Don’t Call Me Crazy (Unless It’s The Right Kind of Crazy)

Sometimes, a small man can make a smart woman do spectacularly stupid things. They might even fall under the “crazy” moniker, but more on that in a bit. I call it being “dick sick.” I wish there was a nicer way to put it, but decorum has no place in this kind of romantic fuckery. In one of my more recent dating disasters, I was so dick sick that I’m almost ashamed to tell you the ways in which I let this sorry excuse for a man take advantage of my heart, my home, and my wallet.

Smoshua and I met on one of those “exclusive” dating apps where douchebags are pre-selected for you—not that I have any problems doing that on my own. His name was obviously not Smoshua, but it rhymes with it, so you do the math. Smoshua (Smosh for short) hailed from Sydney and fancied himself a musician-cum-clothing designer. (Granted, he turned out to be neither of those things.) Anyway, I did a little digging on Smosh when we first matched—a 21st century woman ought to Google all her sexual partners, I believe. Everything seemed to be on the up-and-up, save for a few rogue Daily Mail articles about him and an heiress he used to date. Then again, it was the Daily fucking Mail. Fox does better reporting.

Shortly after we matched, Smosh insisted that we FaceTime. It was lust at first sight. It also quickly became a habit. For the next two months, Smosh and I FaceTimed every day, multiple times a day. I even met his father and a couple of his friends via the 4G. The whole situation was highly unorthodox, and yet it wasn’t without charm. Our calls became part of my routine, and, in some very removed way, it felt like we were almost, sort of dating. Then Smosh headed back to Australia from Bali, at which point he told me he was planning to come to the U.S. to launch his new clothing line. He wanted to meet me, and he didn’t want me sleeping with anyone else until he did. Let’s start tallying the Red Flags, shall we? That’s 1.

I was going to LA to visit family (and evaluate the possibility of moving back home), so Smosh had the brilliant idea to come meet me there. Naturally, he never showed. FaceTime Life resumed. At this point, it was going on month four and my friends well telling me I was certifiable for keeping this up for so long. And yet, I ignored their diagnosis. First of all, Shmosh was now surely coming to New York (he had a ticket!). Second, I was now set to move back to L.A., so I figured I had nothing to lose. It’s not like I was going to come upon my future fiancé in NYC in a matter of weeks!

The day Smosh finally did arrive in New York, it was kind of magical. He just showed up at my doorstep, like they do in Emma Stone films, a day before I was expecting him. It was the sweetest surprise, made all the more charming by the elaborate plot he’d hatched to get past my doorman. So there he was, Smosh, live and in color. After a few excited and awkward hellos, we decided to get breakfast. He suggested Alice’s Tea Cup— and odd choice for a fully grown man, but Aussies like their tea, I figured. We had only hugged at this point. It was all too much and too new to do much else. We went to Alice’s where we talked and we laughed over tea and scones, and then, right as I was about to say something, he got up and kissed me, romantic comedy style, right in the middle of the restaurant. I was fucked. Dick sickness was settling in. At 30, I could wax poetic on immigration policy and tax reform, but, apparently, I still couldn’t resist a foreign accent and a neck tattoo.

I soon learned that Smosh had actually arrived a few days prior and, for reasons unknown, had been staying with someone else in the city. This seemed like a minor detail at the time, but it was actually Red Flag 2. I figured that, now that we had met, he would soon comfortably settle in at mine.

Except, Smosh was in no hurry to change accommodations. When I pressed him for details about who he was staying with, he admitted that it was a woman, Amy*, but that she was just a friend who was helping him with his business. (Red Flag 3!) “Is she helping you in your sleep?” I inquired. Now, I was on high alert. Come to think of it, I should have ended it right then and there, but, like I said, I was dick sick. There was also the fact that Smosh’s mother happened to be passing through New York during his trip, and he decided to introduced me to her. We got on super well, and so I clung to that as proof of his intentions.

He stayed at his “friend’s” place for two weeks. At some point, I decided to do a little research. We’ve all been there: you’re newly monogamous with someone, yet you suspect that something isn’t Kosher.  So, after an Instagram stalk that lands you sleepless and anxiety-ridden at 3 am, you gather enough evidence to suspect that he is indeed sleeping with someone else, if not multiple people. You confront him, but he’s full of excuses—excuses that pander to your deepest insecurities. Smosh had a knack for those. Men like Smosh, a not-so-rare breed of pathological narcissist/sociopath, rely on your sense of shame to manipulate you. They exploit your ego as a cover for their lies and deceit. And here’s the most important part: you are not their only victim. But more on that later.

When Smosh did eventually come uptown to stay with me, things only got worse. We fought a lot and barely had sex. He had a lot of weird hangups in the latter department, including the compulsive need to shave his entire body (Red Flags 4 and 5). I’ll spare you the rest of the gritty details, but it was typical fuckboy shit—flaking on plans, cocaine, getting me to pay for things, projecting his infidelity on to me, etc. (Red Flags 287463827413874374) At this point, I was in the process of packing up my life and moving to L.A., so maybe I was too busy to acknowledge the poppy field of red flags cropping up all around me. I had become romantically color blind. But, wait for it. Despite all the rank bullshit he was leaving about, Smosh said he would accompany me to L.A. and help with the move.

So, Smosh came with me to L.A. Since I had been renting out my place to a relative, we had to stay with my family for a week. Lucky for Smosh, my father was out of town. Or rather, lucky for my father—God knows what my dad would have done to Smosh, and what felony charges would have followed. Nonetheless, this was the ultimate litmus test, and Smosh failed impressively. He was so rude and disrespectful to my mother, it was almost unbelievable. Sometimes, people act so heinously that you feel insane for even bearing witness to it. I was out of my head.

We moved into my place, and, after one fuck-up too many, I finally kicked him out. It was well overdue and came after the second time he didn’t come home after “networking” all night. Networking my ass. No networking happens in L.A. after 1 a.m., unless it’s of the biblical variety. Either that or you’re doing blow at some house in the hills.

As I was kicking him out, Smosh accused me of being controlling and crazy. I fucking HATE that word, crazy. It’s a word that has plagued women for centuries, a quack diagnosis doled out by generations of fuckboys seeking to minimize a woman’s very valid and well-founded concerns about their behavior. The only crazy thing I had done was entertain the idea of Smosh in my life for longer than a second. In that respect, I was completely nuts.

So there I was, Smosh-free and ready to finally put that chapter behind me, when, in an unexpected twist, karma paid me a visit. I met another guy, Dave*, whose girlfriend coincidentally happened to be friends with Amy—that’s right, Amy, the “platonic” friend Smosh had been staying with in New York! (I’d stalked her Instagram well enough to know that they were all part of the same friend group.) When I mentioned Smosh and the entire situation to Dave, he exclaimed, “THAT FUCKING GUY!”  Even Dave was familiar with Smosh’s nonsense.

I had a sudden spark of genius. “Do you think you could put Amy and I in touch?” I asked him. Could Smosh have run the same game on her?

Lo and behold, he had. Except, in Amy’s case, it was way worse, because she had actually gotten rid of the cat she’d had had for over a decade, on account of Shmosh’s allergy. Like me, she had met Smosh’s mother. He had even gone as far as asking her to move to L.A. when he was out there with me—a new level of sociopathy.  After swapping war stories, Amy and I came to the conclusion that we represented but a small fraction of the women Smosh had been using to subsidize his American tour. We decided it would be best to confront Smosh together and proceeded to quite tactfully rip him apart via a group text. He responded in the most pathetic, passive-aggressive fashion, but the job had been done. We had shoved his own shit in his face and had forced him to smell it. Bad dog!

Tragicomic as it is, this isn’t just another tale of love gone wrong, or even one of poor judgement. Sure, the best thing would have been not to get involved with Shmosh, the textbook sociopath, in the first place. And yet, if there is one other thing I should have done differently, one thing that would have saved me a world of time and heartache, it was contacting Amy sooner. After all, I had known exactly who she was and how to reach her, and yet I hadn’t even entertained the thought. You see, women are so conditioned to mistrust each other that we never dare stop and consider playing as a team. We are socialized to feel so insecure about our desirability that we keep our tales of mistreatment and abuse a secret. We are so scared of being called “crazy” that we would sooner take a world of shit from a man—which, in and of itself, is an insane thing to do.

Sure, maybe it was a little crazy to get in contact with Amy, but it was the right kind of crazy. It was the kind of crazy women ought to be more often.