My Own Romance Scam

These romance scams, I don't know what to make of them? Of course, they are unbelievably cruel exploiting people's loneliness and need for love, of course that is true. Exploiting the vulnerable is reprehensible and I hope the perpetrators of such crimes get what is coming to them. You know, made to wear makeup and assume the name of Cheryl while someone bigger and crueller makes them their jailhouse bitch. That seems fitting to me. Held down by bigger men than them and... well, you can fill in the rest.

But handing over money sometimes in the hundreds of thousands, I don't understand that. It just seems nonsensical. (Admittedly, I am a bit tight with my money, however...)

Quite a few years ago, I was seeing a nice Italian boy, it was very casual, as far as I was concerned, just sex really. But he was cute and funny and I liked him and he really liked it up his arse, but then again what Italian boy doesn't?

We saw each other for a few months, he fulfilled a need for me, and I assumed I filled a need for him. He told me how lovely I was, how I was the best he'd ever had. How he missed me when I wasn't around. He even dreamed about me, so he said. Yah, yah, yah. So many compliments, over the top really for me, the cynical one.

At about the third month, he called me at work and said he was having some financial difficulty. He was selling his car, but he'd found the new car he wanted to buy and he wanted me to lend him 30K to pay for the new car, which was such a good deal he felt he couldn't pass it up. As soon as he sold his current car, he would be able to pay me back. 

My initial response was to laugh, which I distinctly remember he didn't take too kindly. Momentary Silence. Crickets. Really, I barely know you, I thought, and you want me to lend you thirty thousand dollars. Then I told him that I didn't have 30K to lend to him.

I never heard from him again.

I felt like I was being ripped off, really, and I guess I was. I thought we had a nice thing, I guessed not. Maybe, he was just indignant at my response to his financial difficulties, you know, laughing, maybe. I don't really know. But I did feel with that phone call he was scamming me. What's more, he worked for a Bank, so why would he need money from me, I thought?

All those compliments? Did he mean any of them? I guess not. Was the whole thing fake? What was I meant to think?