Pushy Pete: Five Easy Steps to Ensure You will Not Meet Belle
Consider what follows to be the Pushy Pete Guide to Ensuring Belle Won’t Meet You.
1. Get really comfortable really quickly.
Almost immediately when we started chatting, Pushy Pete said he felt incredibly relaxed with me and that we would be good friends for a long time. I felt no such thing. I’m honest with all the people I meet online (okay, maybe the other night I did tell one guy I give excellent blowjobs, but I saw no harm considering he’s on the opposite end of the country and that’s exactly what he wanted needed to hear), just like I’m honest with all the people I meet in life. Pushy Pete got my utter honesty, but I’m no fool; I don’t expect that any given virtual acquaintance is telling me the truth and nothing but, even when they insist that’s exactly what they’re doing. That’d just be ridiculously naïve.
2. Put a great deal more stock into our relationship than I do.
Unlike most guys I talk to who demand photos pretty much immediately and want increasingly more thereafter, Pushy Pete waited a long time to suggest the photo exchange and didn’t ask for more than one. He was, he insisted, more interested in me as a friend than in me as a potential lover. He acted like it, too, for the most part.
I’m not sure how long we were talking before he asked for my number, but we spoke on the phone a few times. He talked freely about pretty much anything and everything, all the while reminding me how comfortable he was and that he found it very easy to talk to me. And that we were, according to him, friends and would be such for a long time, no matter what I thought about it.
I didn’t mind killing time talking to him, but I didn’t make any such assumption of friendship. I don’t have online friends. Acquaintances, sure, but my friends are not people I know only virtually. I don’t use the term ‘friend’ freely; it has meaning in my life. And that meaning does not encompass someone with whom I share no past that doesn’t involve a phone or a computer screen.
3. Make demands of me. Repeatedly.
Pretty soon, Pushy Pete was pushing for a little get together. At this point, he was definitely flirting with me and wanted to take me out. I politely (and repeatedly) reminded him that he was the one who set the just-friends status, and that was perfectly fine with me. He slowly backed off the date invitations, but not the invitations in general. Unlike some of the other guys I’d met within a few days of beginning to talk with them, Pushy Pete gave me an uneasy feeling that lead me to back out of meeting him a couple times.
One afternoon, he’d pretty much convinced me to come into the District that night to meet him for drinks, despite it being a weeknight and me being unsure of my best transportation options (moving to Virginia made going out a pain in my ass). As I was trying to figure how to get there, he was on IM hounding me to give him a specific time. Finally, I told him I wasn’t coming. He’d pushed just a little too far, and I suddenly remembered I didn’t have to do anything I didn’t want to do. Meeting him was pretty high on the list of things I would rather eat live beetles than do.
4. Assume that telling me to do something I don’t want to do will result in me doing it.
When I backed out, he asked why. That damn Southern politeness overruled the overwhelming desire to tell him exactly what I thought, and I simply told him transportation was an issue (yes, EG, my townhouse is “inconveniently located.” Bite me). This, of course, prompted him to tell me he’d pick me up.
The conversation that followed had this flavor, if not these exact words:
PushyPete: I’ll pick you up and bring you home.
Belle: No, you won’t. I told you I think it’s a terrible idea to drink and drive.* Plus, I don’t feel comfortable getting in your car. I don’t even know you.
PushyPete: Get over it.
Belle: Um, No.
PushyPete: Um, yes.
Belle: Your telling me to ‘get over it’ shows a complete disregard for my need to feel safe and in control at all times. I will not be going anywhere with you. I have the right to say where I’ll go and with whom and how I’ll get there. You are not in a position to make those decisions or demands of me.
PushyPete: You’re right. I’m sorry. (Blah, blah, blah. Apologies. Whining. Blah, blah, blah.)
After this, Pushy Pete asked when I would meet him and apologized profusely for “messing up” with me. I told him if I did meet him, it’d have to be during the day, in an extremely public place, and not until I felt completely comfortable doing so. He laid off asking me out for a while, although we continued to chat online, and he called a few times (none of which I answered or returned).
5. Let me know it’s probably not just me who thinks you’re a knave.
Several weeks later, though, he was at it again. This time asking that I meet him and a bunch of his (male) friends out in Dupont one night. When I refused, he pressured me to tell him when we could meet. I told him he sent up major red flags and that I probably would never meet him. His response? He asked me to tell him what he’d done wrong so he wouldn’t send up red flags with other girls. My thought? Creep-y.
* Yes, I know. You know I drove after having too much wine with The Mexican. It’s still not a good idea, obviously, to drink and drive, and I do avoid such situations (as both passenger and driver) as much as possible. That night, I was stupid in more than one way.
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