She was the type of person who bought (though, usually, stole) boxes of hair dye only for the special, hair-nourishing conditioner that was inside of them. The type of person who wandered into a hospital to eat for free at the cafeteria, feigning that she was visiting someone there. In short, Valerie was the type of person who did things for extremely roundabout reasons that few others could understand. Except for me, the person she refused to be loved by. I guess that makes me the Paul Varjak to her Holly Golightly. Only, unlike those two—the movie version of them, anyway—Valerie never came around to loving me. We were more like the Truman Capote novella version of Paul and Holly (wherein “Paul,” the narrator, doesn’t actually have a name—that was but another “Hollywood touch” added in the movie).

I know that kind of rejection should have broken me, staved me off the path of my obsession (because, to some extent, all romantic love is obsession). But it didn’t. I was still masochistic enough to keep hanging around her, “just as a friend.” That’s what she would always reiterate. Valerie never wanted me to forget that I was nothing special to her. Merely another “kooky” male acquaintance who had developed a romantic attachment to her. But I knew that I was more than that. Certainly more than an acquaintance. I had known her for the better part of eight years now, initially encountering her when we were both just twenty.

It happened, where else, at the hospital. Where she was having lunch in the cafeteria, naturally. I was there actually visiting someone—my grandfather, Leo. Grandpa L, we called him. He had just suffered a second major heart attack within the span of a year and it wasn’t looking too good for him. In fact, the doctor was fairly unabashed about deeming the prognosis to be “bleak.” That was the word he really used—some bedside manner, huh? His comment nearly gave my grandma, Joan (she was Grandma J, obviously) a heart attack herself. She couldn’t imagine her life without Leo, the two had been together for fifty-plus years. The better part of a lifetime.

That’s what I wanted to have with someone. That kind of devotion…in the face of whatever harrowing struggles came our way. Unfortunately, I wasn’t doing myself much of a favor on that front by setting my sights on Valerie. And oh, how my sights immediately set on her when I saw her in that cafeteria, piling the plate on her tray high with all manner of fare from the buffet. Of course I noticed right away that she had deliberately smeared her mascara beneath her lower eyelids and at the corners of her eyes. That was patently her intent, to wear this ill-applied makeup as her “don’t question me” armor. Her way of being left alone about snatching and gobbling up so much food without paying for it. The natural assumption would be that she was worried about/pre-grieving someone. Who would dare try to counter her ostensible “fragile state” with all that black shit on her face to corroborate the authenticity of the tears? Me, that’s who. I had her number from the second she caught my attention. That was her entire raison d’être, after all: catching people’s attention. Though she would try to deny it through and through.

But no, it was blatant to me what kind of girl she was. I suppose “manic pixie dream girl” was still the term used to describe her ilk—albeit before that Nathan Rabin-coined term received so much backlash for being misogynistic. Well call me a misogynist, because that was all I could see when I stared into Valerie’s piercing green eyes, staring straight back at me with “RoboCop” flair. Like she was appraising me and what kind of danger I might pose.

The danger was that I might blow her cover (or just blow her). And I think she knew that I knew she was a con artist. What else could be the reason behind her suddenly sidling up to me and asking, “So, who are you here visiting?” Instant deflection from herself, a tried-and-true tactic. One that worked seamlessly on a narcissist like me. Because, yes, I’ll be the first to admit that most men are. If you have a dick to swing around, it’s inevitable. So yes, her talking to me all flirtatiously like that won me over right away. Any accusation I might have tried to make melted along with my heart as she kept talking to me about I-couldn’t-tell-you-what. All I could do was try my best not to stare directly at that ultra-sensual mouth of hers while fantasizing about what it could do to me—physically and emotionally.

Before I knew what was happening, I was walking out of the hospital with her, even though I had planned to go back up and see my grandfather again. But that was the nature of Valerie’s effect on me—on people in general. She could get a person to do whatever she wanted with little more than a wink and a head nod. Although, unfortunately for me, never the kind of head nod associated with the movements of getting a BJ. That was an image left purely to fantasy, and she made sure, practically every day, that I remembered that.

Even so, my masochism—more than Valerie herself—is what ended up vanquishing me. Making me surrender to her every whim, her every beck and call. And yes, it was always me that she summoned when she was in any serious trouble. Needing to be bailed out of jail, or to create a diversion when she was hellbent on shoplifting a particular item she was willing to go to jail for. Indeed, I often mocked her for her shoplifting predilections, telling her that it was the biggest indicator of her “white girlness.” Valerie insisted that she wasn’t like that average white girl trope because she wasn’t rich. This wasn’t some Winona Ryder “have you ever stolen something even when you had the cash?” thing. This was a matter of Valerie knowing she was fabulous but being too broke to afford the articles of clothing she needed to accent that point. And, she figured, well, “society” owed her something if it was going to have the gall to make her hot but not moneyed. Because, really, she told me, “Shouldn’t being hot be what gets me some fucking money?”

According to her, that wasn’t happening. Though she seemed to have her fair share of male suitors willing to pay for whatever she wanted (myself included). There was even one “older gentleman” who offered to make her a “full-time mistress” by buying her an apartment. She refused. I suppose that’s when I became a perennial couch sleeper in my own home, always offering her my bed. And she, delightful she, always taking me up on that offer.

Alas, Valerie never took me up on my offer to really take care of her. To let me be the breadwinning boyfriend I felt she deserved, but never seemed to want. She told me that I wasn’t her type. When I at last gathered the courage, all these years later, to ask her what, exactly, was her type, she answered simply, “No one. I’m too in love with myself.” And I reckon that’s when I fully believed in the concept of sologamy (or was it really just garden-variety sociopathy?). Of course, that didn’t stop me from, a few nights later, trying my literal hand at making her see reason, sticking it down her panties while she was asleep in my bed. I should have known that her response would be to pummel me relentlessly in the face, kneeing me a few times in the ribs and nuts for good measure.

So now, here I am, back in the very hospital where she first vanquished me more metaphorically with that bored, disaffected expression of hers. Needless to say, I don’t think she’ll be visiting me. Not even in exchange for the promise of free cafeteria food as a legitimate visitor this time around.