out now”. As my daughter was staying nearby, I said that there was no way I could pick her up at that time. Feeling terrible, I slept another couple of hours. Then I said “Lets get breakfast in a cafe” for the lizard prince had no food in his flat, and again, no toilet paper.
Looking angry, he got dressed. He snapped “Have you got everything?” Yes I replied meekly. We drove to Mordor, and luckily, on this Sunday morning, there was one cafe open, run by a Chinese couple. We had a disgusting fried breakfast. I looked at myself in my little mirror and I looked a bit tired and puffy. “I must look a wreck” I said. He nodded slightly. I asked if I could take a picture of him with my iPhone. He refused. I wanted his picture in case I never saw him again. I paid for our breakfast.
He then suggested that we go to a UFO conference taking place in two weeks. Excited, I agreed. I’d always wanted to go to one, and it would be even better accompanied by him. I dropped him off back home, but he didn’t want me to drive right up to his place, did he fear that I would want to come in again? We exchanged embraces and parted.
After I had picked up my daughter and driven the long way home, I checked his blog. There was a new entry, dedicated to this New York woman. She had commented. It was like a private conversation between them, played out over the Internet, for the world to see. Crest-fallen, it was becoming increasingly obvious where his interests lay.
A few days later, I did some research on the UFO conference and emailed him. He failed to respond. The conference was getting closer and I still didn’t hear from him. I talked to one of his friends on skype and casually asked if the lizard prince was still obsessing over the New York woman. “Oh yes, he’s completely besotted” he replied. I stared at the screen, at these words on skype chat. I couldn’t even reply and changed my status to offline. I asked myself: “Why has he started something with me, when he’s into someone else?” Seeing the truth in black and white was hurtful.
A few times during the 3 months of no contact, I emailed and texted the lizard prince. It sounds crazy, considering that I barely knew him, but I missed him. I wanted to talk to him, discuss things, visit places. He has such a perverse, inventive, quirky intellect. He can make connections that wouldn’t occur to anyone else. He is a lateral thinker. I left a message saying if nothing else, I would like to be friends. Sometimes I got replies: “Will be in touch shortly” was a favourite. Once he asked me to do a chart for a building in New York. I did the work and he never thanked me or gave me feedback. By this time he’d had his trip to New York to see this woman and his blog was littered with references to her. Something that, jealousy aside, I felt detracted from his writing.
Friday 13th, we meet, we drink Guinness, we exchange gossip and news. It turns out that he has been reading my blog regularly which both pleases and disturbs me. He says that he feared that I am a “bunny boiler”, as one of my texts was received 8 times over 6 hours. I feel helpless at the injustice of the accusation and I cannot hold back the tears. It was obviously a problem with the satellites, I splutter, of course I didn’t send you the same text 8 times. I hold his hand, he looks at my legs. He makes suggestions about getting my knickers down then apologizes. “But I like getting my knickers down” I say softly. He looks at me directly, saying “I know. That’s one of the things I like about you.”
We go back to my place (I’m not risking getting kicked out again at his). We eat hummus and carrots. It’s good to see him eat, for mostly he just drinks. “This is great” he says “I’m getting my 5 a day”. I’d like to mother him, feed him, look after him. He meets my daughter. He looks delighted. He takes her guitar and sings us some of his songs. He is talented, passionate with a great voice. We go to bed. The trouble with being so endowed is that it can make you lazy. He lies back like a tumescent Pan or Shiva beneath a dancing Kali.
Later, he talks about the New York woman. It emerges that she was treating him in rather the same way that he was treating me: blowing hot and cold, long silences, high maintenance behaviour. “She’s very highly strung” the lizard prince announces, baffled. She even booked a plane ticket to come and see him in London, but didn’t turn up. The lizard prince thought that this was because he told her about his dream in which she would be in a plane crash. My upstairs neighbour, who is Scottish Jamaican, understood her behaviour, saying that she would have cancelled too. This level of superstition, she intoned, is a “black thing”. My own opinion is that she’s just not that into him. Just like he’s not that into me. (For myself, I have in the past literally crossed continents, climbed mountains, waded through snow drifts in the Himalayas clutching a black & white photo asking “have you seen this person?” to see a man I desire).
While at my flat, he checks his emails and his blog on my laptop. A couple of days later he calls. I am pleased thinking, finally, some normal level of communication, whether it be as friends or as lovers or a combination of both. But I am disappointed. He is annoyed with me. Modifications were made to his blog and he thinks it’s me. Wrong-footed, I deny it but he is insistent, it can only be me. He is frightened that New York woman might see the changes and further reject him. I am indignant. He only cares about her feelings not mine. After discussing it for an hour and a half, deep into the night, I retire, sleeping badly. I awake very early, my heart sinking. The whole of the next day I spend in bed, trying to sleep off the pain. My daughter has her boyfriend round for the first time and she is ashamed and doesn’t know how to explain the fact that I do not emerge from my bedroom. “My mum is depressed” she explains. Our family is like something out of a Jacqueline Wilson novel.
The next day the lizard prince of Mordor apologizes. I ask for more information, what has he found out? He doesn’t reply.
I wanted to go away with him for the solstice, to the Avebury Radical Anthropologists camp, something we had discussed on a couple of occasions. I text him, asking to come round and discuss it. I also text him a sexy message, detailing what I would like to do to him. No reply. I went further down into my craziness. Finally he replies and says that he doesn’t have enough money to go. No doubt he is saving to go to New York again.
I attend an OTO moot. I text him teasing scraps of information about the talk. Maybe he will come with me to the next one. He is 9th house, I am 3rd. I’m out there, reporting, en direct. He is at home, digesting information and turning it into good writing. We’d make a great team. He said about the New York woman, that it’s rare to meet someone into the same things that you are. I know how he feels. That’s how I think about him. I wonder if there will ever be the day when Miss Marmite Lover is listed as one of his interests. Sometimes I am comforted by the sight of the green tick of skype next to his name lit up like a lantern at his window. (Now he has taken it off, oh no, please give me authorisation again…)
I don’t understand much of my own behaviour. I am starting therapy soon. I will be seeing ‘the rapist’ as Naked John calls them.
Is what I write of any interest? I have had problems with this blog both technically and emotionally. I feel exposed and yet I also feel compelled to express myself honestly. I am not a writer but I do write. Is that good enough? Shall I continue this blog?
Speaking to my friend Dvd, I once said “The most dominant thing anyone can do to someone else is ignore them” and he replied “No the most dominant thing someone can do to someone else is to make them love you”. (I take his point but as someone with six, count ’em, six planets in the third house, lack of communication enrages me…)
Another note on this matter: what American women crave above all is class, just look at our Madonna, who is a perfect case in point. What does this successful New York woman see in the lizard prince? For she is surely made of less darker stuff than myself… Oh, it’s gotta be that whole Hugh Grant, Richard E. Grant, Christopher Hitchens, drunken British journalist in Bonfire of the Vanities thing…