I can’t remember his name so I will give him one. Devin. He was 32, blonde, sun kissed, and standing on a dock in the middle of nowhere. I couldn’t tell what color his eyes were but if I had to guess, they were blue. I hit “heart” and a few hours later, I felt his “heart” back vibrate against my jeans. It was December 2014 and I was 21.
Back then, the OKCupid app was clunky and I always gave out my cell because texting was easier. I gave Devin my number and his texts came in green on my iPhone 5. He tried calling me immediately after and I rejected the call. “Can’t talk now, what’s up?”
“Oh, sorry. Just wanted to say hi.”
I ignored this and went about my day, already forgetting him.
The next time he calls, he calls three times in a row at 9:45pm while I’m cramming for a Bio Anth final in the Philosophy building with two other girls. I pick up on the third, frustrated and already bored. I tell him I’m studying for a final in a flat tone and don’t run with any of the small talk he’s making. Eventually he says, “You know, I was excited to get to know you but I didn’t think you’d be such a bitch.” His words are like a dental drill buzzing too close to my pink gums.
I immediately stop breathing, faced with a challenge. I liked challenges, holding my hand over fire to see how long I could last until the burned flesh was too much. I liked stretching my endurance. I was young then, what an excuse.
I forgot what I said next, but my voice changed. I remember thinking of a kitten before its first time getting its claws trimmed, unwieldy and meaningless. I petted him with my voice, pressed my hand to its nose for familiarity. Devin told me he worked in entertainment, lived in Jersey but went often to New York for events and premieres. I told him I was an actor and director finishing up college. I told him where I went to school and thought about joining him for premieres. He asked me what I was into sexually, a conversation I was privy to having. Nothing scared me about sex anymore after I lost my virginity in London the year before. Out of all the questions he asked me, the only one I remember is did I like having things stuck up my ass. I forget what I answered but it probably wasn’t the truth.
“I wish I could meet you tonight”, his voice like gravel. “I’d love to pick you up and see you in person.” I told him I had to study for my final and he proposed to see me after I was done the next day for coffee before I went home for break. But we kept talking, and at one point, he called me from a different number. A work phone.
Devin demanded nudes a couple hours later. I sent him a couple I took weeks ago in the daylight, light pouring into my room as I faced my Macbook, my bottom half covered with my Marimekko duvet but my top exposed, an indie sleeze Rokeby Venus. My nipple piercing on my right breast twinkled as my pupils focused on the spot to the bottom right of my laptop’s digital eye. I remember feeling beautiful, classy, powerful when I took those, thinking they were a gift. Devin responded immediately that these were old photos and that he was insulted that I didn’t send him something new.
“I want you to go back to your dorm and send me 30 photos of yourself in 15 minutes.”
So I did. I sucked myself in, contorted my body and began clicking my iPhone camera. I sent him 30 and he asked to Facetime me. I said yes. I never thought I could say no or ask for photos in return. I don’t know whether I say this to prove I wasn’t asking for this or because I can’t objectively look back at this anymore.
He Facetimed me and I answered on my computer. His screen was black, I could not see his face. He told me he turned off all the lights and was too lazy to turn them on. I vaguely remember he said he had a cat or two. Did I see them? I can’t remember.
I can’t remember how it happened but I was laid back on my twin sized dorm mattress, pressing my cheap red marbled bullet vibrator from Spencer’s Gifts to my clit, fake moaning but trying to make it real. My eyes were fixed on the high cracked ceiling, avoiding the square of darkness on my laptop but more importantly ignoring my body reflected back to me, a form that felt so foreign and weak to me. I had a pit in my stomach that could’ve been sexual shame but felt coarser than that. I tried to ignore it. Devin’s voice was in my ear as I faked the build of an orgasm. Right before the false peak, he said, “now shove it up your ass.” I didn’t do it.
By that point it was 3am and my exam was in five hours. He agreed he’d see me after for coffee and I went to bed with a sour stomach.
I woke up and took my exam, running on acidic coffee and adrenaline. I remember passing my friend Carina in the dorms, pink and giddy because I found someone cool. We both always talked about our boy troubles at our small liberal arts school. I remember I imagined I was glowing telling her the news, like a drop of dew on a leaf.
Once I realized I had nothing packed, I called Devin and asked if we could reschedule coffee for when I returned in the spring semester. He hung up immediately and five minutes later, I received five texts from an unknown number—his other number I forgot to save. All five texts were photos of a man I didn’t know—a brunette with a dark goatee who looked about 250 pounds. Photos of him standing with friends outside, his arm wrapped around a woman’s waist in a bar, him wearing those wrap around glasses dads wore.
Another text came in. “I knew you wouldn’t like me because of how I looked.”
I can’t remember how my body felt when I got all of these texts. I called one of his numbers back, I can’t remember which. I could tell I was on speaker phone and asked him what this all meant.
“I have a medical condition where I look the way I do but I’m going to have surgery in a couple months. I wanted to find a person who could see beyond what I look like now so that when I look different, I know they will be with me because of who I am.” I pictured a fucked up version of Beauty and the Beast, my childhood VHS tape warped in the sun, all the cartoons twisted.
I couldn’t understand why I felt conflicted. He kept talking.
“Well, I’m already on my way to your college.”
“What?”
I only then recognized the fact that his voice sounded slightly farther away, in a tunnel. He was on speaker phone. I imagined his chubby hands on his steering wheel, every minute a couple feet closer to me.
“I’m getting off at your exit now, it’s too late for me to turn around.”
That’s when I remember how my body felt. It felt like glass.
I thought it would be easier to handle all of this on my own. I didn’t think to get campus police involved or anyone else. Devin had my nudes. It felt like I had already signed over my rights and my body and there was nothing I could do. I told him where to go after he passed through the entrance, campus police probably waved him in without looking up from their phones. His black minivan circling the campus like a vulture over a bunny with a broken leg, too stunned to move.
He pulled into the small parking lot of my dorm building. It was one of the older buildings on campus and the 4th floor was supposedly haunted by a girl who jumped out the window because some boy broke her heart. He got out of his van as I stood on the gravel. He had the same wrap around sunglasses, red adidas shorts that hit right at his knee, and adidas slides. I didn’t look at his toes for too long.
My plan was to say hello and send him on his way. But once his soft, sweaty flesh enveloped me, he said, “I thought I’d get to see your dorm.”
I remember walking him up to the second floor of the dorm, my shoes pressing into the grey carpeting, thinking “I have a loud scream, I have a loud scream.” Because even though I knew this wouldn’t end well, I thought I could handle it.
Devin sat on my bed, his flesh resting on the same Marimekko bedding in the photo I sent that he hated.I buzzed around the room packing. He wouldn’t stop talking. About New York, about events, about how he worked on Lord of the Rings—a fact I checked on IMDB later and his name wasn’t listed on any of the projects. As he kept going on, I kept checking the clock, seeing time constrict as my Dad drove closer and closer to me.
At one point, I remember telling him he needed to leave, that I didn’t want my father to meet him like this. He asked me to sit on the bed with him, my worn stuffed elephant as the only witness as he said, “I’m not leaving until you kiss me.”
I wish I had taken the time to think, to slow down, to pause time. To rewind, to enter this dorm room as I am now, to grab my hand and run screaming down my hall. Knocking on doors until someone came out. I picture this now and my screams are silent. She lets go of my hand because no one comes out, no one hears me, and she returns to her dorm room, sits down, and kisses him.
I have never felt my body shake as violently as it did then. Every muscle in me was alive, knocking against my skin like bees in a hive of flesh. I pulled away and remember seeing this booger, this gleaming moist pea green lump of rejected bacteria hanging from his right nostril and being disgusted. “I could tell you wanted more.” He said with a grin.
He left shortly after because I said my dad was nearby. I forget if I kissed him again, and my dad arrived 30 minutes later with my sister in tow. We packed the car and drove back to Rhode Island. Right before my dad came, Devin called me again on speaker phone.
“I know your dad wasn’t almost there. Don’t you ever lie to me again.”
That night, I went to the 99 with my high school friends. After three five dollar margaritas, I told them numbly that I was catfished. I told the story like it was a joke, looking for laughs along the way. Three of my guy friends looked stunned, one of them saying, “Christ, are you alright?”
The only thing that comes back clearly is what my only girlfriend said, “Are you sure you didn’t do anything enticing?”
I called my therapist the next day and told her what happened.
“I need you to block both of his numbers. This man has done this before, he has a story and a system to manipulate women.” she said. “Once you return to school, you need to report this to campus police.”
But I didn’t heed this advice. I thought I could fix this. I texted him a couple days later and explained to him that I really couldn’t get into anything serious with my senior thesis coming up in the spring. It really wasn’t him or his looks (or his lie), it was all me.
What came next was a large paragraph, jumbled and clearly voice to text, but the one thing that stands like a monument in my mind was that “he didn’t want to be my friend he would find a way to fuck me he would.” I blocked both of his numbers. I deleted my OKCupid account and never redownload it.
I told some of my good friends what happened to me when I returned in the spring semester, always when I was drunk or stoned. I figured it was a good party trick, like my nipple piercing—something initially painful that turns into a cheap novelty.
There was something about seeing people react to the story. How they laughed at the term “catfish” and then their faces shifted and landed in a place of concern. I watched this happen time and time again, hoping that concern would rub off on me. It never did.
I graduated in May 2015, age 22. I packed up my parents’ car and stayed in a hotel with my best friend for our last night in Jersey. “The Graduate” was on TV, Katherine Ross in her wedding gown and Dustin Hoffman staring straight ahead into a world we never see.
It is now February 2017. I have forgotten about Devin. I live in Brooklyn and work as an executive receptionist for a luxury real estate company. I get a text from an unknown number around 3pm, nothing atypical as a girl who goes on a lot of first and only dates.
“Hey beautiful.”
“Who is this?”
“Devin.”
“Sorry I don’t know of a Devin.”
“From December 2014.”
Just as my brain made the connection, I received a photo of myself. Nude from the tip of my breasts up, a small smile painted on my face. My eyes locked with the digital eye of my phone.
Another text. “I just wanted to see if this girl was still single.”
I can’t remember how I thought of it but I texted back, “So sorry! I think you have the wrong number! Best of luck finding her.” And blocked the number.
All I can remember was sitting in a packed L train during rush hour, feeling like I was being hunted, that he saw me hiding in Brooklyn. He knew where I was at every moment. I called both my Providence based therapist and my new New York based therapist as I walked home in the park. One said she was impressed by my text to him and the other said this had nothing to do with me, that this was some indication that he was flailing and reaching out to older situations. I pictured him in some basement in his same red adidas shorts and adidas slides, a single booger hanging from his nostril, the only light coming from a laptop as he shot off messages like bullets from a sniper rifle into the void.
“You could be in Africa for all he knows.” I tried to believe that as I struggled to find sleep that night.
Devin never tried to contact me again.
I grew up thinking that love could be served up on a spoon or a knife, but it was love just the same. I had no concept of what negging was, what manipulation could look like, the idea of revenge porn was just whispers and nothing legitimate. For years I looked back and thought what an incredible idiot I was. How I got out by the skin of my teeth. How it really wasn’t that bad, all he did was kiss me in a small dorm I invited him into. How I should’ve known better. I retold this story countless times and I guess I was waiting for someone to ask why I did what I did so I could finally say that I did it for love.