Trashley: Fifty-One

Where the Sidewalk Ends

I spent the afternoon with Cecelia’s entire family: her parents, sisters, hundreds of nieces and nephews, and several neighbors. They welcomed Michelle and me into their home, where taking our shoes off was optional. *Hulk Hogan voice* Hell yeah, brother. The way Ashley and her mom had described Cecelia’s family couldn’t have been further from the truth. These were good, kind-hearted people who were all about family. They didn’t care about material possessions or what kind of Tesla you drove. A membership to the Bakersfield Country Club wasn’t the height of luxury or their aspiration.

A bunch of stars.

Cecelia’s twin sister gave me a tour of her garden, where she grew every vegetable known to man. I used to think gardening was boring until the Pandemic, when I grew a single strawberry. The kids climbed oak trees and ran through the sprinkler in the backyard while the adults drank wine, beer, and homemade margaritas in the sunroom. Cecelia’s Dad told us stories about growing up in the Louisiana Bayou and how he’d met their mom. He was a natural storyteller, tall and gentle, and you could still hear the light remnants of a southern drawl despite spending a significant portion of his life in Minnesota. Cecelia’s Mom was cheery and bursting with Midwestern grandma warmth, like a loaf of sourdough bread that had just been pulled out of the oven. After a few glasses of margaritas, Cecelia’s mom teared up, thinking about how much Ashley and her entire family had put Cecelia through.

“I think that’s enough Casamigos for you, Mimi,” I joked as I put my hand on her shoulder.

Meeting the fam, I loved this day.

I wouldn’t let Ashley and her family get away with what they’d done. I knew I’d tell my story one day and imagined placing it on the World Wide Web, like a scarlet letter, that would forever be associated with Ashley, or at least until Elon Musk destroys the Internet.

Ashley and her family had dragged, slandered, and accused Cecelia of horrible things that never happened in a pitiful smear campaign. They claimed she photoshopped texts, cyber-stalked them, and hacked into their home security system. Stacey even tried to convince me that Cecelia hired a private investigator to stake out their house for several months because she wanted to ruin Ashley’s relationship with me. She had done none of those things.

“Could you imagine Cecelia meeting Lauren? She’d feel so small,” I overheard Stacey chuckle to Ashley one night in Bakersfield. I remember being grossed out by her comment. It was straight-up mean-girl shit. That was something a bully in high school would say to feel important, putting someone else down to mask their low self-esteem. I would never want to make Cecelia feel small. She was always in the picture when I imagined a future with Ashley because they had kids together. I dreamt that we would all be friends and take family vacations where the kids had two loving moms co-parenting them and a stepmom who was chill as hell.

I had imagined Cecelia and the kids visiting us in California during school breaks. The kids would want to go to Disney Land, and I’d say, “That sounds like a nightmare, but I will pay someone to take you.” I would show them how to make dirty martinis so they could bring them out to me by the pool. I’d teach them the A-B-C’s, but Gayle’s version, “A-B-C-D-E-F-U and your mom and your sister and your job, and your broke-ass car and that shit you call art…” Actually, maybe it’s a good thing I’m not their step-mom.

I pictured a modern family. Of course, my fantasy didn’t last long once Ashley’s facade started crumbling.

 She and her family gaslit Cecelia for the five months preceding her baby’s birth. They denied Ashley was having an affair and tried to cover it up, but poorly. Cecelia is the only woman I know to have lost weight during her pregnancy, a time when she should have been taken care of, adored, and worshipped by Ashley for bringing another little human into their family. She was so stressed out that she was diagnosed with Shingles in the last few days of her pregnancy. I will always feel guilt for the role I played in this and for the PTSD she has experienced since.

A month before I started talking to Ashley on Hinge, Cecelia found out that Ashley was having an affair with a woman in Los Angeles. Ashley returned to Minnesota, denied everything, and flew into a rage when Cecelia told her she knew about the affair. Then Ashley did something so horrific that the image will live forever in my mind. Ashley lunged at Cecelia, grabbed her by the shoulders, and shoved her into the wall while Cecelia held their two-year-old daughter and was four months pregnant with their son. Cecelia ran upstairs to lock herself and her daughter in the bedroom. Still, Ashley chased after them, kicking open the door and cornering Cecelia in their daughter’s room while continuing to scream.

It was abuse. Physical abuse. 

I saw it with my own eyes because Cecelia had the recording from their Nest cameras, cameras that were supposed to show whether their daughter was napping or awake, not to gather evidence for an episode of Dateline. Shoving a pregnant woman who is holding a toddler up against the wall—only a monster could do that. And that monster was Trashley. Cecelia realized she and her daughter were not safe, so she stayed at her parents' house while she figured out what to do next.

The physical altercation was in January. I’d matched with Ashley on Hinge in February, while Cecelia stayed at her parent’s house. With Cecelia gone, Ashley had the house to herself and got right back to preying on Los Angeles women on dating apps from their basement in Minnesota. After we started talking regularly, Ashley would disappear on weekends. I always thought she was ghosting me, but then she would text me with an excuse on Monday morning. “I left my phone in the cafeteria at Fermilab. Can you believe it?” 

Of course, I believed it. But the truth is Cecelia and Ashley spent those weekends together trying to work through the affair and the physical altercation. I had no idea.

So much had happened since I’d first met Ashley, and none of it I saw coming. 

I thought I’d met an intelligent, well-read, worldly Physicist who was also a professor at MIT, where she was on the sailing team and hated her student Geoff with a G. She told me she once gave a lecture to her students on Canadian serial killers under the guise of Data Science because she knew how much I loved serial killers. She lied so fluently that I’m surprised I didn’t start lying by osmosis.

A Masterclass on lying.

Ashley wasn’t a pescatarian either and didn’t have a nut, egg, sun, or bee allergy. I felt stupid for carrying around an Epipen everywhere we went because I was constantly worried one of those things would kill her. I even kept a backup in my car and watched YouTube videos on how to stab someone properly if they’re having an allergic reaction. I always thought she was careless about her eating, and I was the only one being hyper-vigilant. It’s because she had no allergies.

I’d been there for her when her Grandparents died, and we talked for hours about how close she was to them. I lent her an ear and my sympathy, only to learn none of it was true. Her Grandparents didn’t leave her in charge of their estate as she claimed. They didn’t leave her Mom and siblings one point three million dollars. Her Uncle wasn’t calling to harass her to hand over the estate. Cecelia was calling because Ashley had disappeared while she was extremely pregnant, scared, and alone.

I remembered Ashley opening her Nintendo Switch case, where five one hundred dollar bills spilled out. “This is just like me. I put money in the most random places and forget about it,” Sshe said at the time. But placing the money in her Nintendo Switch case was no accident; it was pre-meditated. She wanted me to believe she didn’t care about money because she had so much.

She charged me sixty dollars if I said “my apartment” instead of “our apartment, " which should have been a red flag, but at the time, I thought it was just her stupid idea of a game. Now I believe she was grooming me, taking away my individuality and teaching me to say “our,” “us,” and “we.” 

I introduced her to my family and took her to Alaska to find gold and woolly mammoth bones. I showed her how to fire up a D9, took her fishing at my lake, and brought her to Bun-On-The-Run, twice. I took her into a freaking permafrost tunnel inside a mountain, where a real scientist gave us a private tour.  After we left, she told me she did her thesis on that specific permafrost tunnel at MIT. The next time we hung out with my family, she woke up one morning and declared herself a scholar. By this time, I’d never seen her read a book, do a math equation, or write notations on a whiteboard. But I did see her log hour after hour on her Playstation and get high every day and night.

This was real to me.

I should’ve walked away when I had offered to Venmo her for buying me an Apple watch charger. Instead of responding, “Thanks for the offer, but the charger is on me,” she said, “Venmo is some poor people shit.”

Red flags don’t get much redder than this. I was disgusted by this comment, and it was the start of her accusing me of kidnapping her since I wouldn’t take her back to my parent's house until she calmed down. She didn’t want me to Venmo her because she didn’t want Cecelia to see it on her Venmo history. Ashley couldn’t have anything that would link us because she didn’t want Cecelia to know she was cheating on her, which Cecelia already knew.

When Ashley flew to Minnesota for the birth of their son, she made it seem like it was a last-minute decision. Her mom told me, “She only went to put her last name on the birth certificate, and then she’s coming right back.” And sure enough, Ashley was back in LA two days after their son was born. She spent the day with her parents and sisters at Universal Studios and sent Cecelia and me the same photo of her drinking Butter Beer at the Harry Potter-themed restaurant. This was some Slytherin-level shit: abandoning her wife with a newborn baby and a toddler with an unpaid mortgage and barely any money to live on, and then galavanting off to Universal Studios with her family.

Ashley chose to watch my dog while I worked in the Canary Islands for six weeks instead of doing the right thing and flying to Minnesota to help Cecelia with the babies. Ashley wanted her pretend life in LA instead of her real life in Minnesota. I had no doubt she did precisely what one of the producers I worked with said she would do; she pretended my apartment and life were hers while I was in the Canary Islands, and she was on dating apps the entire time.

There was a reason Michelle, Cecelia, and I fell into Ashley’s trap. It’s because Ashley had a tactic when she targeted her victims, and it would weed out the non-empaths. She would spend several weeks or months grooming them over the phone, taking up as much of their time and attention as possible. She would use language like “gosh” and “shucks” because those words made her sound innocent. She would lie about what she did for a living, claim she’d never been in love before, talk up her family as though they were loving and caring, and then kill someone she was close to off, usually a best friend or her grandparents, creating a trauma bond, because we would be horrible people if we abandoned her in her time of need.

After spending time with Cecellia’s family, we said goodbye to Michelle, who had to drive back to Missouri. I stayed in Minnesota with Cecelia for five more days. During this time, we took the kids to farms so they could see the goats and cows. We took them to bookstores, playgrounds, and museums. Every night, we went on sunset bike rides. We took a road trip to a small town known for its trolls and shopped for plants at a local nursery. Ashley could have the kids for a limited time a day, and never both kids simultaneously. I was always in the background when she picked the kids up and dropped them off. She could see me in the kitchen playing with the kids or helping to make dinner. And I didn’t give her any attention.

I get it now, good job Midwest. Can't wait to come back.

On my last night in Minnesota, Cecelia and I biked past a little free library, where I found one of my favorite childhood books, “Where the Sidewalk Ends.” I brought it to the house, knowing the kids would love it in a few more years, and that this was where my sidewalk ended. I was free of Ashley and her family, and I was walking away with an incredible story, a new friend and family in Minnesota, and a nice TV. Unfortunately, this wasn’t where Cecelia’s sidewalk ended. She still has to co-parent with Ashley in person. They’re tied together for life.

Where the sidewalk ends.

Since becoming friends with Cecelia, we’ve seen each other go in and out of relationships, cheered on during highlights and career goals, and been there for each other through losses and hardships. I woke up last August to a text from Cecelia, a text I have dreaded making to my friends my entire adult life. “Lauren, my Dad died.” Her Dad was a rock, and the children adored him.

Through everything—the loss of her father, her marriage, the affairs, the abandonment, the abuse, the lying and gaslighting, and the unknown—Cecelia has remained resilient. Every time life throws her something unimaginable, she finds her way through it despite the resistance and unnecessary fuckery from Ashley.

It’s been over two years since I became friends with Cecelia, and Ashley has continued to be a brute. When Cecelia was hired as a teacher last fall, Ashley berated her and ridiculed her job, as though teaching was only a job for losers. At least Cecelia is a real teacher and not a fake professor.

Any hope that Ashley would be better, or even be best, is gone. 

She’s only gotten more rotten to her hollowed-out core. She hasn’t worked since April, and instead of seeking a job, she’s trying to get on state disability and become a full-time TikTok Influencer. She retired her MIT jersey and replaced it with one from the University of Wisconsin. And now she is also claiming to be autistic. She even started adopting “autistic traits” in her TikToks, like touching and scratching her face all the time, speaking with her hands, and constantly running her hands through her hair.

In one video, she claims her autism keeps her from going to restaurants because of the noise and that she can’t be in loud spaces, yet she is the loudest, most chaotic person I know. In another video, she cries about how devastating her divorce was, fishing for sympathy on the internet. Girl, the reason you got divorced is because your wife found out you had been cheating on her throughout your marriage. But of course, Ashley only plays the victim or the hero, and never who she truly is: the villain.

In July, I received a late-night phone call from the Minnesota Police Department. Ashley had reported my story to the police and threatened to get the FBI involved– because the fun never stops.

“Miss Reeves, this is Officer Dave with MPD. I’ve gotten a lot of calls from Ashley about your Substack, and she’s claiming it’s cyber-harassment.”

“Interesting. Have you read any of it?” I asked.

“I’ve browsed through it, yes,” He said.

“Okay, so what’s the problem?”

“I just need to know how many more you have coming up, because she keeps calling me,” he said. I flashed back to the day Ashley called me 89 times. Yeah, that tracks.

“Well, Officer Dave, I was thinking of posting maybe one or two more,” I said. “Or five or six, I’m not really sure. I write them as I go.”

“Okay, well, if it’s more than two, I’m going to have to issue you a citation,” he said. 

I laughed. 

“For what?”

“For harassment.”

Oh, this poor man, I couldn’t believe someone gave him a gun.

“If you have questions about the law or the First Amendment, I’m happy to put you in touch with my lawyers,” I said. 

He sounded young and was probably new on the job since he called me at ten thirty at night Los Angeles time, which meant he was working the overnight beat in Minnesota.

“I encourage you to read my Substack, not just glance at the fun pictures. Ashley is a con artist, pathological liar, serial catfisher, and master manipulator, and she is extremely abusive to her ex-wife and to every woman she has ever had a relationship with. I want you to know that this is why women don’t come forward about abuse. You are punishing the wrong person and protecting the abuser. She is playing you right now, just like she played me and just like she played everyone else. And you’re falling for it.”

“Uh, I just need it all to stop,” he responded.

“Are you aware that in California, sex under false pretenses is a sex crime?” I asked. “If not, let me explain. Ashley posed as a single woman who lived in Los Angeles and worked as a Physicist and Professor at MIT, but she was none of those things. I didn’t know she was married when we started dating. And I didn’t know she had a pregnant wife and toddler at home. I would never have had sex with her if I knew the truth. She conned me into a relationship. Sex under false pretenses is a serious crime. It’s also known as rape by deception. And you can tell her, Officer Dave, that if she wants to call the cops on my blog, I will go after her so aggressively that she will be placed behind bars and put on the Sex Offender Registry for eternity. She is lucky I haven’t pressed criminal charges. And my lawyers have me well versed in my options to pursue her.”

“Well, she gave me a list of names of people who she believes are commenting on her TikToks. She said you were one of them.”

“I’ve never commented on her boring TikToks. I can barely watch them without having a gag reflex. I also didn’t realize you could call the cops on internet comments. Is this a new thing you guys are doing? And are the comments she’s getting even threats?” 

“No, they aren’t threats. They’re just bothering her,” he said.

“I’m sure they are. Ashley’s made a lot of enemies over the years, so the comments could be coming from a wide range of people. And if Ashley wants to have a public TikTok account, you should just tell her, ‘Welcome to the internet. Stop calling me.’”

 “Do you know a Michelle?” he asked.

“Yeah, I know Michelle. Ashley catfished her posing as a British man named Duncan. Michelle lost an entire year of twenties being duped into that relationship, thinking she was dating someone who, it turns out, never existed. She uprooted her life for this person, and suffered a lot of trauma, and spent thousands of dollars in therapy, all because of Ashley.”

“Well, I have to call Michelle next,” he said.

“Again, you are going after the women Ashley abused.” 

“Do you know a Cecelia?”

“Yes, she was married to Ashley for five years when Ashley and I started dating. And if you think Cecelia is leaving comments on Ashley’s TikTok videos, you are mistaken. She would never do that. Cecelia is the sole reason their kids have stability. Again, you are on the wrong side, my guy.”

“Uh-huh,” he mumbled.

“I just want to be clear– so, Ashley can catfish women on the internet, pretending to be something or someone she isn’t, and that’s fine. But if someone leaves a mean comment on her TikTok, she can call the cops for harassment? Is this the best use of your time and taxpayer’s dollars?”

“Uhhh...” 

Whatever.

I hung up with Officer Dave and texted Michelle and Cecelia that they should be expecting a call.

Ashley claims on her TikTok to be a math whiz. But I’d love her to try to solve a simple pre-algebra equation. I’ll wait. She also starts fights with conservatives, as if her moral compass is superior to theirs. Recently, she created a new bogus company, claiming to help people market their TikTok. It’s giving More Than Ramen vibes, the other fake digital marketing company she created when we were dating. Her brain thinks in scams and cons, while normal people’s brains think in memes.

Ashley lies for sympathy and to gain trust. She cries on command, she comes off as very believable, though it’s all an act. The autism is new and now part of her repertoire. But the simple diagnosis is that maybe she’s just an asshole. Ash-hole? No, Trashley works just fine. 

“Anyways, that’s the story of the time I got catfished during the pandemic by my ex-girlfriend, Ashley.”

The Trader Joe’s cashier stares at me with his mouth agape. He blinks five times.

 “Sorry,” I say, “I got side-tracked. What was your question?”

“Literally, all I asked was if you found everything okay, and then you launched into this entire story. I haven’t seen my family in six months.”

Geez, has it been that long? 

I look down at my phone, “Oh fuck, it’s already September?”

A line of people has grown behind me. The entire snack aisle has been devoured. I make eye contact with a few people I recognize from the neighborhood, and a woman in the back row adjusts her canvas tote bag and starts clapping. The applause catches on. It grows louder; it sounds just like it did when Silver Lake found out Biden won the election..

“Thank you,” I say as I bow my head in respect. “It’s a long story, but we got there eventually.”

Once the cheers die down, I turn back to the cashier. “To answer your question, yes, I did find everything okay. I come here all the time. I could walk around blindfolded and know exactly where everything is.” 

I pick up my bag and turn to address the crowd. “You guys have been great. There’s a GoFundMe if you’d like to support my incredible friend Cecelia, who is the real hero in all of this. So don’t be afraid to smash that donate button. Alright.”

I turn to leave.

“Hey,” Bradley Cooper’s voice rings out from near the citrus section. 

I glance back, one last time.

“You can’t leave without telling us Trashley’s TikTok account.”

“Don’t worry, you’ll find her.”