Next Time, Cut the Dose in Half

Submitted by Ashley:

I agreed to go out on a date with this guy.  We shared a mutual friend and had a few nice phone conversations prior to deciding to meet up.  When I arrived at our meeting place, he offered to drive us both to dinner.

He spent the entire drive and most of dinner talking about himself: who he knows, his "connections," his acting career, etc.  I maybe was able to get a sentence or two in every 10 minutes. 

Towards the end of dinner, the conversation switched to the sort of girls he liked, what he was looking for, and finally all about his ex-girlfriend.  He went on and on about how badly she hurt him, how depressed he was for the longest time, and how he didn't feel ready to date until just recently.

At that point I recognized that the boy wasn't ready to date.  I decided to just enjoy the free meal, nodding along to whatever he said, anxiously waiting for the date to be over.

At some point he looked at his watch and abruptly ended the date.  He stated that he had somewhere to be and needed to take me back to my car.

As we left the restaurant, he continued to talk about the hard time he had with his ex.  He went into more details about his depression until he finally admitted that he was on anti-anxiety medication, anti-depressants, and anti-psychotics.

He asked me if I had ever needed to take BuSpar (an anti-anxiety medication).  I answered, "No."  He then offered his experience while taking BuSpar.

"I would take my BuSpar and then wake up three or four hours later from a trance like state.  While in this state I would develop multiple personalities.  One of them, 'Angry Joe," would fantasize about killing my ex.  I would wake up from this trance, standing in a corner, with my hands shaped like they were around her neck, strangling her.  If I could, I would have jumped on a plane to Florida and killed her."

He released the steering wheel, held up his hands like he was going to strangle someone, looked at me with the craziest look in his eyes, and loudly stated, "You know Ashley, I understand crimes of passion.  I understand how crimes of passion happen.  I would have killed her.  I wanted to kill her so many times.  She's lucky I moved back here from Florida."

I remained silent until we got to my car.  Once we made it back, I got out of his car and thanked him for dinner, then got into my car and locked all the doors.

Before I got home, he called my cell and left a voicemail that thanked me for being such a good listener and apologized for cutting our date short.  He then explained that he had a late appointment with his psychologist that evening.  He ended the voicemail by saying that he had such a great time and couldn't wait to see me again.

Needless to say I never responded.