Mar 242010
 

On May 23, 2003 I posed a very important question for LiveJournal.

I had just edited Henry’s Friendster profile to enhance his more homoerotic qualities and within an hour, someone had suggested a match for him. However, Henry had already begun taking a liking to our new neighbor, Chris. So I asked LiveJournal to choose for him, since his head was practically smoking with indecision.

jonny henryslover2

Jonny or Chris, OMG?

I received this comment from one “chunkstyle4”:

i’d pick jonny… but only because he looks like the kind of person who would hunt out people with the similar intrest [sic] of “teresa strasser”… comment to a journal that intrested [sic] him and ask if he could add them.

ok- so he’s a little like myself. too much infact [sic].
i change my vote to chris.

At least she spelled “too” correctly.

Teresa Strasser was the host of a since-canceled TLC show called “While You Were Out” and apparently I was one of two or three people who had her listed as an interest on LiveJournal. That’s how Christina found me. So thank you kindly, Teresa Strasser.

I added her back and the first LJ post of hers that I read was about how this girl Sylvia wouldn’t stop emailing her. How annoying this Sylvia was. How she wished she never met Sylvia. The comments on that post said things like, “Just stop talking to her! She’s just a stupid little girl!”

I admit that I usually skipped over her posts. Mostly she would brag about being high, complain about her job, talk about God. Nothing that interested me. She would write these juvenile sex poems and constantly complain about how lonely she was, even though she was supposedly in a relationship with this Sylvia girl. She’d post emails from Sylvia, and follow it with commentary like:

“well- i want to hit her over the head and say “I DON’T LIKE YOU!!!”

“she has about as much depth as a crepe.”

“i’m obviously not going to ever give her what she needs or wants and i knew a long time ago, she could never meet my needs.”

Reading these things made me uncomfortable. Why stay with someone who made you so disgusted? Why sit there and whine about how lonely you are when you hold the key that will detach that ball and chain from your ankle? Meanwhile, she was all but sexing me via comments on my LiveJournal posts. Anytime I’d jokingly write about Henry doing something wrong, Vegas would go wild with their bets on Christina dropping a lesbian-in-shining-armor comment.

I didn’t mind it. But my friend Keri was repulsed by this. “She’s trying to make you gay!” Keri would spit over the phone. “I can’t stand it when she comments on your stuff.” But as someone who has developed girl crushes before, the idea of e-flirting with some strange girl was kind of fun. And there were times when she would say things that really picked me up after a shitty day. She always seemed to be right there, lurking in the wings, reaching out to me when no one else would. So through LJ comments, we became closer. By that fall, we had tried to be pen pals, which was really me sending her letters and mixed CDs and her promising to write back, but instead she always trying to chat with me on AIM and coax my number out of me.

“We should talk on the phone sometime,” she proposed one day. I thought this was a horrible idea. I barely talked on the phone at all with people I actually knew in person, and I couldn’t imagine having to struggle through a phone conversation with some strange girl from Cincinnati. But I obliged when she asked for my number.

The first few times she called, my stomach knotted and I let the machine pick up. Later, I’d make up excuses for why I missed her call for the seventh time.

“I was potty-training Henry. In Syria. After rescuing him from the sex slave industry.

You know how it is.”

Eventually, I had to take her call. My inherent politeness told me it was the right thing to do. Taking the phone upstairs, I retreated to the bedroom so Henry couldn’t mock my social-stutter and nervous monotone.

Basically, she just talked while I sat, perched on the edge of the bed, desperate to end the call. She made me uncomfortable. She talked a lot about sex, and it’s not that I’m prude (I mean, obviously), but it left me with a bad taste in my mouth the way she was so intent on letting me know that she “wasn’t all-the-way-gay” and that even though she was supposed to be with Sylvia, she was still fucking random men.

“I fucked a black guy at [random amusement park] when I used to work there,” she bragged. Unbeknown to her, I was sarcastically clapping my hands.

Finally able to end the phone call, I went back downstairs and was met with Henry’s line of interrogation. “Well, how was it? What was she like?” he asked.

“Well. She sounds like a boy, first of all, and brags about sex like one, too,” I recounted. “She was annoying. A little cocky.” We really had very little in common, aside from that fateful joint-love for Teresa Strasser.

I went back to ignoring her phone calls, keeping the contact to online only. Too bad it didn’t stay that way.

That December, she learned that Sylvia had been cheating on her the whole time, but that was OK, because Christina was apparently “in love” with a man now. She started posting love poetry again and there were times when I had to  read some of the lines twice because it seemed like she was calling me out. Then Sylvia joined LiveJournal so Christina’s posts suddenly turned into big pools of lesbian love jizz.

Meanwhile, she was hitting me up on AIM, griping about how she was trapped with a girl for whom she felt no love.

“So break up with her,” I’d say, not knowing that in the next six years, I would utter that statement enough times to fill Michelle Duggar’s stretched out vagina.

  21 Responses to “The Christina Chronicles: Origins”

  1. You know, it’s one of those situations when you look back at the origin of the relationship and realize that your first impressions were right. It’s weird, your initial thoughts don’t tend to steer you too wrong most of the time. Had I learned this lesson for myself I would have saved myself the 10 years spent with my ex, but then again I learned a lot from that relationship and wouldn’t be who I am now. Similiarly though, I still the remember the very first time I heard Bill’s voice. At the time we were both with other people so the idea of actually being with him was far from my mind, but I do recall thinking about how great he sounded and how I wish I had someone half as kind and jovial to call my own. It’s funny how life works out…

    • Definitely! I’ve been doing so much thinking about this whole thing, wondering if, had I been in a better place mentally at the time, I wouldn’t have been able to resist her advances. She preyed on me, I really feel that way sometimes. It doesn’t mean I won’t treasure some of the memories we had together, but it still makes me feel weird.

      I love that you and Bill found your way to each other!!

  2. I like this already! I am glad you’re launching this project. <3

  3. alright well I just gotta say its bullshit behaviour like hers that gives those psycho christans all that “THE GAYS TRY TO RECRUIT US” fodder

    frankly, lesbians are known for trying that kind of nonsense, as well getting all obsessed! (is he joking? well I am, except that theres truth in what i say)

    this post was a good read

    and im tempted to become the new christina

    let me lick your vagine. im going to get involved with someone i ought not to. listen to my complains. no i will not dump them

  4. I HATE YOU SILVIA
    gimme some lovin

    sorry
    i’ll keep the piggybacking to your posts to a minimum. BUT ONLY FOR THESE!!!! anything else… oh you had better believe im gonna make it all about me

  5. omg. The anticipation has been killing me all week! I hate waiting but it was totally worth it.

  6. I am just gonna tell you. OMG-I can’t believe you are giving us all this stuff to read. For a super nosy person like me it’s like, whoa this is the kinda stuff people don’t tell people, well, I do tend to overshare and also some of my friends but I also know people who just can’t acknowledge that fucked up stuff happens to THEM. It is just weird hearing about what people do, I took three psychology classes in the past just because I liked hearing about things people do, how people tick. And I believe that getting things out in the open can be pretty theraputic, it sucks how sometimes befriending another person opens you up to be messed with and hurt, it’s not always like that but sure sucks when it does. I am sure all of us have had our share of fucked-up/psycho-or just plain not good to us “friends”. I am eagerly anticipating the next post in this chronicle!!

    • Misty, thank you for reading this! It’s going to get harder to write. It would be different if I was a straight-up victim in this, but in reality, I treated her in ways I would never ever treat a friend. It got to the point where I would try to hurt her intentionally. It was so abusive, on both our parts, that it eventually started to mirror what she had with Sylvia, only reversed. And it’s going to be difficult, not to mention embarrassing, to publicly admit that!

      Going back through my old journals, I can’t figure out why I pursued things with her. My gut instinct seemed to be spot on, but I ignored it, just like I ignored Henry’s advice!

      I am hoping that in the end, this will not only be therapeutic as you said, but it will also nail the coffin shut so I won’t be tempted to give her any more undeserved chances. The entire friendship was one bad broken record! But I learned a lot about myself from it, at least!

  7. Good on you for doing this! I hate her already!

  8. I’m glad you’ve decided to write about this. I hope this will be cathartic and really help you reaffirm that it is for the best that you aren’t friends anymore. I know that it must be difficult for you to dredge up these feelings and memories, but it will probably be therapeutic. [here’s my moment of lameness:] To quote Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Fractures well cured make us more strong.” Thanks for sharing this; I really admire your bravery.

    p.s. google reader is sending me your updates again — yay! :)

    • Thank YOU, Ally. That quote is so apropos. You’re right, it’s hard going back and dredging up old stuff, but on the other side of the coin, it’s also reminding me that there were good parts too, so I can stop feeling like this is one of those “She ruined my life!” situations. I’m starting to realize that, at the core, it’s really as simple as two people growing apart. It still sucks though.

      I have no idea what was going on with the feed! I had to re-do the twitterfeed thing I was using, and now the original one is working again so it’s posting twice. I just can’t win.

  9. She DID prey on you. And I’m sure she stalked you long before she commented. I agree with Jessi’s comment above–that first impression/gut instinct won’t lead you wrong. But it’s not easy to listen to that voice. We rationalize, especially when we’re not in a good place.

    I am happy you’re writing about this.

    • I have a habit, probably a bad one, of letting people linger on the periphery longer than they have a right to. Sometimes it winds up being a good thing, and I do think there was a purpose for Christina and I to touch each other’s lives. But I think I let it drag on longer than it should have, gave her too many chances and ultimately, she did to me what I saw her doing to everyone else all those years.

      She’s a phony person. I knew this then, but somehow let my own vulnerability ignore that.

      Thank you for supporting me in this and always being honest with me.

  10. It appears that you were in a bit of a vulnerable spot at the time, and she is the type of person who seeks that out.

    Just like Paul did to me.

    • You are totally right about that. In hindsight, I feel preyed upon. But! Everything happens for a reason and I learned a lot about myself, so it wasn’t all for naught I guess.

      I’m sorry that you can relate to this:(

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