Let's Not Meet Again

Guy From The Pub

Ok let me start off by saying that I am not a street smart person. Or I wasn't back several years ago when this occurred. Ive always been pretty naive and trusting, sadly, which has landed me in some pretty crappy situations. But this one was by far the scariest.

So I had just recently gone through a really, really shitty bitter horrible break up with my boyfriend and found myself living alone after he packed his bags and left. I didn't really know many people in the area and so tended to turn to the internet to pass the time. Long story short I started chatting to a guy (let's call him John) and we started hitting it off and it turned out he lived really near me. And by really near me I mean like probably a half hour walk away. So we decide to meet up the next day and see how it went. I phoned my friend (Let's call her Anne. Anne is infinitely wiser and more cynical than I) and told her what the plan was. She insisted she come with me as I didn't know this guy, he could be an ax murderer, blah blah. So the next day Anne and I met with John at around lunch time in a local pub. It was mid summer so we sat outside in the beer garden. It was pretty busy despite it being lunchtime and this place was right next to a busy road, so there was nothing to worry about, right?

Well we get some food and a beer, and we are all chatting and its going pretty well, we are all hitting it off and having a laugh. We are taking turns to go to the bar to get a round (I don't know if this is a term outside of England - where one person buys drinks for the whole group, then later the next person goes and does the same, so on and so on.) So the day is turning into the afternoon, which is turning into the evening. The pub is filling up and we barely notice the time going by as we are having a good time and we are filled with 5 or 6 beers by this time so we are pretty tipsy too. So John goes to the bar to get his round in and the next thing I know I'm waking up the next morning, in my own bed, my face is hurting and there is blood all over my sheets. I start freaking out at this point because I have literally no recollection of what the hell happened between about 8pm and waking up the next day. I don't know where the blood has come from and I don't know why I'm hurting. So tentatively I get up and take a look in the mirror.

Now my face is an absolute mess. I look like I've been in a fight and lost badly. I have a black eye, split lip, half of my face is just scraped and bruised. I felt sick. I was totally gobsmacked. What the hell happened? So I open my bedroom door to go to the bathroom when I see out of the corner of my eye John laying naked on my sofa. Now at this point I'm just losing my mind and start yelling at him like crazy demanding he tell me what the fuck was going on. He eventually calms me down and explains to me that I got out of my mind wasted the night before and I was embarrassing myself, slurring and stumbling all over the place and eventually I fell over a picnic bench and hit my head pretty hard. Apparently I was bleeding and refusing help from anyone so he called a cab and brought me home like the absolute knight in shining armour that he is.

I didn't remember ANY of this. Not one single moment. I had a million questions but at the same time I was utterly speechless. I know I'd had a few to drink but it was no more than an average person would consume at a night out in a club, and I had had many of those. Was it possible that I just had that one too many? I guess so. What other explanation was there? I just looked at John with my mouth open, head absolutely pounding, and eventually managed to muster "I'm gonna be sick". So John looked after me that morning. He peppered the day with the odd tale of dumb things I'd done the night before and how I must be so grateful because anything could have happened to me and I never would have got back without him. I ate and got dressed and by that afternoon I was feeling better so he said he wanted to take me to his house and make me dinner so we could resume our date - you know, from the point where I'd ruined it by getting black out drunk. So I said yeah sure, it was nice of him to still want to hang out after everything. Like I said, I am a naive twat. I really don't have much situational awareness at all. So we get to his house late in the afternoon. But when I say house... He lived in a static caravan. In a caravan park. I mean it was nice enough inside, but I couldn't help but get a creepy vibe from it. it was TINY. The layout was, you open the front door into the living room, then further in you have the kitchen and dining area, then through a door into a tiny hall you have 2 small bedrooms and the small bathroom, and then after that there's a "back" door and the main bedroom. Now I'm sitting in the dining area while He's cooking and we are just generally making chit chat. I'm feeling pretty awkward now because I can still remember absolutely nothing of the night before so it feels a little like theres already been a power shift. Like he knows more about me than I'm aware of and it's really uncomfy. I decide I would eat his food then politely excuse myself home. I didn't know what I was thinking coming here in the first place. I'm a pretty go-with-the-flow type person but even I had started thinking what am I even doing here?

Just then he asks how I'm feeling, and as I'm deep in thought I don't even think about my reply "I feel like I've been drugged" I said distractedly. Well at this point he just FLIPS THE FUCK OUT. I mean he's just going insane. saying what am i accusing him of, and how dare I accuse him of things and I can't prove it and I'm just trying to cause all sorts of problems for him and he's on parole so I'm basically sending him back to jail with my lies. I had no idea at all that he was on parole. He would later tell me in his insane rambling texting sessions that he was arrested for domestic assault. great. He starts literally getting stuff off the kitchen sides and just smashing them. Throwing plates, against the wall, pulled the toaster out of the socket and smashed that on the floor, just absolutely having a meltdown whilst I'm sitting at this tiny caravan dining table like 5 feet away just thinking what the fuck is even happening right now? I move to stand up and tell him I think I'd better go, when he suddenly lunges at me and shoves me as hard as he can and I'm on my knees and he's laying blows into me telling me I'm not going anywhere. He's between me and the front door at this point and I can't see an escape route so I turn heel and just run through the corridor with him chasing just inches behind me.

I dive in the nearest door and slam it shut and sit with my back to it so he can't get in. I'm in the tiny spare room and there's no window that opens. I'm trapped there. He's outside pounding at the door and calling me every vile curse word in his vocabulary. I yell at him to go away and he stops banging. I hear him leave for a few moments then all of a sudden:

THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.

He's trying to break down the door. I'm absolutely terrified at this point and pushing with all my weight back against the door as if my life depended on it. Which i guess it did, really. the thumping carries on for what seemed like forever. Then I guess he got tired or something and I heard him go into the living room and start shuffling around. I still stayed backed against that door sobbing for at least another hour. Eventually I hear the tv come on! He's actually sitting chilling watching some tv like nothing whilst he's basically got a hostage cowering in his spare bedroom. I felt a flick of anger and adrenaline at this point and I ever so slowly and quietly open the door and peer out. The hall is in darkness and the door to the living room is shut. I'm alone but I'd have to walk past him to get to the front door. I'm desperately thinking of a way I can get out when I remember the back door. I creep over to it as silently as I could and prayed that it was unlocked. It was. I silently thanked every single God I could think of and crept out shutting the door silently behind me. I crept down the steps and then just ran. Just ran and ran just sobbing and delirious and so fucking utterly confused. I had no idea where I was. It was pitch dark and I'd never been to this part of town before. I ran to the nearest payphone and used the change in my pocket to call my friend to come and pick me up. My bag and purse were still in John's caravan along with some other personal possessions I just abandoned.

My friend drove me home and I sobbed the whole way home. I never told him what had happened and he never asked. I just got home and went to bed and cried myself to sleep. The next morning I wake up and find my phone that I've left at home. It has about 50 text messages on it. mostly from John. Telling me he's gonna petrol bomb my house and kill my family and if he ever saw me in the street he would stab me to death and he'd happily go to jail if it meant I was dead. I deleted them all. I was scared out of my mind. I just wanted it all to be over and to forget about him. I never really told anybody what happened, not to the full extent anyway. As the days went by I would get crazy rambling texts from him, one moment threatening to kill me and the next moment telling me he loves me and he's sorry. I deleted every single one as soon as I received it. They gradually got less frequent and I changed my number not long after and didn't hear from him again. t got in contact with Anne a while later. Turns out she has no memory from about 8pm that night and her boyfriend had an incoherent voice message from her just babbling and screaming and crying. He picked her up wandering bewildered around a nearby housing estate.

I know we should have gone to the police. I know I should have told somebody. I know there is a million things I could have done, but I just wanted it to be over. It was the surrealist thing that had ever happened to me and I still sometimes think back to it and wonder if it really happened because it was just so insane. So crazy psycho online date guy - let's not ever meet again.