A few weeks ago, I was coming home from the gym and noticed I had 8 missed calls on my phone. Curious, I went to play the voicemail but the phone rang again from the same number interrupting me from my prompts. It was a Long Island number. Before picking up, I went through the options of who it could be. I knew it wasn't my mom because she's savvy and only calls on Skype, It couldn't be Kitty because we talk on e-mail chat and she's planning a wedding therefore calls to Paris isn't exactly in the budget, I knew it wasn't my grandmother because she refuses to acknowledge that I live in Paris and calling me on my Parisian cellphone would be excepting defeat, it could only be one other person. Katie the shady sublet and I knew exactly why she was frantically calling. She googled herself.
During my phase of panic and hysteria when I came back from summer vacation and realized that I had been robbed and my apartment was trashed, I was trying to get answers and to find my things. Katie took her sweet time responding to e-mails, pinning the crime on fictional characters with Italian names thinking that I'd empathize with 'my people' and feeding me lies that only a person with a serious personality disorder could cook up. In short, homegirl was playing me.
So now the tables have turned and the panic is on her side. It's unsettling when you can't control something that is happening overseas, isn't it? I remember that feeling all too well and I'm sorry to say but it feels good to trade places. Was I trying to get revenge? No, not at all. I just wanted my things back and to be respected as someone who really helped this little miscreant rat out, not to be lied to, ignored and talked down to by fictional characters. Unfortunately, in order to make the situation right for me, I had to make it so terribly wrong for her. I have since taken her last name off the blog as she has cooperated but only after getting shaken up a bit.
After my shower and a glass of wine, I felt relaxed enough to listen to her voicemail. I couldn't even imagine what my ears were about to hear. After a few seconds of heavy breathing she said, "You won...(5 second pause)...you've ruined my life....(5 second pause with breathing)...I have no friends...I have no job...my fiancé left me, you of all people know how that feels. My life is ruined because of you....(7 second pause)I don't deserve what you have done to me, I know you think I do but I don't...(3 second pause)...I'm nothing now...(4 second pause)because....of....you."
Hands down, it was the creepiest message I have ever received. It was if Courtney Love was calling me circa 1992 after the scandalous Vanity Fair article was published. Allow me touch on some points in regards to her drunken voicemail. First of all, she has nothing because of her. No one made her come in to my home, steal my things, trash it, flee the country, go into hiding then take me on a ride of calculated lies that changed each day. If what she said was true that all of her friends won't talk to her, well then I say good! I'm doing them a favor, she'll probably rip them off too at some point. As my Aunt Terry said "No one wakes up at 22 and decides to be a lying, cheating thief." This was certainly not her first rodeo. Sloppily done, but not her first.
The following morning and the preceding weeks later, I had received pages upon pages of e-mail apologies, more lies and sob stories on how she was raised on pasta and her family couldn't afford shampoo, that she never knew her father and that she couldn't resist the opportunity to wear "beautiful fashions". Suddenly she was deeply sorry but not because she felt that what she did was wrong but because there was a direct effect on her. Before her internet discovery, I couldn't get in touch with her, she stayed cool as a cucumber in the background and now it's my fault that she is stressed, lost her job and her fiancé left her and trying to to throw Monsieur Flaneur in my face like we are soul sister survivors in the battle of the sexes. MF didn't dump me because I lied, cheated and stole, he dumped me because he didn't think I was good enough. Big difference. But still ouch.
She then goes on to say how I am a strong woman, an influence and has handled hardship with aplomb (Aplomb? Clearly I'm paraphrasing). One, how embarrassing and two, hardship that she contributed to! She also tried to contact several media outlets to close my blog claiming that I am slandering her on the internet and that my readers are being unfair and biased in their comments. I emailed her the definition of slander and reminded her of the evidence that she has provided for me to support my case should she feel the need to escalate it. She did do all of those things, therefor it's not slander. Sociopaths are so self-centered, they think everyone is trying to attack them for no reason.
They say bad things come in threes. The break-up, the betrayal of 'friends' and the shady sublet? I hope that's it for this year. I think I paid my dues in life lessons and to quote the wise Jay-Z 'I've got 99 problems and a bitch ain't one'.
