Scum And Other Animals

I really don’t want to tell you this story because I’d prefer to keep this blog light and frothy, tell you stories about my warts, Rasta pubes or musings on the benefits of burkhas. Fun and drivel. Sadly, however, sometimes it just can’t be. Those of you who have never had to endure some of the horrors of meeting people via the internet, probably can’t imagine that this stuff happens to ‘normal’ people, probably can’t imagine how you’d react.  

Stella turned up yesterday, hot-cross-bun-less and not wearing make-up. Something was clearly up. She dropped herself onto the conservatory sofa and grunted. Better make a cup of tea, I thought. I tiptoed about the kitchen waiting for her to speak. Nothing. I made the cup of tea and placed it in front of her. Nothing. Eventually, since the softly, softly approach was getting me nowhere, I ventured "What’s up?"

"Men," she said. "Bloody men."

Oh that! Why didn’t you say so in the first place? 

"What about them?"

"You’ll never believe what happened to me yesterday."

I thought "I expect I will". Best just to let her get it out of her system. 

"I mean – what is it about me?" she said. "What the hell am I doing wrong? I’m straight-forward, fun, relatively intelligent, honest, hard-working. I scrub up well, know how to behave in all walks of life. And yet..."

"And yet what?" I said. 

"Last night, I let somebody IM me again," she said. "Actually, I just wanted a chat, and I didn’t want to call you coz you said you were going to have an early night. I was wide awake, I’d been working on the computer and I was feeling sort of lonely."

Ah, I could see where this was going.

She went on. "I’m not saying I was entirely blameless; it does serve me right… a bit. But only because I should have learned my lesson from last time. But, you know, you keep thinking, hoping against hope that people are going to be OK. Oh anyway, the long and the short of it, Bette, is that the guy asked me if I wanted to see him in the pop up, I said no, but he still put his web cam on and there’s he was in front of me - wanking." 

There was a sadness and disappointment about her; probably as a result of that last fiasco with the Market Research Guy. It wasn’t that she was shocked or outraged by what he did. Who cares? People do it. But here was a Stella I hadn’t seen before; her optimism had somehow been raped. 

And I just wanted to smack the douchebag, arsehole, fuckwit. Sorry about the language - I’m feeling extraordinarily angry on her behalf. Because for all that I sometimes portray her as pushy and gobby and out-there in this blog, she’s got a heart of gold, is one of the most considerate people I know, is a super mum whose kids (despite my silly digs at them) are a real credit to her, and has so much life, stamina and adventure in her that any man should think himself bloody grateful to have her. 

"Sod it," she said after a couple of minutes of staring out into my garden. "Where's your Ipod? Stick it on." She scrolled down, picked up my orange highlighter, put it to her lips and began to sing to this. Irrepressible - thank God!  

I can’t say that I would be quite so bothered if this scenario had happened to me, well, not after my recent KUTA and the guy on the mobile. I’m learning too. I think I'm almost at the point of being able to treat it like any another David Attenborough documentary - a brief glimpse at an animal in its own habitat. 

Meanwhile, I do believe I have a rather lovely date coming up shortly; I don't quite know why but I feel really good about it. (Kiss of death?) Also, Stella has recycled one of her ex dates onto the same friend I recycled my ex date on. The system is working well. ;)