Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Dating a Soldier in Afghanistan

After MB's melt down, and rise from the dead, we were friendly again. I moved with caution. Not knowing when she would explode again. I didn't need rides from her because I was crashing in the break room, working and attending classes. I tried not to think about Mike, it wasn't easy considering the school was around the corner from his place. I was too busy to wallow though.

Before Mike, while still at Cindy's, I talked to a few other guys online. One of them was Tom, 42, 6ft2, could have been any race from his complexion. He was bald, so I couldn't tell from the texture of his hair. He was a soldier deployed in Afghanistan. He had been in the army for ten years and was doing his final run. He was a divorced from his wife of 10 years.

We talked for quite a while. Our conversations would be cut short because he was on duty when we chatted on yahoo. He had this cute picture of himself as a profile pic on his yahoo. He would always message me during the night, my time. I would wake up to his message which was really nice and a great way to start the day. Sometimes I would catch him online, we would exchange a few words before he would have to go again, usually without a warning.

He told me he has a condo in Salt LAke City. He wanted to get married and have us live there as a couple. He had kid, 10 and 8. They live with his late ex wife's parents in the UK. Tom would send me really long messages, we like long messages!

One night, I was thinking about him and the conversations we had had. He had told me that he was going to be back in 18 days. The countdown was so on.  I asked him again, after a few days, he  told me 13 days to go. That was right. But When I asked him the third time, he was way off. He told me something like 17 days left. That raised a huge red flag to me. If you are so looking forward to going home, how do you make that kind of mistake? I didn't dwell on it though.

I went to sleep hours after the conversation. Suddenly something said to me, look this mutha f$cker up! I couldn't shake that voice so I got up, turned the pc on and went to town. I had already looked his email address up and got nothing. I looked up his IP address, which isn't reliable because he may have been using a proxy site. It picked him up both in San Fran and Los Angeles. Both in California, but miles apart (8 hours drive or so); but it wasn't Afghanistan! I tried the images he had sent me. Voila! Bob's your uncle! There were so many posts on him. He is a scammer who goes by different aliases trying to get women to send him money in Afghanistan when he is stuck blah blah blah. Apparently he also gets stuck at the airport on his way into the US. We hadn't got to that stage yet, him and I. He was still grooming me. My heart could have jumped right out of my heart!

Everything with him changed from how I knew it. He turned out not to be who he said he was. I always look up people I meet online before meeting up in person. Things were different with Tom because we didn't have to meet in person for another 13 days or 17 days? F#ck if I know! I registered on one of the sites and shared my experience with him. I posted his photo on Social Media just in case he tries to scam one of my friends. Because we had been talking so long, the following morning, I checked my phone expecting to hear from him. No word! He may have had some spy software on my PC through which he was able to see my activities. How else would you explain him no longer writing immediately after busting him?

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