Saturday, August 6, 2011

Handsome Paddy VS. The Angry Boyfriend: A True Cautionary Tale

Those who know me could probably guess I was bound to write a blog with this title eventually. I'm no saint. I've been known to cross other couples' relationship boundaries on more than one occasion. Maybe I have low self-esteem, maybe I don't respect other men as much as I should, or maybe I think if your girlfriend is interested in me, then that's a sign that your relationship is already over and I'm just the herald of its demise. But that's all irrelevant because that's not what happened this time.

It was late last Friday and I was casually flirting via text message with an aquaintance I hadn't seen in months and who I no longer lived within three states of. I had been a gentleman (this time) and explicitly asked if she was involved with anyone before the whole thing started. She insisted she was single and was actually a little offended I felt the need to ask. And when I say flirting, I mean this is a conversation I would have while gauging if someone was interested in me. We're talking PG-13 content at the very most. After awhile she stopped replying and I got bored. That's when, at 11:13pm, I received a text from a number I didn't recognize, but not just any text. It was the text that every bored smartass lives for:

"So who is this"

What followed was one of the most surreal conversations I have yet to have with a stranger, and I once talked about orchestras with a homeless man as he bathed himself in a drinking fountain at 2am. Sadly, I did not have the forethought to transcribe that conversation, but I did save this one. Below is, verbatim, the actual conversation I had over text message with an irate man I have never met, complete with color commentary by me and a few lessons to take from my experience. For the purposes of clarity, I will call the person in question Mystery Angry Boyfriend or MAB for short. Enjoy.

Mystery Angry Boyfriend: "So who is this"

Handsome Paddy: "This is Paddy, who's this?"

I'm not ashamed of who I am.

MAB: "U a guy or a girl there patty"

HP: "A guy. And it's Paddy."

Seriously, you literally just read how my name is spelled, how do you fuck that up?

MAB: "Hhmmmm txtin my girl all kids of sexual shit huh ima fuk u up"

This is pretty much exactly where I expected this conversation to be heading based on the previous two texts, so his threat lacked the gravitas he had perhaps hoped for.

HP: "I don't know who you are, but your manners need work. Also your spelling is atrocious."

Hey, he's already going to "fuk" me up, I might as well give him some harsh criticism while we're at it.

MAB: "Ya u dont kno me but soon u will il find ya ya my girl is asleep idgaf what u say but ive seen the txts"

HP: "Well tell her I said goodnight. And goodnight to you as well, stranger."

This guy's a prick who can't spell, if I wanted to deal with that I'd play Xbox Live, but there's no reason not to end things on a polite note. Or so I thought.

MAB: "Were kool if u dont try to hook up with my girl"

HP: "Well I can't really promise anything since I don't know who you are."

Remember, at this point MAB had neither told me who he was or who the girl he kept referring to was, and while I could have guessed, I'm not going to do his detective work for him. I don't work for free.

MAB: "It dosent matter r u n kingman"

HP: "You sure you wouldn't rather talk out some of these anger issues? Have some share time? Maybe a hug?"

MAB: "Na i wana kno what is goin on r u n kingman"

HP: "Why? Do you want to beat me up? Will that make you feel better?"

MAB: "I just wana kno what my girl is up to talkin about sex with another dude man thats all just b strait up with me"

HP: "I'm trying, but your texts are like, indecipherable."

MAB: "Then tell me dude r u n kingman and what is going on"

HP: "Oh, man! You were so close to a properly formatted sentence. A for effort though."

MAB: "Hmmmm im just forget her #"

For a split second I thought I had actually mocked this man into a massive psychological breakthrough and he'd decided to move on and figure his life out. But it turned out he's just really bad at typing.

MAB: "U just forget her #"

HP: "I'm not going to do that, but I'll tell you I will if it will make you feel better, if you promise to stop going through your ladyfriend's texts and allow her privacy. healthy relationships are built on trust dude."

This was the beginning of me trying to diffuse the situation by digging into my years of professional experience giving relationship advice and offering this man legitimately beneficial tips on his love life.

MAB: "True true u got a point just do me a favor and don't talk about sex to her she goes thru mine i dont go thru hers she had me put it on the charger and i seen a text from u its kool il talk to her n the mornin when she wakes up n my arms"

HP: "That sounds like a solid plan, sir."

See, it's totally cool that he's threatening someone he's never met after reading texts from her phone because she asked him to put it on the charger and she goes through his texts all the time! Clearly I have dared to jeopardize an otherwise healthy and happy relationship.

MAB: "She is the only woman ive ever loved and dont wana loose her thats y im tryin to stay calm bro"

MAB: "U sound polite tho sorry if i got the wrong impression just worried about sum shit"

HP: "I'm a worrier too. You want to talk about it?"

MAB: "Just tell me how u guys started talkin man idw to talk about her and i i just wana kno whats up man thats all i do tust her i just dont trust guys if ya kno what i mean guys r scandelous so just b honest with me im not tryin to threatin u i just wana kno thats all"

He almost spelled "scandalous" right! I had to fight the urge to tell him I was proud of him.

At this point it was now midnight. This conversation was now entering its second goddamn day and MAB had yet to use a single character of punctuation.

HP: "You make some good points, unfortunately I still don't know who you are, so I can't really give you much information."

MAB: "It dosent matter who i am bro im not sextin ur girl i just wana kno y u r with mine lets not play games lets just hear the truth thats all i ask"

HP: "I apologize. Perhaps I've been unclear. I don't know who you are, therefore I don't know who your 'girl' is, so I can't tell you anything about me and her. Also did you just say 'sexting' who are you Nancy Grace?"

I seriously hate the term "sexting." It's so trite. I prefer to call it "explicit free verse in 160 characters or less."

MAB: "Ya u do because u txted her back after i sent u a message bro"

This confirmed my suspicions that this guy was angry about the girl I had been flirting with just prior. After his first couple messages I had texted her and told her what was going on.

MAB: "U know what u aint worth my time il get to the bottom of it"

This is the first of many texts where MAB insists this conversation is beneath him, then immediately fires off another text when I don't respond.

MAB: "U obviously aint a man just a boy i guess"

This guy wants to have a stupid fight. I'm not going to have his fight. I'm going to have my fight, because my fight is awesome. So, instead of getting into his petty insults, I come clean and admit that I was apparently flirting with his girlfriend.

HP: "Well why didn't you just say so in the first place? Yeah, that's none of your business. I wish you the best, but this is really something you need to sort out with her. Maybe step back and look at why you want to be with her if it means having to have conversations like these with strangers."

Again, if you're playing along at home, this is actually me trying to give this poor, inarticulate man(?) some useful relationship advice. I've attempted to play fetch with cats and had more successful results.

MAB: "U coulda just been a man about it but u wana play games so im done here"

Alright, he got in one last zinger about me being a "man" but he's finally finished with his tantrum and is moving o--

MAB: "I thought ud b kool but hey i was wrong"

Fuck, he's still going. I'm not exactly sure what made him think I'd be "kool" since before this conversation all he knew about me was that I was flirting with his girlfriend. Maybe he just thinks really highly of her taste in men.

HP: "Which part would have made me a man, violating my friend's trust or pretending to know what you were talking about while you texted me gibberish mixed with idle threats?"

At this point I'm getting frustrated with this guy's pathetic attempts to be a dick to me, so I've gone back to chastising him for butchering the English language with every one of his keystrokes. Bizarrely, this actually had the opposite effect I'd expected.

MAB: "Hey if shes a friend then its all good and il b a man and say sorry but if u have a woman u love and u seen sumthin like that how would u react if i was wrong im sorry shes the love of my life man and about the threats my bad i was pissed at first im calmed down now but like i said if im wrong im sorry"

Mind you, I have yet to deny anything he's accused me of and have actually openly mocked him more than once. And he's already seen the texts of me flirting with his girlfriend, but by calling her a friend he is now totally cool with everything that has happened so far and actually apologizes not once, but four times (if you count the phrase "my bad" as a form of apology). I'm now beginning to suspect that I'm talking to a very strange breed of bipolar sufferer who rather than having manic and depressed moods, instead alternates wildly between rage and deep remorse.

HP: "I accept your apology. if situations were reversed, I would question whether my heart was leading me down the wrong path and I would ask myself whether it's good for me, as a person, to be with someone who I don't trust."

Again, this is real advice I would give to a friend in this situation.

MAB: "O i trust her i havent had a reason not to n over 2 months that we have been together just thought id ask u but u just wana play games il forget this ever happened"

To recap:
  • She is the first woman he has ever loved.
  • She is the love of his life.
  • They have been together for two fucking months.
It's at this point that I begin to worry that I am in fact talking to a mad man who might do something to harm himself or others based on my words. So I stop goading him and just try to get him to step away from the ledge a bit.

HP: "While I don't think that's the healthiest approach, I hope it works out for you."

MAB: "I didnt go thru her phone it poped up when i plugged it n"

HP: "You mentioned that, and it could be true. It's kind of a non-issue at this point."

MAB: "Im still gona question her but il forget i ever talked to u is what i meant u wont get any threats or nuthin anymore"

HP: "Well that is healthy, except for the "questioning" your girlfriend part. That makes it sound like you plan to interrogate her. Just talk with her. Open and honest communication is usually the best route."

MAB: "Well thanks for that ya as i said if im wrong if im right this wont last but il ask her about it when the time is right"

I doubt he meant it that way, but he kind of wrote a pretty good rap lyric there.

HP: "Best of luck to you. Have a goodnight."

MAB: "Hey thank u and same to u"

That's right, the conversation that began "ima fuk u up" has ended an hour and a half later with a polite thank you and a goodnight, without me ever apologizing or admitting any wrongdoing on my part. Either MAB just needed to get his frustrations out or I actually calmed down a possessive boyfriend to the point that he behaved with civility to someone he knows was flirting with his girlfriend mere hours ago. I'm like a douche-whisperer.

Unfunny Side Note:

Despite my jocularity while writing this, as I typed this post I was truly concerned for my friend's well-being. Maybe her boyfriend is harmless. Maybe he's a raging psycho. Maybe he's actually her little brother fucking with me. But before this post goes live I will do my best to make sure that she is, in fact, safe. Because as I will address more below, people do die over this shit and there's nothing funny about that.
Edit: Just heard from my friend. She's fine.

That said, there are several important lessons to be learned from this strange encounter.

First, if you spell like an idiot people will treat you as one.

Second, kill them with kindness can be a useful motto. Sure I gave MAB a hard time about his spelling and sent a few texts that were soaked in sarcasm and intended only to enrage him further, but ultimately I turned the situation around by not sinking down to his level by having an SMS-based screaming match over a girl I barely knew. I stayed calm and mostly polite and honest and actually tried to give him solid advice to think about and in the end he thanked me for it.

Third, this was essentially a flame war via text message and while it's debatable which one of us was trolling the other, things ended amicably because we were able to see where the other person was coming from and maintain some sembalance of civility. So the next time you're in some heated discussion about abortion, gay rights, light beer or what have you, remember that your opponent has thoughts and feelings behind their remarks. They may not be right and they may not be as gracious towards you but that's not the point.

I once found myself embroiled in a flame war where someone I personally knew and who had at one time been a comrade in activist circles outright called me a rapist on a Facebook comment feed based solely on my opinions on a news article. The content of the article is irrelevent because no matter how hard you try, you can never rape someone with an opinion. But he chose to invoke the feminist version of Godwin's Law after I had specifically stated that I had no problem disagreeing with him and was willing to remain civil about the whole thing. And you know what? After he called me a rapist, I stuck by that. I didn't back down, but I didn't let myself get caught up in the torrent of bile spewing either. If more people would agree to be respectful and agree to dissagree during debates that have no actual impact on the topics in question, we'd all be a lot happier and the world wouldn't suck quite so much.

Fourth, behind those texts was a real person with real emotions, and the things I said to him could have had real, and potentially very serious, consequences. I pushed his buttons but I recognized when to try to deescalate the situation for the sake of everyone involved. It was a stupid argument, but people rarely get killed over intelligent arguments. Every day people die over ridiculous shit because no one was willing to back down and say "Hey, this is silly. I'm not fighting anymore." Remember that the next time you're telling someone you hope they die in a car fire becuase they believe something different than you.

Fifth and finally, don't fuck with me or I will make fun of you on the internet, and that shit is forever.

Friday, August 5, 2011

Handsome Paddy News

I was just made a featured blogger on http://www.designedbyfailure.com/ a skate/punk clothing store. Check them out and visit my page and talk about how awesome I am, because I would do the same for you.