The Rotten Apple

I blame Dave Navarro, literally. Had it not been for him—in all his metrosexual Guitar God glory (and a few beers on my end)—I probably would have avoided a ginormous dating blunder: falling for the wrong guy.

I put up my first online dating profile in the summer of 2008, having just come off a self-imposed two-year sabbatical from men after breaking up with a long-term boyfriend. I figured it was a good way to dip my toe back into the dating pool and break the dry spell.

I opted for the free site Plenty of Fish, and crafted a noncommittal ad saying I was looking for some no-strings-attached fun, but wasn’t adverse to it turning into something more. The offers came pouring in.

That summer I went out with several men, all of whom were very young, very attractive and very into me. We’re not talking illegally young but, for lack of a better term, you could definitely call me a “cougar in training.” Although I was 33, the median age of all my dates was around 25.

But I drew the line when a 21-year-old skater-slash-musician sent me an email. I told him he was way too young for me, but he persisted. After about two months of back-and-forth emails and IMs, I caved and agreed to meet him for a drink.

It wasn’t love at first sight, but I was pleasantly surprised by his looks and personality. At 5’7, he was small and skinny (which I like); Hispanic (which I also like); with longish hair, an emo look and a guitar slung over his shoulder (ding, ding, ding!). We hit it off immediately, and eventually wound up back at my place. 

That was in October, and I was juggling way too many guys, so I told the 21-year-old that, while I had fun that night, he was just too young for me. For the next seven months, he contacted me non-stop asking me to hang out again. I always refused.

Fast forward to May 2009. After meeting my #1 Rock God Trent Reznor, I put away a few beers while watching Nine Inch Nails and Jane’s Addiction perform live. I had been lusting over Trent for years, completely forgetting how hot Jane’s Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro was. I was fixated on him as they performed, and soon came to the realization that the 21-year-old looked a lot like him. It only took one drunken text to set up a second date, and I nicknamed him “Navarro” so that my friends could keep track of who was who when I was telling my boy-toy stories.

Our second encounter went surprisingly well, and I felt a little spark. We started talking to and seeing each other more. But he was unreliable. And noncommittal. And all too aware of how good looking he was. And, oh yeah, way too young. A million red flags went up, but it was too late…I was falling for him.

While he wasn’t my “boyfriend,” we were definitely entangled in a relationship, whether we wanted to admit it or not. I was fine with this ambiguity for a while, and continued to play the field. He’d tell me he was falling for me and thought about me all the time. He’d tell romantical tales of moving in with me and getting married. I’d just laugh.

By Christmas, I had grown tired of juggling men. I started cutting them loose one at a time, thinking maybe I wanted something more…were Navarro’s little comments seeping in?

One morning I woke up after spending the night with him and realized something had to change. As he was getting dressed to leave, I told him I was starting to have feelings for him and we had to stop seeing each other. He was too young and had too many girls flocking around him. I was going to get hurt. He flipped out, and I literally had to shove him out of my apartment. I can still remember the wounded puppy look he gave me as I shut the door on him.

But he wouldn’t take no for an answer. He called. He begged. He told me he loved me. We fought. We made up. But as soon as I wanted to label things: This is a relationship; you are my boyfriend, he’d backpeddle. His mantra soon became: “I’m a shitty boyfriend. I’ll ruin everything. You can’t be my girlfriend because I’ll lose you because I’ll fuck it all up.” Still, he contacted me every night before going to bed, often telling me he loved me. We were at a weird impasse.

Eventually things fell into a routine…y’know, like when you’re in a relationship. But I had this nagging feeling he was still juggling other girls. I’d catch him in little lies, but he’d talk his way out of them. I wanted to believe him, I guess. I’d ask him if he was seeing other people. He’d say no, then turn around and accuse me of being unfaithful. We’d fight. We’d make up. Occasionally I’d push for an answer about what exactly was going on between us. Sometimes his answer was, “You know I love you.” Other times he’d freak out: “Why do you need to label everything?! Can’t you just let it happen naturally?! You’re ruining everything! It’s your fault that we’re not officially a couple.”

We’d scream and yell, hang up on each other, say horrible things. But no matter how bad it got or how things ended, he’d always weasel his way back into my life…usually in the form of a simple text message saying “hey.” Eventually we’d have explosive bouts of fuck yous over “labels” and who the other person may or may not be fucking. I’d kick him out or storm away, but he’d almost always contact me the next day with a simple “hey,” as if nothing ever happened.

It was weird and frustrating and exhausting, but I rolled with it because we had chemistry. There was an undeniable attraction, both physically and mentally. Yeah, he was young, but we always had something to talk about. He could make me laugh, make me blush. He was smart, creative and fun. And, okay, yeah, super-cute too.

He started to come around more often and became more open to labeling this on-off thing we had, which was going on almost two years now. But just as he started acting more like a boyfriend, I felt like something was wrong.

The little lies continued. He’d offer up conflicting stories about what he did on a Friday night. He’d change jobs at the drop of a hat. He’d cancel plans because he “had to work” or he got “lost” on the subway, despite having grown up in the city. He’d disappear for hours or even days sometimes. He’d mention new and re-emerging female friends, calling me “crazy” for thinking there might be something going between him and some hot chick he was “just recording music” with. He’d tell me I was “ruining everything” by acting “paranoid,” and I started to believe him and backed off with the questions.

We met up one Friday night in the city. He said had been out skateboarding with friends all day and smoking weed. Prior to this he had claimed he never touched a drug in his life. I had caught him in another lie. I didn’t call him out on it though. I was tired of always asking questions and getting the runaround. What was the point? Besides, I was probably just being paranoid, right?

We went to a bar. I usually paid when we went out because he was broke. This night, though, we met a guy who wound up buying us round after round of drinks. As the night wore on, Navarro started asking me whether he could “get” the pixie-like bartender he thought was cute. They’d immediately start talking as soon as I went to the bathroom. When I’d return, he’d stare at her then look at me and laugh. It got old as the night went on, and I was getting drunker and more irritated. He was becoming more and more of a douchebag.

Another glance at her and giggle directed toward me and I had had enough. I demanded to see his phone. I was sure he had gotten her number the last time I was in the bathroom. He refused to let me see it. We started to fight. I went to the bathroom to try to cool down. When I came out, he was talking to her again. I lost it. I couldn’t believe how disrespectful he was being. I walked right up to him, gave him the finger and walked out.

I went about half a block and started crying, stopping to compose myself. The guy who had been buying us drinks had come looking for me after realizing what happened. He talked me into going back in, saying he knew Navarro hadn’t gotten her number.

When I returned, Navarro wouldn’t talk to me. He was pissed. Pissed that I had made him “look like an asshole” and left him sitting there alone. I told him he was being rude and deserved to be knocked down a notch. We sat in silence. When the drink guy came over to “check in,” I told him to leave us alone. Navarro blew up at me, turning the table and calling me a “rude bitch.” We started fighting again. I got up and told him I was going to the bathroom and then leaving, for real.

When I came out of the bathroom, he wasn’t at the bar anymore. I walked out the front door and found him outside with the drink guy. I stopped to say something but he rolled his eyes and turned away, so I left. I walked about two blocks, turned a corner and started to cry. It was 2 a.m. so decided to hail a cab, but before I could flag down an empty one, Navarro rounded the corner looking for me. What happened next was like something out of a reality show…

We spent the next hour fighting on a street corner, yelling at cabbies that pulled over to see if we wanted a ride. Where were you when I was trying to make a getaway? There was a strained mix of screaming, crying and silence. I again brought up that I was pissed he was flirting with the bartender in front of me. His response was, “Just because I flirt with someone doesn’t mean I’m gonna stick my dick in them!” Then he dropped a nugget: “I blew off my friend Angelica to hang out with you tonight, and this is how you act?!” What the hell does that mean? I decided it meant that this Angelica was someone else he was seeing and accused him of having a bonafide “girlfriend.”

This accusation lead to him dropping a series of bombshells: He started rattling off all the other girls he’d fucked since I’d known him—names I recognized and had accused him of lying about in the past. So, my suspicions were true. By this time he was screaming, “I use girls! I fuck ‘em and I dump ‘em. That’s what I do. I treat them like shit because that’s what they deserve.” Apparently he could see the horror in my eyes because he immediately did damage control. He started to cry: “You’re different. I treat you different. They’re down here, and you’re up here. I have so much respect for you, that’s why I didn’t want to be in a relationship with you. I’ll fuck it all up and we’ll end up never talking again. I don’t want that. I need you. I can’t let you go.” He started wiping the tears off my face, which only made me cry more.

My head was spinning. I had really opened a can of worms. I had been pressing him to admit he was lying, and he finally did…and now I didn’t want to hear it. It was too much. I was 35, standing on a busy street corner at 3 a.m. on a Friday night in May making a scene over a 23-year-old douchebag. It was a low-point I hadn’t hit since right after college…y’know, back when I was, like, 23. When the next cabbie pulled up and honked his horn, I got in. I couldn’t take any more.

The next day, I started looking for a therapist. Something needed to change. I needed to change. But, believe it or not, I hadn’t hit rock bottom yet.

Despite the mega-meltdown, Navarro contacted me the next day. He even apologized, which he had never done before. I stupidly thought maybe this was progress.

I wanted to talk about what happened, but that wasn’t his M.O. He liked to ignore things. It was almost as if he forgot they ever happened. I started to think it was easier that way too. We started talking again on a daily basis, but we didn’t really make plans to see each other.

He went quickly back to the “I love you” phase, once again fantasizing about moving in together and getting married. He swore up and down he wasn’t seeing anyone else. He’d have me sign onto Skype to show me his room so I could “see” no other girls were there. We’d be in contact almost non-stop—texting, IMing, talking on the phone.

He had a million ways to reach him, and utilized as many websites—MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, FormSpring, you name it. I had unfriended him from everything at one point, and now he wouldn’t refriend me on Facebook. This made me suspicious. He’d send me links to songs and videos he’d uploaded to various sites, so I’d check them out and read some of the comments while I was on the page. Once I noticed some flirty exchanges between him and girl named Angelica. Hm, Angelica. Wasn’t that the girl he told me he blew off that Friday night? I made a mental note.

Soon she started popping up more and more. They’d have cryptic conversations on public forums. I wasn’t going out of my way to find them—when he sent me a link to a new song he recorded, she’d be there commenting…referring to him as her “man” and writing things like “you’re mine” on his wall. I asked him about the comments and he told me it was just “some friend” who was “into him” but he had rejected. As usual, he’s call me “crazy” and say I was “ruining everything” with my probing so I’d back off. The cutesy comments between them continued. Was it really all in my head? I decided to investigate.

When I actually did some digging, I found comments he made about a “girlfriend” who clearly wasn’t me. It didn’t take too much effort to find out Angelica’s last name or piece together their cryptic conversations. He started updating his AIM status to say things like “she’s so sexy.” When I questioned him he’d tell me he was talking about his guitar. When he told me he was at work but left an away message reading “out with my new love,” he’d claim it was the new video camera he’d bought.

One day I came up with an idea, hoping to show him I was onto him and see if I could suss out whether this Angelica was indeed his girlfriend. When his status said “she’s awesome,” I posted a comment: “Thanks, baby. I think you’re awesome too :)” It was immediately followed by a comment from Angelica claiming her turf. Neither of us ever commented on his AIM statuses, but now it was out there. I knew what was going on, but he still thought he was smarter than me.

Without confronting him, I blocked his phone number. I really didn’t want to talk to him anymore. He popped up on instant messenger. I block his screen name. He popped up under a new one asking, “Why did you block me?” I told him I knew for a fact he had been lying to me. He said I was “making things up” in my head. I countered by saying knew who his “girlfriend” was and dropped the few details I knew about her—age, race, school, etc.—but didn’t say her name. He told me I was wrong, but admitted that in the few days we hadn’t talked he had met someone, dated her and dumped her. He then proceeded to describe a completely different girl (who I have come to believe was a second “girlfriend”). I typed in all caps, “YOU’RE LYING.” I let out a slew of accusations and expletives, and he basically challenged me to “prove” he was lying.

I was so enraged, I did something I have never done before…not even when I was 23. I contacted “the other woman.” Yup. I found Angelica on Facebook. I needed to know 100% whether it was true or if I was really losing it and being paranoid. I stayed up late writing her an email. And stayed up even later trying to decide whether I should actually send it. When I finally hit send, my email calmly and briefly asked her if she knew who “Dave Navarro” was and if she would mind telling me what their relationship was. She wrote me back almost immediately. (Maybe cut off here and start a new post.)

She told me he was her boyfriend and that they’d been together about two months, which was exactly when I started to get suspicious. She said she had no idea he was seeing anyone else. In fact, she had noticed my comments on his websites and caught my name coming up on his phone. When she asked him about me, he told her I was “into him” but he wasn’t interested in me and I wouldn’t leave him alone. He implied that I contacted him non-stop, begged him to move in with me and generally “stalked” him. He denied we ever had sex or that he had even seen me in months. She, of course, believed him for the most part. But she knew something was off, saying he was always “disappearing” and not contacting her for days, sometimes weeks, on end and then telling far-fetched stories about where he’d been.

We went back and forth via email a few times, piecing together stories and realizing he had sometimes seen us both on the same day or had blown one of us off for the other, like the Friday night “fight night.” I was devastated, and pissed. And so, so over it.

First thing the next morning I texted him: “Guess who I just talked to? Your GIRLFRIEND Angelica, and she had some very interesting things to say. Do not ever contact me again, you LIAR.” He never replied, but he immediately did damage control…with her. As soon as he got my text, he called her and claimed I was lying and just trying to ruin his life because he wasn’t interested in me. Angelica broke up with him on the spot.

Then, she wanted to talk to me on the phone to vent. I begrudgingly agreed—and that’s when shit really got crazy. (Another post?) Turned out he was an even bigger liar than I ever even imagined. In fact, it was like he was a completely different person.

Angelica told me Navarro did drugs, lots of them. Things far more serious than weed—coke, Xanax, oxycodin, you name it. She even implied he might deal them, and that he might be dangerous. She seemed to think he was capable of hitting her, saying she could tell by the scars on his back, which I just thought was backne, that he had been in numerous fights and was prepared for the worst if she came face-to-face with him. She claimed he would show her really depraved porn and laugh at the degrading things being done to women. I had never seen this side of him. Aside from him being stoned that one time and his occasional admission to watching online porn, there was no reason to believe any of what she said was true. But it didn’t seem completely impossible either.

But the thing that really freaked me out was something very mundane: I mentioned in passing to Angelica that Navarro was unemployed and doing odd jobs to scrape together money. She cut me short, asking, “He doesn’t have a job? He told me worked at Macy’s.” That was the job he had when I first met him, and he had proceeded to get fired or quit at least a half a dozen others in the two years since then. Now, as far as I knew, he wasn’t really working.

She proceeded to tell me that just a couple weeks prior, she slept over his place one night and in the morning he said he had to go to work. He got up, put on his uniform, showed her his Macy’s badge before pinning it on his shirt and left for work. As she told me the story, I realized I may have just spent two years dealing with a sociopath. I mean, pretending to go to work when you don’t actually have a job is a really, really crazy thing to do.

I know Angelica thought either I was lying or he had lied to me, because she confronted him about his job situation and reported back to me that he admitted he was unemployed.

While he supposedly begged her for days to give him another chance, I never heard a peep from him. Until…(do single posts about every recent time he contacts me?)

So, yeah, Dave Navarro…Then again, maybe I should thank Dave Navarro because without him, I would have never started this blog. I decided it might be highly entertaining, sometimes tissue-worthy or cringe-worthy—and maybe even helpful—to chronicle my time with “Navarro” and my other dating experiences…’cause it ain’t easy out there.