Sometimes there are no good answers

I had some drama in life this past couple days. This is a bit different blog than normal, this has nothing to do with the club. It does have to do with a former dancer. This event has me a bit unsettled. I'm not a confrontational person. I try not to make decisions based on intuition. I had to do both today. While I often write about these things, this will be the first time I blog about it. Something about the writing process forces me to look at things without the veil of my prejudices.

I'll be vague about the person and some of the events. What ever I feel about the other person, she has the right to her privacy. The other person is a former dancer. I've been friends with her for a while, nothing romantic. She's been falling on hard times recently. No job, messed up family life. I've been helping her out from time to time. As of late the amount of "help" she needs has been increasing. Sometimes she does massively selfish things. Sometimes she shows bad judgment, which is a polite way of saying she does stupid things. Things like driving with a suspended license, driving drunk with a suspended license. I helped her out with the consequences of that. I don't owe her anything. I can't help but be irritated at the thought of paying out for somebody else's screw up. Even without the screw ups the situation is wearing on me. I can't keep paying out forever, but I can't turn my back on somebody I care about.

I met her before work on Thursday to help out with money for rent. I know she has other bills mounting. I can't solve all her problems. I headed off to work where things took a turn for the worse. I had left my cell in my car when I got to work. It was raining and I decided to leave it there. I began to feel progressively sicker as the day wore on. I had a couple of projects that had to be done sick or not. I muddled through that and finished everything around 2:30. I decided to go home early, when I got to my car and check my phone I had a voice mail and some text messages. I check my voice mail, it was the ex-dancer telling me she had just got into a fight at a bar and was going to be arrested. Something broke in me, I just lost all compassion at that moment. I've been unemployed and struggling for money, it's stressful, it's depressing. But it's not an excuse. I checked my text messages. The message was from her friend, telling me she would pay the ex-dancers bail ($550) but only if I would pay her back that night. No, I'm not doing that. Cell phone bills I'll help, rent I'll help, food I'll help. Bail? No. I sent her friend a rather terse reply:

No, I will not pay this. I've paid enough for her mistakes. Please do not contact me any more.

I figured that was the end of it. Nope. I got a reply back telling me that the fight wasn't the ex-dancer fault. She was just at the wrong place at the wrong time. I didn't buy this. I've run into people looking for a fight in a bar. Sometimes you have to back down. It's not worth the grief. Getting into a fight that bad enough to have the police called is not going to do any good. I sent back a pissed reply:

I don't care. I've done enough. I'm not doing any more.

I don't think I can be any more succinct then that. I assumed that the other person would catch the hint that I'm not going to pay anything. Instead I got another reply saying again that it wasn't the ex-dancers fault and that I should help her out. Now I was upset, who the fuck is this person telling me I need to pony up half a grand+. I've already gone above and beyond helping this girl out. This was too much. I deleted the message. I then got a message telling me that she wasn't mad at me, and I should really help. What the hell? This is not making sense. Why was this person badgering me and why the hell would I care if she was or wasn't mad at me? I ignored it, choked down some aspirin and l tried to take a nap. I got three more text messages asking me "one last time" for help. I deleted them.

Something struck me, I checked the times of the text messages (they were still in the deleted folder on my phone). The call came in at 12:40, the first text message arrived at 1:30. This was starting to smell. How did her friend know that the bail was $550? How did she know less than an hour after the first call? I wasn't aware the city had installed a drive through window for quick perp processing. I know cops will sometimes let people make a quick call before the take somebody into custody. But multiple calls? And where the bail amount come from? Then it occurred to me that the ex-dancer and the friend were probably the same person. This was some grand scheme to see if she could get more money out of me. The text messages make no sense from a complete stranger, but from the ex-dancer they do. I don't think she planned on me getting pissed .She had to try and salvage the situation. What the fuck, this was too much. I couldn't prove it was a complete fabrication, but this whole thing just seemed completely absurd.
At 10pm I get a call from the ex-dancer. Apparently she didn't need bail money, or she would still be in jail. I didn't take the call. I didn't want to hear the lies. I turned the phone off and went to sleep. The next morning I got up and was getting ready for work when I had a knock at the front door. At 6:50 in the morning I was confronted by the ex-dancer. She was upset by those terrible text messages. This is insane. Those weren't nice messages, but it didn't equal this. I didn't care if she didn't like the messages, I wasn't going to feel guilty. I wanted to confront her about how this whole thing smelled of bullshit, but it would have led to more lies. I didn't have time. I didn't have the patients. I told her to go away, that I didn't want to talk any more. She elevated it to "are we through?" "is it over?". Yes, it's over. I don't deserve to be lied to. I don't deserve to be manipulated.

I hate this. I just ended a friendship with somebody that needed my help. Do I know for sure that this was a scam? No. This will bother me. I could spend the next couple days calling county clerks to see if there is any record of the incident. But why should I invest any more time in this. Or am I just looking for some moral high ground for my decision? I suppose friendships normally don't dissolve when everything is going great. I'm tired. I didn't put her in this situation. I did more than anybody else to help her out. I don't feel any better after writing this. I'm tired. Two text messages, thirty words and a friendship ends. Why do people make things so difficult?