For those of you just joining us....
Mar. 12th, 2009 12:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysobelleIn 2002, I went to this party, met this guy. We hit it off. Blue eyes, long blond hair. He was wearing cool boots. We had some mutual friends. I gave him my number, I think, but he didn't call. Mutual friends told me he'd met some girl online, and moved to Canada to marry her. Loser, I thought. But almost a year later, I was in the back of a car getting carted around NCRF-land, and I got an email on my phone-- same guy, wanting to know if maybe we could have that dinner date.
I met him for sushi, and we wound up almost living together for about nine months. As you might surmise, he didn't have issues-- he had the Library of Congress. A codependent relationship with his ex, with whom he was still living. A ridiculously exaggerated love of his membership card for the Church of Satan. An adamant refusal to get a bank account or a car because he "didn't want anything the Government could come and take away." A "secret" way he'd discovered to legally not pay his taxes. A slight-- ahem-- problem with alcohol. The tattoo he couldn't afford but got anyway that he swore was really an Old Norse wheel. An annoying habit of laughing when he said things he knew would piss me off. He laughed a lot. There was some other stuff, too, that I won't go into, but that would probably make some of my friends break him into tiny pieces if he ever showed up. I probably wouldn't stop them. Okay, I might do a Willy-Wonka-Oh-No-Stop. Maybe.
And then there was the time he started speaking to me in German in bed. The only word I caught was "Judenfrau." Ohhh, yeah.
I mean, I knew there was something wrong on our second date, when he wore all black, with a button-down black shirt crossed by a sam brown belt, and a black tie. And his black pants tucked into his knee-high black steel-toed boots. I knew. I just kept saying, "No way! He knows I'm Jewish. No WAY."
Yeah. Way. His favourite movie was "The Night Porter," and that's pretty much the life he wanted to build for us. He even applied for a job as a night auditor at the local Holiday Inn.
All I can say is I was young and stupid. And yes, I know six years isn't that long a time ago. But I'd never actually met a Neo-Nazi, and I honestly...well, maybe I just didn't believe in them, somehow. So I gave him prim comebacks and tried to talk to him seriously about his attitude, and introduced him to my Jewish friends and family, and argued back when he started complaining about African Americans, or Mexicans, or you-name-it. Anyway, one night, we got into a fight and he said some really cruel things. He also said I should send my puppy back to the breeder and get my money back, as I needed money more than a dog. I realised two things: Clue was far, far more important, and I was fighting for something not worth saving.
So a few days later, after he went on yet another rant about Mexicans in his LiveJournal (an account I'd gotten for him, back when you still needed invite codes), I called him on it, right in front of his friends with ridiculous names like NaziNazi and Panzer and crap like that. I told him maybe someone who didn't pay taxes or vote didn't have the right to critique those of us who did. Trust me, I knew exactly what I was doing. Sure enough, he completely blew up-- not that I'd disagreed, but that I'd told people he didn't pay his taxes or vote. Like I said, issues.
He called that night, and sputtered that he was too angry to come over as we'd planned. In the middle of answering him, someone knocked on my door. It was evening, and I wasn't expecting anyone, but instead of being even vaguely concerned that there might be an axe murderer-- or, gasp! a minority!-- at my door, he went on about how righteously indignant he was, and that he just needed to hang up. So I saved him the trouble and hung up on him. And after I answered the door-- it was Korman maintenance-- I packed up all of his things.
His housekey arrived in the mail with a semi-coherent letter about trust and betrayal on the same day I left his boxes on his doorstep.
I will say it was only after the break I think he really just let it all hang out in his endearingly Aryan way. He started dating a Messianic Jew (which was a whole other argument), and for her birthday, he apparently bought her a super surprise gift! An authentic Nazi Waffen SS helmet! Wow! What girl wouldn't want that! And he started talking about his "regalia." Months later, I looked at his LJ, and it was covered in anti-Semitic, racist propaganda. He either stopped trying to resist it, or just stopped trying to hide it.
I make a lot of jokes about the whole episode now, cos, seriously, you want a worst-boyfriend-ever story? Ha! Don't try to beat me on this! But it really did some damage. I have an almost knee-jerk reaction to distrust anyone who brings up any kind of Jewish issue unless I know them well, or know they're Jewish. I'm enraged by people who wave dismissive hands when anti-Semitic incidents happen right in front of them. I feel older now, and much more jaded. I half-jokingly say that he didn't just take off my rose-coloured glasses, he stomped them under his jackboots.
Sigh. I really meant this to be a brief, snappy quip about the Neo-Nazi I used to date. I think, though, parts of the whole mess have been floating around in my head lately, so there's obviously something I needed to take out and examine again. Something I need to make sure I've learned, or have yet to figure out. I mean, when I screw up in a relationship, I don't make a little error-- I make a giant, colossal mistake. Yet there's usually something to pull from the ashes-- some small bit of hard-won wisdom. In a terrible way, I suppose, this particular screw-up made me a more politically active human, and a more dedicated Jew. But honest to G-d, couldn't there have been an easier way to go about it?
I met him for sushi, and we wound up almost living together for about nine months. As you might surmise, he didn't have issues-- he had the Library of Congress. A codependent relationship with his ex, with whom he was still living. A ridiculously exaggerated love of his membership card for the Church of Satan. An adamant refusal to get a bank account or a car because he "didn't want anything the Government could come and take away." A "secret" way he'd discovered to legally not pay his taxes. A slight-- ahem-- problem with alcohol. The tattoo he couldn't afford but got anyway that he swore was really an Old Norse wheel. An annoying habit of laughing when he said things he knew would piss me off. He laughed a lot. There was some other stuff, too, that I won't go into, but that would probably make some of my friends break him into tiny pieces if he ever showed up. I probably wouldn't stop them. Okay, I might do a Willy-Wonka-Oh-No-Stop. Maybe.
And then there was the time he started speaking to me in German in bed. The only word I caught was "Judenfrau." Ohhh, yeah.
I mean, I knew there was something wrong on our second date, when he wore all black, with a button-down black shirt crossed by a sam brown belt, and a black tie. And his black pants tucked into his knee-high black steel-toed boots. I knew. I just kept saying, "No way! He knows I'm Jewish. No WAY."
Yeah. Way. His favourite movie was "The Night Porter," and that's pretty much the life he wanted to build for us. He even applied for a job as a night auditor at the local Holiday Inn.
All I can say is I was young and stupid. And yes, I know six years isn't that long a time ago. But I'd never actually met a Neo-Nazi, and I honestly...well, maybe I just didn't believe in them, somehow. So I gave him prim comebacks and tried to talk to him seriously about his attitude, and introduced him to my Jewish friends and family, and argued back when he started complaining about African Americans, or Mexicans, or you-name-it. Anyway, one night, we got into a fight and he said some really cruel things. He also said I should send my puppy back to the breeder and get my money back, as I needed money more than a dog. I realised two things: Clue was far, far more important, and I was fighting for something not worth saving.
So a few days later, after he went on yet another rant about Mexicans in his LiveJournal (an account I'd gotten for him, back when you still needed invite codes), I called him on it, right in front of his friends with ridiculous names like NaziNazi and Panzer and crap like that. I told him maybe someone who didn't pay taxes or vote didn't have the right to critique those of us who did. Trust me, I knew exactly what I was doing. Sure enough, he completely blew up-- not that I'd disagreed, but that I'd told people he didn't pay his taxes or vote. Like I said, issues.
He called that night, and sputtered that he was too angry to come over as we'd planned. In the middle of answering him, someone knocked on my door. It was evening, and I wasn't expecting anyone, but instead of being even vaguely concerned that there might be an axe murderer-- or, gasp! a minority!-- at my door, he went on about how righteously indignant he was, and that he just needed to hang up. So I saved him the trouble and hung up on him. And after I answered the door-- it was Korman maintenance-- I packed up all of his things.
His housekey arrived in the mail with a semi-coherent letter about trust and betrayal on the same day I left his boxes on his doorstep.
I will say it was only after the break I think he really just let it all hang out in his endearingly Aryan way. He started dating a Messianic Jew (which was a whole other argument), and for her birthday, he apparently bought her a super surprise gift! An authentic Nazi Waffen SS helmet! Wow! What girl wouldn't want that! And he started talking about his "regalia." Months later, I looked at his LJ, and it was covered in anti-Semitic, racist propaganda. He either stopped trying to resist it, or just stopped trying to hide it.
I make a lot of jokes about the whole episode now, cos, seriously, you want a worst-boyfriend-ever story? Ha! Don't try to beat me on this! But it really did some damage. I have an almost knee-jerk reaction to distrust anyone who brings up any kind of Jewish issue unless I know them well, or know they're Jewish. I'm enraged by people who wave dismissive hands when anti-Semitic incidents happen right in front of them. I feel older now, and much more jaded. I half-jokingly say that he didn't just take off my rose-coloured glasses, he stomped them under his jackboots.
Sigh. I really meant this to be a brief, snappy quip about the Neo-Nazi I used to date. I think, though, parts of the whole mess have been floating around in my head lately, so there's obviously something I needed to take out and examine again. Something I need to make sure I've learned, or have yet to figure out. I mean, when I screw up in a relationship, I don't make a little error-- I make a giant, colossal mistake. Yet there's usually something to pull from the ashes-- some small bit of hard-won wisdom. In a terrible way, I suppose, this particular screw-up made me a more politically active human, and a more dedicated Jew. But honest to G-d, couldn't there have been an easier way to go about it?