At 4 am, I startled awake after sensing a presence in my room, standing at the foot of my bed.

“JesusfuckingChrist!!! What the fuck, Javier?”

Javier (“Hav!” I would call him) and I had been dating about a month. I had given him a key the week before because I felt I could trust him. Plus the apartment I had was massive: it was a long flight and a half to get downstairs to open the front door. My legs are lazy, my heart, not so.

“I missed you. I wanted to be sure you were here,” Jav says, sitting on the corner of my bed. I turn on the light.

“Wait. You drove from Ajax to see if I was sleeping? You don’t trust me?”

Thus began the end of our emotionally charged whirlwind dating. Javier was a closeted Uruguayan, first gen Canadian, testing the gay waters for the first time in his early 30s while living in the basement of his deeply religious parent’s home. At the time I was working the odd bar shift at The Black Eagle while working at Rogers in their iMedia department (yes, Rogers jumped on the “iBandwagon” back in 1998-2001) and would come home on the weekend at odd hours. Needless to say our relationship was moving along at a slow pace, since I had very little free time. Because of my lack of enthusiasm in our love affair, early on in our relationship, Jav accused me of sleeping around and not finding him attractive and that I’d prefer to be with bigger, bearish type guys simply because I worked at a rough leather bar.

I did find Jav extremely attractive: he was one of those hairy Southern Latinos, slenderly well built, well groomed, and playful. He had beautiful eyes and the whitest teeth of anyone I’ve ever been with. And apparently had no sense of boundaries.

“I’ll go,” Jav says and rises off the bed. A switch-whipped puppy couldn’t look sadder

“Oh for Christssakes, Jav. You better stay.”

The above mentioned incursion happened early Saturday morning. Sunday we met up and I called it off. It was surprisingly swift and without incident – Jav accepted that he was being a bit smothering and we parted without drama. I was relieved that I dodged an emotionally crippling bullet.

Monday morning at the office, I get a call from reception as soon as I sit down at my desk saying I had a visitor.

Uh oh…

I come around the corner to find Jav in tears in the middle of the reception area. Like Jav’s tears, co-workers are streaming by us, offering odd sympathetic glances. The receptionist has her head down, ears wide open.

I drag Jav out into the hall for some privacy. He begs me to take him back, he can change, it will change, he’ll give me my space. I stand firm and say that we need to go our separate ways. After a long pause, he leaves.

The remainder of the day I am sent 40 to 50 emails from Javier’s gal pal telling me that I am a horrible person, god will punish me, I’ve ruined Jav’s life, his heart and subsequently his career. I am scheduled to rot in hell and be miserably alone for the rest of my life, according to her. I am a monster who cannot possibly love anyone. I have lost the ability to love when I cut Jav loose. I was scum.

I call IT to ask how to block an email.

My boss notices my distress and after listening to my story, tells me that sometimes our hearts are unbalanced. In both senses of the word.