[special filter] Looking the gift horse right in the fucking mouth.

[angledge]

OK, this is angledge being really, really uncharitable. Time to vent a little bit about jacesan.

Background: I met jacesan in July 2005 at the ljdq Pub Crawl. I got super-drunk that evening, & I was flirting with him. He asked for my phone number & I gave it to him, & in the next few weeks we went out on two dates. The dates weren't that great, & his behavior was kind of weird (as a f'instance, he called me up drunk one night & told me all about his time in jail) (I have such great taste in men), so I met up with him & told him I wasn't interested in going out again. I met la chica at about the same time.

Since then, jacesan has been one of the top commenters on my LJ, & he specializes in extremely complimentary, flattering, fawning commentary. Now, don't get me wrong, a girl likes to hear a bit of praise every now & again.
But
there
is
a
point
where
flattery
... starts to become cloying (edit: or downright scary). On top of this, remember how he gave me that really weird gift last autumn - a bust of Katchoo from Strangers in Paradise? That was an expensive gift. I don't feel that this is normal behavior towards someone with whom you went out on two dates.

He's also donated $475 to my triathlon fundraiser. Holy shit. I'm deeply grateful for the contributions, but deeply suspicious about the motivation. I feel HORRIBLE for questioning someone's generosity, but when combined with all his other actions, it makes me feel uncomfortable. I feel that, because he knows I won't ignore anyone who makes a contribution, that he is buying my attention.

Added freaky-deaky: jacesan has subscribed to an EPA mailing list that lets him know where I'm working when I'm on emergency responses. It was after he told me this that I de-friended him. Call me paranoid, but it made me uncomfortable that he would know when I was working on sites as isolated as the Zeibright Mine, & that he would have the site address.

When I de-friended him, he started posting disturbing song lyrics as his answers to the ljdq. His latest contribution:

Dying all the time
Lose your dreams
And you will lose your mind.
Aint life unkind?

I don't actually think that jacesan represents a danger to me. But he does make me uncomfortable, & he does cause me to heavily censor &/or filter what I post to my own damn LJ. Am I just being paranoid here or is he actually being strange?

Comments

[sskipstress.livejournal.com]

I'd be a bit freaked by the whole thing, too.

Maybe it's just our SE PA upbringing, but that level of generosity always makes me uncomfortable, too. The gift more than the donation because it was directly for you, but still. I'm also reminded of the guy who thought I was cute who lost all chances with me when he came to where I was working and bought a $5 doormat and paid for it with a $100 bill. First thing in the morning, leaving me with no change for the day. So not impressed by that.

And where I come from, guys don't compliment you like that unless they want to get in your pants.

But those two things alone aren't really such a big deal, but being able to track where you are for work is creepy.

[sskipstress.livejournal.com]

I meant to say that outside of SE PA, I've met men generous with gifts and compliments who really were just being nice. But the EPA thing is still creepy.

[angledge.livejournal.com]

I know he's a generous guy (the few times we hung out, he gave money to almost every homeless person who asked him for some change). I also know he has a personal reason to support the LLS (a friend of his god-daughter was just diagnosed). So that partially explains his support of my fundraising. But it's when it's combined with everything else that he does/has done that it starts to bother me.