Witness

1. Chelsea

Being a bigger girl, my first date was at the ripe age of seventeen. 

After a nine hour shift working in the only fast-food restaurant in the small town where I lived, my twenty-six year old co-worker, who had been flirting with me since I began working there at sixteen, asked if I wanted to go for a late night drive down some of the local country roads. 

Yes, I counted that as a date. 

Yes, he did pull over in a lay-by and try it on with me. 

I went on three more equally-as-tragic dates with him, on each of which he also suggested a drive and pulled into a suspiciously dark corner. Looking back, he definitely scouted out those dark corners beforehand; there's no way a person would've just stumbled across perfect car sex side roads. 

But those sorts of dates were what I felt I deserved. The little crappy dates that weren't really dates because they were actually just boys who wanted to put their shriveled dick inside me and then beg me not to tell anybody. 

After losing my virginity on one of those crappy dates - thankfully, not to the twenty-six year old - I decided that nobody deserved those kinds of dates, not even the popular girl that bullied me in high school.

Then came my very first and only boyfriend, Kyle. 

(My friend Madelaine loves that he was called Kyle. There's always a Kyle, she would quietly soothe every time I brought him up.)

Kyle, in her dictionary, means heart-breaker. 

And a heart-breaker he was. 

For a year Kyle slept with every woman who smiled within a five metre radius of him while I gazed dreamily into the clouds thinking how amazing it was that I had the most perfect boyfriend in the world. 

I broke up with him every four months like clockwork. He'd cheat, I'd send him a lengthy text about how I found out, I'd block him and then when three days had passed I'd worry about him finding someone else and tell him to come on over to my house again.

My thought process was this: he may sleep with other women, but he never asks them to be his girlfriend.

That made me special, apparently. 

More cheating. More blocking. More getting back together. As first boyfriends go, Kyle did not exactly set a very high standard. Maybe I stayed with him because of the confidence he gave me, because he made me feel pretty in a way that no other boy ever had, despite the extra weight. 

I realised that I was not special after the year was up; Kyle was just an asshole who could sweet talk his way out of anything. Luckily this realisation aligned with me moving back home with my mum, so I didn't have to go through that awkward phase of seeing Kyle around town everywhere I went once we broke up for good. 

Unluckily, Kyle gave me a dating complex. 

I haven't dated a single soul since. Too much cheating, too much heart-break, too much effort. Instead of being a girlfriend, I flit between relationships. I flirt until we're almost there, I might even sleep with the guy, then I ghost. 

No boyfriend, no commitment, no thank you. 

I try to remind myself of my only relationship every so often, especially when I know that I'm dating someone my mother wouldn't approve of. 

Someone like Kyle. 

Tony Mierro is a Kyle, deep down. 

A heart-breaker. A womanizer. A man that would make you walk barefoot across glass before he borrowed you his designer shoes.