Hi guys n dolls. Well I think I’ve worked my way up to sharing clusterfucks #2 and #3 respectively. Please fasten your seatbelts, and return your trays to their upright and locked positions. We’ll be running into a bit of turbulence on the next leg of our journey.

The next guy doesn’t even have a description. There is a solid reason for that. It’s one you may be alternately amused and horrified by. About 3 weeks after the ‘near-death by bible’ guy I had gone into a phase of manic cleaning, painting and reorganizing that truly merited high dosages of Seroquel. If you’re unfamiliar with Seroquel let me bring you up to speed. It’s medicinal usage is as an anti-psychotic. ( No, I have not acted out any fantasies that included harming anyone). I just wasn’t sleeping. At all. I was having pulse pounding, anxiety skyrocketing, panic attacks about every 6 minutes. So yeah, not sleeping. After a few days of that kind of exhausted frustration one tries to find productive things to do! So I was stripping rooms, repainting, hanging new blinds, assembling furniture and doing it all AT ONCE. Oh…2 rooms at a time. Drying time for paint gets really boring so I was multitasking. But if there’d been an overhead camera of my round the clock activities I would have most likely resembled a squirrel on meth trying to get ready for winter. “I have a nut! I’ll put it here. What was that sound? Is that a nut over there??? Oh shit, where’d I put the one I had?” And round n round I went.

Now for a couple weeks I’d been texting back and forth with this dude. Cant remember his name. I blame meds for that. But really it was just exchanging random jokes, anecdotes. A friendly distraction. So I had gotten a bit comfortable. One afternoon while I was painting the brand new floor boards, doing laundry, and fielding messages from “the festering bitch” (see last post) I got a text from…whats his name.

He asked if I wanted to grab a coffee, and I explained all the crap I was in the middle of. So, being a stellar new friend, he offered to bring me one since I was obviously working my little petunia off. Sure! Sweet! Nice guy to be so considerate!

Now just so you get the visual here, I was wearing the same clothes I’d been working in the day before. I had oil based paint decorating several different locks of hair. Not a stitch of make up on. Saw dust from cutting the baseboards adhered to me like a batch of wooden fairy dust. The dryer buzzed at me about 40 seconds before my doorbell rang, so I had a hamper full off toasty clothes on my hip and was racing to let in my ‘friend’. The deliverer of much needed caffeine. Ok, it wasn’t really needed cause I hadn’t slept in days, but I like the shit, so shut up. I didn’t want to be rude and leave him standing there. So I throw open the door, puffing paint-hair out of my eyes and this is what I see.

Giant golden coasters dangling 3 inches from my nose. Not one. A whole slew of them, dropped down in a line from a hand hovering against the door frame about 4 inches above my head. Have you ever seen a movie where a character unleashes a fistful of credit cards in the plastic slinky-like holders for a wallet? Like that. Now see…I’m far sighted, so I kind of had to pull back a little cause there was something printed on the golden discs in black, but I couldn’t make it out at close range.

So as I lean away to see what it says I absorb 2 things at one. First, the black print says Trojan. Second beneath the line of ginormous condoms is, unmistakeably, track pants. At full salute. I’m not typically a very girly girl. Not easily startled. In fact I have been known to manhandle a guy if I’m irked enough. But all I could muster was an authentic girl squeak, and slamming and locking the door. I never saw buddies face. It took me a few weeks before I realized the dirty bastard hadn’t even brought a coffee!

The Bums Rush….So this guy was “Chad”.  Chad had been shooting off messages to me for awhile. After the last couple of banner experiences I wasn’t overly excited about meeting new friends. However, he persisted. So after over a month of exchanging pleasantries we agreed to text. Another few weeks of schedules never seeming to jibe and I’d sort of back-burnered him.

Now Chad was around 28 or 30. About average height. Worked in some sort of sales position. Brown hair, light eyes, Caucasian. Pretty average kind of dude. One day I was out doing some errands and I got a text. “Hey, what are you doing right now?” So I replied, not much, yada yada…Well it seems he had a free hour or so and was in the basic vicinity. Would I like to grab that coffee? Shrug…sure, why not?

I walked into the Starbucks we’d agreed to meet at, ordered my Venti White Chocolate Mocha (thank you Starbucks. All the rest of your stuff tastes like diesel to me, but that one’s yummy) and took a seat. About 15 minutes later a guy approached my table. “Oh Hey! How are you??”

I was nonplussed trying to figure out how I knew him. Had I served him when I used to waitress? Was he an electrician I delivered to? Then he sat down. A little alarm in my head started beeping at me. You see..the man who’d just sat down was not the person I was supposed to be meeting. He was about 5’7”, chubby, east indian, without an accent, and talking very fast.

I just stared at him. The WTF look must’ve been pretty clear, too, then I started laughing. I went to stand up and said “Alright, this is ridiculous. You’re not who you claimed to be, and sorry, but I’m not up for this”

“Up for what? What do you mean? I’m who I said!”

“Dude….You’ve been lying to me for weeks. And really. You aren’t even the race you said. I’m not looking to date you, but my friends don’t lie to me. I gotta go”

So the little scrotum muncher actually reached out and grabbed the sleeve of my jacket. I looked down at his hand and I was honestly debating whether or not to hit him when he said “Just let me ask you one thing.”

At this point I was outta there anyway. So I figured screw it. “What?”

The following is, word-for-word, I shit you, not, exactly what he came out with.

“So, you’re separated right? So you must just really need it. Just-let-me-hitit-from-behind-I’ll-make-it-good-you-won’t-even-have-to-knowitsme”

Like a fuckkkkin auctioneer.

Ever seen a cougar come un-cunted? That day at Starbucks  a lot of people did!

I’ve been launched helter skelter into the dating world again. There’ve been some changes. Either that, or there were things before that I was simply unaware of. In either case, I’m stumbling around like an epileptic in a mine field and causing shit basically everywhere I go.

First of all, I haven’t really been paying attention to eligible men for quite some time, do to the fact that I was…I dunno…MARRIED and not looking. I had been living under the misconception that I was happily married and therefore had a nifty set of blinders on. So since my ex (we won’t name him) decided to become a douche guzzler (the french bastard) and start some freakish on line relationship with a married mother of five(We’ll refer to her as festering bitch) in Alabama (I’m not making this up, and we lived in Canada) I went thru what one could call a personal Armageddon. A full cycle of batshit crazy followed by the joy of councelling and medication. The resultant title of my (now permanent?) condition is bi-polar. Its nifty. But apparently I’ve retained my sense of humour, so that’s something.

About 3 months into my descent into bedlam a weird little woman I met thru friends ended up staying with me over the weekend as her plans had fallen thru. Well, we’d gone to karaoke. Harmless enough. And she’d said I should bring my camera. She needed some new profile pics. I assumed she was referring to facebook, I was wrong. We went, had a decent time, took some pics. I had uploaded the pics to my computer and left her to post at will, taking my sedated little butt to bed. Throughout my blissfully ignorant sleep, she’d gotten a wild hair up her ass and decided I needed to get out more. Her reasoning was sound. I wasn’t going out, was barely eating, and was basically on a thought cycle of “How did this happen???” however her radical idea was somewhat of a surprise to me. I woke up to her music. Have I mentioned I’m not a morning person? Cause I’m not. I’m more likely to shoot someone for waking me than to arise with a smile. And her music was country. She was pretty much hitting every nerve I had before I even opened my eyes. So as I stomped toward the offending noise and threw the door open I probably looked a lot like the medication wasnt working.

Well my gifted and brilliant new friend had been diligently working on throwing what was left of my life into complete chaos. She’d created a dating profile for me using the photos we’d taken the night before. When she confessed this, I almost laughed, thinking no one uses those things. 2 years later….I’ve deleted and recreated accounts multiple times. It’s the fast food menu of our time. You can order in. You can browse the menu. You can dine n dash…it’s a different world.

One of the most startling things I discovered, and discovered quickly, was that the term I’d thought of as insulting and seedy had had a change in definition. Cougar. In my world a cougar was some night skulking creature that stalked on the fringes of groups looking to pounce on a young man in a desperate state or situation. Nay, nay!! The cougar is apparently the experienced and no bullshit older woman that many fit and handsome young stallions seek out. When the FUCK did that happen???

At first I was shocked, then suspicious, but over time I just became…well..relieved! Cause while I’d had my fancy little monogamy blinders on most of the available men in my age range had become somewhat paunchy, they’d developed jowls and bags under their eyes and what I can only refer to as ‘fat head syndrome’. The rest of them seems to be in ok shape, but somehow they’d managed to gain 5-7 lbs strictly in their faces. Or they’d lost teeth. Or they’d become raging alcoholics. Or…they were married! So, sweet mary mother of jesus, thank you for making the cougar attractive.

At first the goal was just to get out more, in a platonic way. I was stymied by the fact that the site where she’d created my profile would allow you to say you were only looking for friends, but wouldn’t allow you to list “everyone” as a target group. It made you chose. Male or female. Well, with my somewhat crass humour I’d always had a lot of guy friends, and since I was still being harassed by ‘the festering bitch’ I had limited patience with females. So I opted with men. I naively thought that friends meant friends. When in fact it means friends with benefits to a large portion of the population.

Instance #1
I went to watch a movie with a dude. He was somewhat religious. I thought that meant I was relatively safe. He had aspirations to heal me by the laying on of hands. I was about as happy about that as a badger with hemorrhoids. He then took exception to the fact that I was wearing a star ring. It wasn’t actually a pentagram, but the only reason it wasn’t was that I couldn’t FIND one. So he started preaching. Now..see…I’d been relatively calm for a few months at this point. Coulda been the councelling. Coulda been the meds. Either way I was quite enjoying my neutral state. And then he had to start that. I could actually, physically FEEL my blood pressure rise. He was all “You people are all lost, empty inside”. My brains thinking things like “Is that what you were trying to do? Make sure I wasn’t empty?” But my mouth remained shut for a total of 2 minutes. And THEN he pulled out the book. Yes. THE BOOK. Leather bound, with about 300 little coloured sticky notes poking out from all sides. (By the way, if someone has their bible bookmarked in a zillion places, you probably don’t want to know them.) And started pushing it at me. I laughed. A wise man might’ve heeded the slightly maniacal tittering sound to it, but Dopey there wasn’t too smart. He tried to challenge me.
“Ask a question, and open the book. I gaurantee you’ll find the answer to your question there.”
Ok, Jim Jones….My response? “Holy FUCK. They really modified the magic 8-ball!”
He took great exception to that. And started to tell me that my ring signified that I worship…At this point my words came back. All of em.
“Dont say the Devil, idiot. Cause the Devil doesnt exist.”
He looked like a 4 year old being told that the tooth fairy wasn’t real.
“It’s not the devil. It’s YOU. You get horny and try to get your dick wet. YOU get greedy and try to lowball someone for their goods on kijiji, and take advantage of their hardship. YOU get envious of other peoples lives, wives and status. The devil’s just the scapegoat for your own greed and desires.”
Well…..
Dopey was stumped for second. His response was “Then why are you afraid to touch my bible?” Sheer brilliance.
“Oh you ass…I’m not afraid to touch the book, I’m afraid I’m going to beat you to death with it, and you weren’t even a real date!” With that I stalked out, not even putting my shoes on. I drove home barefoot. It was still winter.




There are so many stories and musings to be shared. Stay tuned for the next tirade.
The Cougar Confessor.
Jacklin Hyde