Narcish Favors

In the mind-set of Wottaprick, he was always doing me favors, indeed one of his favorite sentences was, "look at all I`ve done for you" (and when I left him it was, "and after all I`ve done for you").

At the start, when he offered to do something for me, I was as grateful as if he had already done it, and he kind of preened and puffed up a little as if he had also believed he had already done it. But as our "relationshit" progressed, I couldn`t help noticing that he usually didn`t do the things he had offered to, so my response to his offering to do something for me became a little guarded. At this point he included "ungrateful" in the adjectives he was now using to describe me.

He was the ONLY man I ever met, boyfriend or non-boyfriend, who could watch me struggle with something that was too heavy for me without offering to help, or just coming over and helping. He used to watch me as if I were a fly that he`d just sprayed with fly-killer and was wondering how long it would take to die, and how many hopeless attempts it would make to right itself before it finally gave up the ghost. (Doubtless that is what I looked like, from his perspective.)

The only favors he ever really granted me (apart from access to his all-pervasive wisdom and his incandescent sex-drive - when he was there)were (a)fixing our bicycles (only at the start), (b) fixing my car (once) and (c) fixing my computer.

I must interject at this point that Wottaprick really enjoyed messing with machines, and that he frequently used a perceived or real necessity to mess with a machine as a way of avoiding relationshit. He invariably became extremely angry when this darker aspect of his "favors" was mentioned. The word "ungrateful" began to crop up more often in his frequent analyses of my (obviously) no longer so magnetically attractive personality.

Wottaprick works with computers. When I first met him, he admitted to me that he was ashamed at earning so much money for doing so little work. Later he "confided" that some days he would do nothing but surf in Internet all day, and still got paid for it 3 times more than I did for working my butt off all day. (At this he puffed up a little more).

So given his work and his tendency to prefer messing with machines to engaging relationship on the rare occasions he was actually physically there (although we were living together, he had a job which took him overseas (increasingly), plus he had his children, his hobbies and his job, what kind of a monster must I be to put myself between him and any of those?), it was predictable that his favors would come to circle increasingly around my computer. And they did.

I didn`t want him messing with my computer. He used to change everything around and I couldn`t find anything any more. He would never ask. I used to suspect he was reading my personal folders, too. Besides, I started programming computers when they were still programmed with punch cards. I`m really good with computers. Plus I`ve always had to deal with really antiquated systems gasping their last at coping with the vagaries of todays technology and getting at least twenty viruses every day. I`m even a reasonably good hacker. Wottaprick couldn`t cope with those kind of things. He was spoiled. His firm paid for the computers he used at work, and his mother paid for the computer he used at home; since both his firm and his mother had more money than sense, he never met a machine that didn`t function perfectly all the time until he accosted me.

Things were always going wrong with my computer. When he was in a good mood (which became increasingly rare the longer we were together) he would say, "Tigerlily, that system is antiquated, I`m gonna buy you a new one". And I would say (guardedly) "Oh, thanks, Wottaprick", knowing full well it wouldn`t happen.

When he was in a bad mood (which became increasingly consistent) he would say, "I don`t know what you DO to your computers, Tigerlily - you`re just as bad as my children".

He wouldn`t let me solve my problems myself. He would elbow me out of the way, complaining that I was neglecting him, when I tried to solve them, and then sit for two weeks in front of my computer, only emerging to bang around, shout how awful it was to come home after spending all day at work in front of a computer and "have to" sit in front of a computer at home too, slam doors, storm off, get drunk - and God help me if I DARED to mention HE was neglecting ME. My ingratitude became my most prevalent trait. I was ingratitude personified.

The crowning glory was, he finally got it to work (according to his parameters). He changed the hard disk and screwed some mother-fucking board harder, or something - I didn`t quite get that bit. I was duly grateful, thanked him 5 or 6 times, praised him etc. and then he said "I think I ought to be the only person allowed to change anything on your computer". I said, "what?" and he said, "well, ever time you change anything on it, it goes wrong".

I took a very deep breath, counted to ten and said, "Wottaprick, you can`t do that. You can`t tell a fifty-year old woman who has ALWAYS managed her own computer that she can`t change anything on her own computer any more. You just can`t do that". And he said, "Well, actually, it`s not your computer any more". And I said, "Why not?" and he said, "because it`s got my hard disk in it".

I fixated him with my own version of a narcish stare and went off to sleep in the guest bedroom. The next morning, for the first time ever, I didn`t wake him and send him off to work with tea and a nice breakfast, but slept in instead.

And when I finally got to my computer, I found it connected to my brand new super-class monitor screen, my new super-class printer, my reasonably new scanner - and the whole lot guarded with a password I didn`t know.

So I disconnected everything that was mine and put it in the guest bedroom, and when he asked me why I said that I was angry that he had denied me access to things that belonged to me. And he said, "You see, Tigerlily, that is why you and I can never be together - you have no sense of we".

There is a sequel to this story. He DID buy me a new computer right after (a new secondhand one, of course). He reprogrammed it. He copied my hard disk onto it (and probably screwed the mother-fucker board even harder). He told me my old computer was fucked and I believed him. But my moving my computer stuff into the guest bedroom started the ball rolling. I was moving out. He named "my" new computer "Wo-Livelove". He put the music on it we used to listen to in bed together. He changed all my music recordings so that my voice or my violin can hardly be heard. As payment for this favor, he demanded I leave an external CD burner and the remains of my old computer, which he could use for spare parts.

The last time we ever spoke (07.08.11) he was envious that I made nearly 200$ that day at street music, where he and I together had made nothing. He said, "better you make street music alone". The next subject, apparently unconnected, was that he had got my old computer working, and "It was much better than the one he`d bought me (which I knew). I said, wonderful, S. can haave it (my youngest son, desperately needy of a computer). He said, "no way, S. already got two laptops from me". I said, "S. got two laptops from you that your own children threw out because they were fucked" and he said, "I want no further contact with you, you only humiliate me".

Last sequel: the "new" computer I had swapped my old computer and CD-Burner for gave up the ghost two months after I left Wottaprick. I took it to a real computer expert, who was so rude about it that I said, a little defensively (I didn`t want him to think I was an idiot), "I didn´t buy it, I got it as a present".

His immediate answer was, "Anyone who gives you a present like that doesn`t like you much".

So much for narcish favors.