My ex-boyfriend the author

Ladies and gentlemen of the internets, may I present to you a man we will call STEVE. I can only assume that this is a fairly recent photo of STEVE, as I got it off of his publisher's web site. That's right, STEVE has written a book.

Those of you who do not know me IRL ("in real life," for my non-big-huge-dork readership) may not be familiar with the man called STEVE. Actually, even those of you who do know me IRL probably aren't familiar with STEVE, as I dated him the year of my life during which I effectively went insane.

Many moons ago, a much-younger Karo went off to Baltimore to change the world (read: teach math in the inner city). I didn't know a soul in Baltimore, and being the aforementioned big huge dork, I embraced the world of online personals. After spending a week in London visiting my friend Suze, I came home to my craptastic apartment to find a Very Witty Email response to my ad. So began my quick decent into insanity, chaperoned by the man called STEVE. You see, the man called STEVE was a master of the Very Witty Email. He wooed me mercilessly until I was rendered helpless by his wordsmithery. I fell in love, but not so much with the man called STEVE as with his email, but I didn't realize the two were not the same for another year.

The man we're calling STEVE was not an ideal candidate for a boyfriend, one might say (and by "one" I mean all my friends, and by "might" I mean did). He was 14 years older than me, had three children, and was not quite yet divorced from his legally separated wife. When one is wookin pa nub, though, it's easy to overlook these things. You know why? Because his emails were SO FUCKING WITTY. I would have killed a kitten for one of those emails, let alone overlook three kids and a not-quite-ex-wife.

The thing is, though, that's not all the man called STEVE had going for him. He was also:

• a Conservative (collective gasp from the peanut gallery);
• a former Baptist minister;
• suffering from what, in retrospect, appears to be some sort of clinical depression; and
• an unbelievably huge, do-you-kiss-your-momma-with-that-mouth, scarily convincing LIAR

This is the part where the post switches over from being an amusing anecdote to a bonified Public Service Announcement. Women of the World, I am about to share with you what is undoubtedly the most humiliating moment in my life. I'm going to PUT IT OUT THERE for the all readers of the internets to see. I am doing this because I feel very strongly that the man called STEVE must be stopped, and I think that the most humiliating moment of my life will clearly illustrate why that is.

Early on in the wooing, the man called STEVE told me the he was writing a novel. Actually, here's exactly what he said:

I wrote this book, kind of a humorous novel. I shipped it off to a good New York agent who has 73 clients, 67 of whom are bestsellers. He tells me it's the funniest thing he's ever read, it's the only thing he's laughed out loud at in years. He says we're both going to make a lot of money from it, but he wants me to go through and add some "texture" (I had to resist asking him what kind...bumpy, smooth, rough?).

(Yes, readers, I am THAT pathetic. I fired up my rickty-krickety old PC this weekend, and using a KEYBOARD, since the fucker's too old to handle an optical mouse, I saved all of my old emails to disk.)

The things is, the man called STEVE never let me read his novel, even though I asked him repeatedly. Imagine my excitement then, a few weeks later, when I receive this email and an attached Word doc:

We had the discussion on "The Rules" at one time, and here's the story I made mention of at that time. Sometime when you're not hurried, give it your undivided perusal. Let me know what you think whenever you care finish.

People, the attachment was the best short story I'd ever read. Not only did I heap praise upon the man we are today calling STEVE, but I also forwarded the story to a bunch of people. Imagine my surprise when, a few months later, I receive a phone call from my college roommate. (Pay attention, Women of the World. This is where it gets good.) The college roommate says the following: "Listen, I really hate to tell you this, but I was at the bookstore this weekend and I was thumbing through this book called The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing. Remember that story from STEVE that you forwarded to me? Well, it's in there."

Yes indeedy, the man called STEVE had sent me the last chapter of Melissa Bank's novel. How he had it as a Microsoft Word document will forever remain a mystery, but you can bet your sweet ass that as soon as I got off the phone with my former roommate I called him up to ask him why he'd sent it to me claiming he wrote it. You want to hear what he said? You want to hear his excuse for being an unmitigated, lying ASSWIPE? Then man called STEVE said, "Well, I never said that I wrote it."

What.

The.

Fuck.

You send me a Word doc, accept all the praise I lavish upon you, and then when I fucking nail your ass to the WALL, you worthless piece of shit, you hide behind a TECHNICALITY?!?!?!

I am not proud of the year I spent with STEVE. I am not proud of falling in love with a ghost, and then spending the following months making excuses for all the unbelievably shitty things that the real-life man did to me, such as refusing to drive an hour to come see me when I was freaking the fuck out because my mother had just had a grand-mal seizure in the middle of her kitchen because THE TRAFFIC WOULD BE BAD GOING TO WORK THE NEXT MORNING. Luckily, I met BK and he taught me that love isn't about making excuses for someone's bad behavior. But now it appears that STEVE-O has made good on his promise and written a real-life book, which I can only assume is not actually a plagarized chapter from another book since knowledgable people have read it. So I tell you my sad tale of WHOA to warn you, just in case you're in the DC area and are turned on by men who write non-fiction spewing conservative propaganda. If you see this man, run. Run as far as your little legs will take you. Because no email is witty enough to be worth it.