Vol. 2, Post #61 Rip Her To Shreds? Hardly

Girl Talk and Douching Around: The Final Frontier. My weekly sex tips for girls* (*girls who are holding on to mid-life by a thread). A dating odyssey for Young Olds, (people with readers).

Who remembers that scene in Spike Lee’s “Jungle Fever” when Flipper (Wesley Snipes) comes home to his Harlem apartment after he’s been having an affair with his assistant Angie (Annabella Sciorra), only to be stopped from going inside by Cyrus (Spike) who warns him do not go upstairs, where their wives are gathered with a coterie of other angry, outraged women. “There's a war council goin' on in your living room,” emphasizes Cyrus. Flipper stops in his tracks. He gets it immediately.

Around this time in the early 90s, one of my pals renamed our monthly girl’s night gathering as “The War Council,” not because we were skewering someone’s husband for cheating, but because it was an almost tribal gathering of women, preaching, bitching, talking shit, laughing, whooping it up, sometimes breaking down in tears. It was INTENSE. And it always felt like a release.

Well, Dear Readers, last week, there was a good, old fashioned War Council, Hudson Valley edition. You’re caffeinated, right? Top yourself off; this War Council was FIERCE.

Normally, I think of myself as someone who usually takes the high road when there is drama that doesn’t personally concern me. On the high road, we are shown rubbish and debris as we motor along, and most of the time, we just keep on truckin’. Ain’t got time for that, right? But sometimes, we stop and gawk. Or run over something that is truly a hazard and calls for us to stop and move it off the road so that no one else gets hurt.

This particular hazard? The Douche Of Woodstock. Who is the gift that keeps on giving. Barring any additional ridiculousness, this week will conclude any mention of him in this Substack, but boy oh boy, he’s going out with a bang!

I’ve written about bullshit dating practices here before (who remembers when I was intro’d to this nonsense: A pathetic Facebook page aimed at publicly poking fun at men’s online dating profiles that was brought to my attention last year? This just goes to show that it’s not only the men who make us sadly shake our heads. However, I think that page might now be gone, or at least, a cursory search of Facebook doesn’t display it, so perhaps the woman who started it rethought the idea, and in that case, I say, “Brava!” All of us misstep (God knows I do, all the time) and a course correction is something to applaud. And if the page creator just made it private so I can’t search it out? As I wrote on the original post, well, god bless America. Takes all kinds, doesn’t it (groan).

But, The Douche Of Woodstock, he’s in a category by himself after last week…a regular “what NOT to do” in dating as a Young Old.

BTW, I’m just going to refer to him at The Douche, but if you wanna get granular, he texted me a few weeks ago after he first made headlines here, and I said, “Oh, fuck it” and cut-and-pasted his text into this update so he’s unmasked there if you need to put a name and a face to the douchery. Real quick if you missed the earlier installments — he’s just some loser who has now, to date, ferociously pursued, love bombed, and then subsequently cheated on and/or lied to multiple women in my small, mountainside community. And because we are women, and therefore, because we all talk, and because this kind of bad behavior just does not go unchecked, it’s exceedingly easy to roast his stupid ass over a fire on the Village Green, or, here, as it turns out.

For the love of god, even a couple of MEN reached out to me to say this dude was a dud, and, apparently a fairly lazy one, since two of the the women that he fucked over compared notes during Hudson Valley War Council Week and discovered that he texted them almost verbatim messages about “feelings being a delicate thing” along with how lovely they were. Can you hear this collective Greek Chorus of Witches laughing our asses off at his stupidity? Speaking of laughter…

So why does this particular bit of small dick energy idiocy matter? Glad you asked.

First, ha, it’s a personal affront to me because, as mentioned, The Douche texted me (before I blocked him — he and I never dated, ew, but he had been to my home with one of his girlfriends/one of my pals, which is how I met him in the first place). In his text, he wrote that he thought my original post on the pathetic mess he had created was “classy as usual.” Oh, poor sweetie. Really? You want to spar with me ? Let’s go.

To begin, people in CLASS HOUSES shouldn’t throw stones.

(I don’t even like Billy Joel, but there you go…)

I had previously written that The Douche did two of my friends dirty (one as recently at mid-March), and that when I saw him out at a restaurant with yet another woman, I went up to him and confronted him about it. Jump to the War Council: my two pals got into a deep discussion with the very same woman who I saw him with that night, the same woman who said that she’s been dating The Douche since last summer, the same woman who has now summarily dumped him. Hmmm, since one of my friends dated him in March, and his most recent lady says they’ve been dating for over a year now…You following?

As you can imagine, the group text thread that has woven itself through this War Council has exploded. I believe cocktails have been planned for all to meet up and Darlings, this is one evening out that I am going to attend WITH BELLS ON. Class houses and all.

Wait, it gets better. After reading my Substack, a few more women poked their heads into the War Council, including a woman who never dated The Douche, but had been friendly with him. She shared pretty specific conversations that took place between them, regarding how he really wanted to meet “The One” etc. This woman went on to say he’d been asking her to fix him up, etc. with available women, and she obliged by introducing him to a friend of hers, only to discover he had started dating that friend while, yes, seeing someone else. Naturally.

In closing, I’ve lost count of how many women are now piecing together timelines and lies. So, to that, I say, “Pretty fucking classy indeed.”

You wanna date around? Totally fine. I’ve been non-monogamous at times and there’s nothing wrong with keeping things casual while you explore multiple people at the same time. The way to do that is with honest open communication, room for other people to express their feelings and ask questions, and a lot of check ins. The Douche gets a failing grade here. None of these women thought they were in an open relationship with him. Boo, Douche. BOO!

BUT ASK ME THE OTHER REASON THAT I’M SHARING THIS HERE TODAY?

OK, Abbe, why are you sharing this today? I mean, does this guy even deserve another moment of my precious time?

He does not. But these women do. Here’s their story.

As noted, my two pals — who haven’t met in person yet since they live a few towns apart and The Douche dated them a few years apart; let’s call them Pal 2021 and Pal 2025 since those were the years when they were in the line of fire — were chatting with each other, when Pal 2025 asked Pal 2021 (and me) if we thought she should reach out to Current Girlfriend.

We all discussed it for a bit. Pal 2025 was sincere in considering the reach out. She had realized that in the short time she was dating The Douche, he must have been, in fact, cheating on Current Girlfriend with her. Did we think Current Girlfriend deserved to know? Did we think that Current Girlfriend would figure it out eventually on her own?

In the end, Pal 2025 sent a gently worded DM to Current Girlfriend, saying that she had been briefly dating The Douche, with the timeline in which they were dating, and that if Current Girlfriend wanted more information, she could get in touch.

Current Girlfriend got it touch and — shocker! — let Pal 2025 that she had just broken up with The Douche, sick of his lies. Current Girlfriend (now to be known as Most Recent Ex), was positively furious (with good reason) at how many lies she had unearthed regarding The Douche’s cheating, and then THOSE two women began comparing notes, calendar dates, text snippets from The Douche.

Meanwhile, Pal 2021 also reached out to Most Recent Ex to offer sympathy and best wishes for “goodbye, good riddance.” Most Recent Ex and I had an exchange too, via DM. She sent me a friend request on social media. She was, understandably, smarting from all of this, sort of in shock but very happy that her new tribe of Douche-Free Females had stepped up to support her. I’d venture to say she felt fresh and clean…

All of these text messages flying around, and not a drop of nastiness to be found. Utter and complete calm, total respect. Let me tell you, it was gorgeous to behold.

So many times, we hear about women getting into hair-pulling tussles with other women over men who CLEARLY don’t deserve the pleasure of their company. Total RIP HER TO SHREDS (see above — Blondie drummer Clem Burke, who died earlier this month, is epic on this tune) This girl grouping was the opposite.

Wait. I’m not done yet.

Since these women were now sharing texts they had exchanged with The Douche, I read some of the truly disgusting lies he was lobbing at them. Things like, “I’m sorry you feel this way. I was looking forward to us being together and leaving that other stuff behind.” Comments about wearing rings. Insincere promises that were precisely that — insincere — BECAUSE HE WAS LYING. Even the half-lies were gross. Things like, “Yes, I had dinner with Pal 2025” when in fact, he should’ve said, “Yes, I had dinner with Pal 2025 since I was also dating her and sleeping with her. I’m busted. I know it. I apologize.”

Is your head spinning? Mine is too. Do you know why?

ONLY THE WORST COWARDS, THE BIGGEST LOSERS, write or say things like “I’m sorry you feel that way.”

Grown ups say, “I’m sorry. I was wrong. I know I hurt you.”

Grown ups say, “I’m ashamed of my behavior, of the things I did out of insecurity and the need to self-validate. I know you are upset and I assure you that I’ve learned a valuable lesson here. I send you my sincerest apologies.”

But Douchebags do not. Instead, they just go back online and start trolling for the next victim. The Douche is already back on Facebook Dating, says one of the exes who saw him come across her screen. I guess he got over his broken heart from Most Recent Ex pretty quickly. Douchebags tend to heal at the speed of light, don’t they?

But lest you think I’m jaded, I still believe in love. A few weekends ago, I met someone who seems to be a wonderful guy. I’ve vetted him through a few mutual friends. I am all systems go if he reaches out to get together; I asked him if he wanted my number, and he said yes so I’ll keep you posted. This is about as much effort as I want to put into dating in this moment: offering up my interest, giving out my number, doing my thing no matter what happens next. But douche-y stories like this one ^^^ sort of make you pause, don’t they? Don’t. Walk on.

I love how these women took back their power from this idiot, without doing much more than exchanging some info and then reassuring each other that they’d have each other’s backs going forward.

Speaking of taking back power, I’ll leave you with a video that I’m sure many of you have seen before, circa 1997, when it was filmed during Fleetwood Mac’s “The Dance” tour in Burbank, CA. “Silver Springs” was a song that Stevie wrote as response to Lindsey Buckingham’s “Go Your Own Way” and if you follow lore, you’ll know that these two have seemingly never really gotten over each other. “Silver Springs” was cut from the “Rumours” album, which ultimately resulted in Stevie leaving the band for a bit.

On this late 90s tour, something otherworldly happened when FM performed this song. Entire blogs are dedicated to this performance. It’s literally a show-stopper, when it comes to heartbreak, lies, disappointment, the list goes on…

You can jump ahead to 3:45 if you want to get right to the drama; by 4:10 you might feel like you’re a voyeur on what is starting to seem like the most intense foreplay ahead of some epic grudge fucking. It’s one of the almost uncomfortably intimate things I’ve ever seen and never fails to make me gasp. But I’d recommend watching the whole thing to see it all build, to see the first bubble of betrayal in Stevie’s eyes, unless you’re a douchebag. Then it might prove to be too much for you.

Next week, since I’ve ostensibly done my “spring cleaning” with this (did anyone in your family ever take a dusty, dirty old rug outside after the winter and “beat it” clean? Yeah, like that), I’ll take on a sexier topic and maybe even slip into something more comfortable, ya dig? Enough douchiness…time for some juiciness.