I met someone several weeks ago, someone who is profoundly hard of hearing, which isn't the same as deaf. He walked over to me and gave me a note that said "I'm a punk rocker and a skateboarder but I have a good heart." He and I interacted with notes and then texts, as there was no way I was going to learn American Sign Language fast enough... We had a lot of laughs as we both made errors in understanding. He showed me his art; I understood what he was doing even if it wasn't so appealing to me.
But what really did he want with me?
So one day I said, "My girlfriends are teasing me that I have a boytoy."
He said, "Hearing that excites me."
"Well, I'm not Madonna or Cher. I can't have a boytoy."
We laughed.
On June 19th, he joked. "Don't fall in love with ME."
So I began to wonder about him.
I decided he was too young for me in general. That had a lot to do with his boyish appearance. Shorts - tennis shoes - a cap on his head.
"How old are you?" I asked.
"No comment," he said.
"Are you married? Have you been married?"
"No comment."
"Do you have children?"
"No comment."
And so it went. There was nothing he was easily willing to admit, and, as my girlfriends pointed out, he had not asked me the same questions.
"I respect women." he said.
"If or when you're my girlfriend, I will tell you those things."
The girlfriend posse agreed with me. No woman in her right mind circa 2024 becomes a man's girlfriend without knowing these basics before she gives it consideration.
The girlfriend posse also got into the act of trying to trick him into revealing some information.
You know this game. "What's your zodiac sign?" "What high school did you go to?" "What year did you graduate?"
"What was your favorite superhero when you were growing up?" he asked me.
"I don't think I ever cared about superhero's" I said.
"When I was growing up, the Green Hornet was my favorite."
I pulled out my cell phone and looked up Green Hornet. It was only on the air for one year, 1966. (But it might have been in reruns.)
"Were you born between 1950 and 1955? 1956 - 1962..." I asked.
He laughed.
He texted me, even after we spent some time together, and it went like this.
A 5 - buzz, a 4-buzz, a 3 an the a H e L L O. Then "Can I ask you a question?" It seemed to me that this was all like an alarm clock. Even when I put the phone on silent, so I could go to sleep. I started to feel pestered.
Then one night the question was "That ex-boyfriend of yours that you had coffee with the other day, how long ago did you break up with him?"
"He's still a friend. None of your business," I said. No, I didn't just say, I retorted.
I was started to loose interest in all this. The fun of the game was over. I became suspicious of his unwillingness to disclose. Was he hiding something?
I'm a private person myself, actually. And I understand that we need to protect our privacy because we are in a world in which Identity Theft is rampant.
There was also the guessing game of what his surname was. As this man is Hispanic and his surname begins with a K, I had guess Kastaneda and Kardashian, which he said made him LOL.... The icon with the tears pouring out of his eyes had been selected.
Then one day I tried one more time. I asked him how old he was, if he was or had been married, and if he had children, and he said No Comment each time.
Our friendship could go no further. I respected his boundaries. I told him "I respect your privacy and I think we have spent too much time with each other lately and should just see each other around."
He didn't get it. He didn't take it well.
It was then I decided that how many years old he was didn't matter. He was simply too immature...
C 2024 Christine Trzyna
