Beware of Taicho

It was a year after my legal separation. I had dated a few people but none that were ever going to stick. I met him on a dating app. There was just something about him. He was definitely cute and had this undeniable charm about him. I couldn't resist.

We had so much in common, and so much that I wanted, he had already done even though he was three years younger than me. I chalked it up to different life paths and kept it moving.

I hated that dating app though, so soon I told him I would be deleting it, and he offered his number. Me being me, I did a reverse phone look up. Something about him just seemed too good to be true, and I had seen enough Catfish to know better. This provided evidence of his first lie. The name did not match the name on the app.

I shrugged it off thinking that people use fake names on apps all the time and sometimes when you're on the family plan, reverse phone look up provides the name of the person on the bill. There were all kinds of reasons why it would be a different name from the one I had known. It was no big deal. We continued to talk and soon we decided to meet.

We met at a comedy show. I almost didn't go because he did seem like he was starting to pull back a little, but some friends were like, "at least get a few good laughs. You never know what will happen when you are actually in the same room." So I went and we ended up spending the entire weekend together. No sex, but I could tell he wanted to because he "accidentally" let a condom slip out of his wallet.

I had asked him how do you pronounce his name since it was not an ordinary English one, and he simply pronounced it exactly how it reads, so I figured maybe it was someone else's name on the bill. Again, no big deal, and we continued to talk.

The next weekend was also spent with him. We went to a couple bars, and hung out at my house since my kids were with their dad. He said it wasn't in his budget to go out that weekend since we had gone out the weekend before, but I really wanted to see him, so I told him that I could handle it. It was fine.

It was, but then he didn't seem to want to go home. He asked if we could watch a movie. It was getting late, but I said we could. It was just a movie. He fell asleep on the movie, so I just laid next to him and was starting to drift off. Somewhere in the middle of the night, he started kissing me. I kissed back. We had sex, and went back to sleep.

The next day, I asked him what were some of his pet peeves. He said, we're just friends so his pet peeves wouldn't apply to me. I was confused because I hadn't asked him about our relationship status and I didn't know what pet peeves had to do with it anyway, but I thought, maybe he just wants to let me know what he considers me. Okay, whatever. We're friends. Cool.

When he went outside to get something from his car, he left his wallet. I looked at his id, and it was the name from the reverse phone look up. I have an uncle who calls himself something else and never got his name legally change. He's been doing this for years, and everybody who knows him after he started doing this calls him by the other name, so I thought, maybe it's the same situation.

When we went out that night, he told me that he was moving to Argentina for work. I was disappointed, but I told him that it was cool, and we continued to hang out. This was lie number 2. I thought we were hanging out until he moved, but the move never came. He continued this lie often with different places, all for work, but he never seemed to leave.

He told me all of these different places that he used to work. He said crazy stuff like he worked for the CIA and there was no record of this. He said he was a cop but he couldn't continue because he didn't like the treatment of Black people, the closest I saw to this was security guard work that he did for a couple of months according to Linkedin. He was a Lord because he owned all this land, but he never seemed to have any money. None of them made sense for his age and his personality. The only verifiable thing he said was that he was a marine. Whenever I asked clarifying questions, his explanations never were completely convincing, but I didn't want to admit he was lying because I couldn't figure out the point.

He lost 2 Iphones while we were together. Both of them were on credit with Tmobile. The first time we took an Uber all over Phoenix looking for his phone with the Find My Iphone app, called the police, showed them where the phone was, and still never got the phone back. The second time, he left it at the bar that we were at, and we never saw it again either. It was completely irresponsible, and made me question everything I thought about him.

He never actually acknowledged that I was his woman, but did all the boyfriend things including telling me he loved me. I met his family, he met mine. He was at my house more often than not. He completely took over care of my dog. He kept asking me questions about having children together because he didn't have any, but he wanted them, and I can't have anymore, so it would be about adoption and fostering. He would make little comments about when we were getting married, which would be hard to do considering I was only legally separated and not divorced. He never wanted to be posted on social media, take pictures, or be seen in video. He said there were people looking for him, but he said it in a joking way, so I laughed it off, but when I did some research, it seemed like he was on a number of sites that hated him, so maybe this wasn't a lie, and I also thought about his name, and that maybe this is why he goes by a different one.

Even through all of this, when he got the opportunity to move to California, and I had already wanted to move back home, it seemed like everything was starting to line up. He said his job would take care of everything as far as rent and bills. I would only need to take care of the extra stuff we wanted to do. He left before me because I still had to get things together for my kids, and with being a student, I needed to transfer and do all kinds of stuff. We were together almost a year at this point.

When he first left, he went to D.C. because there was a funeral. He was supposed to go from there to California. He called me a few days after he got there and told me that he would have training in D.C. for his job in California, so he stayed there a month. Therefore, I couldn't go to California then because he would not be there yet. That was fine. It gave me a chance to get more of my stuff together.

Then he came to back to Arizona to visit with his family, and he didn't stop by to see me. He swore that he tried, but he was very far from where I was, and he could not get transportation. That was plausible, so I just focused on the move.

Then he moved to California, and he was so excited to tell me about everything. He said he was in a Airbnb, and that I needed to wait until he got our place together. He was right. I didn't want to move in with him going from place to place the way he said he was.

I got tired of waiting though. I needed to find a job in California. I needed to get myself set up. California is home so I know how hard it can be to move out there with nothing, and I didn't want to do that. So I decided to come right after Christmas and stay until after my birthday two weeks away.

We talked my whole way there. He told me that his phone was off but he had called to get an extension, and they turned it back on. He called me immediately after I got there. I was at family's house and they were in the middle of a move. He asked should he come over. I told him it was getting late, but he could if he wanted to. He showed me a screenshot of Uber being over 100 dollars for him to get to where I was. I told him that maybe he shouldn't come because it was getting late and they were right in the middle of moving. He said he would help with the move. Then he asked could he stay over. I told him that I was barely staying there, and he said he would call me back.

He never did. That whole time, I thought that maybe it was an issue with the phone. He kept losing them and he had told me they gave him an extension, but he never said how long. I called Tmobile and found out that he owed over 600 dollars for losing the 2 Iphones.

He never called me again.

I moved to California on my own. I had gotten everything together like I wanted to when I came for the two week visit. I sent him an email telling him that I had moved and that I would be going forward by myself. He still didn't respond.

A few weeks later, I contacted his mom on Facebook Messenger. She told me that he was doing well and living in D.C. Did he ever actually live in California? I don't know. There was a lot that pointed to he did, but there was so much that pointed to he didn't.

I felt scammed, but I couldn't figure out what he got out of the deal. We barely had sex. I didn't spend more money than I would have done for myself and my kids. Plus, I wound up in California anyway which is where I wanted to be until the Pandemic pushed me right back to Arizona. Maybe he just never got what he came for and he moved on. *shrug*

Today, I just restarted my Twitter page to share my pieces here on Vocal. I remembered that he was always on Twitter, so I decided that I was going to attempt to look him up. Instead of finding him, I found the girl he was obviously with after me saying he did similar things to her. That prompted me to write this.

I don't know what he's after, but apparently he hasn't found it yet. Women, particularly Black Women because he made it clear that he was interested in no other race, beware of this man. I've gone down a rabbit hole of his exes and they all have similar stories.