A Modern Romance
by
Ms. C.J. aka "Pinky D."
and
Candy Man aka "Sugar Bear" Bill
Copyrighted 2014 by C.J. Miller
This is a true story...only the names have been changed to protect the innocent.
They
say that sometimes, "Truth is Stranger Than Fiction." This is actually
a true story and I cannot wait to tell it to millions of people because
people need to hear stories about the power of the Living God and how
wonderful he can be if you just recognize him and give yourself to him
completely. This is also a story about how two grown people, who were
old enough to know better, fell in love after having a three month
"long-distance" relationship via the Internet. I say they should have
known better, because as circumstances would have it, they were both
drawn into their desire to be loved by someone whom they thought that
they knew --- but, found out that people, like their looks--- can be
very deceiving.
They
were not strangers to one another. So, all those stories about meeting
someone over the Internet who essentially is a stranger to you and
falling in love with them too quickly, only to have the relationship
turn into a living nightmare,
didn't actually apply to them. On the contrary, despite the fact that
they grew up together in the same town and went to the same schools
together, they truly did not "know" one another. That was the imminent
danger that they faced, while struggling to develop what any truly
loving person would want to have in their lives...a true love forever.
Well...as
the saying goes: "Nothing good lasts forever..." so I guess the
relationship was doomed from the start if it started out to be good, at
all...but ended up being a disaster of Biblical proportions. This is a
story about how to NOT have a good relationship with someone...whether
you truly care about them or not. This is a story about what happens to
good people who have good intentions that are definitely NOT...good
enough. And, this is a story about how some truly crazy people can lure
you into their messed up world and end up not only trying to drive you
crazy with them...but, also trying to destroy you in the process.
Take heed and be careful...
In 2013, Ms. C.J. wasn’t doing so well. She had recently been fired from a very stressful job in Las
Vegas, NV and had to move back to Atlanta, GA. where she had been
living for over 25 years, to try to get her life back in order. It was July, and it was sweltering hot in Atlanta, but she was hopeful of finding a good job and a new place to live in a familiar town. She had been homeless in Vegas for over two months and had just driven through a devastating tornado in Oklahoma. How much worse could life get for her?
She had actually been fortunate enough to be sharing a very large mansion and working as an Office Assistant/House Sitter for a well-known author and radio celebrity, in an upscale, affluent neighborhood in Atlanta, when she had started her relationship with Sugar Bear Bill via Facebook messages on the Internet. But, things were about to change for her very quickly. Unfortunately, she didn’t have a lot of money, she had very few friends in Atlanta and was living on the Unemployment Benefits she was receiving from her last job. She was lonely and tired of struggling so hard. She just wanted a good man who would understand her situation and (yeah)…take care of her.
She had just left her newest love interest, an ex-Marine and former "Meth-head" in Las
Vegas, despite the fact that they had been planning to be together
again. They would speak to each other on the phone every week, but she
was not looking forward to dealing with another stressed out veteran
with drug and alcohol problems, nor was she looking forward to spending the coming holidays alone. Her money was beginning to run out fast, especially after the government “shut down” that took place in October of 2013, that cut off her benefits before she could find another full time job and left her even further behind than ever before.
Life was looking very bleak, indeed for Ms. C.J., and she was losing hope of ever finding someone with whom she could share her life,
not to mention the ever present fact that she was having problems
finding another job and it was getting very cold in Atlanta. She had made the decision, in the summer of 2013, that she would never deal with another stranger and she never wanted to be homeless, ever again. Her last fiancé of five years with whom she had been living in Atlanta, was an ex-Army veteran suffering with severe PTSD and he had tried to kill her in June of 2012.
She had left him in the middle of the night with only the clothes on her back and some important papers in her purse. That was the reason why she had gone to Vegas in the first place; having escaped his wrath to avoid ever dealing with him again and fearing for her life in the long run. She
had also vowed to never deal with another veteran, since apparently the
ones she had been with all seemed to have severe psychological problems
that left a bad taste in her mouth and a cleaned out bank account,
every time.
Thus, the reason for putting all of her possessions into a storage unit. But, this time she had left Nevada with whatever she could carry in her car. She was in danger of losing everything that she owned, and the prospect of losing her mind in the process was very real indeed. Her car payments were late, her car insurance had been canceled, and she was about to lose her only means of transportation and the key to getting a good job…the brand new car that she had purchased just nine months earlier. The mansion in which she was living was located on a very dark, private road with little or no street lights and the days were getting shorter with the coming of Fall. The street would be plunged into complete darkness after 5 pm in a few weeks and she was getting scared.
In September of 2013 her health was failing
and she needed to see a doctor, but she could only go to the county
clinic with a current Georgia ID. The Monday after she had gone to the DMV
to get her ID renewed, the police were waiting outside of her driveway
and pulled her over immediately. She hadn’t committed any traffic
violations but that didn’t matter…they
impounded her car anyway. So, she was forced to walk almost three miles
to get to any sort of public transportation; up and down steep hills,
around blind corners on a street with no sidewalks and muddy shoulders;
taking her life into her hands with each trip to get food or other personal necessities.
The road back to the house was a 45 degree incline...straight up.... for about four city blocks. She would cry out in pain and pray that God would help her get up that hill every time she went out. Ironically,
her landlady’s car had literally exploded into flames in the same week
that C.J.'s car was repossessed, and she too was inconvenienced with
having no transportation. But, the landlady was running an illegal
gambling operation out of her home, and had a well-to-do boyfriend to
help her get another car within 2 weeks. But, Ms. C.J. didn't have those
options.
C.
J. was forced to move to less lavish accommodations in a Middle Class
neighborhood in Decatur, GA. where transportation was, at least, a
little more convenient but, that was when things began to change
radically. Her so-called friends from her new church claimed that they would try to help her, but they were unable or unwilling to do what needed to be done to get her life back on track. They
accused her of being lazy and not trying hard enough. They had never
been in a situation like hers and they didn’t understand what she was
going through looking for work as an older woman in a bad economy. They had cars and didn't have to walk for miles just to get somewhere in town.
Besides that, they were foreigners…Caucasian
looking people from Iran... who had never been subjected to the
discrimination and prejudices that a 58 year old African-American woman
was facing in the job market of the Post-Recession, U.S. Economy of 2013. They were now millionaires and business people who lived in luxury, but refused to share any of their good fortune with her
and did the bare minimum in the way of financial assistance to help.
They claimed to have come to this country with nothing and had to
struggle to get ahead, and yet their stories did not add up. Especially
since they were business owners and diplomats back in Iran and somebody
had to have given them and their families plane tickets to get to
America, in the first place..
The move to Decatur, proved to be disastrous, to say the least. She was living
with greedy and troubled people who used her for whatever they could
get out of her. Although she shared the common bonds of being
African-American with them, she did not feel comfortable around the
poverty that awaited her every time she rode the buses somewhere. She
tried desperately to find work; putting in scores of online
applications, and ended up with absolutely nothing to show for it. The
crushing blow came during the holiday season when she was asked to cook
a lavish Thanksgiving dinner for her landlady and her sons, who then
tried to make her pay for the entire meal by turning the heat off in the
house, during an unseasonable cold snap for Atlanta.
The
constant changes of temperature in the house caused her to get a nasty
sinus infection and she seemed to have been developing a problem with
her hip that was affecting her walking. She managed to get to a local
doctor who began treatments with painkillers and muscle relaxers. Little
did she know that the pains that she was experiencing in her legs and
hip were the beginnings of a very serious ailment.
The bright part of this whole scenario, however, was that she had recently reconnected with an old friend of hers from back home, Candy Man Bill. They had been corresponding on the Internet, and were rekindling their friendship after a 40 year separation. They had known one another since Kindergarten and had graduated high school
in the same year. They had had the same friends and lived in the same
neighborhoods. But, they had lost contact with one another after graduation when they had gone to different colleges.
Ironically,
he had attended the college that she had wanted to go to, and she had
attended the college that he had wanted to go to. She had never really noticed him or hung out with him in high school, although he had been a member of a popular local band, was a very talented musician, and had even been in a few of her classes. He had never been one of her “boyfriends,” so it wasn’t like they were actually rekindling an old flame. She really didn't know him at all.
He had moved to Los Angeles, CA in the early 1980’s, had developed his own vending business (thus the name Candy Man), had purchased
a very nice home (that he was renting out), was working as a substitute
teacher for a local school district (but not making much money), and
was taking care of his elderly mother, after having cheated death a few
years earlier from having a mild stroke and a serious heart attack. They had both worked in the Financial Services field had a lot of interests in common, and Ms. C. J. knew (or, so she thought) that this was going to be the final love of her life.
They had so much in common that they were both smitten from the start, and had professed their growing love for one another; even if it was only the kind of love that old friends with thirteen years of common memories of living in the same town
could express to one another in a conversation over the phone or in a
text message. She thought that she could help him take care of his
mother and his health problems together. It seemed like it would be the
ideal situation for her until they got married legally, since she was
also a professional registered elder/child care provider with Care.com.,
had taken care of her own mother during her later years, and also had
training as a disabled person's caretaker.
Candy
Man had called her on New Year’s Eve, and they had spent over an hour
talking on the phone; reminiscing about the old days back in their home
town. They knew that they were “technically” compatible, but they also realized that they didn’t really know one another very well. He called her every day (sometimes twice or three times a day) and they talked (sometimes for hours) about what was going on in their lives. They began planning a life together, but neither of them could have dreamed what Fate had in store for them. Their love was about to be put to the ultimate test.
This was
when disaster struck in Ms. C. J.’s life. Atlanta was going through a
horrible cold snap. The temperatures dropped to the single digits or
below, but C.J. had to still try to find a job. She bundled up as best
she could and managed to acquire a part-time job working for an upscale men's
clothing store as a tailor, but was unceremoniously fired in less than
one week after spending over $55 in bus and taxi fare to get to their
training site over 30 miles away from her home. They claimed that she
could not perform to their impossible standards of altering ten suits in
eight hours (it was actually age, color and sex discrimination) but at
least, she had made enough money to get her through another couple of
weeks.
She had planned to move out of the home where she was living in the middle
class neighborhood to take a job as a live-in Nanny/Tutor for an 11
year old hyperactive, special needs child closer to home in Atlanta.
But, the city had recently been through a very bad snow storm and had
been shut down for days. Atlanta does not have the ability to deal with
serious snow storms, and this one was as debilitating as it could have been to the city, to say the least.
She
met the people that she was supposed to be working for at a local
McDonald's, and had to walk almost two miles, up a long icy hill to get
there because the people were afraid that they would get stuck inside of
the neighborhood where she was living because the house was at the
bottom of a deep gully at the bottom of another steep hill. Anyone
familiar with Atlanta's topography knows that the terrain there can be extremely treacherous; especially when it is icy.
The first of February was coming fast and she had already given her landlady notice that she would be moving out. Her Emergency Unemployment Benefits had run out, and Ms. C. J. had found herself broke with no money, again. She needed this job badly. The
people who had promised to hire her seemed to be a nice professional,
religious couple and the child seemed to be manageable. But, the
saying: “You cannot judge a book by its cover,” could never have been truer in this instance.
The couple turned out to be evil, vindictive, super over-protective, "bourgeois to the nth
degree", unrealistic, psychopaths who claimed to be related to our
President. Their house was drafty and cold and the kid was a
pathological hyperactive liar. After a seemingly minor misunderstanding
about how to care for their child, some serious lies being told by the
kid, and asking whether or not she could have a drink of water or eat
lunch at their house after being there for over ten hours a day, Ms. C.
J. was verbally
abused, and threatened with attempted kidnapping for letting the kid go
outside to play and jail time for neglect and abuse. None of the lies
were true and C.J. had been the 3rd caretaker in a month to be with the
kid.
Mind you, they were supposed to have been "church people" and true Christians. The father was an ex-crack head deacon of the church they attended, was the director of the outreach program for homeless people, and
the mother (who was really the kid's adopted parent who couldn't have
children of her own) was a department supervisor who worked for the CDC.
But, she treated C.J. like she was one of the street people they dealt
with on a daily basis, instead of the educated professional that she
was. After telling the people that she didn't want to work for them any more, she was then physically beat up by the DeKalb
County Police, and ultimately ended up lying in jail on the bench
warrant that had been issued after her car was impounded four months
earlier.
The people for whom she had been working had tried to wrongfully evict her, from the apartment where she had been living as a part of the Nanny/Tutor deal, and then sued her for the rent they claimed that she owed them. And, were it not for the bench warrant against her, she would have been “home free” (so to speak) to find another place to live. But, because she didn’t have the money to pay the tickets on her car or the money to get to the court the day of her hearing --- on a bitterly cold Winter’s night in early February 2014, she found herself homeless and “ass out” again.
To make matters worse, the city of Atlanta had just gone through a SECOND more serious snow storm in two weeks. The city was again, shut down for over five days,
and Ms. C. J. had to sit for 20 hours a day, in a desolate, freezing
cold, horrendously boring jail cell with a woman who hated the sound of
her snoring; something she knew very well that C.J. couldn’t control,
but the woman swore up and down that C.J. was doing it
on purpose and would wake her up by yelling her name over and over in
the middle of the night. The food looked and tasted like dog food and
basically, all she could stomach were the peanut butter sandwiches, since she was a practicing vegetarian.
Ms. C.J.
had to endure this torture through meditation and prayer, until she
could face the Traffic Court judge ten days after her arrest. All she could think about was getting out and being with her Candy Man Bill. After twelve days of eating
horrible jail food, and living with loud and unsavory characters in the
bleakest of conditions one could ever imagine, she was finally
processed out of jail and released into the streets of Decatur. Her brand new “KINDLE” computer had been stolen by a crack head who lived in the house where she was living. They also stole her medications. So then, she had no home, no money, no car, nowhere to go...and she was IN PAIN!
Candy
Man had been devastated from being over 3000 miles away with no way to
contact her or to find out what had happened to her while she was
incarcerated. He managed to send her $130 in cash when she was released, so she could at least get something to eat, a charger for her phone and some bus fare to get around town. Luckily she ended up being able to stay with her niece, in a beautiful townhouse about 25 miles outside of Atlanta for a short time. But, she still needed to figure out what she was going to do with the rest of her life. Her niece's HOA had regulations against unauthorized visitors moving in with her. C.J. had to find someplace else to go, quickly.
She
had tried to get help from Social Services and local homeless shelters
but the shelters were full of seriously mentally and physically ill,
angry, dispossessed, uneducated, dirty and hopeless people from the
streets of Atlanta and they turned her away night after night because she didn't "look" homeless and didn't have a bunch of screaming babies on her hip.
It broke her heart to see the numbers of Black men and woman who had
been thrown away by the Society with nowhere to go and no one to care
for them. She didn’t belong there and everything she had
tried to do to get up on her feet had come to naught. She was back to
“square one,” again. All she got was a few free lunches and a pair of
jeans to wear from the shelter's clothing closet. .
But then, finally --- her “knight in shining armor” came through…and
between her family buying her a plane ticket and his mother agreeing to
take her into their home (at least that is what he told her) in California, they decided that she should finally move to Los Angeles!
She had to swallow her fear of flying and living with earthquakes to go
be with the man of her dreams. Little did she know that what waited for her in California was nothing like she could have ever imagined, and she definitely did not think that it could be worse than what she had just gone through.
