Before I met Ted, my boyfriend of a year and a half (who shares my disdain for Valentine’s Day), I dated an interesting cast of characters. So if you find yourself single, upset with your significant other, or working this Valentine’s Day, at least you’re not dating one of these guys…

Turnpike Mike

A couple of months after my breakup with my ex Eric in late 2005, I dated different people, trying desperately to look for “the one” that would help me forget Eric. So one day as I paid my toll, I mustered up the courage to give the handsome 22-year-old toll man my number.

“How’s it going?” he asked.

I had seen him many times while paying the toll before: the slightly muscular, cream-colored man with a friendly grin and dark bluish green eyes.

“Um, I wanted to give you this,” I said, handing him a folded up Turnpike receipt with my cell phone number on the back.

I drove off so fast, I didn’t wait to hear his response. But then my phone rang five hours later and “Turnpike Mike,” as he called himself, said he was interested in me.

There was just one problem: the phone wouldn’t stop ringing. He called several times a day, even when he was at work collecting tolls.

“So when are we gonna go out?” he asked. I had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.

My usual white lies included: “I’m working late” or “I’ve made plans with friends.” But once I exhausted my excuses, I came up with, “I can’t go out tonight – I’ve got to do my taxes,” as my former colleague Sonja giggled in the background. He got the message and never called again.

Haddonfield Hottie

I gingerly applied red glitter lipstick, a red scarf with white hearts, a cotton red skirt that fell just above the knee, and a soft pink long-sleeved shirt. I looked more like a candy bar than a sexy vixen as I waited for Mike (yes, another Mike!) to pick me up for our Valentine’s date in 2003.

Mike was a thin, bashful, blonde-haired blue-eyed South Jersey boy who took two political science classes back to back with me. When he impressed me with his Spanish-speaking skills, I befriended him and he soon asked me out for Valentine’s.

My heart was ready to come out of my mouth when I saw Mike approaching the front door to my dorm with a rose and a teddy bear. “Esto es para ti,” he said in slightly accented Spanish.

But the date was less than great. While I liked the Italian film with English subtitles we watched, I felt uncomfortable with the fact that his roommate munched on chips and typed away on his computer while we were on our “date.” Mike and I couldn’t kiss or hold hands without feeling awkward.

Though Mike seemed interested in me, a few weeks later he said he “wasn’t ready” for a relationship, and avoided me in our classes.

Alex the Stalker

Riding on a bus on my way to my Northern New Jersey home for the weekend in late 2003, I struck up a conversation with Alex, a newspaper photographer who had recently emigrated from Venezuela. Since we both had journalism backgrounds, we talked about careers and school and I didn’t think twice when he offered to walk me home.

“Can I get your number? I need someone to practice English with, and I don’t have many friends here,” said Alex, 27, a brown-haired brown-eyed 5’8” man.

“Sure,” I responded, thinking he was harmless.

During the next two weeks, he called at least 10 times each day. When I did pick up, I told him firmly that I was taking classes or working at my college paper, and had no time for him.

But that didn’t deter him and one weekend when I came home to study, I found him standing by my front porch.

“You’re never home. I always knock on the door and see your cat and dog by the window but you’re never here. Maybe you’ll invite me to dinner so I could meet your parents?” he asked. I was still in shock, scared that he would return to harm my parents or my animals since he knew where I lived.

My lips quivered as I told him to leave me alone and if he failed to do so, I would call the police.

He was angry and called me “an immature 20-year-old,” but he did stop calling.

A few months after that, he spotted me on a bus and sat next to me, only to declare in front of the 20 passengers on the bus that “he had found a girlfriend even though I broke his heart.”

Good riddance.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 13th, 2008 at 7:59 am and is filed under General, New Jersey, Blogroll, Immigration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.