Several years ago I somehow allowed myself to become completely entranced by Jaba The Hut, well by his human counterpart to be exact. I had been cajoled into going to a country karaoke bar on a weekly basis by Stacey, as her boyfriend and his group of friends were frequenting it. I never cared overly much for the group of friends, but still wanted to be able to hang out with my best friend, so every week I found myself singing Sweet Home Alabama on the little stage at the western dive bar. Eventually, I started to make my own friends there with the regular bargoers, as I wasn't happy with the bulk of the company that I was there with.
It started with Henny, the door girl that checked IDs and kept the capacity count. She and I became fast friends. I chatted her up to keep her from her boredom, and she kept an eye out for me. She would let me know of any good looking men that came in without dates. I had become adept at befriending bouncers and door girls early on, for security and "hunting" purposes. Henny introduced me to a lot of her friends that were always there, and eventually I found myself going to the bar weekly on my own long after Stacey's group stopped going. I could be myself there, even if I was different than everyone else. As long as I accepted them, they accepted me warmly. I had found my friends in low places, and though I was happily along for the ride, I had no way of fathoming what that ride would be.
A few weeks in, while Stacey was still with me, we met a beautiful girl that was at the bar by herself. She was outgoing, friendly, smart, and a bit on the motherly side. You could tell that she sincerely cared for every person she met. The three of us struck up a conversation, and spent most of the evening dancing together. A week later, we saw her slow dancing with one of the regular guys there. He was a bigger guy that worked as a part time bouncer at a couple of bars in the outlaying area. I hadn't met him yet, but I was really impressed that he was dancing with our friend. Though she is beautiful, most guys in the bar would pass her by for the younger girls with no personality and taut bodies. To me, this guy dancing with my friend showed that he was above that. The next week I was in, I saw him dancing, and though he was a big guy, he was quite graceful. Looking back now, he looked like a giant dancing bear, but that's beside the point. Not thinking much of it, I complimented him on his dancing. Gawd, I wish I could take that back.
He introduced himself to me as Big Daddy Roy. Later that night he asked me out. It turned out that he wasn't in a relationship with our friend, they had just gone out once or twice. I was a little flabbergasted, but accepted the date. BDR came over to play board games and watch a movie. It wasn't horrible, but it wasn't great either. This being during my mid twenties, the first date pretty quickly ended up in the bedroom, where he had performance issues. The pressure he put on himself to impress me caused utter failure instead. I felt pity for the guy. So much pity that I accepted another date with him.
On the second date we went to see a movie. He spent the evening trying to impress me with his horrible scary driving, and telling crappy jokes about lottery tickets to the sales girl at the concession stand. The date wasn't well at all. That night, once again, I took a bit of pity, and we ended up in the bedroom. It was a bit more successful this time, though I found out that while BDR was a big guy, he wasn't a "big" guy.
And that is where my memory becomes unclear. Somehow we had two horrible dates and nothing that wonderful happened in the bedroom, and yet over the next few months I ended up developing a craving for him. We continued dating, primarily in secret, though all of our friends new about it. I started to hear stories about him, not about random women, but stories directly from my bar friends there. About how they had dated him in some capacity in the past, and what their experiences were. Since I was an adult, and it was in the past, I listened without judging anyone for it.
The stories went from unsavory to downright nausea inducing. Stories about drunken hookups in the car, where he would find girls at the bar with esteem issues, and take advantage of their lack of confidence. I heard stories from a good friend of mine about how they had worked together and they would have sex all the time at work. She even told me that he was really good at anal because he wasn't well endowed. These stories churned my stomach. Almost every girl I met there had slept with him at some point or another. My friends would bring new friends in, that didn't know me or the bar, and in conversation with them I would find out that they had slept with him. The man was an enigma of gross sex.
Yet, I ran to him whenever he beckoned. BDR was not physically attractive at all. He had breasts bigger than my own, and pasty, sallow skin. He wouldn't acknowledge we were dating like I was something to be ashamed of. He drank like a fish, smoked like a forest fire, and for some reason had started smelling like ass. He began to ask to borrow money, and had come up with elaborate excuses as to why he needed it. We dated off and on for years. It was like the relationship in Say Anything where she writes these beautiful songs for an absolute douchebag, who keeps coming after her, destroying her ability to move on. I had fallen for Jaba The Hut, and there was no saving me, though I tried to stop dating him several times.
Eventually, during one of our "off" times, he came clean as to what he had needed all of the money for. He had finally gotten into a program because he had become addicted to heroin, and had been shooting it up on a regular basis. It's also why he had smelled like ass. The mix between beer, cigs, weed, and heroin being sweat out of his pores left an aroma literally like shit covered his body. When he fessed this up to me, he did it with an apology - one of the twelve steps. He then asked if I wanted to hang out soon. We were at it again. This time it was completely quiet, as he wasn't supposed to date during his first year. I came to find out that he was dating another girl from the bar. We'll call her Dodo, as she had a very distinct and sad resemblance to the bird of the same name. Dodo was also an addict, and engaged to another man. She was blonde, extremely pale, with a big hook nose, and about half my size (addict...). He started showing up at events, publically, with Dodo, not worried about appearances with her, though she was about to be married to another man. I randomly saw him out with her one night, and I immediately made a scene and dumped him.
Months later, we were back together, and yet again I ended up finding out he was talking to another girl from the bar. We'll call this girl Chickenhead, because, well, she had a chicken head - really huge cheeks, long pointy nose, and no chin. For awhile BDR had a real Audubon thing going. It made me wonder if I looked like some kind of bird, too.
Over the next year, he continued to see both of us, eventually getting into a relationship with her. I found out that he proposed to her on Valentine's Day. It disgusted me, but by that point I was trying to just let go, which is incredibly hard to do in your twenties. It becomes much easier in your thirties because you have already dealt with this crap in the lessons of your twenties. Some time after his engagement, BDR started to sniff around me again. Anytime he would see me happy, dancing with friends, out with a guy, or even just sitting talking with our group, he would try and talk to me, text me, call me, walk with me. He was relentless. Eventually I gave in and let him kiss me. We started back up again, while he was engaged to Chickenhead. It was horrible. One morning she came home, unexpectedly, 15 minutes after I had left, my forgotten panties hiding in the trash can. Another time he had dropped her off at the airport and immediately came to my house. The next morning, lying naked in bed next to me, he took a call from her, as she had just landed, and told her that he loved her.
Don't get me wrong - she had cheated on him before, with his best friend. Chickenhead was no angel. Somehow with all of this, I had lost myself, and was a shadow of who I really was. Three weeks before the wedding, I looked at him, and asked him what the fuck we were doing. What the fuck was I doing?!? I called it all off right then and there. I couldn't even look at myself in the mirror. The next day, I booked a ticket to the UK to visit my family there. The dates? I would be there the week of the wedding. I ran away. It was a good week, though I spent most of it hibernating. I had told my family what was going on, and they took especially good care of me.
I haven't spoken to BDR since the day that I dumped him. He's been married to Chickenhead for several years now, and she is welcome to keep him. They have a child, and, from what I hear, are happy. Looking at our situation with more sanity now, I would never want a husband that had been intimate with all of my friends (or 75% of the women in Seattle). I still love my friends that had dated him, but feel it is better to keep a little bit of a distance from a situation that was so unhealthy that way. I still can't comprehend why I got so wrapped up with a man I don't find attractive, nor did I ever find him mentally stimulating, or humorous, let alone that I found every single aspect of his behavior reprehensible. What I do know is that there are many reasons that I would never go back to my twenties, though I enjoyed them at the time, and he is definitely one of them.
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