Saturday morning. Sitting at the coffee stand, as per usual. Watching the traffic pass by.

My brain made the effort to help me forget Antony by bringing up the memory of Andrew while I slept. It was very unpleasant. Neither of us were happy to see each other. I was sleeping in a random apartment I rented. I found out he owned it when he came in and woke me up. I hid underneath my blankets and got upset because now I need to move… again. I’m tired of moving.

Yeah it sucked. That’s why I allowed myself to get swept away by this gross story of this gross guy I met in Bangkok who I have now officially named Antony. He is a scoundrel and a rake.

Haha, it’s still fun to write that line even if I do dislike him greatly and think he’s problematic. I am not proud of myself for this particular exchange. This is right up there with the Basketball Guy. I forgot his fake name again. What was it… Levi Gene?

Oh god, that one was so gross and embarrassing. This guy Antony is like Levi Gene after he divorces his third wife and moves to Thailand to retire alone with his money. Just a washed up old lush.

They just keep worse. This is why the Rare Pokemon is the Rare Pokemon. He wasn’t gross. He was actually very sweet and pleasant to be around. He was like Pineapple Fried Rice by the Ferris Wheel. You know what I’m saying? At least I will always have that memory to keep me warm at night, LOL!

I know what you’re thinking: Betsey, you have so many men! How do you keep track of them all?

I put them on my Island of Lost Guys. It’s my way of compartmentalizing all of the trauma I’ve compounded from my insane collection of past relationships with men of questionable moral character. I make bad choices. Over and over and over again. That’s just a fact. I don’t know how to choose better. I am only familiar with the fucked up dynamic I know. As I’m sure you figured out, I was preyed upon when I was younger and now, as a result, I constantly in the company of the same type of lying, cheating, creeping scumbag. It is what it is.

So I just try to write it all down so all of you can be warned in advance about the types of gross men that are out there. Maybe one of these stories is familiar to you. Maybe you have also been treated like garbage when all you ever wanted was to find true love. I just hope that you can see that it isn’t my intention to end up in these situations. They just keep happening to me.

Since I’ve been in SEA, I’ve learned to sit back and watch the disaster unfold in front of me, helpless to intervene. I don’t know if you call it dissociation or what. I just don’t even try to argue or stop it anymore.

Like the other night when I was out with Antony. Everyone who was in that bar totally blew up our date. He was already acting shady and weird. Everything just kept getting worse. Everything that could go wrong went wrong. And I just back, totally helpless, unable to argue or intervene, and watched the whole thing blow up right in front of my eyes.

Now it’s over and it’s like… okay, so that happened. That’s so unfortunate and gross. Why did I let myself be drawn into this gross, creepy man this way?

Answer: because I am always being drawn in by gross, creepy men. I have a very real history of dating predatory men. It’s pretty bad, actually. It’s a real problem for me. I guess that’s why I keep writing about it. I’m trying to figure out how to make the cycle of trauma stop repeating itself.

Maybe get out of the city again for a few months and teach yoga? I could go full White Lotus and teach at a luxury resort in Cambodia. Can you even imagine? You want to talk about a wretched hive of scum and villainy, it’s definitely Cambodia. I have to go there, obviously. My curiosity must be satiated.

Basically, I just need to stop being lazy. I’m using this dumb story as an excuse not to focus on work, which is a problem. I have real things to do, like revamp my website and build a new portfolio and send out my CV. I worry about such dumb shit instead of what is really important.

I need to take my yoga mat to a park and reprogram my point of view. Too bad it’s going to rain. I guess I will just try to practice inversions at home now. Get some blood rushing to my head again.

And in the end, we took these very sour lemons and made the sweetest batch of lemonade. Finally, I get to be like Jane and Emily and Charlotte and the whole gang and write “He was a scoundrel and a rake” like I finally understand the true meaning of those words.

Go me.

Thailand is the vibe.