You’re crazy to work with this guy!

If you have any plans to do a project with someone that you don’t know well, check their references first. Not checking someone out first can result in you getting screwed, or worse, the person can ruin your reputation in your given field of work.

That’s what happened to some friends of mine that decided to do some video production work with a guy named Dasher.

Dasher was touting this promotional video as being a montage of all of his finest work. The video was shopped around to some high profile folks. One of those fine folks decided to do a little investigation work and found that at least 40% of the clips weren’t even shot by Dasher. Two gentlemen came forward, very proud of their work, and could prove it was their footage, to discredit the video’s authenticity completely.

Dasher also promotes himself as being involved with major networks as a cameraman when all he’s actually done is grip work holding a boom mike for infomercials and stalkerazzi television. He has absolutely no clout in the film and television business at all.

He does some video work with another guy he went to college with and I feel sorry for this guy. Dasher never misses a chance to jab this guy in the back. Of course the friend does all of the legwork, the promotional work, sales, money management and rolling money back into equipment investments, while Dasher sits on his large ass doing not much of anything. He has never even contributed a dime to support of the sales initiatives, the website or anything to do with making the business successful. And the stuff he says about his “friend” behind his back go something like this; “This guy thinks he’s a professional now just because he bought an expensive camera, but his work looks like crap!” Of course, Dasher would never make these same observations to the poor fellas face.

The arrogance and superiority and full-on snottiness he exudes is enough to make any business partner run for the hills. In fact, I think a few of these “business partners” have called Dasher on his arrogance on more that one occasion.

There was also a very short lived business partnership with another guy. This guy put his bank account behind his belief in Dasher’s work only to find out later on that Dasher’s priorities, honesty and integrity were far off the mark. I spoke with him briefly one afternoon and he was hesitant to give out too much information.

He told me the last time he had any dealings with him they were riddled with stuff straight out of a bad soap opera. He told me he knew he had to get out of the mess with him when he called him one afternoon in a state of frenzy. Evidently the girl he was seeing had tried to commit suicide and someone had told his parents about it. He was also getting nasty letters from her ex-boyfriend, or they might be from his ex-wife, he wasn’t sure, but he was blaming everyone. He couldn’t focus on the work they were doing because he had let his personal life consume his entire world. The worst of it was he wanted him as his sounding board/counselor and he had to keep reminding him that they were in business together and even though he thought he was a nice person, he was firm that he should seek professional counseling elsewhere.

That same week he found out Dasher hadn’t paid his income taxes in 13 years.

There was also mention of a made-up lawyer with a bogus Yahoo email account that wrote to him about “legally” dissolving the partnership a year after he had already paid his own lawyer to take care of his end of the business. Yahoo investigated and found the email account was actually setup by someone with the same IP address as Dasher. Imagine that. Yahoo closed the email account pronto.

Every two or three months he’d find another threatening email in his inbox from him, but Dasher never had the stones to just call him up and finalize these proceedings as they were happening the year before. He had several of his “friends” call him up to talk about Dasher while he listened in on the other line. He thought these calls were fishy and was vindicated once one of his “friends” told him that’s what he had been doing. He wanted to know if he was talking about him behind his back. Um, are we in high school here?

He gave him every opportunity to do the things he promised and he never came through on a single item. He spent thousands setting up a bank account, building a webpage and designing and ordering business cards, teeshirts and promo discs. He was also aware of the promo video being a montage of Dasher “and friends” work, but told me that he also pitched it to him as 100% his work. He too found out later that this was just another lie to add to the heap.

He said that to this very day Dasher has never paid him a dime and he lost thousands of dollars. He did say that he had been warned. Someone Dasher loudly and proudly calls his “best friend” did ask him what he would do when Dasher got a case of big-head and decided to take all of his hard work and go out on his own and not pay him. He says he really should have listened to this guy.

He’s had to deal with fallout from this for the last three years because once Dasher finds out someone knows him he tells his whole sordid tale all over again. He said that in his twisted world the story has taken some bitter turns and that Dasher has desperately tried everything from trying to convince people that he’s the crazy one to telling outright lies about the business arrangement.

There was another alleged business arrangement around that same time. It was a company that was going out of business and Dasher felt the owner of the company should have paid him half of the proceeds when the business was bought by another company. Huh? It was another situation where Dasher hadn’t contributed a penny to the making of the business, but expected to reap the rewards. He said that Dasher pushed him every day to sign a partnership agreement with him and the guy just put him off until the job was over. This fellow was also smart enough to make the business sale look like a bust and there was no money made to appease the litigious Dasher and get him off of his back. Dasher had more than a few choice remarks to make about this guy. In fact, if people listening didn’t know Dasher as well as most do, he could have ruined this guy’s reputation in the business.

Before Dasher became the famous-in-his-own-mind cameraman he worked giving surf lessons. Even then he had the reputation of being a mooch when it came to money. He always asked for more than he was worth and when he didn’t get it he would poison the water by running his mouth about the business owners and how they were always ripping him off.

So you can see now why you would be crazy to work with this guy!

Dasher’s new teeth

Dasher had decided to work on his outside a little since his inside was rotten. He couldn’t get a pretty girl to give him the time of day and found himself surrounded by wrinkled older women that he couldn’t even close his eyes and pretend to desire.

He had this dentist friend who was willing to trade product for teeth. Dasher was always calling companies demanding new items claiming he would use ONLY their products and give them a good word to his pals. What the poor companies didn’t know was they were paying his way down a lot of roads he couldn’t afford to travel on his own dime.

One of these roads was pearly white veneers. Your own teeth are reshaped to account for the added thickness of the veneer overlays. They look like little kernels of corn when the dentist is done. This means that there is no turning back once you decide to get them. They usually will last about ten years with proper care, however when you’re like Dasher, they’ll probably stain yellow within two years. Brushing and flossing were never his strong suit. That’s probably why he needed veneers to start with.

Dasher’s expensive smile looks yellowed and discolored these days. He’s like a before and after and after the after picture for the dentist office.

Cheese with that Whine?

I had never met anyone that was so emotionally retarded as Dasher.

We attended a friend’s wedding in Big Sur and Dasher hooked up with one of the bridesmaids there. This particular bridesmaid was one of those the horny groomsmen fantasize about. She was not pretty at all, in fact she looked kind of like a man, but she was doing everyone she could find that weekend. Dasher just happened to get in line early.

So he gets to spend the last night there with her. Keep in mind that she spent the previous night with another guy. And Dasher FALLS IN LOVE! Or he says he does and that’s where the drama ensues.

He gets home from the wedding and he talks about her constantly. She lives on the east coast which is far away. She has a kid, which he DOES NOT like or appreciate because he thinks the kid will get in the way of their “romance”. She’s a cool woman. He really, really likes her.

…one of us finally had to remind him that he had only met her once and according to other people in the wedding party she was kind of slutty and she also had plans to come back out to the west coast in a week or two to visit one of the guys she had slept with prior to Dasher. You could see reality start to creep back in a little.

Dasher is awfully tenacious and finagles a trip to the east coast where she lives and gets his friend at the magazine to pay for it. He shows up on her doorstep to spend a satiating and sex-filled weekend in a tiny, two bedroom/one bathroom apartment she shares with her teenage son.

Question…what mother does this?

That Monday she hops on a plane to spend a satiating and sex-filled week on the west coast with the other guy.

And Dasher has a mental breakdown in Ventura.

Then the judgments start rolling off of his tongue like rrrrr’s. No one but a few at the wedding knew the woman was on the prowl, but after Dasher got through EVERYONE HE KNEW…KNEW. And he made her sound awful. The comparisons to his ex-wife were flying. The comparisons to his ex-girlfriend were hitting the walls. The tears and histrionics were so intense that sometimes you couldn’t understand a word he said.

The week crawled by as he rolled around in his past and in his own self pity. He drove his friends crazy. He asked everyone for advice and the advice was always the same; don’t call her, stay away from her. He even called his ex-girlfriend for advice. I thought that was nervy of him since he was very busy that week using her name in the same sentence as cunt and bitch.

And then she called Dasher from her “other guy’s” place to say that the two of them were thinking of stopping by to say hi. He gave her an ultimatum. “it’s either me or this other guy.”

REALITY CHECK: He met the girl once. They screwed once. They do not know each other. (I keep having to remind myself too)

She’s shocked, I’m sure. But she buys it hook, line and sinker. Later in the story you’ll you’ll know why it was so easy. This woman is in a recovery of her own. The last thing she needs is someone she has to fix.

So then the emails start, which Dasher shares with everyone too.

Question; is anything private or sacred with this dude?

There’s the one about the wounded bird, or two birds meeting, I’m not sure because I seriously wanted to barf. The foundation of this twisted relationship left much to be desired and I wasn’t convinced. There are several more syrupy and childish emails with his sounding hurt and needy and her rushing to “fix” him. Can you say co-dependent?

http://www.soulselfhelp.on.ca/CodependantP.html

I neglected to mention earlier in the story that one of the details about this woman’s life that became conversational fodder for Dasher was the fact that she was an alcoholic/drug addict and had taken him to a meeting when he visited. She also took great pains to point out that he was self medicating too and he had problems. She recruited him. Now he was condemning her for sharing this part of her life with him. He thought her past was the reason she was behaving like a slut.

Question; Isn’t the fact that it’s called Alcoholics Anonymous mean that the people attending are supposed to remain anonymous?

That was the single most scary form of personality disorder I had ever witnessed. Dasher felt that in order to be with this woman he had to be LIKE her so he became an AA believer and meeting attendee that weekend he stayed with her. Now he was sitting there with green snot running down his face spewing hatred about every woman in his life and wondering why he was so messed up. He told her all of his secrets that weekend and now she was spreading her legs for another man right down the road from him.

Does any of this sound like a healthy way to start a relationship with anyone? No? Perhaps we should serve a little cheese with the whine in order to add back the biting flavor of reality, but Dasher was beyond hope.

more later…

Attacked by a Cougar!

Not long after I met Dasher he hooked up with a much older woman. He has a way about him that older woman just flock to. He gives off this scent of baby powder and diapers and feigned helplessness. I say feigned because if he’s anything, he’s not helpless. He’s got some sly ways to get women to pay his way and buy him gifts.

The older woman, hereafter referred to as OW because I won’t be using her name, has a huge estate on Montego Bay. This was the major attraction for Dasher, not her looks or personality. Trust me, she had the face of a mangled dog and the personality to match. OW was the biggest braggart and name dropper I had ever met. I kept wondering when she was going to SHUT UP. To say she’s a cougar is giving her a serious compliment because the cougar is a beautiful and exotic animal. This woman was neither.

But to Dasher she wasn’t beautiful she was RICH.

For a guy that never has any money and can hardly pay his own bills he sure knows how to attract other people’s money. Dasher lives by the favors of his wealthier friends. He stays in their homes, eats their food, wears their clothes, and drives their cars. He’ll even extend an invitation to you to come along and freeload right along with him. The only jobs he’s ever had were jobs acquired through friends or working for friends. He’s everyone’s favorite charity until they figure out he’s a mooch.

Back to the cougar. After she had spent numerous dollars buying him gifts and taking him for expensive meals Dasher lamented that soon she would expect him to give up the goods. This is something he had no intention of doing with her since he couldn’t get past the face on her. “What am I going to do?” I suggested going oral but that would entail a reciprocation on his part and the grimace he made must have used all of his facial muscles.

So he made up a story about being too vulnerable to start a relationship with anyone right now and SHE BOUGHT IT! And get this…she continued with the star treatment because now she felt he needed nurturing in order to prepare him to have a relationship with her. Unbelievable! He was able to string this woman along for another year and I think she still hasn’t caught on.

He says she still emails him constantly with invitations to visit her in Jamaica at her expense. He can’t take her up on it because he says there’s just no way he could ever follow through with the pound of flesh she would expect in return.

How NOT to talk about a woman behind her back

I’m sure if you’ve been following along the Dasher saga you might be wondering “well, what’s really so bad about this guy?”

It’s how he talks about the women in his life behind their backs. Of course when the woman is staring him right in the face he’s as sweet as a candy bar. But let her walk in the other room and the claws come out. I felt like I was watching a real life Jekyll and Hyde.

About his ex-wife: He moved to California to be closer to her. Except he never told anyone that except his closet friends. It was a way for him to play at being a stalker, but not seem too stalky because his ex-wife’s new husband is a lawyer. So he would make numerous phone calls to her, a “let’s be buddies” kind of feeling thrown in there to insure that when Ex-wife starting having marital troubles she would run to him first since he was geographically closer now and such. He also felt his omnipotent presence would give the new husband cause to be nervous and jealous.

There were also the secret planned lunches with the ex-wife that Dasher was sure she hadn’t shared with the new husband. He found this titillating. That is until the new husband strolls in midway through the lunch because he’d known about it all along.

You see, Ex-wife had NO intention of ever getting back together with Dasher, but he couldn’t accept this and continued to pursue her. She and her new husband were totally aware of what he was doing and had already decided to let it play out rather than embarrass Dasher by asking him to face the truth and to get lost.

IT WAS WHAT DASHER SAID BEHIND HER BACK THAT MAKES ONE’S SKIN CRAWL!

One minute he’s professing his undying love for the woman and the next he’s calling her a bitch.

I sat through a particularly chilling confessional one afternoon.

He has this web page bookmarked on his laptop. It’s a picture of him and her on a dock at the island. I found out later this is the only picture of her on the Internet. He likes to show this picture to people…a lot. “see how pretty she is.” Then he tells the entire the-night-she-cheated-on-me story leaving out no details. He gives her name and tells where she lives. He smiles as he admits how much he hates her. He gloats when he reveals how much all of their mutual friends hate her too. How dirty and cheap she is to have soiled her marriage vows the way she did. There was nothing wrong with their marriage and he was the perfect partner to hear his memories of the episode.

It’s like he sets up this whole act so he has the floor and you’re held captive until he finishes. The finale is peppered with pats on the back and mewling of “oh she was terrible to you man”, “may she rot in hell dude”, etc. He sets himself up to get that pitiful reinforcement so he can continue on with his vendetta and resentment. It’s like he needs to feed his obsession.

No woman in his life is immune either. Wait until you hear what he says about his next girlfriend.

Meeting Dasher

The first time I met Dasher he was on the beach filming some kite surfers. His camera was a mess that he had taped back together, but it seemed to be working fine for what he was trying to accomplish. I went over to ask what he was going to do with the footage.

His introduction went something like this “Hi I’m Dasher. I used to be a famous windsurfing instructor, and now I’m a film producer.”

See what I mean? The only thing I said was my name and how’s it going. It was an automatic put-off. I mean, who introduces themselves like that? I use to be famous?!?

He seemed friendly enough so I stuck around to observe, but he never once asked me any questions about myself. He talked endlessly about his life, what he was doing, where he was going next, etc. But never seemed terribly interested in me at all.

In fact, he wasn’t interested in anyone on that beach if they weren’t in the water or didn’t have breasts. You could watch the camera zooming in on the kite surfers and then his camera hand would make a wild turn as a bikini walked by. After a few turns doing this he turned to me with a grin and said “you can’t make a good surf film without hot chick clips.” I finally asked if he would ask the ladies to sign a permission-to-use form before they left the beach that day and he looked at me like I was speaking to him in Japanese.

My first impression was that Dasher wasn’t terribly bright.

I put my gear together and hit the water.

After surfing we all went for beers at the Bombay and I mentioned meeting Dasher. All the guys knew him and all the guys thought he was a major pain in the ass. My impression was not far off the normal opinion of almost every surfer on C Street except there was another general consensus that he was also an arrogant know-it-all.

Some of the guys had tried working with him to make a surfing documentary and he had thrown tantrums over the workload, even though he was doing the least. Then he wanted to claim total ownership of the finished product and not share the footage or the wealth, if it sold, with any of them. One of the guys there had shot a majority of the best footage that made it into the finished product and he was very sour about Dasher’s attitude. He told me that Dasher was toting the product around and showing it off as being 100% his work and 100% his idea. All of them agreed that Dasher would come out on the beach and film them and had never asked permission from anyone that showed up on his monitor.

He would also discourage anyone from buying their own camera and shooting their own work. He would make fun of the footage and called them amateurs. Granted they were amateurs, but so was Dasher. He had no formal training. He had never been to film school. His claim to fame were mostly clips he had borrowed from other people and spliced together on his Mac at home with background music he hadn’t paid the royalties to use.

This doesn’t make you a “film producer”.

Everyone at C Street had essentially given him a wide berth since he moved there and showed his true colors.

So this was my first introduction to Dasher. Not a very good starting point, but I was to learn that Dasher was oblivious to what people said about him. In his mind he was the most popular and the most famous person living in Ventura, CA.

Dasher’s body parts (not for the faint at heart)

There’s one thing Dasher loves to talk about. That’s how well endowed he seems to think he is. He’ll bring the subject up out of the blue, make some coy remarks and then laugh at his own jokes. The rest of us are smiling politely and wondering what it is he’s trying to accomplish or what kind of response he expects us to make. He even does this same act for any women present. It’s a real turn-off for the women.

You will never see Dasher without his shirt on. He even swims and surfs wearing a rashguard or a swim shirt. This habit is because he has a nasty fungal infection that he treats daily, but has never gotten rid of. It makes his skin blotchy and it itches.

This is kind of what it looks like. Pretty gross, huh?

This is not a picture of Dasher’s chest. The reason you’ll know this is because he also has a little something he likes to call man tits. That’s right, he has breasts. It’s not from taking hormones although he does act like he has PMS most days. It’s from being overweight.

Even with his shirt on and knowing what’s underneath you have to give the guy credit because he still acts like he’s the sexiest thing since pantyhose.

He also claimed that no matter how much he flirts he can’t just bed any woman. He has to make a massive revelation before they do it because he has another body part that has failed him. I was shocked that he revealed something so personal, but it seemed anyone that knew him knew about his problem. He has an anal fistula that he had been treating for the last 20 years. The effects of this on his health were devastating. He always had a low grade fever and infected sinuses because the fistula was a constant source of aggravation and infected his body on a daily basis. I was going to add a picture here, but the ones I found were way too graphic and made my skin crawl. If you want to know what one looks like you can Google it yourself. Reading the causes of such an affliction also made me queasy, but I can’t imagine having to live with one. The fistula occurs from injury to the anal canal such as insertion of foreign objects that tear the lining or from extreme constipation.

Go here for the full disclosure on anal fistulas:

http://www.mayoclinic.org/anal-fistula/

Go here to see a picture of one:

http://mrcas.mpe.ntu.edu.sg/research/crobot/images/fistula/fistul13.jpg

This handicap alone made Dasher’s mate choices limited. His daily life was filled with sanitary pads and antibiotics. His prostrate was constantly swollen and it hurt for him to urinate.

Knowing about his issues with health I gained a whole new respect for him. It made his juvenile behavior a bit more tolerable. I now understood that his constant preening and posturing for the female gender wasn’t about how hot he thought he was. It was about how hot he knew he wasn’t. It was a way for him to feel better about himself.

Perhaps it was time for Dasher to work on his outside a little so that his inside could follow along in the healing process. He began this journey by having all of his teeth filed down to nubs and replaced with some shiny new veneers.

Stay tuned for Dasher’s makeover…

The new girl

Dasher wasted no time securing another woman to share his bed and his expenses once he knew he was getting divorced. In fact, I would say not even one year passed between the women.

Right away Dasher moved a new girl to the island to keep him company while he nursed his wounds from his past. To sum up their time together you could describe it as one long pity party with Dasher as the guest of honor. He played the “I was cheated on” card in every argument and fostered deep roots for betrayal, hatred of women in general and numbing the pain with anything narcotic and alcoholic.

To this new girl’s credit she hung in there for six years. We wonder if perhaps she brought some of her own issues to the island.

She was much younger than Dasher therefore not as experienced in the ways of life and readily available for the kind of emotional abuse Dasher was adept at dishing out. The fights were notorious and the makeup sex sloppy and drunken. The two of them stayed inebriated for the better part of six years.

Then the little girl grew up and became wise to the wiles of Dasher and decided to teach him a lesson. She threw him out. During this separation she toyed with the attentions of a fellow colleague and then made the cardinal sin of bringing him home to her bed. It was a nightmare made for movies.

When the telephone started ringing that night she at first answered it and she listened. Meanwhile the mutual co-worker sat on the sidelines twiddling his thumbs, listening and trying hard to remain hard. Each time she hung up on Dasher that night he would call back. He was crying, he was pleading, he was begging. He was annoying. His feeble attempts to ruin the evening for her and her new lover were not going to work. She had made up her mind.

Meanwhile Dasher is having a total breakdown because he realizes that once this new guy makes penetration he can never turn back the clock for him and his girl. He has blown it by pushing the envelope one time too many with her. She even told him she never knew just how much he hated women when she moved to the island to be with him. After six years of mental torment just trying to love him she had had enough and wanted out. She was weary of being the object of his therapeutic attempt to get over his wife. She was tired of the obsessive tirades, the disrespect and the blame placed on her for something she never even did. All she ever wanted was to love him and he never allowed her to do that.

So she let the phone ring that night and she stopped answering it. She and her new lover went in the other room and commenced with the act that she knew would forever sever the hold Dasher had on her. She was sure that once Dasher knew that another man had spent hours pleasuring her, holding her, in her mouth, between her legs, that Dasher could never come home to her. In his mind the betrayal would cut to the bone and never heal.

Dasher stayed true to form. He ran from his troubles. He packed his belongings and left the island.

This time he left for good.

A man’s best pickup lines

I’ve heard some great pickup lines in my life, but Dasher had some of the hokiest bullshit pickup lines I had ever heard.

It all starts with his name.

He realized a while back that women are intrigued when they find out his name is Dasher. What they don’t know and what he is stubborn to give up is that “Dasher” is actually his last name. He has this whole rehearsed spiel he gives once the opening question is asked “how did you get the name “Dasher”?” I guess he thinks this makes him fascinating.

He likes to tell them he was named this because he was born on Christmas Day. Was he? Who knows? He then goes on about his ancestry…boring, boring, boring. And the women eat it up until they get to know him better.

He’s an easy read and very transparent. He has a hard time holding onto the “cool” he likes to project. If the women only knew how he objectifies them after the initial meeting they’d be as turned off as I am and I’m a dude.

He met this woman walking her dog one afternoon. He stops her and asks if he can pet the dog. Great opening. He then goes on and on about how much of an animal lover he is. Later he relates this story to his pals and his only concern and deep impression was this “and I could totally see down her shirt and she wasn’t wearing a bra. I got to check out her titties the whole time!” This is said with great enthusiasm. But can he remember her name? Unless her name was titty I’m guessing not.

His other line involves his divorce. When he bats those eyelashes and feigns a tear or two about how his ex-wife cheated on him and how he’s never healed and the fact that he’s soooo vulnerable. He says women just want to offer their comfort and understanding which usually ends up with his face mashed against their titties.

It’s all about the body parts with Dasher and has very little to do with feelings or honesty.

He likes to think of himself as this sophisticated man of the world. His wardrobe consists of two dress shirts that aren’t that dressy, swim trunks, ratty shorts and swag teeshirts. His favorite shoes are his flops. In fact, when he showed me his Match.com ad this was actually written in there. Also part of his ad was the mention of “fine Italian leather shoes to dress up his look”. I asked to see these and he laughed. He told me that this addition would attract the kind of sophisticated pussy he was looking for even though he’d never be able to produce the look the woman was seeking. He also likes to wear this one gaudy cuff bracelet all the time and occasionally this big silver ring. I asked about the significance of the ring because he doesn’t wear it all the time. He told me that when he’s in a “relationship” he wears the ring. I wondered if it was to ward off other potential suitors or if it was to remind him about the “relationship” when he went out carousing. His choice of jewelry certainly leaves behind a green ring of tarnish, if you know what I mean.

If he was born on Christmas Day he most definitely is NOT the next coming of Christ.

All things considered his pickup lines didn’t ever seem to attract the woman of his dreams so he settled on some cheesy older women to bide his time with while he was in Ventura. There was one woman in particular that comes to mind. Guess what her deal was…

When a girl needs a green card…

What do you do when the girl you’re obsessively in love with might get deported? Well in Dasher’s case, you marry her. That marriage sounded doomed from the starting gate, but you got to hand it to them for hanging in there for 8 years or so.

She checked out long before he did.

Shortly after they married in Florida they moved to Aruba to work in a job that barely paid the bills.

I’ve heard both sides. Dasher was an incurable flirt and a tyrant. He made unreasonable demands for someone that had never held a decent job in his life. They would never get ahead and they would never have much because Dasher would continue stoking his immaturity until they were homeless in their golden years. He was constantly depressed and self absorbed to the point of distraction. His moods and his sullen behavior were eventually enough to send her looking for someone that had ambition, drive and eyes only for her.

She found that person in Aruba and had a secret affair with him for almost a year before Dasher ever found out. All of their friends and colleagues already knew about the affair too. Dasher was literally the last person to know. Pathetic? Yes, and sad too because the reasons she was leaving him for another man were the same reasons she had the affair to begin with. Dasher was so engrossed in himself that he never even looked her way until it was too late.

He tells about the night he found out. He uses great detail. She never came home that night. It was late. He was worried and got in his car and drove all over the island looking for her. Finally she came home and he asked her where she was. She told him she was with this other man and swore they were just friends. So he pressed “did you sleep with him?” And again she denied this. This is burned in his memory. This is a night he can’t forget, he can’t let go of.

And so she left and eventually married the other man.

I would have to say that her side of the bed wasn’t even cold yet when he started looking for his next victim…ahem…conquest. The phone calls and the emails were flying out of Aruba. Oh, the pain and suffering! “Oh, poor, poor, jilted me!” “My wife cheated on me!” So some nice, clueless friends offered him solace at their retreat in Canada and low and behold when Dasher flew back home to the island another woman wasn’t far behind.

One wonders just how many other women there were before the actual divorce was imminent. One wonders if Dasher was true to his one green-card-lover or if his flirting was acted upon while he was still married. We may never know because Dasher carries himself as a Puritan when he tells these stories and claims that no one is as loyal in a relationship as he is.

The next woman’s life is about to be consumed by the obsessive Dasher. Will she survive? Or will she be driven to cheat on him too?