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The Fake Fiancé 2: Fake Harder

When we last left off, more than a year ago, I was desperate for advice on how to solve the problems with my friend Kelly. None of you jackasses came through. I did try Lucy’s suggestion to grill Kelly hardcore about the wedding details, and she immediately changed the subject to her teaching job. The only thing I could think to do was just back off. I’ll be honest: we’ve only talked two or three times in the whole of 2008.

Why did this happen? The answer happened in December of 2007. I never blogged it because, at the time, I was embroiled in a bunch of job bullshit that prevented me from blogging as much as I would have liked. God, what a pain in the ass. I hate that I’m making no money, but I’m so fucking glad I got out of that goddamn sty, and I’m so glad that — even though it took a year — my “replacement” has fucked up so hardcore that she’s gotten the attention of the man who runs the entire corporation. That’s an epic level of retardation.

What was I saying? Oh right, December. I hadn’t talked to her for awhile because, she explained, she got busy teaching by day, pursuing a Masters at night. Combine that with the various after-school activities she was involved with, and she had zero time for me. Or to plan her made-up wedding or ensure her made-up relationship stayed healthy. Nonetheless, when I did talk to her, she mentioned something very, very confusing and important: she and her fiancé were moving to an apartment in Lombard. Now, for people who didn’t go back and read the original post, here’s the thing: she already told me she bought a house.

Now, let’s say she and the fiancé had bought a house. How would this conversation have gone?

Instead, the conversation was actually little more than a long tirade against her fiancé for going out of town at such a bad time (and she didn’t even make it sound like it had to do with business), leaving her to do all the packing and running around before the movers showed up. Instead of bringing up the house thing, I waited for her to mention it. It was yet another of my not-so-clever litmus tests — I figured, at a certain point, she had to bring it up. She brings it up or it never happened, I thought, and she never brought it up.

So I took my distance-keeping into overdrive. I remember two distinct times we communicated with each other: once, early in the year, when Jive’s father passed on, and we expressed mutual surprise and dismay before getting bogged down in whether or not we should coordinate a time to meet at the memorial service; and a second time, in July, when she e-mailed to tell me this jackass we went to high school with threw himself in front of an el train. I said “two or three” because I have to believe there’s at least one conversation I’m forgetting.

And then there was Christmas Eve, when I received an out-of-the-blue MySpace friend request…from Kelly.

To my knowledge, she had no MySpace profile. I discovered a mostly barren, hastily filled out profile that had only one friend — not, I’ll cautiously point out, her fiancé. I came to the logical conclusion that she had just created this profile, perhaps realizing that she’d lost touch with certain people and thought this would be an easy way to keep in contact.

After glancing at the information in the profile and finding nothing useful about the fiancé (other than “Engaged” set as her relationship status), I clicked on the pictures link. I figured I wouldn’t find anything useful, but holy shit did I ever! Four distinctly non-Photoshopped images of herself and the fiancé, one photo of him by himself, and several of Kelly alone, including one that showed her in tropical climes, wearing a tanktop, classily clutching a plastic cup filled with beer, captioned: “Just a few hours before [the fiancé] popped the question on the beach at midnight. I am totally clueless.”

Well, I guess that about wraps it up, right? She’s clearly with this guy, he clearly proposed, and they’re clearly getting —

Wait a minute.

Here’s where I correct a mistake: in the earlier post, I mentioned the too-cute scenario where he proposed to her on Christmas Eve, as if on a whim. That was actually the too-cute story of him asking her to move in with her, way back on Christmas Eve of 2005. The story of the proposal goes like this:

In early December of 2006, the fiancé took Kelly to a fancy restaurant downtown, got an elaborate dinner, and proposed like a proper gentleman.

Restaurant. Chicago. December.

Beach. Tropical. Tanktop.

Does not compute.

How can I let this go, goddammit? There may be photographic evidence suggesting a relationship between the two of them, but why is there still a barrage of inconsistencies? What the fuck is going on here? I feel like if I ask Kelly for clarification, she’s going to make me watch the test film from The Parallax View and make me assassinate her ex-best friend.

I had to know more, but I didn’t feel safe asking Kelly. I mean, I’d tip my hand if I provided a log of a two-year-old Instant Messenger conversation as evidence of her lies. How do I confront a situation like this?

To find out, I asked Lucy. She surveyed the photos and said, “I…don’t think they’re involved.”

“Um,” I replied.

“No, look at them!” she snapped. “There are only four pictures of them together. Three of them are on vacation, the fourth is at a wedding. The only picture of him alone, he was out of town [on a trip Kelly wasn’t on]. So…who’s taking these photos, and why don’t they have any pictures of just bumming around the house? There’s only one of Kelly on her birthday, and it looks like she’s alone and took it herself.”

I didn’t scrutinize the photos to this level, but when I looked again…she was right. More than that, in all the photos with Kelly, he’s not smiling. He doesn’t have an arm around her waist or shoulder. In fact, his uncomfortable, distant body language suggests he barely knows and doesn’t much like her. Meanwhile, she has a wide grin in every shot and is leaning in to suggest a closeness that he tries very hard to counteract.

What’s the story here? Going from the one kernel of truth I still recognize in this story — their initial meeting, down in St. Louis — Lucy speculated that maybe he hit it off with one of Kelly’s other friends, so Kelly has waited in the periphery this entire team. This group of friends has met up at random time for vacations or reunited at weddings, and she’s managed to snag a few photos, but they are most assuredly not together.

This seemed unwise, on a public profile on a popular website. If this guy is really involved with someone she knows, and he has a MySpace page, doesn’t it follow that he — or someone who knows better — will find her, will find these publicly available photos, and her jig will finally be up.

Right now, I’m clinging to the publicness of this profile as the only shred of legitimacy to this relationship. Kelly’s not an idiot — if this were really an elaborate work of fiction, she’d have privatized the profile or, at least, these particular photos… Right?

I want to believe, but I still have the fake engagement story and the fake home purchase leaning me hard to the side of “100% bullshit.” Combined with the myriad other inconsistencies and oddities involved in this drawn-out relationship, the only thing I can say is, “How could it be real?”

Kelly’s profile insists that they’ve finally set a date. I feel like my only option is to jump back into the fray to either score an invite or score a reason why I’m not invited.

I’ll keep you all posted, but I hope to God what I report is, “It’s all true.” I don’t have much left but hope.

Tags: confused, deceit, engagement, evidence, fiance, fictitious, fraud, friends, guilty, Jive, Kelly, lies, Lucy, MySpace, photos, snooping, vacation, wedding

Posted by Stan on January 2, 2009 10:19 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Friends: Can’t Live with ‘Em | Digg It