Charming, Part 5……..Just Because You have a College Education, doesn’t Mean Your Smart.

“Here’s all you need to know about men and women: Women are crazy, men are stupid. And the main reason women are crazy is that men are stupid” -George Carlin                                                                                              

George Carlin’s theory has some merit, but let me just say not all men are stupid.  I thought I’d throw that in there before I begin this part of my story.  Speaking of stupid men, during one of the separations with Lestat, I had begun to date someone else (yeah hard to imagine since my Lestat was always addictively lurking in the background of my life).  But this “new” guy was, by far, definitely NOT Prince Charming.  Oh hell to the no he wasn’t, actually the tables turned with this relationship and I became Charming for this emotionally weak, arrogant, self-absorbed asshole.  And the thing was, he had all the traits of an emotional vampire, all but that is, the looks.  Okay, I have already mentioned that looks are not something anyone should be judged on, and I told myself I would give this guy a chance in spite of his dull, boring and unbelievable arrogance.  This guy was what I like to call the old “bait and switch” of men.  They come off as a normal guy with normal traits, they put on a show for you and just when you think you are secure and comfortable with the relationship BAM, they fucking changing into who they really are.  The old bait and switch, it’s horrible and I know some of you know exactly what I’m talking about.

This guy whom I’ll call Waldo (because I can’t think of a more idiotic name for him without using his real name and I don’t want to get sued).  Waldo was not a guy I’d normally be attracted to, he was NOTHING like what I thought my “type” was.  Okay what I thought my type was what Lestat was/is, tall (6’1) dark, intelligent, ruggedly handsome, honey colored eyes, huge………biceps (get your mind out of the gutter people!) a gorgeous smile with dimples to match and rough, hardworking hands and a kiss that would melt Cinderella’s glass slippers off.  But not this guy, this one was by all means a dud, and how did I wind up with this idiot?  Well I suppose I was so desperate to date someone else I didn’t care who, and as I mentioned before I fell victim to the old bait and switch, which didn’t happened until I was a bit farther in than I’d like to admit.  So during one of my many breakups from Lestat I had actually actively begun to look for a “real” boyfriend.  What I found was Waldo, and I ran smack dab into the dull, boring wall that was/is his personality (he’s still dull there’s no changing that….ever).

I met this idiot at work, we wound up working together in the same department at UTEP.  He was a short, balding (who somehow thought that if he used enough hair mousse no one would notice the extremely thinning hair, so thin you could see the acne on his awful scalp, yuk) middle aged man with thick glasses, all of 5’4 (my height which in the world of me is extremely short) no conversational skills whatsoever, as a matter of fact he had NO personality at all.  I mean this guy probably knew he had no personality so therefore was so full of himself to make up for that shortcoming.  Because the dick suffered from sleep apnea and his sinuses were clogged (I mean perpetually clogged) and when he spoke he mumbled.   I strained to have conversations with him over the phone because he wouldn’t speak up even though I had my volume at its highest setting.  Then of course that’s when I realized it was dull Waldo not my precious iPhone.  He also had the most immature sense of humor and the most annoying laugh I’d ever heard, and this fucker was three years older than I was at the time.

Now this guy had a formal education and Lestat didn’t but that didn’t mean that Lestat was uneducated or dumb, because he was not.  He may not have a bachelors but he was educated in the way of life and business.  He was/is a licensed electrician, plumber and HVAC. We talked about politics, construction, books, movies the news I mean we could talk about literally anything.  Waldo on the other hand had to make up shit to make himself look good because physically he was doomed.  Let’s just say he was a legend in his own mind, because in real life he was more of a sidekick or hunchback character.  Even though he was formally educated, and he cemented the notion in my mind that not everyone that gets a Masters or PhD is smart or intelligent.  They only have a degree and didn’t actually absorb their education, they only have a piece of paper that they can hang on their wall and smugly point to it in order to assert their self-imagined superiority to others. This was Waldo and when I was “dating” him he was at the tail end of getting his PhD or EdD, which is different than a PhD, in any case he was wrapping up his doctoral degree.  One day, we were having a conversation in which he decided to annoyingly correcting everything I was saying, you know to “educate” me, because he “thought” I needed it.

If you think about it, one shouldn’t do things like that to a Latina woman (no it’s not a stereotype it’s a fact) especially if she’s educated and probably knows more than you do even if she only has a bachelor’s degree to your EdD motherfucker.  So this conversation was getting to the point of all out “oh no you didn’t go there asshole and let me tell you why!”  But I kept my temper in check, then after the fifteen thousandth time, I finally said “Look I get that you are trying to so-call educate me on shit you think I should know.  But let me give you some pointers, don’t fucking do that, not to me and let me tell you why.  You shouldn’t do that especially when the woman you’re trying to educate with your annoying, nasally whine can actually change the oil and cabin filter on your fucking truck because you couldn’t find the goddamn YouTube video for it!” and then something happened, something I never thought I’d ever see and that was……I had made a man cry.

Yep, this bait and switch male dud was not only an impostor, he was probably the biggest pussy I had ever met (pardon my French).  Okay I realize that too is a stereotype that men should always be strong and the most important thing they can poses is their masculinity, so let’s get this straight, for the record I don’t think there is anything wrong with a man crying.  But when that man cries constantly and shrivels up into the fetal position on the floor, yeah that’s a bit much for any woman to take (yes he really did cry a lot and curl up into the fetal position…..I mean ALL THE FUCKING TIME!).  Especially since I had become the man in the relationship and I was fed up with trying to make this insecure man feel better about himself because he believed the entire world had it in for him.

When one is in a relationship I strongly believe it is a two way street, and that means giving a little and your partner should as well, to meet in the middle in this relationship you are both in.  So during this horrid ten month relationship I had emergency surgery because I had suffered from severe endometriosis.  Excruciating pain coming from within a woman’s baby baring parts that is pain on a monthly basis that would kill a grizzly bear!  I wouldn’t wish this on anyone (okay that’s not true I do have a mean streak and I’d wish this on the people I hate, to suffer day after day with no relief in sight).

Anyway I was told by my physician that since I didn’t plan on having any more children that it would be best for him to perform an emergency hysterectomy.  I agreed, as a matter of fact I asked him when he could yank this betraying part of me out so I could live in peace.  He arranged for my surgery to happen the following day.  So I went to check into the hospital and where was Waldo?  I don’t know because he didn’t answer his goddamned phone.  We had been fighting and he’d been standoffish since I made him cry.  So my two youngest sons took me to the hospital the next day at 4:30am for the pre-surgery routine.  My OBGYN who is “the” best OBGYN ever came in and talked to me and he introduced the anesthesiologist and told me we’d be done in about an hour and fifteen minutes.  I said “cool, where are the drugs I want the drugs” and then the anesthesiologist told me he was going to use Propofol as he stood there with a huge syringe he was going to inject into my IV.

I said “Whoa, whoa, whoa….isn’t that the drug that killed Michael Jackson?”  He said “yes but that was in extremely high dosage, and also an extreme situation.  Used properly it will only put you to sleep for a couple of hours.  It’s perfectly safe.”  Now mind you I probably wouldn’t have let him put that shit into my IV but he had the most piecing blue eyes I’d ever seen.  So I let him…..yeah I know it was probably Prince Charming in disguise, again.  Only I couldn’t see the rest of his face because he was wearing a surgical mask and within a couple of seconds after he put the drug into my IV, I was being wheeled into the operating room.  My middle son walked with me until my doctor told him to talk to me because I was going in.  My son took his hand and rubbed by forehead and said “I love you mom, and we’ll be right here when you wake up.” As I was going under all I could manage was a nod of my head acknowledging his comment.  Then as we walked away he asked “So you have life insurance right mom?  And by the way, who gets your car?”  As he laughed.  Now to many this may sound cold and callus but my boys are all (and I do mean all) sarcastic in nature.  I also know their sense of humor, and he said that knowing I couldn’t respond with my usual middle finger gesture as I was being wheeled away into an operating room with a huge painted clock on the ceiling.

My doctor stood over me and caressed my forehead and said he was going to take good care of me so I shouldn’t worry.  I trusted him completely, probably the only man that I did trust totally and with my life no less.  He asked me to look at the huge clock on the ceiling and count from one-hundred backwards.  All I heard myself say was…….ninety-nine and then I was out.  When I was being awoken by my doctor in recovery, he told me that I did great, I mean as great as a woman who was going to have her betraying body part pulverized by a microscopic laser.  In any case I was only going to be there overnight for observation and after I was taken to my hospital room.  I sent Waldo a text to tell him I was going to be in the hospital overnight should the motherfucker decide to go and visit me.

I got no answer, but by this time I was sure this was the end and I had this sense of overwhelming relief that I would be getting rid of this asshole within a couple of hours.  The nurse brought me my lunch and as she helped me sit up in bed, at that moment my hospital room door opened and just like in the movies I looked up and there stood the handsome Lestat.  His 6”1 tall frame, he smiled and his beautiful dimples showed themselves and his cologne wafted into my room.  The nurse positioned the bed tray next to me and walked out.  He came in holding a small bunch of flowers and asked if he could come in.  I said yes, and he walked over beside me and sat down.  He handed me the flowers and smiled and said “Are you okay?  Are you in any pain?”  I told him I was not, that my doctor was awesome and I was only sore due to that fucking catheter I had shoved up my hoo-ha.  He got up and gently brushed the hair from my eyes away and kissed my forehead.  And there is it was, the Charming effect once again took hold and I fell for it again.

This reminded me of those angels from the series Dr. Who, those concrete statues that are usually found in cemeteries and graveyards. They get closer and closer but only if you blink.  They are usually covering their eyes as if they’re crying, but in Dr. Who, if you blink and look they reveal their face and usually have fangs and are grotesque.  As long as you keep staring at them they can’t change, get closer or reveal their face.  But the minute you blink *BAM* they touch you and your sent into another time and place.  Which is what happened when Lestat came into my hospital room and kissed my forehead.  I was sent back into a time when I felt love and affection for him in spite of knowing better, there was no fighting the Weeping Angel in my hospital room.

Even though Lestat was there when my so-called idiot boyfriend wasn’t, the fact that Lestat not once fell on the floor and cried in the fetal position….NOT ONCE, made me rethink being with Waldo the Human Bore.  I allowed him back into my life and proceeded to tell Waldo to go straight to hell because the asshole couldn’t bother himself with finding out if I had come through this surgery okay.  No, that prick was finalizing his dissertation and used that as an excuse as to why he didn’t respond to my texts.  What I got was “I did think about you and I wondered if I should go visit you at Providence Hospital, room number 418, but didn’t know if you wanted me there.”  Now the fact that he told me this like it was some sort of confirmation that he knew where I was at and what room I was in made me think he thought I’d actually acknowledge his feigning concern.  Which pissed me off and it was all I could take and I finally told him to go to hell, but not before the motherfucker decided that I had ruined his Doctoral graduation ceremony.

He was texting me to tell me that I had emotionally manipulated him and that I had ruined his graduation.  As a strong Hispanic woman, I thought to myself, I can’t believe this asshole.  I mean I was probably still high on whatever meds they gave me because I thought to myself this prick has no idea how lucky he is to have someone like me in his life.  And he’s trying to blame me for his inadequacies?! I laughed to myself but not before I blocked his stupid ass, oh but before I did, I sent him a text to tell him to fucking grow a pair of balls and to accept that the world didn’t owe him a damned thing, that he needed to go out and earn it for himself.  I also called him a human sized pussy (because let’s face it the dude was or should I say dud?) and that’s when I blocked him.  I was lying in bed at the hospital staring at the flowers that Lestat had brought me, and as I lay there I imagined this idiot in his cap and gown falling onto the floor in the isle of where he sat, fetal position and all crying like a baby at reading my text.  Okay the likelihood of that happening was small but I’m pretty sure it upset him enough he cried, he always cried, ALWAYS.

I’m going to elaborate on Waldo, because this dude really needs a lot of elaboration to explain just what an idiot he was (or is).  The prick couldn’t do anything, and I do mean ANYTHING.  He didn’t know how to work on his truck, or cook, or even bother to offer to help when he’d come over to my house.  Like the day he came over to my house and I was cleaning my garage, I was pushing boxes outside and sorting out things I was going to throw in the trash from stuff I was going to donate to the Goodwill and what did this useless asshole do? He pulled down the tailgate to his truck to watch me work instead of offering to help me.  My father always said that a man will always help out his women in any and every way.  I was use to men that knew how to do stuff, like fix their cars or trucks and be handy around the house, you know change a light bulb, grout the tub, fix the washing machine, put up a ceiling fan.  But this useless jerk didn’t know how to do anything, I mean other than being annoyingly pompous.  I knew how to do all of the things he didn’t and like I said I had changed the cabin filter on his truck when he couldn’t find where it was.  He was basically a good for nothing, unless of course he was playing basketball.  But I’m not sure that wasn’t the truth either.  He would always brag about how good he was at basketball and football when he was in high school.

He was like the Hispanic version of the Uncle Rico character from the movie Napoleon Dynamite, living in the past through his own delusional memories, when he “thought” he was good, he probably sucked then too.  Because if you have to look to your youth to build yourself up, because you can’t find anything worthwhile in your adult life to say about yourself, you’ve reached an entirely new level of “suckedom.”  But in “real life” he was totally inept as a boyfriend, as a man and professionally.  Did I mention that he had no manners whatsoever?  Waldo had the amazing ability to sit and eat a meal and miss his mouth entirely every single fucking time, which made having meals with the fucker aggravating.

His clothes were always stained on the front because there were bits of food running down them, way to go “Dr” Waldo.  He had a black jacket that he used during the winter that was absolutely dirty, I mean DIRTY with food or whatever streaked down the front of it, it was absolutely nauseating.  One would think that the motherfucker would be smart enough to wash his jacket before (or at any time actually) putting it away for the summer, right?  Don’t even get me started on his goddamned neckties.  Another of his annoying habits, and by far the most disgusting was that Waldo would use the men’s room and the imbecile would NOT WASH HIS HANDS! How do I know this?  It doesn’t take a genius to time someone when they use the bathroom.  We worked in an old building that at one point were dorm rooms, and they had remodeled them into offices and every two offices shared one bathroom.  When I’d be in his office, he’d excuse himself to go to the bathroom (to be clear everyone could hear when someone was in these bathrooms) and the gross asshole would pee, flush and walk back out into his office.  I stopped holding his hand and letting him touch anything of mine after this disgusting revelation.

I mentioned this to him and he got mad, he actually got angry because he accused me of “spying” on him.  I think I gave him the biggest eye roll I could and walked out of his office.  After that if he’d touch anything on my desk, I’d promptly wipe it down with a Clorox wipe. And yet this creep was still offended, I mean come the fuck on!?!  After we broke up I left the department and somehow he wound up working with one of my friends in another department.  I told her to be careful and not allow this prick to touch any food or help out or volunteer if it meant he had to help set up for a luncheon, or office party of any sort because of the disgusting habit he had.  She made it a point to let everyone know and she said everyone stayed away from any food he bought or prepared.

All of those hideous attributes compiled with the fact that he believed he was smarter than everyone else was all I could take, so bye-bye Waldo.  It’s safe to say that this guy was definitely NOT Prince Charming, not anywhere close to being that Charming dude, who was still missing at that point in my life by the way.  And how I dated this knuckle dragging, mouth missing, bathroom using, no hand washing PhD for ten months is beyond me too, it was definitely a relationship regret, abso-fucking-lutely.    Stay tuned for part six….