The Evil Evangelist -- by Anne Shier

I once met a man who was a bona fide pastor of a local Baptist church, and as improbable as it sounds, he was what I would consider “evil.” I do not consider myself a religious person of any denomination. I was never baptized in any church, and my parents were not religious. However, that does not make me a bad person. So under what authority could I claim that this man was evil? The answer is this—none. It was simply my own feelings toward him that developed over time because of the way he treated people—namely me. Naturally I would expect a pastor to treat people kindly, even those who do not regularly attend church. What I would not expect is a pastor to be dictatorial, selfish, inconsiderate, womanizing and controlling. He was the rudest and most obnoxious man I’d ever met. This one man had all these horrible qualities and more. I had no idea how or why he became a pastor, given his numerous undesirable characteristics. I experienced him firsthand when I moved in with my roommate, Dot-Lynn (or “Doormat,” as I used to call her privately), and he turned out to be her practically live-in boyfriend. His name was Andrew.      

      This event happened in Toronto at the time that I happened to be renting a basement apartment in the house of my landlady, Toni. A big problem was that I was not very happy living in her extremely damp and dingy basement apartment and wanted out as soon as possible. I got busy looking for a roommate who owned a house with at least three bedrooms we could share. My daughter and I each needed our own bedroom, as well as access to the common rooms of the house—the kitchen, bathroom and living room. I had been looking for a thriftier kind of living arrangement ever since I had finished college three months ago. I was earning some money from a temporary full time job, so paying the rent was not an issue. Another problem was that my landlady, Toni, could not always handle the loud arguments that I used have regularly with my teenage daughter.

My student loans and grants had covered our living expenses for the most part while I was attending college, and a part time job took up the slack. Now that I had graduated (with honours, I might add) and now had good career potential in the IT industry, I needed another place to live for the time being until I got settled into a full time permanent job. It was imperative that the place I chose be accessible to public transit since I didn’t have a car, and that the rent be affordable—an amount in the neighbourhood of between $500 and $600 a month. That’s how I came to meet Dot-Lynn, a Jamaican woman, age 35 or so.

She was looking for a roommate, as well—someone who was dependable and reliable enough to pay her the rent consistently on time. She told me she had some household renovations to do, which my rent money was going to help her finance. I replied that I didn’t care why she needed the money; I could see that her house was nice and big, and that alone told me the house was expensive to maintain. We hit it off, and she offered me the chance to move in with my daughter, Elizabeth, who was about 13 at the time. Elizabeth was in middle school in grade 8; soon she would be a high school student.

I gave Dot-Lynn the equivalent of two months’ (first and last) rent, which was $1,200, and we agreed on a moving day. I was relieved to have found a place to live that I deemed much more suitable for myself and my daughter. We would each have our own furnished bedroom; my own furniture from my current apartment could then be put into temporary storage until I needed it again, so our move into this place would be relatively uncomplicated. We just needed to move our clothes, toiletries, books and personal stuff. Thus, a week later, we moved and gradually settled in.

The critical thing that Dot-Lynn neglected to mention was that her boyfriend, Andrew, stayed there a lot, overnight. From what I could see, he was living there; he never seemed to go back to his own place at night, assuming he had a place. Whenever I wanted to do something in the house like store something in the kitchen, Andrew would always be the one telling me I couldn’t do that. Instead of heeding what he said, I told him I would check with Dot-Lynn and that if she gave me permission to do whatever I needed to do, that would be all I needed. Andrew, for his part, would then show me his loud and aggressive side and start ordering me around, objecting to whatever I wanted or needed to do in the house. I thought about what he was saying and doing, realizing that he was not my landlord or my roommate; Dot-Lynn was the owner of the house as well as my roommate, and I decided that I would do whatever she said was okay for me to do, not what he wanted. However, he consistently gave me flack every time I did something he didn’t like. It was amazing to me how many things I did that he objected to. It was even more amazing that he acted like he had the authority to boss me around. In fact, he would boss Dot-Lynn and Elizabeth around too on a regular basis. It was all becoming too much for me to handle, and he was practically standing on my last nerve when I went to tell Dot-Lynn about his obnoxious behaviour and attitude toward Elizabeth and me. It was either going to be him or us that capitulated.

Something that I discovered about Andrew shortly after we’d moved in was that he was legally married with three kids! I’d overheard him talking to someone about his kids one day. His family lived in Jamaica, which was where he was from. How he’d met Dot-Lynn and managed to become her boyfriend was beyond me.

What the hell does she see in him? He’s nothing to write home about. Maybe he’s so good in bed, she can’t resist him. If I had a boyfriend right now, he wouldn’t be anything like Andrew. I know that for a fact!

One day, after a particularly bitter argument that I’d had with Andrew, a strange woman called the house on the landline. She asked to speak to Andrew. I told her he wasn’t there—even though he really was—and asked her to leave a message. She told me her name was Taya and that she was Andrew’s sister, which I did not believe for one second, and she asked me to pass on the fact that she’d called and to tell him to please call her back.

Very politely, I told her, “No problem, Taya, I’ll let him know you called.” Yeah, in your dreams, lady!

Meanwhile, I had no intention whatsoever of telling him about her call. In fact, I had no intention of telling anyone about it. Instead, I hung up and called *69, which is the “call return” option for how to get the caller’s number right after the call. I found out that this caller’s number was coming from outside the country, probably from Jamaica. There was no doubt in my mind that the caller was Andrew’s wife, not sister. He didn’t have a sister, as far as I knew. At that point, I knew how I was going to get even with Andrew for all the shenanigans he kept pulling around here. He was not going to be bossing us around much longer if I had anything to do with it.

 The next day, almost 24 hours after the first call, the woman called back. I made sure I was near the phone all day because I wanted to be the one answering it in case it was the same woman. It was. I recognized her voice. It was a good thing she’d called back so soon—I might not have recognized it or I might have missed her call.

 “Hello, Taya! My name is Shannon,” I told her. “I just moved in here with my daughter, Elizabeth, last month. My roommate’s name, in case you didn’t know it, is Dot-Lynn. Recently, I met Andrew too, though I haven’t seen him lately. I was wondering something though. Did you know Andrew has a steady girlfriend …? Yes, apparently, they’ve been practically living together for the last two to three years. Dot-Lynn tells me he’s been her boyfriend for quite some time now. All I know is that he stays overnight here a lot.”

  “What?! Who did you say you were?” she screamed. “There is no girlfriend there, as far as I know … Dot-Lynn, or whatever her damn name is does not live there, she is only a friend of Andrew’s!”

  "Wrong, lady! You could not be more wrong than you are about your husband, or however you want to refer to him. He is a cad and a womanizer. He treats my daughter and me like second-class citizens when we are the ones who live here, paying rent like any good tenants would. Andrew, on the other hand, eats here for free and sleeps with Dot-Lynn in her bedroom every single night, mooching off her constantly. Not only that, he orders us all around at will. I am sick to death of his crap, so if you don’t mind, why don’t you come and haul your lazy-a** husband back to Jamaica where he belongs! Put him to work there supporting you and your kids!” And with that parting quip, I hung up, satisfied that I had accomplished in one phone call what might have taken a lot longer otherwise.

 Next thing I knew Andrew and Dot-Lynn were fighting like cats and dogs constantly regarding what Taya had discovered about him. I thought, Now I just have to sit back and watch them fight … this is real entertainment! If Dot-Lynn is smart, she will get rid of this albatross quickly because it’s either him who leaves or us. But if she isn’t that smart, then “Doormat” really is the right name for her. At least I know I did my part to make Andrew’s life absolutely miserable from now on.
After that fateful call I relaxed and let the fates take their course. I had done what I needed to do to set the situation right for myself and my daughter.

copyright - Anne Shier, 2013, all rights reserved, published by Authorhouse, Bloomington, Indiana, USA