Beware the Cell Phone Bandits!

I've spent the last week or so watching Sex and the City on DVD and marvelling how even years after the series ended, the show is still relevant and the writing crisp. In one memorable episode, the metaphor of the circus freak show is applied to the men that the women date: they seem normal on the outside and then ka-boom! The men's true personalities reveal themselves in an ugly way.

This episode hit very close to home considering what happened to me Saturday night at Plush. I was supposed to meet my friends L and T to celebrate T getting permanent residency in Canada. L and T were running late, but while I was standing outside a guy stepped out of the line and introduced himself as K. He told me he was T's friend and he used to work at the same company as T and me before moving to Seattle to work for Amazon.com. He seemed like a nice friendly person as we stood there killing time by figuring out how many people at my company we both know. L and T eventually showed up and we went inside.

In retrospect, K seemed like he was definitely into me. We danced together a lot and I bought him a drink and he bought me one as well. In my defense, I'll say this much: Whenever I go out with friends, we take turns buying each other drinks, and I dance pretty closely with complete strangers in bachata and salsa so I'm comfortable with being on the dance floor. Oh, and I'm completely clueless when it comes to reading guy's signals unless they're very obvious. I didn't think much of it and didn't consider myself to be "sending signals" or anything, and I definitely didn't think he was either. Boy was I naive.

The night wound down and we stood in line for coat check waiting to exit the club. K asked if he could borrow my cell phone to make a call and I lent it to him, thinking he wanted to make a local call and avoid a roaming charge on his own phone. To my surprise, I glimpsed a non-local area code in the phone number on the call display. I reached for my phone but he wouldn't give it back. Then he pulled out his own phone and showed me my phone number in the missed calls log. I realized he'd just called himself using my phone to get my number.

I'm still angry thinking about it. What a sneaky deceitful loser thing to do! It's lame and tacky for these reasons:

• He basically stole my number! He didn't ask for it like any nice, respectful upfront guy would. He may have gotten my phone number, but would I ever want to talk to him when I see that area code on my call display?


• It reflects poorly on his personality; he comes across as underhanded and lacking in integrity, and as a result I respect him a lot less.


• He was the friend of a friend and a former colleague to boot. Treating someone like this when you know there might be a chance you'll run into each other again just makes for bad karma.

I hope I never see him again, and I hope for his sake that if I do, he has the good sense to run in the opposite direction.