True Story #2: Deja
NOTE: This will sound like I'm writing a story, but this shit really happened...
...
This was the next to the last woman that I met on 'teledate'. The very last woman I met ended up being my girlfriend of a year or so, with whom I moved to LA. That's another story.
I was in my third year at HU. I lived in a duplex with one of my best friends and a female room mate, and our place was spitting distance from campus. My entire crew was thriving socially. Even the homie roommate that didn't go to college seemed to be dong well. He'd tell me about how he and our lady room mate would have their midnight rendezvous on the regular.
Somehow, though, this social success was skipping me, and that tore me up.
So I met this chick on teledate who called herself Deja. For a guy in my situation, she seemed like a fantasy right out of a noir novel. She was a 'stripper' trying to get out of the game. She'd only met bad guys and had 'never talked to anybody like me before'. One conversation became two, and two became ten. Before you knew it, we were talking every night. When I came back from class, It was exciting to get those voice mails with, "I miss you" and, "Call me back, boo...", and blah, blah, blah.
Basically, simp bait.
Every time I wanted to meet, she had an excuse. "I've got to work late tonight", or "they wanted me to dance at club XXX but now I've got to dance at club YYY across town." This is difficult, when both of you rely on public transportation and me, on a measly undergrad budget, needed to schedule meetings and transportation with extreme financial prejudice.
For the first month, this was okay with me. It satisfied a fantasy. Every night we spoke on the phone, we seemed more connected. Shit, we even fucked around on the phone. It was all part of the illusion, and from my years of dealing with phone-chicks, I knew exactly what to say and how to say it such that I was Denzel on the tele. That's all mattered.
During month two, I started to get antsy. The fellas were looking at me funny because I was treating this invisible chick like my lady. When cats were going out on dates, I'd skip out because I'd tell them that I had my own 'date', a meeting with a girl I spoke most enthusiastically about where our face-to-face meeting was always, "tomorrow, man. I'm tellin' you...tomorrow."
The irony is that all lies have a morsel of truth. I knew her telephone number, and she'd even given me her Bowie address once. At one point, Her birthday came. I was feeling romantic, and I wanted to surprise her. I'd managed a ride from my room mate and we went out with some bullshit present that I'd bought, but she wasn't home. I left it at the door, and the next day I got a call thanking me for it, so I knew that the address was real.
During Month THREE is when, as Chinua Achebe said, "Things Fall Apart". I was tired of the games and tired of the runaround, and she could sense it. Her promises of meeting up became more and more pleading. I started to believe her less an less. Her lies were confusing. My thinking was, "if she was playing me, why go on for this long? Why do we talk all the time, and what was the gain?" I started to let my emotional side go, and let my analytical mind kick in for the first time. Maybe she was sincere and I had really bad luck...
...but it was highly unlikely.
It was when she set up our last date that i decided to call her bluff. We spoke, and she said that she wanted me to catch the last train out to New Carrolton (a good hike from HU by train), then catch the last bus - a rural county bus - which would take me to a shopping complex near her house in Bowie. She'd meet me there and pick me up.
So I said, Fuck it. Whatever happens, I just wanted to test her
character. At that point, that was all that mattered to me.
So I went. As the sun started going down in those summer hours, during that long ride I realized that I was putting a lot of faith in this person.
The shopping complex was thinning out, and I waited at the meeting point at the pay phone by the Taco Bell. I called, and she said she was waiting on her ride and she'd be by to pick me up shortly. One hour passed, then two. By this time, the entire place was deserted save for the occasional person going to the gas station across the street.
By midnight, I knew that she wasn't coming. We spoke on the phone, and she told me that she'd be there soon. By this time, I called my roommate to tell him the story, and he offered to come get me. Every hour, I'd call on the payphone with an update, and he'd offer to come out and I'd decline. I wanted to see this through. I needed to know if this chick that I spoke to for three months would really leave me sitting out here all night long at a fuckin' pay phone
By 1am, she was just like, "Go with your friend", and I'm like, "no, I want to really see what you're going to do." You see, I *had* to see what she was going to do. This was my first lesson out of naivety. Until this point, I didn't really realize what some people were capable of. It was then that I got my first lesson that some people really just don't give a fuck. It was a defining moment for me, my first REAL life college lesson.
I sat on that corner until the sun came up.
I caught the first bus back home, and, newly resolved, made my decision.
Deja called several times apologizing profusely, and I played along. We continued as if nothing happened. I'd already decided what i was going to do that weekend.
I borrowed a friend's car, but didn't tell her immediately. During the week, I purchased a cell phone, and got her comfortable with the transition of talking on that as opposed to the land line.
We'd made plans to talk that evening, but
my plans were to drive out to the address that I'd been sitting on for months. Back then, I was a big comic book junkie, and brought a comic to read just in case I'd be out there a while. I remembered that her nephew liked comics, and in case I met him, I wanted to have something to give him.
She called me when I was in route, and I told her that I was going to buy groceries. She bought it, and carried on business as usual. By the time I made it to the dirt road leading to her 'neighborhood', I remember seeing a car pass by and I hoped that it wasn't her and her people. Her area, back then, was in the nascent stages of development when communities were being forced from rural simplicity to the Americana cut-n-pastes that they are today, so it was uncommon for two cars on roads like these to pass each other.
They didn't pause, and neither did I, though. I kept my eyes straight on the road, praying that they didn't see me.
When i pulled up in front of her house, I dialed her number. Her easy mirth plunged to shock when i told her that I was parked in front of her place. She was furious, and the words just tumbled out, "Why didn't you tell me you was coming?? You can't just show up! I ain't even there right now! I'm gone! I won't be back for hours."
It didn't matter, though. I was resolved. I just parked and told her that I'd wait. After about two hours, I knocked on the door and an older woman answered. I politely told her my name and my business there. She didn't recognize the name Deja at first, but she paused, drew in a breath, then started biting her lip. After a moment, she new what was going on. She called to a man in the house and said that somebody's here for (I can't remember her real name) "Shaneka". When the older man came to the door, he looked at me for a long time, listened to my story, realized that I was straight, and invited me inside.
The three of us sat at a dinner table in an uncomfortable silence. The woman, who I learned was her mother, offered me a drink. The father sat there, looking back and forth between the two of us, then told me that I needed to be prepared to deal with the fact that the girl I called Deja is a liar and that I needed to be ready for some disappointment.
Mind you, I didn't care if this girl looked like a model 10 at this point. I just wanted closure. I wanted to see this chick that had usurped three months of my life, face-to-face.
As told by them, she'd had multiple phones and amused herself with the phone lines. I looked on the wall and saw, just like she said, a wall mounted phone on the dining room wall. Below it was another phone resting on some odd table, undoubtedly one of the many phones to go with the one that Deja spoke to me on those late nights in her bedroom. The mother continued, saying that things like this had happened with her before, but never to this extent.
For what felt like an eternity, we sat waiting at that table until we heard a car pull up at the rear of the house, doors open, and several people make way to the back door.
The first one through was the nephew. I'd never seen him before, but as soon as the youngin' saw me, he looked at me, looked to the mom and dad, said, "Uh oh", and knowing the deal...shuffled off, stage left.
Bad sign.
Next came Deja. She was big. I mean REALLY big. Like 300lbs big. My face was blank. Nothing, at this point, surprised me anymore. The mother lowered her head and, i shit you not, the father actually SMILED and said, "Shaneka, this young man is here to see you."
Deja shock turned to anger, then righteous indignation. The profanity poured, and I was more shocked that she used that language in front of her family than at the fact that it was directed towards me. "You can't come to my fucking house! Fuck you! Fuck you!"
She sat down at the end of the table, the father sat, the mom went off somewhere else in the house. I never saw her again. The little nephew was off somewhere in my peripheral, smiling and laughing, but never bold enough to come to the table.
When she'd exhausted herself, Deja's furry turned to tears, then pleas, "I didn't mean to lie to you. I was gonna tell you but I didn't know what to say!" I caught feelings for you and...blah, blah, blah..."
The whole time, I didn't say a word. I just looked at her, then looked into myself, angry that I'd allowed my own weakness and solitude to bring me to this place at that moment. When she finished, she looked at me and asked me, "Aren't you gonna SAY something?".
I didn't think that there was anything to say. I waited there for a long moment. It was the nephew that I noticed more than anything else. I just didn't feel ANYTHING, except the nephew made me smile. I don't know what it was. I just saw a little geek kid caught up in all this drama, and I remembered that i had that damn comic book in my hand.
I stood up and told Deja that I wasn't angry. I told her that none of it mattered. As the father escorted me to the door, I stopped and gave that kid my comic. He smiled, and for some reason, that stuck with me. Deja was saying something at my back, but I couldn't tell you what the words were. They just faded into the noise of that evening, just like everything else.
I walked to my car, saw Deja, her dad, and her nephew standing at the porch like something out of an old slave movie, got in my car and drove away.
She called a few more times that week, but I never answered, and the calls eventually tapered off.
We never spoke again.
It would be another year before I used Teledate again.
