I Am Dating a Worse Criminal than Martin Shkreli

We all know the story of the notorious “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli, who gained international infamy for raising the price of the lifesaving drug Daraprim over 5000% over night. Shkreli is currently serving a seven-year prison sentence for defrauding investors. With his smug persona and his online antics, it is very hard to imagine how someone could date a man like him, especially if they already had a husband and a job where the one rule was you can’t date Martin Shkreli. But what is even more difficult to fathom is the person I am dating who is an even worse criminal than Martin Shkreli.

Yes, it is true that Martin Shkreli shifted funds from his pharmaceutical company to his hedge fund to cover up losses and mislead his investors, all while he was charging obscene prices for lifesaving drugs that patients who needed it could not afford, but what my romantic partner did makes that shit look like a fucking lemonade stand.

When I first met my partner, I was married to a man who worked as chief meme generator for Goldman Sachs, we enjoyed doing molly and going to overpriced vintage laptop repair shops. We were living the perfect little Brooklyn life. Then I met my partner. I was covering him for my job as a weather reporter and at the time he was threatening to blow up the sun.

The version of my partner that everyone saw on the news was a nefarious megalomaniacal terrorist hellbent on world domination. And admittedly that is who I expected to meet as well. But after our first conversation I realized he was so much more than a dangerous psychopath willing to wipe out all life on earth unless he was given control of NATO. He was a deeply sensitive man, who dabbled in art and love discussing philosophy and reciting poetry. He could be moved to tears by a beautiful sunset or by the sight of a small child stepping on a landmine placed outside his compound.

I began talking to him more and more frequently and began to see things his way. My husband couldn’t understand, to him humanity was not a diseased writhing animal needing to be purged in a cleansing fire so a new race could be born. We started having pretty heated fights. Meanwhile my relationship with my source was starting to grow into something more.

He invited me to cover him for a talk he was giving about his activism in the chemical weapons legalization movement to the young republicans at Harvard University. I decided that I would write a book about him that would try to give a broader picture of the man and not just the baby cannibal you see on tv every night. The talk was exhilarating I felt like a political wife. Once the talk had finished, we had to abruptly flee from Interpol and he invited me for a nightcap in his castle. That was the first time we kissed.

The next time we spoke it was clear he was not in a good headspace. The laser he was building to blow up the sun wasn’t powerful enough, and it was clear that all of the negative publicity was beginning to get to him. I feared he might kill himself, so immediately after the conversation I did the only responsible thing and called my publisher to strategize about whether we should release the book before or after his suicide. Things fell apart for us both very quickly. My marriage ended and he was apprehended by SEAL Team 6.

After that a romantic relationship blossomed. Though we were never able to be physical with one another we developed a deeply profound emotional bond. I remember visiting him in his super max prison and seeing him in a full body straight jacket strapped to a dolly wearing a Tiger Mask like Hannibal Lecter inside of the glass cage they used to imprison Magneto and it was one of the most profound romantic experiences of my life. I asked him if I could be his girlfriend and he hissed something that I took to mean as “yes.”

We are deeply in love and I eagerly await the completion of his hundred consecutive life sentences so we can begin a life together. While it may seem strange to some, our relationship is built on a bedrock of love and respect for one another. Some things are right even if society doesn’t approve, all I need people to know is that my partner is a much, much worse criminal than Martin Shkreli.