Weird Boyfriends

I’m sure we’ve all had our share of weird boyfriends – or even weird girlfriends for that matter – but if you look back through your dating life, you might find at least one that tipped the weirdness scale so far off the meter, it broke.

No weird boyfriends (girlfriends)? Don’t fret. If you haven’t dated your fair share, the reason is because I have dated them for you. Here’s a sampling.

I dated mostly in the 70’s when the common phrase was, “What’s your sign?” (as if anybody knew what that really meant) and “I haven’t seen you here before. Is this your first time?” I looked for more clever come-ons, like the guy who asked me if I wanted to visit him in his haunted house. Talk about a great opener! I never dated patrons at the cocktail lounge where I worked, but this guy grabbed my attention with his unique style. So, yeah, show me the way.

The funny thing was that when I went to his house, some other guy, who never said a word, sat at the kitchen table. When my date drove me home, he asked me if I’d seen anything. I told him I hadn’t. The house definitely had that haunted feel to it, though. When I asked him about the guy who was sitting at the table, he asked, “What guy?”

I still don’t know if I actually saw a ghost or if he was kidding.

Some guys wanted to get married immediately upon meeting me. I might have felt flattered if it hadn’t dawned on me that I could have been anybody – it just so happened that I was in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong person – who lived in perpetual “marry me” mode.

Then I met the guy who said he liked my right eye. What? Seriously, was that a compliment or was he telling me my left eye was ugly? Weird little man.

Then I dated a guy who traveled halfway across the country to see me. Sweet, right? But he brought along his computer (not a laptop – this was the 90s), his printer, and all his cords. Most of the cords he owned were dirty, yellowed, ugly cords because he fixed computers for a living and, for reasons I never understood, he kept the ugly yellow cords. Before he left, he replaced all my pristine (clean) new gray cords with those ugly yellow cords.

Why?

I hate when things make no sense to me. Why not replace my bed with his bed, or my radio with his radio. And, yes, that would have bothered me too. But cords? Did he think I wouldn’t notice? They looked like dirty mustard colored neon lights flashing from behind my beautiful gray Apple computer and components. I’ll never figure out why he did that. I mean, I would never drive halfway across the country to replace my underwear with his.

Some boyfriends are kind of endearing although also annoying, like the guy who tried to impress me with his manliness knowledge. The problem with my car, he told me? The Cadillac converter! Wow! I didn’t even know that came with my car.

Then there are the dates who never actually become boyfriends. You know, the ones who comment when they come to pick you up, “You’re not wearing that, are you?” And the ones who show up on your doorstep – unannounced and uninvited – and who tell you– no, demand you, when they notice you have another guy over – who was invited, by the way – to, “Get rid of him; I’m here now.”

And then there was the guy who came over with a batch of photographs of himself and proceeded to nail those photographs to my walls. Anyone detecting boundary problems?

But probably the weirdest of all the guys I dated was Alex (not his real name). We had been dating for a couple of months when one day, he just stopped calling. He didn’t return or acknowledge my calls either. A couple of weeks later, he called to say, “I was in a fugue. I get like that sometimes. Anybody who dates me has to understand that I get in fugues all the time, and you’ll just have to deal with them.”

OK, well, we all have our idiosyncrasies. I let it pass, but then one time, several months passed before I heard from him. During that time he never returned my calls either. Then one day he called me as if we’d seen each other just the day before and commented once again that he had been “in a fugue.”

So I stopped returning his calls. To this day, I am so tempted to call him and pretend as if no time at all has occurred between then and now – “Hi, Alex! I was in a fugue these past 20 years. Let’s pick up where we left off.”

I’ll admit that I have poor judgment when it comes to men. So far, they have all turned out to be either alcoholics or drug addicts, and they are either stalkers or, if I end up really liking them, completely apathetic.

When I realized that I had no common sense when it came to men, I decided to date men I wasn’t the least bit attracted to. Want to date Kevin (not his real name), I was asked? Sure. Why not? I find nothing at all appealing about him; therefore, he is probably safe. So we went on a couple of dates. No fireworks, nothing. Reason enough to continue dating him, I figured, because up until him, I had been dating (and marrying) disasters.

One day he called me to tell me his wife – HIS WIFE – wanted to talk to me. WHOA! Really? Sure, she can come over to talk to me – what were the chances that she would actually show up? The beautiful 6-foot tall blonde walked toward me, bent down, and looked me directly in the eye. I need to know – did you sleep with my husband?

Husband stood at the end of the driveway watching the encounter. I wanted to explain to her that I wasn’t even attracted to him, but he was standing right there and he was her husband, so I decided to answer politely – all her questions – he didn’t tell me he was married – we didn’t sleep together, blah blah blah blah blah.

When the trial was over, she told me that she believed me and then she said something that would haunt me for years (crying as she said it), “You just have no idea how hard it is to be married to a crack addict.”

And that’s when I stopped dating.

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