Crazy

Out of all the insults thrown at women, ‘she’s crazy’ has to be one of the most damning.

Crazy encompasses a wide spectrum of unruly female behaviours, from being too persistent , to not getting over someone quickly enough, to over-sharing or being jealous or petty or hormonal or loud or horny or emotionally attached… the list goes on. If you are a woman, and you have at some point in your life not been the receptive, docile creature you should’ve been, chances are you have been called crazy. Maybe not to your face, but someone somewhere has said it about you.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve held back words or actions for fear of being labelled crazy or too much. ‘Too much’ is just a diluted version of crazy, dressed up in slightly more palatable vernacular to make it seem like the woman can, if she tries a bit harder to temper her fluctuations, achieve a normal status. Too much is verging on crazy, but there’s hope for the woman yet.

Plenty of men appear to be cool with sexually liberated women on paper (or apps), but not comfortable with the reality. On a date with a guy from Belgium, I decided early on that I would like to sleep with him. We met in a busy park and walked around for half an hour, talking about inane things like the pond and the trees that lined it. People walked past us. I sat on a bench and swang my legs back and forth; I felt uneasy and anxious, sick yet very alive.

About ten minutes into our conversation, he told me he was autistic. I said I didn’t care. Looking back, he probably thought I meant I didn’t care that he was autistic in the sense that I would consider dating him seriously, but I meant I didn’t care because I didn’t understand how being autistic guy would affect sex.

After toying with the idea of my dry spell continuing for another five months, I looked him in the eye and told him I wanted to go back to his place. I suggested maybe we could go to a bar first. He said loud spaces made him feel anxious and he didn’t like drinking. He asked if I needed to drink to have a good time. This threw me so I said I’d go back to his on the condition I could send my friend my location and keep them updated on my whereabouts.

He didn’t react well and insisted he wasn’t a creep. For the next few minutes, I did the delicate dance many women do of soothing a potentially dangerous man’s injured ego. I said no, of course I knew he wasn’t a creep but I had to be safe, you know? I fluttered my eyelashes in innocence and hoped he’d play along. He nodded and started to walk so I followed him.

*******************

The conversation on the way back was polite. I told him I wrote a blog, and he expressed his interest in it, badgering me to send him the link. When I told him I wrote about feminism and art that expresses female perspectives, I watched his response closely. He took the route of taunting me for my interests, but not too maliciously. I decided to keep following him.

When we got to his flat I was suddenly wary again; tension was briefly abated by the walk. He lived on the top floor of a block and the ‘apartment’ was a minimalist studio: not in an edgy, artistic way, but in a barren, I-could-be-a-serial-killer way. I’ve watched too much Penn Badgley in ‘You’; too much real-crime to not assume the worst in men, and I fully admit this potentially damaging tendency.

I felt very aware of my sobriety in this unknown man’s apartment. The cloud of alcohol wasn’t there to act as a safety veil or dull the persistent throbbing of my fight or flight instincts that lingered like a headache. I didn’t know where to look or what to say. Why was I here? I sat at a low wooden table and said I was hungry. He confessed he didn’t have much in the way of food, but he could rustle up something if I was prepared to wait. I nodded again and made more inane chat, trying to patch up my intentions with light humour and questions about his job.

He said he was a real estate agent. I said that was an odd choice for someone who struggles with human interaction. He said it brought him out of his shell. I nodded and pressed my palms into my thighs. I asked if he had a beer and he said yes. He got up and went to the fridge, placing the beer in front of me. The chat warbled on like a television in the background of a busy room; I spoke and listened, but I felt like a sliver of myself.

He took a deliberately long time to make food. At one point he stood up and claimed he forgot to put the oven on. I laughed at his jokes, some of which were funny, some of which weren’t. I looked behind me and saw a steep staircase leading up to what I assumed must be his mezanine room.

He smiled when I turned back to face him and said ‘Something on your mind?’ I smiled and sipped at the beer he’d given me, praying for my mind to turn off so that I could get through the conversation.

I wolfed down the food. A dry burger with sweet potato and peas. I hadn’t eaten for eight hours, and I felt weak.  He watched me, pointing out my messiness. I smiled but was completely focussed on finishing, painfully aware of the time and not wanting to miss the last tram home. I washed down the last morsels of meat with the bitter beer, and then I sat forward and said ‘let’s go’.

*****************

When we got upstairs, the bed was propped against a wall, and there was a bookshelf cluttered with magazines and ornaments. I sat down on the bed and took off my shoes. He kept talking, and I kept up with the light banter, feeling the beer run through my blood and flood my brain. I swirled my tongue across my teeth, checking for any pieces of meat that had become lodged in between the cracks. He switched on his laptop and I got under the covers, shifting around to get comfortable on this strange bed island we were on together.

I propped my head against my hand, watching him log into Netflix. He slid his hand under the cover and put it on my thigh. I looked at him and kissed him. The laptop was shoved to the floor. He had muscular arms and a short sleeved t shirt on. Just the feeling of his chest against mine and his hands on my hips made me pulse in excitement. I felt, for the first time since I met him in the park, a huge release of tension and that I’d made the right decision.

*****************

After, we lay in silence. He half-heartedly stroked my arm. It always amazes me: two people who minutes before were consuming each other with such voracity can be sat in a lifeless daze with nothing to say. The flaws of the other person are suddenly fully visible again, shunted into daylight like a curtain pulled back on a bright morning. We lay like this for a few minutes, and he said he wanted to see me again. I said I did too, which was a lie, but I felt vulnerable again, aware that this was when something bad was most likely to happen.

We chatted and then I said it, the words slipping out in a rush: ‘I need to leave because I have work tomorrow.’ He didn’t look up and said sure, that’s fine. I got dressed quickly and before I walked down the stairs, he made a saluting motion that made me cringe.

I went as fast as I could down the staircase, feeling dizzy from the sharp turns, and when I got to the door that led outside, I flew out without considering which direction I was going in.

When I got home he texted me: ‘That was amazing. I can’t wait to see you again. You felt so good. Let me know you’re home ok xxx’

I replied with ‘Hi. It was fun yeah. I’m back, sleep well x’

The next few days were uneventful and I went to work. We texted on and off, most of the texts sexual in nature.

I became increasingly busy with work and social obligations, so I stopped texting as much. The weekend after we met up, I received a text from him:

‘Yo, why aren’t you messaging? I want to see you again.’

My heart sank. I couldn’t, no matter how hard I tried, see myself sitting through more awkward conversation for the result of a reasonably satisfying sexual encounter. I ignored him for a few hours, then:

‘Hello?’

I replied:

‘Hey, I’m really sorry if I’ve led you on, but I don’t think we want the same things. I want to see other people’.

The words ‘typing’ immediately appeared, and I hastily closed Whatsapp.  He frantically sent me several messages in a row, each one growing more incredulous and frustrated than the last:

‘What??? Hey I know I can be a bit much sometimes, but give me a chance!’

What did I do to deserve this?

Was I that bad in bed?

I can get better! You need to show me what you want!’

My heart was racing as I typed, deleted, and then typed again.

I settled on:

‘No its nothing you’ve done, I just want to be alone. Again I’m sorry’

He sent more:

‘Dude

Just one last time, please

Let’s talk about this. You are the one who made this sexual. I wanna see you now. What’s your address I’ll get you an Uber.’

At the mention of an Uber I closed WhatsApp again. I was shaking and put the phone down. I went into my bathroom and thought if he could possibly know my address. I decided that he couldn’t. I picked up my phone again and blocked his number. A few moments passed before I saw the yellow Snapchat icon with his name next to it appear:  typing.

I swore and grabbed at my phone, trying to block him before he could send anything.

It was too late and I received two messages:

‘You double dating little slut

Come suck me deep’

I watched the messages come in one by one, shaking too much to pick up my phone. I bit my nails and saw the small black text dance across the screen. The next message he sent me read:

‘I hope you die of HIV’.

I snatched the phone and blocked him on Snapchat.

*****************

I slept fitfully that night. I was bleary eyed as I went to work the next day. I told several friends and they reacted with a mixture of shock and disbelief, urging me to report him. I said no, I just wanted to forget it ever happened. People’s concerns were tinged with disapproval: why did you put yourself in that situation?

Few could understand the logic of me going to a random man’s flat. I could, until I’m red-faced and breathless, explain that I just wanted to, but this isn’t a valid reason for my actions. There must be something wrong with me, some underlying cause that propelled me to go back to this clearly unstable man’s place without getting to know him first. If I had gone on a few dates with him, gotten to know him better, his actions would be monstrous. Instead, because of my haste, they were merely a bit creepy. I had, in most people’s opinions, acted crazily by giving myself so easily to a man I didn’t know. I had deserved, in some shape or form, what had come to me.

I still don’t know if this man had given me his real name, or if he was really autistic. One friend suggested he had made up his autism to excuse his violent reactions. The perspective that struck me the most came from a male friend: ‘you can do so much better than that’.

There, in that small yet significant sentence, I found the true meaning of people’s concern: it was, to many, more frightening that I had defied the gold standard rule of courtship (a woman being placid and passive, keeping my dignity by refraining from sex) than that a man had sent me death threats. Next time I date, I’ll try not to be so crazy.