To tell this story properly, I need to do a little bit of setup first. This took place in early 2009 when The Girlfriend and I went on vacation to Chicago. For Christmas 2008 she decided that a good gift would be to purchase plane tickets and spend the better part of a week in the home of The Blues Brothers to visit my Brother from Another Mother, the goodly Professor Tillman. We decided to wait until the weather got a bit warmer than the Christmas season, due to Lake Effect Snow and Chi-town generally being negative below during that time of year. Plus, I had used all my vacation days for that part of the year and would not get some more until April 1st. Once we settled on the date, the only thing left to do was decide on what to do. If you have read my other blogs, Three had planned the last real vacation I had gone on down to the minute and if we deviated from said schedule, I got to deal with her being pissy for several hours. To combat this, my only prerequisite was that shit wouldn’t be planned down to the minute. A general activities outline? Sounds great. I was content to those terms and the general planning portion of the week was done. All I had to do then was wait until my vacation days leveled up to acceptable levels once again.
One of the first things we did in Chicago was get lost. The Professor had taken a few hours off work to welcome us at the airport and get lunch and get back to his apartment. Unfortunately, he then had to go back into work to finish out the day. That sucked, but The Girlfriend and I are both fairly self sufficient and decided to go exploring the greater Chicago-land area. The first thing we did once out of the supervision of a tour guide/semi-native was to hop a few trains and go exploring and get a more general sense of the area. Sort of a lay of the land type deal if we needed to go get anything or go to the many culturally significant areas around town.
When it came time to decide on which train to take, I decided that we should take The Green Line. Green is my favourite colour, so it was the first logical step. Or misstep, rather. We got lost. In the ghetto. It was a veritable Puerto Rican wonderland set out before us. We passed a run down part of town that looked like the background in that one scene of Child’s Play where Chucky took Andy to some shit-bag voodoo priests’ house to learn how to get a new body. Just run down buildings, abandoned warehouses, and broken bags of trash stretched as far as the eye could see. And the husks of burned out cars. We can’t forget those. Anyway, we finally hit the end of the line and had to get off and wait for the train to depart in the direction we came from. I got some neat pictures of the Coca-Cola bottling plant while we waited. The Girlfriend got real scared. I maintained that if we acted like we belonged there, no one would fuck with us. I was correct in that assumption. No one messed with us as I smoked my cigarette and admired the view of a Dunkin’ Donuts that had not seen a remodel since the Reagan Administration. Fun times!
We finally got back on the train and rode it until shit started looking familiar again. The we got off and waited for a bus. When we got on a bus that was going the right direction we were headed and settled in for the ride back to areas we knew. It was about this time that The Professor decided to call and check up on us to make sure we weren’t up to anything fun and/or illegal without him. I explained the situation and that we were on a bus back to his place and he asked what bus, and I told him. He paused for a second, took a deep breath and said, “grab the girl and get THE FUCK off that bus right now! Don’t wait for it to stop even. Run.” So, deciding the native might know something I didn’t about the Puerto Rican Wonderland splayed around us, I pulled the cord to stop, and we got off at the next stop to get another mode of transport. As it turns out, The Girlfriend was right, and we were on the right bus all along. But The Professor is someone I trust totally and completely. If he had a gun pointed at my head, I would only assume that something bad wrong was going on behind me at that very moment. The thought that I was about to be shot would never even cross my mind. That level of damn trust. In any case we made it back to the apartment safe and sound and were given a map with borders on it for further use in the city. And all this happened the first few hours we were in town. The bar has been set.
So Saturday rolls around after a Friday doing touristy things and sightseeing on our own. The Professor has the day off, and we make a plan to spend the day only doing awesome things. First stop: The Bongo Room (http://www.thebongoroom.com). The Bongo Room was an amazing wonderful place to get breakfast. It was kind of a hipster gourmet. But with more courses. While we waited for a table to open up we hit the thrift store next door. It was awesome in a way I have not seen since Village Discount moved up in Akron. I wound up picking up a UK version of the sixth Harry Potter book for a couple of dollars and we went to eat.
I don’t remember what literally anyone else ordered I was so focused on the plate of wonderful placed before me. Pear hotcakes. Shredded hash browns that make Denny’s look even more like a haven for hoboes with no taste buds. And for desert? Vanilla bean fucking ice cream. I made sweet sweet love to my breakfast and assumed the day would only be able to go down hill from there. The wrongness of my assumption was topped only by the fantasticness of the rest of the day ahead.
After breakfast we went back to the apartment to get cleaned up and figure out what to do next. Natural History Museum? Don’t mind if we do! The Professor turned to me before we went in and said, “There are tons of dinosaur bones and other assorted dope shit behind these doors. And also, small children on field trips and with parents. We cannot show our appreciation by saying ‘fucking astounding’ or some bullshit like that. Pull your earlobe and give me a look. That will translate to swears and nerd boners in front of the youth of the area.” I agreed and in we went. The afternoon was whisked away looking at dead ass lizard bones and tugging the shit out of our ears and nodding at each other in awe. After that I was satisfied that the day was thoroughly amazing and we should just go back to the apartment and call it a day. Turns out that our shit was just getting started.
We waited in the rain for a while for a bus to take us to Kuma’s Corner (http://www.kumascorner.com/). Kuma’s Corner was a heavy metal burger bar. The wait was an hour or so, or if you could get a seat at the bar you could sit and eat there. So The Professor and I ordered some blueberry beers and settled down to wait. The Girlfriend had agreed to babysit us as we drank and make sure we didn’t wander off into traffic or dance on anything people ate off of. The beers contained an insane amount of alcohol and tasted like blueberry pancakes, so we were slightly sloppy in about half an hour or so. The Girlfriend played games on my phone while we drank and chatted and watched a war movie on the TV above the bar. Then we noticed that several seats had opened up at the bar, and grabbed them with the quickness. We sat and ordered perhaps the best burger I have ever had in the history of burgers. Pepper jack cheese. Chili powder. Blackened meat. Onion rings. High Octane beer. War movie with shit getting blown all to hell. Plate/round two of awesome down; we decided to go out drinking some more. Like lots more. We had a babysitter to keep us wrangled and in check. We were golden. We went across the street to wait for the bus and took a picture in front of a Latina hair salon because it had a sign that said “el special” in the window. It was roughly at this point that we declared the day ‘The Best Day Ever’. When we boarded the bus we were literally retarded drunk. We started singing “In the air tonight” and miming drums. Then we moved onto “oh what a night!” You know, to show how special Best Day Ever was to us in the spirit of camaraderie and general bro-ing down. This was also the point where The Girlfriend regretted agreeing to babysit us and wanted to be literally anywhere else in the world than with two drunken singing man-children on a bus in the rain in Chicago.
We wound up going to The Green Mill (http://www.greenmilljazz.com/). Back in the day, it was Al Capone’s speakeasy. Lots of history went down there, so it was natural that we were meant to take part in it by drinking and watching a jazz trio perform and drink some more. After Bobby Sixkiller told us to shut our phones off at the door, we sat down and waited for someone to bring us some libations. The waitress appeared and I heard The Professor order something. I couldn’t hear what it was, but I said give me one also and went back to watching the trio perform. Turns out he had ordered Makers Mark on the rocks. What the fuck was I thinking? We had been drinking like immortals for several hours and here I was drinking Makers fucking Mark. The challenge had been thrown down and I had accepted.
It was about that time that The Professor had noticed several pretty young things sitting in the first row by the band. Assessments were made and he asked both The Girlfriend and myself if we saw any rings on their left hands. None that I noticed, so it was game on for him. They got up at an intermission and went outside to smoke. The Professor turned to me to bum a smoke, but I already had one and my Bic lighter out for him. THAT level of trust! He went outside and The Girlfriend and I started to chat as she assessed my intoxication level and ran the probabilities of us getting up to something nefarious later in the evening. Obviously I fooled her into thinking we were still in good shape to be out, but she did shy away from my whisky breath. I felt a vibration in my pocked and pulled out my phone. A text stating “fuck me. I lit the filter. Backup requested. Game on, sir!” was what greeted me on my tiny screen. I chuckled and took out my smokes, kissed The Girlfriend on the top of the head and went to go smoke.
The Professor was doing pretty well when I got outside. I introduced myself, apparently, and made with the wingman task of gathering as much information as possible to provide the best chance of one of these girls touching The Professor’s area. The Professor asked if they wanted to go bar hopping with us and got one of the girls’ numbers. She smiled and they walked back inside as I snubbed out my cigarette. The Professor laughed a hearty laugh and shook my hand. “I’m IN!” he proclaimed to no one in particular. After that exchange we went back to drinking and watching jazz for about an hour (maybe?) or so. Then we decided to hit another bar, a favourite watering hole of sorts. Mainly because they had a Tetris machine and some pool tables. So tell the girls where we are heading and hop in a cab to make dreams come true. The cab was immediately hit by another vehicle that took his rear view mirror off and the cabby jumped out to inspect the damage and exchange information. The Professor leaned over me to The Girlfriend and said, “I need you to do me a solid. I need you to get that girls name for me. I don’t think I got it when we were talking.” Before she could even answer I slurred, “her name is Hayley and she’s here from Nebraska.” Literally out of fucking nowhere. “Look as this motherfucker right HERE!” The Professor stated in awe. Even totally wrecked on Al Capone’s hooch I was a damn fine wingman.
We arrived at the Tetris Bar and promptly hit the bar for more liquid charm. When the ladies showed up we kind of split into two groups. The Professor had decided to charm young Kayley with his Tetris skills. I did my duty and went to entertain the other two ladies. The Girlfriend had sat down to watch Ghostbusters on the shitty black and white television above the bar and keep an eye on us at a distance. She didn’t want to scare the ladies off by making them think I was taken, thus cock blocking The Professor. She wiped something off my face, straightened my shirt patted me on the bottom and basically said, “Go be fucking charming. Help your friend get some. And don’t touch the dancers,” as she sent me over to the pool tables to distract Kayley’s cousins.
Now by this point I can barely stand under my own power. I am sloppy as hell, but I take a deep breath and pull my shit together to go be The Best Wingman Ever. I may have juggled; I may have done a magic trick. Honestly, I’m not even sure at this point. I did, however, keep those two distracted and a distance from The Professor as he made out with Kayley outside as they went to smoke. I think I had the advantage of confidence here. I wasn’t trying to get laid. I was merely trying to keep them distracted. Even the older one who I don’t remember being all that pretty or interesting. But flirt and distract, flirt and distract, flirt and distract. That was my mantra for the evening.
The Professor decided we needed to go to another bar, closer to his apartment I’m sure, to drink some more as he threw on more charm and plied young Kayley with more drinks. It also gave them the excuse of “leaving” her wallet at the Tetris Bar to go back for and make out some more. Possibly in a bus station in downtown Chicago. So as we walk to this other bar The Professor stops and bellers “TAMALIE GUY!!!!!” at the top of his lungs. The tamale guy is a staple of bar life in The Windy City. He is a man who makes tamales and sells them out of a cooler to drunken assholes like us. He turns to us and asks for cash. I have none, cab ride and all, but The Girlfriend hands him $5 and tells him to get what he can. We wind up with several fresh hot homemade tamales to eat at the next bar.
We arrive and grab some seats. The Professor and Kayley wander off to make out in a dirty bus terminal and we sit at The Boar’s Nest with the two other girls. And this is where they catch on that I’m spoken for and start to lose interest. I tell them that Kayley is in good hands and we'll be sure to get her back to their hotel in time for their flight the next day. They decided that is a capitol plan and go back to the hotel, my job as wingman finally at a close. The Girlfriend and I head back to The Professor’s place to get out of the rain and go to bed.
We somehow get lost and wander around in the rain for like half an hour. We duck under awnings when shit gets really heavy from the clouds and finally make it back to the apartment. We hear The Professor talking to someone, and I assume its Kayley and ignore it. As I’m using the bathroom The Professor starts questioning The Girlfriend as to why I wasn’t answering my phone. Bobby Sixkiller. I forgot to turn it back on! The Girlfriend settles down to go to sleep as The Professor and I go into the stairwell to smoke. He explains that he was talking to my voicemail when we finally made it back to his place. I pull out my phone and start to listen to these voicemails. After about thirty seconds I decide to back it all up, put it on speakerphone and let The Professor know what kind of comedic gold was being recorded. After we returned to Ohio I transcribed them to the best of my ability. They are as follows:
Call 1 – 2:50 a.m.
Adam…. This is John. Your lost ness is compromising the status. Of this day. As being The Best Day Ever. If you get lost, we would then have to submit this as Best Day Ever for a review. And this cannot happen. Cause it’s clearly The Best Day Ever. Please don’t be lost in the pouring fucking rain at 3 in the morning. Because it MAY not be The Best Day Ever if you end up fucking lost and mugged and dead. (Laughter) at 3 in the fucking morning. So could you PLEASE find your way back to my fucking apartment? And/or, slash, give me a call. Thank you. This is John. Bye.
Call 2 – 2:50 a.m.
Hey Adam, it’s me again. (Drunken laughter) Will you PLEASE, you wily homosexual, stop your fucking urban frolic, and get back to my fucking house. Pretty please. Because (drunken mumbled laughter) this is compromising today’s status, April 25th, you know, addendum as it is April 26th right now, Ah, (drunken laughter) is compromising the status, and I cant have that. So… if you could drag your flaming homosexual self back to my fucking apartment, PLEASE do. By all means. (Drunken laughter) Because this is a troubling turn of events. So, I’m going to keep calling. It's what I'm going to do… because obviously I can’t be fucking that girl if she’s going back to (jumbled drunken mumbles) this is problematic. To say the least. So. Thusly. If you could fucking give me a call And or get back to my fucking apartment immediately without getting on the trains, plane or bus that would be fantastic. Thank you much. Goodbye.
Call 3 – 2:54 a.m.
Hey… it’s me again (drunken laughter) why am I the only one enforcing the status of Best Day Ever today, which is The Best Day Ever. Because I have literally from start to finish fucking produced nothing but solid gold. You, on the other hand, have become LOST in my apartment. 2 blocks from my house. What the FUCK?!? What the fuck are you doing with yourself man, (jumbled drunken mumbles) seriously… fucking take a good look at your life. You NEED to somehow pull it together and get to my goddamn apartment, if you could. And bring Ice Cream, and/ or any other treat to fucking, like, sooth the burn of NOT having sex with that girl that would be FANTASTIC. Because I’m sitting here NOT having sex with her. So, in closing, please…what the FUCK.....what are you doing not in my apartment, in the fucking freezing cold rain. Please come home. Wherever you are. And/or, pick up the phone. Do SOMETHING productive with yourself. I love you. My name is John, and this is my message.
Call 4 – 2:56 a.m.
No message.
Call 5 – 2:58 a.m.
No message.
Call 6 – 3:00 a.m.
No message.
Call 7 – 3:02 a.m.
Adam, I hear you fucking with the door right now. I had to re-record my message cause I just kept talking last time I tried to leave you a message. I’m going to let you keep fucking with the door because this is difficult for you (laughter) OBVOUSLY a fucking hurdle you need to get over on your own. I can only lead you to the river, I can’t make you drink, nigga! So, in closing, as part of the Best Day Ever I’m going to expect this message reaches you, in good health. And that you then listen to it, and realize the folly of your wandering around the goddamn neighborhood. OH! That appears that’s you…is that you? I hear you fucking sloshing through my apartment, you fucking faggot ass motherfucker. Hold on, I’m going to go talk to you. Goodbye.
After laughing and crying about the messages and discussing how he failed to seal the deal, even with my supreme liquid charm turned up to 11 we head to the roof. To dance and frolic in the rain I guess? It seemed like a good idea at the time. In hindsight, it was amazing that we didn’t fall off. Or worse. There was a charcoal grill and a bottle of lighter fluid up there. I briefly considered us setting it on fire and kicking it off the building, and promptly hid this idea even from myself, as I knew it was terrible and would only lead to crazy jail like in the end of X-Men when Magneto was in plastic prison. I could not compromise The Best Day Ever like that.
Thanks for reading. But that’s it for now, kids
Heart,
The Doctor
Monday, November 14, 2011
Monday, September 12, 2011
Ten Years Later
The day began like pretty much every Tuesday for the past few months. My alarm went off and I woke up to get ready for work. I went to the kitchen, surveyed the damage from a Monday night of roommates who liked to stay up late drinking, playing cards and breaking shit. I opened a Coke, lit a Camel and went to take a shower. You see, these were the days where I actually liked my job and wasn’t late for work all the time. So having to be at work at 10 a.m. meant that I woke up at 8 a.m. to get shaved, showered and whatnot.
But I digress, I finished my cigarette grabbed a clean towel and jumped in the shower. I flipped on the 1985 Sound Design boom-box I had inherited from my older sister that sat on the tank of the toilet to provide music for bathing as well as the occasional extreme bowel movement. There was also a small library of Maxims, old school Nintendo Powers, and porno mags for the extended dance mixes your colon was wont to produce from time to time. We also had Tetris and a Gameboy Color. Anyway, as I scrubbed my tanned muscular 20 year old body free of dirt and sleep I was only half listening to the radio. It was basically background noise to keep me from falling asleep with shampoo in my hair. But the news report about a runaway airliner DID capture my attention.
I was kind of baffled by it. I wondered “what the hell is going to happen here, exactly? Where are you going, guys?” But then a guitar driven guitar ballad captured my attention away from those thoughts and it was back to drinking my Coke in the shower and washing my balls. I shut off the radio, dried off, and dressed in a clean uniform and apron for work. It was around 8:20 or so, so I had time to join D.W. on the couch for whatever cartoon or mystery show starring Angela Lansbury he saw fit to watch on his day off. But nothing so tame was on the television that morning. CNN or some local news was what D.W. had graced the Nintelevision with as I sat down next to him with a fresh can of Coke and lit another Camel.
The story was about the runaway airliner I’d heard about earlier and my attention was again grabbed. When the newscaster went live to New York my jaw, stomach and heart fell. They showed footage of the World Trade Center. One of the Twin Towers was smoking with a big hole in the side of it. “Holy Shit…..” I said aloud. “Accident or on purpose, you think?” he asked between the guitar scales he was playing. “Don’t know. We’ll see, I guess”, was all I could say as I snuffed out my cigarette in the comically large mid-70’s ashtray on the coffee table.
It was about that time The League of Mothers started making calls to The Oregon. Realistically they weren’t much of a League. But we liked to picture our mothers all around a huge Bond villain conference table with a citywide map behind them plotting our demise and destruction. First to call was Lanzer’s’ mom. She asked if we were watching TV, were sober, and if her son was awake. Not in that order, I’m sure. He was not; it was before 9 in the morning, after all. She insisted that I go wake him up; post-haste. I did and he trundled his sleepy hung-over ass up to the living room to see what his mother was babbling about. His response to the NYC skyline billowing smoke out of a skyscraper was about the same as anyone sitting in the TV room, a look of shock and an almost dropped phone and some expletives. Joe had joined us, being awaken by the ringing of the phone and coaxed away from his path from the bathroom back to sleepy town by D.W. and the promise of shit going all wrong on the television. D.W. and Jim’s mom was the next to call after Lanzer hung up the phone. She pretty much asked the same questions as Lanzer’s counterpart. As we watched New York burn, and the second Tower get hit I realized I needed to get to work. As I was gathering my keys, lighter and wallet my mother called and we briefly discussed the doom being broadcast on CNN and I told her to keep me updated at work. She promised she would, said she loved me, and I tossed the phone to Joe saying his was probably the next that was going to call and left for work.
When I got to work my manager Judy had no idea what was going on so we switched the usual piped in music to the radio with a news station so we could be kept abreast of the situation. Being East Canton there was very little the customers normally discussed on an average day aside from the weather. This obviously was not an average run of the mill day because not one person wanted to discuss the cloud cover and the chance of precipitation. The hungry masses were convinced it was the End of Days. The Rapture. The Second Coming. The Apocalypse. We’re All Fucked Day. This went on for about half an hour or so. Making sandwiches and trying to hear what was going on in the world. The announcer formally confirmed that it was a terrorist attack. Judy and I locked eyes in a look that said “Fuuuuuck”. We then continued to make sandwiches for people and tried to keep the panic and concern off our faces. Then my mother called with a report that the first Tower had fallen, and the second was likely to fall any time now. I was starting to worry about my Brother from Another Mother at that point. John was in NYC for college, the belly of the beast as it were. I hoped he was safe and couldn’t wait until my shift was over so I could give him a call and check in to see if he was OK.
People kept going on about how the Akron/Canton area was the next on the terrorists list. You know, due to our production of wartime materials during World War II. What they failed to realize as the Akron wasn’t the top tire maker anymore, and that Hoover mainly made vacuums and wasn’t able to shift to munitions manufacture with the flip of a switch or the pull of a lever. Shit, their vacuum cleaners caught fire if you turbo charged the motor and tried to sweep up 50 pounds of flour with one. But the populous was still worried. Add to that the reports that were pouring in about Flight 93 basically crop dusting us and it was near a full fledged panic.
I got off work and went home listening not to the usual mix-up of Beastie Boys and Nirvana CD’s, but I actually turned on AM radio. Bad news kept rolling in by the second. By the time I got home I had heard 20 minutes of disturbing shit and had several messages on the answering machine. One from Stark State saying that all classes were canceled for the 11th, one from Bruce I think, and one from my very panic stricken girlfriend. I called her to say I’d be up as soon as I got a shower and made a few phone calls. John’s dorm phone was busy, and his cell phone said that all the lines were already in use. Not a huge surprise with all the primitive cell phone traffic on the networks out there. I sent out an email to him anyway, showered and left the house.
The girl I was dating at the time was going to Kent State, so it was about a 45 minute drive up there. I resumed the random CD routine because I knew we’d be watching the news up there and I wanted a break from all the horribleness happing. So I put on some tunes and hit the road. When I arrived on the Kent Campus, it looked like a ghost town. Completely deserted due to class cancellations and everyone being glued to their TVs. That gave people something to do besides panic, I guess.
Three and I sat on her top bunk eating pizza and watching the news on her 19” TV/VCR combo set up in the corner. Carolina Roommate wandered in, sat on her bunk watching for awhile and then went to smoke or call her family in North Carolina. Maybe drink, I’m not entirely sure. A few hours later and many news clips of shit on fire and other shit falling down I left for home. The rest of Kent was as deserted as the campus. The only thing actually open was the Sunoco station, and they were changing the signs. Gas went from two dollars and some change a gallon to around $6.50, in the span of a day. Yep, the panic was starting to set in and people were starting to lose their collective shit. All the other gas stations on the way home featured jacked up prices also.
The next day school was back in session and all we did was talk about what happened. Like an AA meeting, or group therapy. And it was pretty badly needed all around, I think. I think the one thing that stands out about September 12th was the lack of noise outside. The Akron/Canton airport was on federal lockdown. The lack of airline noise in-between classes on cigarette breaks was unnerving. Add to that the solemn mood of most people that day and it was spooky quiet.
Talk to your grandparents and they can tell you exactly where they were when Pearl Harbor was bombed. Ask your parents and they can tell you what they were doing, and where they were the moment they heard that President Kennedy had been shot. Pretty much anyone ages seventeen to adult? We can tell you what we were doing on Tuesday September 11th, 2001.
Several interesting post scripts to this little autobiographical entry:
1. The next day I climbed up on the roof of The Oregon and lowered the Pirate Flag to half mast. The guy across the street (Frito Lay as we called him due to him driving a Frito Lay truck for work) who usually called the cops on us because someone threw beer bottles at his truck and caught his mailbox on fire was out doing some yard work. We made eye contact after I lowered the flag and he gave me a kind of nod of approval. Like a “You guys are a constant pain in my ass and I think you steal my newspapers on the weekends, but you guys are decent people in your own fucked up little way. Well played, sir.”
2. On the 13th I went back up to Kent as per usual and saw the most fucked up display of Patriotism on the way home. I drove by this house:
See that porch? A scruffy guy was standing on that porch in a camouflage jacket with pins and metals on it. He had that haircut that middle aged men have that shows they haven’t been to the barber and had been rocking the same hairstyle since around 1974 or so. Also, he had a glorious Foghat mustache. But what really caught my attention was that he was waving a faded American flag. I know, everyone was waving flags that week. But he had it on the end of a RIFLE. He was on his porch. In a camouflage outfit, probably from Viet Nam, waving a flag on the end of a gun next to state route 44. Holy shit that’s Patriotic! Like if Captain America had walked by this guy would have called him a pussy and stolen his shield to wave off the end of something.
Thanks for reading. But that’s it for now, kids
Heart,
The Doctor
But I digress, I finished my cigarette grabbed a clean towel and jumped in the shower. I flipped on the 1985 Sound Design boom-box I had inherited from my older sister that sat on the tank of the toilet to provide music for bathing as well as the occasional extreme bowel movement. There was also a small library of Maxims, old school Nintendo Powers, and porno mags for the extended dance mixes your colon was wont to produce from time to time. We also had Tetris and a Gameboy Color. Anyway, as I scrubbed my tanned muscular 20 year old body free of dirt and sleep I was only half listening to the radio. It was basically background noise to keep me from falling asleep with shampoo in my hair. But the news report about a runaway airliner DID capture my attention.
I was kind of baffled by it. I wondered “what the hell is going to happen here, exactly? Where are you going, guys?” But then a guitar driven guitar ballad captured my attention away from those thoughts and it was back to drinking my Coke in the shower and washing my balls. I shut off the radio, dried off, and dressed in a clean uniform and apron for work. It was around 8:20 or so, so I had time to join D.W. on the couch for whatever cartoon or mystery show starring Angela Lansbury he saw fit to watch on his day off. But nothing so tame was on the television that morning. CNN or some local news was what D.W. had graced the Nintelevision with as I sat down next to him with a fresh can of Coke and lit another Camel.
The story was about the runaway airliner I’d heard about earlier and my attention was again grabbed. When the newscaster went live to New York my jaw, stomach and heart fell. They showed footage of the World Trade Center. One of the Twin Towers was smoking with a big hole in the side of it. “Holy Shit…..” I said aloud. “Accident or on purpose, you think?” he asked between the guitar scales he was playing. “Don’t know. We’ll see, I guess”, was all I could say as I snuffed out my cigarette in the comically large mid-70’s ashtray on the coffee table.
It was about that time The League of Mothers started making calls to The Oregon. Realistically they weren’t much of a League. But we liked to picture our mothers all around a huge Bond villain conference table with a citywide map behind them plotting our demise and destruction. First to call was Lanzer’s’ mom. She asked if we were watching TV, were sober, and if her son was awake. Not in that order, I’m sure. He was not; it was before 9 in the morning, after all. She insisted that I go wake him up; post-haste. I did and he trundled his sleepy hung-over ass up to the living room to see what his mother was babbling about. His response to the NYC skyline billowing smoke out of a skyscraper was about the same as anyone sitting in the TV room, a look of shock and an almost dropped phone and some expletives. Joe had joined us, being awaken by the ringing of the phone and coaxed away from his path from the bathroom back to sleepy town by D.W. and the promise of shit going all wrong on the television. D.W. and Jim’s mom was the next to call after Lanzer hung up the phone. She pretty much asked the same questions as Lanzer’s counterpart. As we watched New York burn, and the second Tower get hit I realized I needed to get to work. As I was gathering my keys, lighter and wallet my mother called and we briefly discussed the doom being broadcast on CNN and I told her to keep me updated at work. She promised she would, said she loved me, and I tossed the phone to Joe saying his was probably the next that was going to call and left for work.
When I got to work my manager Judy had no idea what was going on so we switched the usual piped in music to the radio with a news station so we could be kept abreast of the situation. Being East Canton there was very little the customers normally discussed on an average day aside from the weather. This obviously was not an average run of the mill day because not one person wanted to discuss the cloud cover and the chance of precipitation. The hungry masses were convinced it was the End of Days. The Rapture. The Second Coming. The Apocalypse. We’re All Fucked Day. This went on for about half an hour or so. Making sandwiches and trying to hear what was going on in the world. The announcer formally confirmed that it was a terrorist attack. Judy and I locked eyes in a look that said “Fuuuuuck”. We then continued to make sandwiches for people and tried to keep the panic and concern off our faces. Then my mother called with a report that the first Tower had fallen, and the second was likely to fall any time now. I was starting to worry about my Brother from Another Mother at that point. John was in NYC for college, the belly of the beast as it were. I hoped he was safe and couldn’t wait until my shift was over so I could give him a call and check in to see if he was OK.
People kept going on about how the Akron/Canton area was the next on the terrorists list. You know, due to our production of wartime materials during World War II. What they failed to realize as the Akron wasn’t the top tire maker anymore, and that Hoover mainly made vacuums and wasn’t able to shift to munitions manufacture with the flip of a switch or the pull of a lever. Shit, their vacuum cleaners caught fire if you turbo charged the motor and tried to sweep up 50 pounds of flour with one. But the populous was still worried. Add to that the reports that were pouring in about Flight 93 basically crop dusting us and it was near a full fledged panic.
I got off work and went home listening not to the usual mix-up of Beastie Boys and Nirvana CD’s, but I actually turned on AM radio. Bad news kept rolling in by the second. By the time I got home I had heard 20 minutes of disturbing shit and had several messages on the answering machine. One from Stark State saying that all classes were canceled for the 11th, one from Bruce I think, and one from my very panic stricken girlfriend. I called her to say I’d be up as soon as I got a shower and made a few phone calls. John’s dorm phone was busy, and his cell phone said that all the lines were already in use. Not a huge surprise with all the primitive cell phone traffic on the networks out there. I sent out an email to him anyway, showered and left the house.
The girl I was dating at the time was going to Kent State, so it was about a 45 minute drive up there. I resumed the random CD routine because I knew we’d be watching the news up there and I wanted a break from all the horribleness happing. So I put on some tunes and hit the road. When I arrived on the Kent Campus, it looked like a ghost town. Completely deserted due to class cancellations and everyone being glued to their TVs. That gave people something to do besides panic, I guess.
Three and I sat on her top bunk eating pizza and watching the news on her 19” TV/VCR combo set up in the corner. Carolina Roommate wandered in, sat on her bunk watching for awhile and then went to smoke or call her family in North Carolina. Maybe drink, I’m not entirely sure. A few hours later and many news clips of shit on fire and other shit falling down I left for home. The rest of Kent was as deserted as the campus. The only thing actually open was the Sunoco station, and they were changing the signs. Gas went from two dollars and some change a gallon to around $6.50, in the span of a day. Yep, the panic was starting to set in and people were starting to lose their collective shit. All the other gas stations on the way home featured jacked up prices also.
The next day school was back in session and all we did was talk about what happened. Like an AA meeting, or group therapy. And it was pretty badly needed all around, I think. I think the one thing that stands out about September 12th was the lack of noise outside. The Akron/Canton airport was on federal lockdown. The lack of airline noise in-between classes on cigarette breaks was unnerving. Add to that the solemn mood of most people that day and it was spooky quiet.
Talk to your grandparents and they can tell you exactly where they were when Pearl Harbor was bombed. Ask your parents and they can tell you what they were doing, and where they were the moment they heard that President Kennedy had been shot. Pretty much anyone ages seventeen to adult? We can tell you what we were doing on Tuesday September 11th, 2001.
Several interesting post scripts to this little autobiographical entry:
1. The next day I climbed up on the roof of The Oregon and lowered the Pirate Flag to half mast. The guy across the street (Frito Lay as we called him due to him driving a Frito Lay truck for work) who usually called the cops on us because someone threw beer bottles at his truck and caught his mailbox on fire was out doing some yard work. We made eye contact after I lowered the flag and he gave me a kind of nod of approval. Like a “You guys are a constant pain in my ass and I think you steal my newspapers on the weekends, but you guys are decent people in your own fucked up little way. Well played, sir.”
2. On the 13th I went back up to Kent as per usual and saw the most fucked up display of Patriotism on the way home. I drove by this house:
See that porch? A scruffy guy was standing on that porch in a camouflage jacket with pins and metals on it. He had that haircut that middle aged men have that shows they haven’t been to the barber and had been rocking the same hairstyle since around 1974 or so. Also, he had a glorious Foghat mustache. But what really caught my attention was that he was waving a faded American flag. I know, everyone was waving flags that week. But he had it on the end of a RIFLE. He was on his porch. In a camouflage outfit, probably from Viet Nam, waving a flag on the end of a gun next to state route 44. Holy shit that’s Patriotic! Like if Captain America had walked by this guy would have called him a pussy and stolen his shield to wave off the end of something.
Thanks for reading. But that’s it for now, kids
Heart,
The Doctor
Monday, August 15, 2011
Cake
Band I was given (by John Tillman): Cake
Song I love: pretty much all of them. I liked everything from 1994's 'Motorcade' to 2011's 'Showroom'. I like the fact that they are the only non-ska band from the 90s still in existence that still has a trumpet. Plus it kind of sounds to me like said trumpet has a dent in it for some reason. Or it's just all tarnished and worn out. I don't know, that's just how I picture it. I like the cheap-ass garage sale sound of the acoustic guitar. And I love the random chain of consciousness dreamlike feel of the lyrics. Shit like that is what You think about when you have a fever and are on nyquil.
Song I hate: I didn't really care for 'Short skirt/long jacket' for the longest time, and I'm not really sure why. I just didn't like the cut of it's jib. It kind of grew on me though. I think it was because it was the first pre-album single released off of 'Comfort Eagle' and it was so drastically different from everything they'd done up until then. But I gave it a chance as I drove around listening to it and it sucked less and less with each consecutive play.
Favorite Album: While I personally think that all 6 (7 counting the 'B-sides and Rarities' compilation) of their studio albums have start to finish replayability, an odd thing for a band to have two let alone SIX A-to-Z good albums, the one I love the most has got to be 'Prolonging the Magic'. It was what I listened to off and on pretty much all year my senior year of high school. It made an appearance in my car CD player at least once a week. when Lanzer and I went to see Tom Petty at Sour Titty's Gund Arena it was in the CD player the whole way home in the concert/Indians traffic. We listened to it like 3 or 4 times and would pause it as we analyzed the lyrics and thought up theories as to what the fuck John McCrea was talking about.
Join the best meme ever - Like this status I will assign you a band!
Song I love: pretty much all of them. I liked everything from 1994's 'Motorcade' to 2011's 'Showroom'. I like the fact that they are the only non-ska band from the 90s still in existence that still has a trumpet. Plus it kind of sounds to me like said trumpet has a dent in it for some reason. Or it's just all tarnished and worn out. I don't know, that's just how I picture it. I like the cheap-ass garage sale sound of the acoustic guitar. And I love the random chain of consciousness dreamlike feel of the lyrics. Shit like that is what You think about when you have a fever and are on nyquil.
Song I hate: I didn't really care for 'Short skirt/long jacket' for the longest time, and I'm not really sure why. I just didn't like the cut of it's jib. It kind of grew on me though. I think it was because it was the first pre-album single released off of 'Comfort Eagle' and it was so drastically different from everything they'd done up until then. But I gave it a chance as I drove around listening to it and it sucked less and less with each consecutive play.
Favorite Album: While I personally think that all 6 (7 counting the 'B-sides and Rarities' compilation) of their studio albums have start to finish replayability, an odd thing for a band to have two let alone SIX A-to-Z good albums, the one I love the most has got to be 'Prolonging the Magic'. It was what I listened to off and on pretty much all year my senior year of high school. It made an appearance in my car CD player at least once a week. when Lanzer and I went to see Tom Petty at Sour Titty's Gund Arena it was in the CD player the whole way home in the concert/Indians traffic. We listened to it like 3 or 4 times and would pause it as we analyzed the lyrics and thought up theories as to what the fuck John McCrea was talking about.
Join the best meme ever - Like this status I will assign you a band!
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Doc Robinson and the Heartbreakers Part IV
When we last left off I was complete mess. I was drinking heavily, depressed about mistakes made in life and trying to not feel feelings anymore. And I was flat fucking broke. All that adds up to not really wanting to date. From late 2003 to halfway through 2007 I was in a self-enforced jail sentence of not dating. Or as The Professor likes to call it “A Booty Ice Age” or “Vaginal Drought”. Point is things were slow in the relationship department and that was, for the moment, how I wanted it.
I was too damn depressed, financially unstable, and untrusting of anyone of the opposite sex to have much contact aside from occasionally checking out some of the girls I would see at the bar of looking at pretty girls the few times I went public with my exploits. I figured I had to have time to heal my mind, and my wallet, before even making the attempt to date anyone even on a casual basis. If I was unstable with what I was, what right did I have throwing some poor girl under the bus with me? I grew what is commonly known in my group of friends as “The Ugly Beard”. I rarely left the house when others were out and about. I avoided human contact unless I was completely beyond intoxicated. Parties in Alliance became a staple of my life at the time. That was about the only social contact I had for the better part of two years. I’d see girls at the parties, but wouldn’t go up and start spitting game or throwing game or whatever the kids are calling it theses days. In my mind I was undateable. So why bother trying, right?
Have you ever not used a group of muscles for an extended period of time? Like if you once played the piano or run marathons and suddenly stopped? Those muscles start to atrophy. The same goes for social skills. I was a self made recluse. Before I started working midnights even. After I joined Third Shift the first time, things just went from shit to worse. I was cut off from even the meager social contact the Alliance parties afforded me. I was alone in a populated area. And was somewhat OK with that. Sure I missed playing guitar with Crazy Ben in the Alliance Party Shack, but I was stuck in my little rut and halfway content to eek out paying my bills and going to the library for books and music three times a week. I was in crisis mode, and had no time or money for taking the ladies out on the town.
The closest I came to actual factual dating was going up to parties in Kent with Carolina. I think she took pity on me and invited me up to hang out. Or she and her friends remembered that I was an entertaining intoxicated man. I’d gone up a few months after Four and I split up and played beer pong with rum. Not a wise decision by any stretch of the imagination. All I remember after that nonsense was Carolina saying “We’ve been drinking for hours! Let’s go to sleep! I promise I won’t try to romance you!” we both laughed and I passed out, fully clothed, next to her on her futon. A few months later I went back up and partied. Again drunk beyond reason. I felt the watery mouth you get when you’ve drank too much and need to throw up. I excused myself to “step out for a smoke” and wandered into the bushes outside. On the other side of the bushes was another college trash townhouse. I leaned against their picture window as I vomited in their flower bed. They were on the couch watching a movie as I was sick in the foliage. From the few moments I saw it was a pretty decent one. The time after that I “went outside to smoke” again and kicked open a built in grill and vomited inside. I felt pretty bad about that one, but I still had to laugh after doing so. “Have a fun picnic tomorrow, assholes!!”
About a year after those horrible antics my alcohol tolerance was increased exponentially from a year’s hard work at Robinson and Robinson: Alcoholics At Large! So having the drinking fortitude of Gary Buscey I went up to drink with the Kent Girls once more. This time there was no vomiting. Carolina and I were telling stories of the glory days of The Oregon and carrying on with the college kids at the party. Keg stands were done and I was King of the Keg for an evening. As with all parties of that era I brought a disposable camera so I could piece together the evening at a later date. I wanted to get some picture with Carolina since it had been over a year since I’d hung out with her. The usual making faces at the camera with our tongues out. That turns into making out on her back deck. Which later leads to half naked making out and dry humping when we head upstairs. I woke up with three hickeys and no underpants on. She awoke with cleavage hickeys and smacked me on the ass as I searched for my clothing and told me to go make her some waffles. We both laughed at the awkwardness of the situation and handled it like adults. After playing Booze Clues we determined that no shenanigans (or either of us) had gone down and moved on with our respective days. This was the only thing even close to a sexual nature I did for the better part of four years. A random drunken hookup that was akin to homosexuality and incest because we were such good friends. Good friends that one night decided to give each other hickeys. Bet the guys with the barbecue grill were happier about my antics at that party than the last one I attended.
When they transferred me to Third Shift at Sam’s Club and the tomfoolery of Kent behind me I pretty much gave up hope of dating at all this decade. Not in a self loathing pathetic way. In a clinical logical detached way. I was undateable before so now I was completely convinced no girl would put up with my antisocial antics. After another year of midnights I had decided I’d had enough of the lack of dating. People I knew for a fact were complete dirtbags were out dating attractive members of the opposite sex. The only thing they had over me was jobs that happened during the daylight hours. So I made the decision to try to get back on days or find a job where I could be a Daywalker once again.
Sam’s didn’t want to try to trick anyone else into the midnight gig, so they tried to keep me there and wouldn’t put me back on days. In response, I started putting in applications like crazy. The first job I’d ever had was a cook at KFC. In the many years since then I’d had management experience. So when I saw they were hiring managers I thought I’d be a natural fit and applied. After acing two interviews I put in my two week notice and was set to start back with The Colonel after completing my midnight stocking duties.
I went to orientation one Saturday and was in a room with teenagers, twenty-something’s and a real old guy. In the room with me, and (re)training with me in store, was a girl two years younger and a few inches taller. She was attractive, very tall, fair skinned and a fucking Amazon. After not seeing any females in my own age demographic for six months I was excited at the prospect of some eye candy while I worked this new daylight job I’d managed to land.
We started training and as the only two trainees at the store were on the same schedule. As such we were scheduled to take lunch breaks together. For me this was just awkward. My small talk muscle had atrophied, and I was socially retarded from years of hermit-like behaviour. The first week she had the flu, so it all worked out. I was awkward and quiet and she was trying not to pass out from the medical cocktail she had ingested with her chicken thighs and mashed potatoes. The whole first week of training felt like an awkward blind date. But after she got better and I became slightly resocialized we started to bond. Working with someone who was hired in as the same rank as you five days a week for a month gets you to talking about everything trivial. We were both Smallville fans. Both liked enough of the same bands to carry on an intelligent conversation about music. And we both thought the guy training us was kind of a dick. I’d known this from my teenage years but still thought it was better to come back to working for a jack wagon than to spend another day sleeping and night working.
Working for the man, we bonded like people tend to do and were assigned to the same store. That’s when Five and I started to get all flirty and shit. Since we were both new to the store it turned into an “us versus them” situation with the established managers. That led to a touchy feely flirty fight in the parking lot one night after work. This, naturally, led to her inviting me over to watch a movie one night. It started out with us sitting there watching a movie and evolved into us making out on the couch while the DVD menu repeated for a few hours.
The store manager saw that we were kind of close and friendly and forbade us from dating. A little warning gave it the forbidden Jedi Romance angle. It was a dirty little secret and forbidden, so it just made it that much hotter when I’d head over to her house to make out and watch movies and play Wii after work. Eventually, we started officially dating and went to the Harry Potter movie midnight premier. At the premier was someone from the company that saw us and told our boss that we were “very couple like” and tried to throw us under the bus. Way to get into the spirit of Harry Potter, you cocksucker!
The boss questioned her while I had the day off and Five told him we were dating and, since we were of parallel rank (I’d looked it up in the rule book) breaking no previously established store policy. He had to relent and let us date. She then sent me a text message saying that he would let us date. The only thing he told me was not to fuck on his desk. Class fucking act, that guy.
It was kind of nice going to movies with someone who liked me and holding someone’s hand in public after four years. It was also fun rediscovering how to have sex. If I had a hymen, it would have grown back in the time it had been since I’d had relations. The Professor referred to the four years I was on my vagingally free diet as getting a Masters Degree in my own penis and a Bachelor’s in Knowing Myself. Or “School of Cock” as he so nobly put it. He was the first person I told that we had consummated our relationship. All I wrote was “I graduated. With honours”. His response? “God Bless you, dear Doctor. And God Bless America!” That, ladies and gentlemen, is the true measure of friendship and brotherhood.
We date for awhile and I turn off the not talking about my personal life firewall I’d put in place. I tell her about not being on speaking terms with my mother because I found out about her new marriage from a friend on MySpace. I tell her about my fathers’ alcoholism and how living with him is making me crazy. I tell her about the shame I feel living with him in a house that he refuses to clean up his alcohol induced messes and I can never bring friends to. It was like having a really terrible roommate. I paid half the bills and couldn’t bring anyone over due to him pissing on the furniture when he passed out after a handle of hobo grade vodka. It was like having a therapist you got to mingle with naked.
Things with Five never really got all that heavy and serious. The word “Love” was never thrown out. Partially due to me still having some trepidation about the term and partially about her not having those kinds of feelings about me. She convinced me to get back on speaking terms with my mother right before Christmas that year. She’d listen to my rant and rave about the last few shitty years of my life and how I’d made a mess of them with a few simple bad decisions. She was patient with my socially retardedness. Even though it was never that heavy a relationship she taught me how to be a person in society again. After a few months of her hearing me bitch about living with an alcoholic jackass she invited me to come live with her. Initially I was uncomfortable with this invitation due to the fact that when she moved back from college she moved into her parents’ attic. But realistically it was like a little apartment up there. So after having to start smoking in my bedroom after six months of not smoking where I sleep to avoid the same three stories he’d get ripped and tell me about his week, I decided to take her up on the offer. I started to pack my things up and tell Bruce about my decision to bug out and leave his deadbeat ass.
I moved all my nonessentials to my mothers basement and after asking Five several times if this was a good plan and if she was SURE it was all right that I was moving in with her and I eventually brought my day to day things up to Five’s loft and set up camp. I didn’t bring much. Mainly DVD’s and books and clothes. And my computer of course. You can’t live without a necessity such as that. And for the first month all was well with our cohabitation.
Roughly six weeks post move in day she started getting kind of strange. Restless and uneasy. She quit her job because her manager was an asshole. I’d left The Colonel’s service and defected back to Subway about six months previous, so I was unaffected by her decision. I thought he was somewhat of a turd, but I was able to deal with him because I could see both sides to the situation. He was just doing his job. Being a schmuck about it sometimes was a byproduct of the job. No one likes their boss all the time. It’s a scientific fact. But she quits her job and gets restless sitting at home playing Wii and watching videos. She starts to long for her college days of going out to bars and hanging out with new people. Bars have never really been my thing, so I wished her well and would go to sleep for work the next morning.
This worked out fine for a little over a month. Then she got real distant and we stopped even holding hands and kissing, let alone the other physical things that go along with living with someone you’re dating. She starts hanging out with her friends for a few weeks and meets a guy down at the local hole in the wall bar and, as I found out through a very reliable email from one of her friends, developing feeling for this guy. The email said that she was sitting around while I was at work playing Wii with this asshole. Now I don’t begrudge her any happiness, but after asking me to move in, this kind of thing stung twice as bad. I’d be in bed early, and get up to use the bathroom. I’d hear her on the phone with him laughing and talking to him until the late hours of the night. That was what cut me to the core. The sound of someone else making her laugh when she’d barely look at me with any attraction or affection in her eyes.
So one Thursday after a two hour conversation with The Professor, in which I asked him, from an outsider prospective, if I was overreacting I decide to end things with her. Keep in mind, me breaking up with her would effectively render me homeless at this point. I had no real plan as to where to live after we ended things. That was how miserable I was with the situation and how hurt I was with her crushing on this dirtbag from a bar.
I sit down on the instant messenger and ask her when she’ll be home; I need to talk to her. She says she won’t be home until like 2 or 3 in the morning. so I gather my courage and say “Five, I didn’t want to do it this way, but I love you. And I can’t keep living like this. I think should break up.” She agrees, and comes home to see if I’m going to be OK. We sit on the couch and both cry for awhile in silence. Neither one of us wanted it to end like this. But it had to end somehow, why not like this?
The next day I get off work and start to pack my things, and ask my mother if I can crash with her for awhile. She consents and I start moving my things into the basement of her duplex where I will take up residence for the next several years. Five and I have a long conversation and decide to remain friends. I still harbor no resentment or ill will from this relationship and was happy that I actually got answers from this parting. I was sad, yes, but I was also on the road to living a decent life again. She taught me not to dwell on things in the past.
In the next week of moving things from Canton to Louisville, Five and I were realized we were still friends, like we started out the better part of a year previously. She taught me that I didn’t need to retreat into myself and dwell on a broken heart and mistakes of the past. Sure, I was living in the basement of my Mom’s duplex but I was halfway into setting up a pretty decent Nerd Cave down there. All I needed now was to stop by Bruce’s house and get a few little things I left there in my hasty evacuation. And a few larger things like my bookcase……
To be concluded…..
Thanks for reading. But that’s it for now, kids
Heart,
The Doctor
I was too damn depressed, financially unstable, and untrusting of anyone of the opposite sex to have much contact aside from occasionally checking out some of the girls I would see at the bar of looking at pretty girls the few times I went public with my exploits. I figured I had to have time to heal my mind, and my wallet, before even making the attempt to date anyone even on a casual basis. If I was unstable with what I was, what right did I have throwing some poor girl under the bus with me? I grew what is commonly known in my group of friends as “The Ugly Beard”. I rarely left the house when others were out and about. I avoided human contact unless I was completely beyond intoxicated. Parties in Alliance became a staple of my life at the time. That was about the only social contact I had for the better part of two years. I’d see girls at the parties, but wouldn’t go up and start spitting game or throwing game or whatever the kids are calling it theses days. In my mind I was undateable. So why bother trying, right?
Have you ever not used a group of muscles for an extended period of time? Like if you once played the piano or run marathons and suddenly stopped? Those muscles start to atrophy. The same goes for social skills. I was a self made recluse. Before I started working midnights even. After I joined Third Shift the first time, things just went from shit to worse. I was cut off from even the meager social contact the Alliance parties afforded me. I was alone in a populated area. And was somewhat OK with that. Sure I missed playing guitar with Crazy Ben in the Alliance Party Shack, but I was stuck in my little rut and halfway content to eek out paying my bills and going to the library for books and music three times a week. I was in crisis mode, and had no time or money for taking the ladies out on the town.
The closest I came to actual factual dating was going up to parties in Kent with Carolina. I think she took pity on me and invited me up to hang out. Or she and her friends remembered that I was an entertaining intoxicated man. I’d gone up a few months after Four and I split up and played beer pong with rum. Not a wise decision by any stretch of the imagination. All I remember after that nonsense was Carolina saying “We’ve been drinking for hours! Let’s go to sleep! I promise I won’t try to romance you!” we both laughed and I passed out, fully clothed, next to her on her futon. A few months later I went back up and partied. Again drunk beyond reason. I felt the watery mouth you get when you’ve drank too much and need to throw up. I excused myself to “step out for a smoke” and wandered into the bushes outside. On the other side of the bushes was another college trash townhouse. I leaned against their picture window as I vomited in their flower bed. They were on the couch watching a movie as I was sick in the foliage. From the few moments I saw it was a pretty decent one. The time after that I “went outside to smoke” again and kicked open a built in grill and vomited inside. I felt pretty bad about that one, but I still had to laugh after doing so. “Have a fun picnic tomorrow, assholes!!”
About a year after those horrible antics my alcohol tolerance was increased exponentially from a year’s hard work at Robinson and Robinson: Alcoholics At Large! So having the drinking fortitude of Gary Buscey I went up to drink with the Kent Girls once more. This time there was no vomiting. Carolina and I were telling stories of the glory days of The Oregon and carrying on with the college kids at the party. Keg stands were done and I was King of the Keg for an evening. As with all parties of that era I brought a disposable camera so I could piece together the evening at a later date. I wanted to get some picture with Carolina since it had been over a year since I’d hung out with her. The usual making faces at the camera with our tongues out. That turns into making out on her back deck. Which later leads to half naked making out and dry humping when we head upstairs. I woke up with three hickeys and no underpants on. She awoke with cleavage hickeys and smacked me on the ass as I searched for my clothing and told me to go make her some waffles. We both laughed at the awkwardness of the situation and handled it like adults. After playing Booze Clues we determined that no shenanigans (or either of us) had gone down and moved on with our respective days. This was the only thing even close to a sexual nature I did for the better part of four years. A random drunken hookup that was akin to homosexuality and incest because we were such good friends. Good friends that one night decided to give each other hickeys. Bet the guys with the barbecue grill were happier about my antics at that party than the last one I attended.
When they transferred me to Third Shift at Sam’s Club and the tomfoolery of Kent behind me I pretty much gave up hope of dating at all this decade. Not in a self loathing pathetic way. In a clinical logical detached way. I was undateable before so now I was completely convinced no girl would put up with my antisocial antics. After another year of midnights I had decided I’d had enough of the lack of dating. People I knew for a fact were complete dirtbags were out dating attractive members of the opposite sex. The only thing they had over me was jobs that happened during the daylight hours. So I made the decision to try to get back on days or find a job where I could be a Daywalker once again.
Sam’s didn’t want to try to trick anyone else into the midnight gig, so they tried to keep me there and wouldn’t put me back on days. In response, I started putting in applications like crazy. The first job I’d ever had was a cook at KFC. In the many years since then I’d had management experience. So when I saw they were hiring managers I thought I’d be a natural fit and applied. After acing two interviews I put in my two week notice and was set to start back with The Colonel after completing my midnight stocking duties.
I went to orientation one Saturday and was in a room with teenagers, twenty-something’s and a real old guy. In the room with me, and (re)training with me in store, was a girl two years younger and a few inches taller. She was attractive, very tall, fair skinned and a fucking Amazon. After not seeing any females in my own age demographic for six months I was excited at the prospect of some eye candy while I worked this new daylight job I’d managed to land.
We started training and as the only two trainees at the store were on the same schedule. As such we were scheduled to take lunch breaks together. For me this was just awkward. My small talk muscle had atrophied, and I was socially retarded from years of hermit-like behaviour. The first week she had the flu, so it all worked out. I was awkward and quiet and she was trying not to pass out from the medical cocktail she had ingested with her chicken thighs and mashed potatoes. The whole first week of training felt like an awkward blind date. But after she got better and I became slightly resocialized we started to bond. Working with someone who was hired in as the same rank as you five days a week for a month gets you to talking about everything trivial. We were both Smallville fans. Both liked enough of the same bands to carry on an intelligent conversation about music. And we both thought the guy training us was kind of a dick. I’d known this from my teenage years but still thought it was better to come back to working for a jack wagon than to spend another day sleeping and night working.
Working for the man, we bonded like people tend to do and were assigned to the same store. That’s when Five and I started to get all flirty and shit. Since we were both new to the store it turned into an “us versus them” situation with the established managers. That led to a touchy feely flirty fight in the parking lot one night after work. This, naturally, led to her inviting me over to watch a movie one night. It started out with us sitting there watching a movie and evolved into us making out on the couch while the DVD menu repeated for a few hours.
The store manager saw that we were kind of close and friendly and forbade us from dating. A little warning gave it the forbidden Jedi Romance angle. It was a dirty little secret and forbidden, so it just made it that much hotter when I’d head over to her house to make out and watch movies and play Wii after work. Eventually, we started officially dating and went to the Harry Potter movie midnight premier. At the premier was someone from the company that saw us and told our boss that we were “very couple like” and tried to throw us under the bus. Way to get into the spirit of Harry Potter, you cocksucker!
The boss questioned her while I had the day off and Five told him we were dating and, since we were of parallel rank (I’d looked it up in the rule book) breaking no previously established store policy. He had to relent and let us date. She then sent me a text message saying that he would let us date. The only thing he told me was not to fuck on his desk. Class fucking act, that guy.
It was kind of nice going to movies with someone who liked me and holding someone’s hand in public after four years. It was also fun rediscovering how to have sex. If I had a hymen, it would have grown back in the time it had been since I’d had relations. The Professor referred to the four years I was on my vagingally free diet as getting a Masters Degree in my own penis and a Bachelor’s in Knowing Myself. Or “School of Cock” as he so nobly put it. He was the first person I told that we had consummated our relationship. All I wrote was “I graduated. With honours”. His response? “God Bless you, dear Doctor. And God Bless America!” That, ladies and gentlemen, is the true measure of friendship and brotherhood.
We date for awhile and I turn off the not talking about my personal life firewall I’d put in place. I tell her about not being on speaking terms with my mother because I found out about her new marriage from a friend on MySpace. I tell her about my fathers’ alcoholism and how living with him is making me crazy. I tell her about the shame I feel living with him in a house that he refuses to clean up his alcohol induced messes and I can never bring friends to. It was like having a really terrible roommate. I paid half the bills and couldn’t bring anyone over due to him pissing on the furniture when he passed out after a handle of hobo grade vodka. It was like having a therapist you got to mingle with naked.
Things with Five never really got all that heavy and serious. The word “Love” was never thrown out. Partially due to me still having some trepidation about the term and partially about her not having those kinds of feelings about me. She convinced me to get back on speaking terms with my mother right before Christmas that year. She’d listen to my rant and rave about the last few shitty years of my life and how I’d made a mess of them with a few simple bad decisions. She was patient with my socially retardedness. Even though it was never that heavy a relationship she taught me how to be a person in society again. After a few months of her hearing me bitch about living with an alcoholic jackass she invited me to come live with her. Initially I was uncomfortable with this invitation due to the fact that when she moved back from college she moved into her parents’ attic. But realistically it was like a little apartment up there. So after having to start smoking in my bedroom after six months of not smoking where I sleep to avoid the same three stories he’d get ripped and tell me about his week, I decided to take her up on the offer. I started to pack my things up and tell Bruce about my decision to bug out and leave his deadbeat ass.
I moved all my nonessentials to my mothers basement and after asking Five several times if this was a good plan and if she was SURE it was all right that I was moving in with her and I eventually brought my day to day things up to Five’s loft and set up camp. I didn’t bring much. Mainly DVD’s and books and clothes. And my computer of course. You can’t live without a necessity such as that. And for the first month all was well with our cohabitation.
Roughly six weeks post move in day she started getting kind of strange. Restless and uneasy. She quit her job because her manager was an asshole. I’d left The Colonel’s service and defected back to Subway about six months previous, so I was unaffected by her decision. I thought he was somewhat of a turd, but I was able to deal with him because I could see both sides to the situation. He was just doing his job. Being a schmuck about it sometimes was a byproduct of the job. No one likes their boss all the time. It’s a scientific fact. But she quits her job and gets restless sitting at home playing Wii and watching videos. She starts to long for her college days of going out to bars and hanging out with new people. Bars have never really been my thing, so I wished her well and would go to sleep for work the next morning.
This worked out fine for a little over a month. Then she got real distant and we stopped even holding hands and kissing, let alone the other physical things that go along with living with someone you’re dating. She starts hanging out with her friends for a few weeks and meets a guy down at the local hole in the wall bar and, as I found out through a very reliable email from one of her friends, developing feeling for this guy. The email said that she was sitting around while I was at work playing Wii with this asshole. Now I don’t begrudge her any happiness, but after asking me to move in, this kind of thing stung twice as bad. I’d be in bed early, and get up to use the bathroom. I’d hear her on the phone with him laughing and talking to him until the late hours of the night. That was what cut me to the core. The sound of someone else making her laugh when she’d barely look at me with any attraction or affection in her eyes.
So one Thursday after a two hour conversation with The Professor, in which I asked him, from an outsider prospective, if I was overreacting I decide to end things with her. Keep in mind, me breaking up with her would effectively render me homeless at this point. I had no real plan as to where to live after we ended things. That was how miserable I was with the situation and how hurt I was with her crushing on this dirtbag from a bar.
I sit down on the instant messenger and ask her when she’ll be home; I need to talk to her. She says she won’t be home until like 2 or 3 in the morning. so I gather my courage and say “Five, I didn’t want to do it this way, but I love you. And I can’t keep living like this. I think should break up.” She agrees, and comes home to see if I’m going to be OK. We sit on the couch and both cry for awhile in silence. Neither one of us wanted it to end like this. But it had to end somehow, why not like this?
The next day I get off work and start to pack my things, and ask my mother if I can crash with her for awhile. She consents and I start moving my things into the basement of her duplex where I will take up residence for the next several years. Five and I have a long conversation and decide to remain friends. I still harbor no resentment or ill will from this relationship and was happy that I actually got answers from this parting. I was sad, yes, but I was also on the road to living a decent life again. She taught me not to dwell on things in the past.
In the next week of moving things from Canton to Louisville, Five and I were realized we were still friends, like we started out the better part of a year previously. She taught me that I didn’t need to retreat into myself and dwell on a broken heart and mistakes of the past. Sure, I was living in the basement of my Mom’s duplex but I was halfway into setting up a pretty decent Nerd Cave down there. All I needed now was to stop by Bruce’s house and get a few little things I left there in my hasty evacuation. And a few larger things like my bookcase……
To be concluded…..
Thanks for reading. But that’s it for now, kids
Heart,
The Doctor
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Doc Robinson and the Heartbreakers Part III
The next girl on this little list is Four. The first time I really saw her was at the Dranksgiving party 2001. The night before Thanksgiving we’d have a huge party and everyone would get sloppy. I spent the afternoon with friends who were back in town for the holiday, and it was in the pre-cell phone days and I hadn’t gotten a chance to talk to Three that afternoon. Needless to say, her selfish ass was pissed at me for breaking a date to make plans for Thanksgiving. So she wasn’t at the party that night, but it was still a good time and there was much music and merriment. Then I walked into this room and saw this girl….she was beautiful. I turned to my friend Thing 1 and asked “Who is she? She’s fucking gorgeous…” He chucked and said “Dude…that’s my little sister. You remember her, right?” I was taken aback. I’d seen her when we were in Junior High, but that was years ago. She’d grown up. I was dating Three at the time so I didn’t think much of it aside from her being completely hot. We talked and joked around the rest of the night, and then I went to bed, alone, to get some sleep for dinner with the girlfriends’ family the next day.
After Three and I broke up, I was having the time of my life. I was free, I was 21 and I had a house where mass amounts of parties happened. I was going out with friends, drinking in bars, talking to girls, going on dates. It was a really great time. Someone at the Subway in Canal Fulton had quit so they asked me to cover shifts up there for the next month. I agreed since it was more money and I had nothing else going on at the time except my newfound freedom, and drinking with the boys could take place at anytime. I had the next weekend off for my good service to a store that wasn’t even mine, and on the last night I was assigned to that store I came home to a birthday party. It was a joint endeavor between Four’s older twin brothers (Thing 1 and Thing 2) and Carolina. She and I were still on good terms, I had custody of her every other weekend, and there was still a good trade to be had between random Kent girls and my roommates.
I walk into the party, give Carolina her gift of a carton of Camel Lights and since she’s sitting I give her a super sexy birthday lap dance. Had I been able to find a non-permanent marker at work I would have written “Happy Birthday” on my chest and given her a topless lap dance. Anyhow since it’s the twin’s party too, Four is there. Well, that was part of the reason. The other part was that she found out I was single again and was super fun to talk to so she thought she’d try her luck at hanging out at my house for a night.
Her and I get to talking and drinking and decide to head to Dairy Mart for more mixers and something for my roommate Warren G. Warren G had given me $2 and said “See if you can get me something to eat. Something EADIBLE!” We come back to find a 1990’s dance party in my living room. The roommates and partygoers and the Kent girls were hitting it off while Vanilla Ice blasted on the stereo. Four and I headed outside and watched through the window to the living room in my driveway. It was like National Geographic full of drunkards. I mustered up my liquid courage and leaned over and kissed Four. That led to making out against D.W.’s Sometimes-van in my driveway. Well, that and getting busted by Thing 2 making out with his little sister at half his birthday party. We go inside and watch some television until 7 a.m. and Four leaves. I walk her to the car and start high-fiving myself as I get ready for bed. I was ecstatic. Random hookups didn’t usually happen to me. Especially with girls I’d had a crush on for so long.
I give her a call a few nights later and see if she wants to grab a bite to eat and have a semi-proper date. She agrees and we go out to dinner. This ends in more making out and a plan for the next weekend. This quickly turns into a relationship. Which in my mind was kind of a surprise, since I was piss scared that I’d have nothing to talk about and it was just a physical attraction type relationship. But it turned out to be quite a good one. We got along so well, and liked a lot of the same things. Plus she already knew all of my friends, and got along with all of them. This was a welcome change, seeing how Three kind of thought most of my friends were kind of sketchy shitbags.
October hits and we throw our annual Halloween Party. Dressing up was required, and Four showed up as a sexy Goth fairy. I went as Brodie Bruce from Mallrats. People from all over came and hung out in costume. The only one out of costume was Bob-O. He showed up as a pizza delivery man. We let it slide since he brought a shit ton of pizzas for us to eat. But all in all, a good time was had by all and later that night we consummated our relationship. Or rather tried to. What she had failed to tell me was the she was a virgin. A smoking hot blonde 19 year old, a year away at college in BG, and somehow she decides she wants to have relations with my goofy ass. We put off the sexy fun time for another night and passed out.
About a month after we start dating, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets came to the theater. I get talked into going, and rather enjoy it, but didn’t get into the books for another few months. Once again, I was happy going on dates and spending time with someone. It was nice that this person wasn’t pushy and bossy. A very, very welcome change indeed.
As things progress, The L Word gets dropped, in the next year to come we start getting more and more serious. She introduces me to the world of Harry Potter books and in turn I introduce her to the world of Arby’s roast beef sandwiches. Shit gets real and talk turns to future plans, marriage and a family. And for the first time in my life I’m not at all freaked out by this kind of crazy talk. I’m actually kind of excited. Its summer, it’s beautiful out and in the back of my mind I start laying plans to propose to her this coming holiday season. I put a ring on layaway at a store and start making payments. I even had the talk I was going to have with her parents (and Thing 1 and Thing 2) all mapped out, with all the possible responses already accounted for. I was just hoping they would give me permission to marry their eldest daughter.
Turns out I didn’t need to worry about their permission. In early November she starts getting really distant. I just thought it was because we were having problems at the time. I was getting really down on myself for losing a good paying job for being a lazy turd and after the mutiny on The Oregon I was having problems paying all my bills in a timely manor. All this added up to stress and depression from having to move back in with my folks after several years of freedom. Looking back, I guess it was only a matter of time before it took its toll with our relationship. We were fighting over money, over looking for a place of our own and over how I couldn’t afford to move right now. I was always broke since I was still paying for bills from The Oregon and had been jobless for over a month. She was the only thing that kept me sane through the move and downfall of The Oregon. I guess I started taking that for granted and started taking out some of my stress and disparagement at the way my life was going on her. Not in a direct manor, like I didn’t punch her in the face because I just spent all my money on my credit card bill, but in a more subtle way. I was just not happy with life and I think she took that as I was not happy with her and with us. That’s when she started getting more and more distant.
Midway thought November my friend Steth was having a party at his parents’ house on a Saturday night since they were out of town. I called Four from work and told her about the party and she said she’d think about going, she wasn’t sure. I drove by her house to pick her up at around 11 and she wasn’t there. I thought maybe she was already at the party so I just headed there myself. She was at neither place, and I wasn’t sure where she was. This was totally unlike her. I think by this time she had written me off as a lost cause and started seeing a guy from work.
She was working at this retailer up in Belden and a few months previous, her best friend needed a job. Doing the good friend routine she hooked her up with one there, as a good friend is wont to do. A few months later her brother, a guy who lived down the street from me growing up, and I graduated High School with went to work there as well. We all went out to dinner a few times and while he and I weren’t exactly friends, we did have friends in common. So we got along pretty well, and were at least cordial if nothing else. More and more they were all hanging out while I was at work, and once again, that was fine. Once again, not I’m just not a jealous person. But in retrospect I think there was more going on than the three of them hanging out and watching movies and going to dinner.
The day after the party I give her a call and get no answer. I leave her a message on the machine to give me a call and we’d hang out later. About five minutes later I set my AIM Away message and go to take a shower. I come back to the message of “We need to talk. Come over at 11 tonight.” Uh-oh. I had an idea where this was headed. This is usually the part of the book or movie where the guy either gets dumped or the girl has won the fucking lottery and there is a brand new car waiting for the guy in the driveway. In my case it would be a Batmobile. And she knew that.
I get in my car and go head over to her house. The moment I turn on my car, the radio is playing November Rain by Guns N Roses. Not a good sign. Not a good sign at all. I stop to get gas and leave the radio playing while I fill up, for some unknown reason. I show up at her house at 11 and see no Batmobile. ‘Shit…this still isn’t good’, I think still half in denial. I snuff out my cigarette, drain my can of Coke and head towards the house. I get as far as her porch and she comes out crying. I grab her and hold her and ask what was wrong. “I have to break up with you…” she told me between sobs. Not wanted, not we should break up. But HAVE to break up with you. To me that indicated guilt over something.
By this point I’ve lost it, and am sobbing away myself. I ask why, she won’t tell me. I ask if it’s something I’ve done, something I’ve said, and still she says no. During this whole process I can’t get a simple straight answer, and that’s all I really want at this point. So I hug her, she says “Goodbye, Adam” and get in my car to lose my shit some more now that I’m alone, cursing Axl Rose the whole time. I put my brain into autopilot and somehow make it to D.W.’s in Massillon and stay up all night watching Adult Swim, COPS and feeling too numb to even have a drink.
Over the next few months I begin to lose it, and continue to lose it a little bit at a time. I start to drink heavily, thankfully only on the weekends, and am made a junior partner in the family business: Robinson and Robinson Alcoholics at Large. I still had her picture on my night stand and look at it when I come home from Alliance completely drunk and miserable and lost my mind all over again. This was a nightly ritual. A sad pathetic ritual.
My friends are all kind of unsure as to what to do. Over the next few weeks they take me out drinking on a regular basis and try to get me to talk to other girls. Thing 2 takes me out for beer and chicken wings at Buffalo Wild Wings to try to take my mind off things and reveals to me, in a very drunken state, that Four is now dating her best friends’ brother. Everything makes sense in that one 22 ounce draft beer fueled moment.
By this time my trunk is filled with rum bottles and I’m starting to not care about anything at all. I just go to work, read books, and come home to cry myself to sleep Monday through Thursday and drink myself to the point where I can’t feel feelings anymore Friday through Sunday. This is the way my life goes for the next few months. I contemplate suicide often during this dark time. On a very regular basis. I make plans. I pack up all my things and label the boxes as to what I want done with them. I keep telling myself that it’s just because I’m going to move out and I need my stuff packed but I know it’s just a lie I’m telling myself to keep myself going for the time being.
Then in May things go from completely fucking terrible to ‘I’m going to eat a bullet and slit my fucking wrists with shards of hot glass today’ fucking horrid. I go out to get the mail one Saturday afternoon to see if I have any new bills to pay and there is the Herald in the mailbox. My mom’s a subscriber, so that’s nothing unusual. I open it on my walk back to the house and see on the second page an engagement announcement. The woman in the picture is Four and the man is her new Husband to be.
More alcohol had to be consumed. Post haste. It was Saturday night, so that wouldn’t be a problem. I spent the next several months in a complete alcohol induced stupor. My job starts to suffer and my boss pulls me aside telling me to get my shit together or I’m done. By this point I don’t even care. The announcement said that they were going to be wed in December, so I still thought I had a chance of her coming back. I didn’t phone stalk her or leave anything on her doorstep or anything creepy like that. I just sat and waited for her to realize that I was the one she should be with, and he wasn’t. I help out hope that she’d come back, even until the night they got married. I guess I expected a Spiderman 2 ending where she showed up at my house in a wedding dress and begged me to come back, saying that she’d made a mistake and all that. It never did.
And, since that didn’t happen, I decided to just give up and end it. That night I organize my room, write my goodbye to my family, and write a lengthy note to The Professor to explain my actions and say goodbye. I could have done this with a phone call, but in all honesty I didn’t want to be talked out of it. And he is only one who could have at that point. The Oregon is empty, the tenants we’d rented to having moved out the week before and The Delta 88 is still in the garage. In complete working order. I had made sure to keep my spare car in decent working order since I’d parked it there three years before. The next day I was going to go through with this plan. I stopped and got Arby’s and a few cans of Coke on my way, and got some strawberries for desert. I’m allergic, but it would hardly matter. I pop in a CD I burned the night before shut the garage door and turn on the engine. Beside me sits a pack of strawberries and a letter to the authorities and my friends and family explaining my actions. I think that’s what scares me the most. That and the deletion of any and all porn from my hard drive. I didn’t want my mom finding that when the authorities went though my stuff after I came up missing. I was dead fucking serious about this. That alone should tell you how serious I was.
About half an hour later I’m starting to get drowsy from the fumes and itchy from the fruit. I’m contemplating various things throughout my life, and how one way or another I’ve managed to fuck them up. At this point I’m ready for it to be over. Then, out of the blue a rather absurd thought occurs to me: How is Harry Potter going to end? The last two books weren’t out yet, and I’d spent lots of time rereading them over the past year. I had to know! I shut off The Olds, open the garage door, and step out into the cold December night. That’s the night Harry Potter saved my life. This is also the reason I have a Dark Mark tattooed on my inner left arm. As a constant reminder to myself of what I almost did over a woman and how a fictional character saved my life.
I spent the next three years single, still trying to sort out all the excess baggage that came with almost killing myself. I had enough going on in my head without throwing some poor girl under the bus with me, trying to make a relationship work. Plus, I was still flat ass broke from The Oregon Mutiny. Bills eventually got paid and I socially worked myself up to the point where I could handle a relationship again.
Actually, that’s not true, not completely. Lex had a lot to do with that. She was kind of like training wheels for dating. She got my midnight working ass out of the house and into the sunlight to interact with people at restaurants and movies and things like that. She helped me to be social enough to go talk to girls and to actually be able to handle a relationship like a grown up again. Weird thing is, I don’t think that until she reads this she knows what she did to help me. So by this time I’m social, I have some bills paid off, and I’m ready to start dating again. Where does this take us? It takes us to Five.
To be continued…..
Thanks for reading. But that’s it for now, kids
Heart,
The Doctor
After Three and I broke up, I was having the time of my life. I was free, I was 21 and I had a house where mass amounts of parties happened. I was going out with friends, drinking in bars, talking to girls, going on dates. It was a really great time. Someone at the Subway in Canal Fulton had quit so they asked me to cover shifts up there for the next month. I agreed since it was more money and I had nothing else going on at the time except my newfound freedom, and drinking with the boys could take place at anytime. I had the next weekend off for my good service to a store that wasn’t even mine, and on the last night I was assigned to that store I came home to a birthday party. It was a joint endeavor between Four’s older twin brothers (Thing 1 and Thing 2) and Carolina. She and I were still on good terms, I had custody of her every other weekend, and there was still a good trade to be had between random Kent girls and my roommates.
I walk into the party, give Carolina her gift of a carton of Camel Lights and since she’s sitting I give her a super sexy birthday lap dance. Had I been able to find a non-permanent marker at work I would have written “Happy Birthday” on my chest and given her a topless lap dance. Anyhow since it’s the twin’s party too, Four is there. Well, that was part of the reason. The other part was that she found out I was single again and was super fun to talk to so she thought she’d try her luck at hanging out at my house for a night.
Her and I get to talking and drinking and decide to head to Dairy Mart for more mixers and something for my roommate Warren G. Warren G had given me $2 and said “See if you can get me something to eat. Something EADIBLE!” We come back to find a 1990’s dance party in my living room. The roommates and partygoers and the Kent girls were hitting it off while Vanilla Ice blasted on the stereo. Four and I headed outside and watched through the window to the living room in my driveway. It was like National Geographic full of drunkards. I mustered up my liquid courage and leaned over and kissed Four. That led to making out against D.W.’s Sometimes-van in my driveway. Well, that and getting busted by Thing 2 making out with his little sister at half his birthday party. We go inside and watch some television until 7 a.m. and Four leaves. I walk her to the car and start high-fiving myself as I get ready for bed. I was ecstatic. Random hookups didn’t usually happen to me. Especially with girls I’d had a crush on for so long.
I give her a call a few nights later and see if she wants to grab a bite to eat and have a semi-proper date. She agrees and we go out to dinner. This ends in more making out and a plan for the next weekend. This quickly turns into a relationship. Which in my mind was kind of a surprise, since I was piss scared that I’d have nothing to talk about and it was just a physical attraction type relationship. But it turned out to be quite a good one. We got along so well, and liked a lot of the same things. Plus she already knew all of my friends, and got along with all of them. This was a welcome change, seeing how Three kind of thought most of my friends were kind of sketchy shitbags.
October hits and we throw our annual Halloween Party. Dressing up was required, and Four showed up as a sexy Goth fairy. I went as Brodie Bruce from Mallrats. People from all over came and hung out in costume. The only one out of costume was Bob-O. He showed up as a pizza delivery man. We let it slide since he brought a shit ton of pizzas for us to eat. But all in all, a good time was had by all and later that night we consummated our relationship. Or rather tried to. What she had failed to tell me was the she was a virgin. A smoking hot blonde 19 year old, a year away at college in BG, and somehow she decides she wants to have relations with my goofy ass. We put off the sexy fun time for another night and passed out.
About a month after we start dating, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets came to the theater. I get talked into going, and rather enjoy it, but didn’t get into the books for another few months. Once again, I was happy going on dates and spending time with someone. It was nice that this person wasn’t pushy and bossy. A very, very welcome change indeed.
As things progress, The L Word gets dropped, in the next year to come we start getting more and more serious. She introduces me to the world of Harry Potter books and in turn I introduce her to the world of Arby’s roast beef sandwiches. Shit gets real and talk turns to future plans, marriage and a family. And for the first time in my life I’m not at all freaked out by this kind of crazy talk. I’m actually kind of excited. Its summer, it’s beautiful out and in the back of my mind I start laying plans to propose to her this coming holiday season. I put a ring on layaway at a store and start making payments. I even had the talk I was going to have with her parents (and Thing 1 and Thing 2) all mapped out, with all the possible responses already accounted for. I was just hoping they would give me permission to marry their eldest daughter.
Turns out I didn’t need to worry about their permission. In early November she starts getting really distant. I just thought it was because we were having problems at the time. I was getting really down on myself for losing a good paying job for being a lazy turd and after the mutiny on The Oregon I was having problems paying all my bills in a timely manor. All this added up to stress and depression from having to move back in with my folks after several years of freedom. Looking back, I guess it was only a matter of time before it took its toll with our relationship. We were fighting over money, over looking for a place of our own and over how I couldn’t afford to move right now. I was always broke since I was still paying for bills from The Oregon and had been jobless for over a month. She was the only thing that kept me sane through the move and downfall of The Oregon. I guess I started taking that for granted and started taking out some of my stress and disparagement at the way my life was going on her. Not in a direct manor, like I didn’t punch her in the face because I just spent all my money on my credit card bill, but in a more subtle way. I was just not happy with life and I think she took that as I was not happy with her and with us. That’s when she started getting more and more distant.
Midway thought November my friend Steth was having a party at his parents’ house on a Saturday night since they were out of town. I called Four from work and told her about the party and she said she’d think about going, she wasn’t sure. I drove by her house to pick her up at around 11 and she wasn’t there. I thought maybe she was already at the party so I just headed there myself. She was at neither place, and I wasn’t sure where she was. This was totally unlike her. I think by this time she had written me off as a lost cause and started seeing a guy from work.
She was working at this retailer up in Belden and a few months previous, her best friend needed a job. Doing the good friend routine she hooked her up with one there, as a good friend is wont to do. A few months later her brother, a guy who lived down the street from me growing up, and I graduated High School with went to work there as well. We all went out to dinner a few times and while he and I weren’t exactly friends, we did have friends in common. So we got along pretty well, and were at least cordial if nothing else. More and more they were all hanging out while I was at work, and once again, that was fine. Once again, not I’m just not a jealous person. But in retrospect I think there was more going on than the three of them hanging out and watching movies and going to dinner.
The day after the party I give her a call and get no answer. I leave her a message on the machine to give me a call and we’d hang out later. About five minutes later I set my AIM Away message and go to take a shower. I come back to the message of “We need to talk. Come over at 11 tonight.” Uh-oh. I had an idea where this was headed. This is usually the part of the book or movie where the guy either gets dumped or the girl has won the fucking lottery and there is a brand new car waiting for the guy in the driveway. In my case it would be a Batmobile. And she knew that.
I get in my car and go head over to her house. The moment I turn on my car, the radio is playing November Rain by Guns N Roses. Not a good sign. Not a good sign at all. I stop to get gas and leave the radio playing while I fill up, for some unknown reason. I show up at her house at 11 and see no Batmobile. ‘Shit…this still isn’t good’, I think still half in denial. I snuff out my cigarette, drain my can of Coke and head towards the house. I get as far as her porch and she comes out crying. I grab her and hold her and ask what was wrong. “I have to break up with you…” she told me between sobs. Not wanted, not we should break up. But HAVE to break up with you. To me that indicated guilt over something.
By this point I’ve lost it, and am sobbing away myself. I ask why, she won’t tell me. I ask if it’s something I’ve done, something I’ve said, and still she says no. During this whole process I can’t get a simple straight answer, and that’s all I really want at this point. So I hug her, she says “Goodbye, Adam” and get in my car to lose my shit some more now that I’m alone, cursing Axl Rose the whole time. I put my brain into autopilot and somehow make it to D.W.’s in Massillon and stay up all night watching Adult Swim, COPS and feeling too numb to even have a drink.
Over the next few months I begin to lose it, and continue to lose it a little bit at a time. I start to drink heavily, thankfully only on the weekends, and am made a junior partner in the family business: Robinson and Robinson Alcoholics at Large. I still had her picture on my night stand and look at it when I come home from Alliance completely drunk and miserable and lost my mind all over again. This was a nightly ritual. A sad pathetic ritual.
My friends are all kind of unsure as to what to do. Over the next few weeks they take me out drinking on a regular basis and try to get me to talk to other girls. Thing 2 takes me out for beer and chicken wings at Buffalo Wild Wings to try to take my mind off things and reveals to me, in a very drunken state, that Four is now dating her best friends’ brother. Everything makes sense in that one 22 ounce draft beer fueled moment.
By this time my trunk is filled with rum bottles and I’m starting to not care about anything at all. I just go to work, read books, and come home to cry myself to sleep Monday through Thursday and drink myself to the point where I can’t feel feelings anymore Friday through Sunday. This is the way my life goes for the next few months. I contemplate suicide often during this dark time. On a very regular basis. I make plans. I pack up all my things and label the boxes as to what I want done with them. I keep telling myself that it’s just because I’m going to move out and I need my stuff packed but I know it’s just a lie I’m telling myself to keep myself going for the time being.
Then in May things go from completely fucking terrible to ‘I’m going to eat a bullet and slit my fucking wrists with shards of hot glass today’ fucking horrid. I go out to get the mail one Saturday afternoon to see if I have any new bills to pay and there is the Herald in the mailbox. My mom’s a subscriber, so that’s nothing unusual. I open it on my walk back to the house and see on the second page an engagement announcement. The woman in the picture is Four and the man is her new Husband to be.
More alcohol had to be consumed. Post haste. It was Saturday night, so that wouldn’t be a problem. I spent the next several months in a complete alcohol induced stupor. My job starts to suffer and my boss pulls me aside telling me to get my shit together or I’m done. By this point I don’t even care. The announcement said that they were going to be wed in December, so I still thought I had a chance of her coming back. I didn’t phone stalk her or leave anything on her doorstep or anything creepy like that. I just sat and waited for her to realize that I was the one she should be with, and he wasn’t. I help out hope that she’d come back, even until the night they got married. I guess I expected a Spiderman 2 ending where she showed up at my house in a wedding dress and begged me to come back, saying that she’d made a mistake and all that. It never did.
And, since that didn’t happen, I decided to just give up and end it. That night I organize my room, write my goodbye to my family, and write a lengthy note to The Professor to explain my actions and say goodbye. I could have done this with a phone call, but in all honesty I didn’t want to be talked out of it. And he is only one who could have at that point. The Oregon is empty, the tenants we’d rented to having moved out the week before and The Delta 88 is still in the garage. In complete working order. I had made sure to keep my spare car in decent working order since I’d parked it there three years before. The next day I was going to go through with this plan. I stopped and got Arby’s and a few cans of Coke on my way, and got some strawberries for desert. I’m allergic, but it would hardly matter. I pop in a CD I burned the night before shut the garage door and turn on the engine. Beside me sits a pack of strawberries and a letter to the authorities and my friends and family explaining my actions. I think that’s what scares me the most. That and the deletion of any and all porn from my hard drive. I didn’t want my mom finding that when the authorities went though my stuff after I came up missing. I was dead fucking serious about this. That alone should tell you how serious I was.
About half an hour later I’m starting to get drowsy from the fumes and itchy from the fruit. I’m contemplating various things throughout my life, and how one way or another I’ve managed to fuck them up. At this point I’m ready for it to be over. Then, out of the blue a rather absurd thought occurs to me: How is Harry Potter going to end? The last two books weren’t out yet, and I’d spent lots of time rereading them over the past year. I had to know! I shut off The Olds, open the garage door, and step out into the cold December night. That’s the night Harry Potter saved my life. This is also the reason I have a Dark Mark tattooed on my inner left arm. As a constant reminder to myself of what I almost did over a woman and how a fictional character saved my life.
I spent the next three years single, still trying to sort out all the excess baggage that came with almost killing myself. I had enough going on in my head without throwing some poor girl under the bus with me, trying to make a relationship work. Plus, I was still flat ass broke from The Oregon Mutiny. Bills eventually got paid and I socially worked myself up to the point where I could handle a relationship again.
Actually, that’s not true, not completely. Lex had a lot to do with that. She was kind of like training wheels for dating. She got my midnight working ass out of the house and into the sunlight to interact with people at restaurants and movies and things like that. She helped me to be social enough to go talk to girls and to actually be able to handle a relationship like a grown up again. Weird thing is, I don’t think that until she reads this she knows what she did to help me. So by this time I’m social, I have some bills paid off, and I’m ready to start dating again. Where does this take us? It takes us to Five.
To be continued…..
Thanks for reading. But that’s it for now, kids
Heart,
The Doctor
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Doc Robinson and the Heartbreakers Part II
When we last left off I had just gotten out of a relationship with Two. With the circumstances of that breakup had pretty much left me completely bitter with girls, with school, and with life in general. It wasn’t just THAT I got cheated on, but the HOW and the complete lack of remorse. Shit like that kind of gets to you, you know?
Anyhow, I should probably get to the next girl in the story, right? That would be Three. I had seen Three around school and whatnot, I think I had lunch with her my senior or junior year. Not really sure, and it’s not really relevant. But I had been checking her out a bit, and had suspected she had been checking me out too. But then graduation came and since I was dating Two, I didn’t really give it another thought.
It was mid 1999 and graduation parties were plentiful. I decided to go to the good Captain’s party and actually sit down and talk to Three. While at this time I was still dating Two, unlike her, I had morals and standards. Sure my girlfriend was in fucking France, but throwing game at someone else just wasn’t my style. Again, I didn’t really think much about her aside from she was this cute little sophomore who wore the Radiohead shirt and could carry on a conversation about cool movies.
About a year passes, and it’s the fall of 2000. I had dated a few girls here and there, nothing really serious. I really wasn’t over One completely since there was no real closure and Two had left me so jaded and whatnot, that I really wasn’t that in to getting into something serious with anyone. I hooked back up with One, one night, gotten some closure after realizing she hadn’t changed at all, and decided to start looking for another serious relationship as soon as one seemed to present itself.
I was working at HP with The Captain and a bunch of other pretty cool guys and all is going pretty well. Aside from the hectic schedule, it was an extremely decent job. Why only decent? See, I went to school from 8 am until noon. And then I worked from 3:30 pm until 2 am. There in lies the dilemma. It cut into the social life quite a bit when you’re working 10 hours a day, going to school 4 hours a day and only sleeping 4 hours a day. Well, that and the little nap I took everyday between class and work. Point is it cuts into the whole meeting and wooing of the young ladies.
One day I was sitting there during some downtime at my machine, wishing I had something to do or read. My homework was, ironically, at home, and I hadn’t thought to bring a book. So I scurried over to the shipping department to ask the Captain if he had anything readable on him. All he had was some old Louisville Heralds that they used to wrap fragile things with when they ship them. Success. That would do in a pinch so I decided to read up on the old home town as I waited for my machine to be up and running again.
Most of it was the same old bullshit that you usually get in a small town paper: Wedding and engagement announcements, anniversaries, who died recently, who had a baby and all that. Then I stumble across an article, with pictures, about the High School Choir concert from the spring before. And who is looking back from one of the pictures? Three. I walk over to The Captain to ask him if he remembers her being at his party and the vital babetistics. I tell him that I was somewhat interested and for him to find out if she has a boyfriend, or whatever. Yes, he does remember her. Even better yet, he says if I’d like, he’d call her on my behalf to see what he could do. I love it when a plan comes together.
The weekend rolls around and with no class or work I’m sleeping my extremely tired ass off, and the only thing on my day planner is putting together a desk I bought at Sears the night before. Then at about 11 am my phone rings. “*sleepy grumble* It’s so EARLY! This had better be good…” I mumble into the receiver. It was the Captain. He had apparently done some fairly clever detective work while I was starring as the elusive Snorlax in my bed and looked up Three’s phone number in his year book the night before. He calls her, has a nice conversation about her last year and a half, catches her up on the day to day details of his life for the past few months and then gets to the nitty gritty of why he called. He has a friend, she might remember from his graduation party, and said friend is somewhat interested. He then asks if it’s permissible if he gives me her number, and says he’ll talk to her later. She consents, and I write the number down, planning on calling her the next night, for that evening was filled with desk assembly and drinking with the guys.
That night after the assembly, I head over the D.W.’s and we make a beer run to Giant Eagle and I want to stop by the video store in the plaza to rent something to play on my bright shiny new DVD player. Guess who’s behind the counter? That’s right, Three. So I look around for something non-offensive to rent, something that wouldn’t make her think that I'm a perv or serial killer loser or something. First impressions and all that garbage. Ah ha! The Toy Story box set. Perfect. It’s cute enough to score some points, and a disc I had actually wanted to see. So D.W. and I go to the counter and I check out, and I ask in passing if she’s going to be home the next night. She said, yeah, she would, and I should call her after 8 or so, since it was a Sunday and she had school in the morning.
I call and we get to chatting and I find out we actually have a lot in common. We like the same bands, she plays video games, and then I drop the bomb: “Want to go do something next weekend?” “Sure” she answers. A date was made and aside from another week of not getting enough sleep it was shaping up to be a decent evening.
The week passes and we email back and forth and make something that resembles a plan. Her friend (and my future roommate) Sexy Glen was having a get together at his house, but if we’d like to go see a movie first, she was down. But Sexy Glen saw going to chaperone to make sure I wasn’t a complete turd. Understandable, really. You’re a 17 year old girl, going on a date with someone you barely know, and that a friend from high school who called out of the blue wants to set you up with.
The only thing playing at a decent hour is The Exorcist. Not exactly what you think of when you think first date is it? Yeah, I thought the same thing too. But you have to make do with the cards life deals you, so to the movie we went. Three sat in-between Sexy Glen and me, but that didn’t stop me from making clever little quirks and jokes to both of them. If you’ve been to a movie with me, you know how this is. I like to talk during them. A lot. MST3K style. If I’m not ripping the movie apart, it’s either really good, or boring enough that I’ve fallen asleep. The movie went pretty well, and Three and I decide to go get some late night food at Denny’s. We sit and talk about all the things people talk about on first dates, and decide it’s about time to get back to Sexy Glen’s apartment.
By the time we get there the little get together had pretty much worn down and Sexy Glen and his roommate Slick were sitting there playing Mario Golf or some such thing on the Nintendo 64. Being that the party was kind of beat we decide to go to Wal-Mart in Alliance to wander around for awhile. By about the forth or fifth isle we are holding hands and grinning like idiots. Ah, young romance.
We leave with our items in tow and head back to the East Canton lair of Sexy Glenn and Slick and put in a movie. I’m sitting on the floor and Three is sitting in the chair behind me. The couch is occupied by someone or another sleeping off the mikes hard lemonade of a few hours earlier. She starts giving me a backrub. I hadn’t had a backrub in like a year and a half. Let me tell you, after working 10 hours a day, going to school 4 and sleeping next to none, a backrub is like Thanksgiving fucking dinner when you’re high. It feels amazing. Then she starts kissing on my neck. Somehow we wind up making out on the floor until like 7 a.m. All in all, not a bad first date.
We start to date, and months go by. The L Word gets dropped. We are pretty much inseparable. The first year was really fun. Lots of dates were gone on, and since she was in High School (she was 18 a week after we started dating, and I was only 19 at the time. so shut up) our schedules seemed to mesh pretty well. Families met each other, holidays and things were celebrated. Fun couple things were done and generally I wasn’t a complete depressed wreck anymore. I had finally found someone to get me over One and Two. That was a good feeling.
We started dating in October and by March I was ready to move out of my parents’ house. D.W. and The Captain shared my sentiment, and Sexy Glen’s lease was up. What’s the logical thing to do? Buy a house. Or rather, my parents bought me a house. Now before you go and think my parents just up and BOUGHT me a house, there are several details to get out of the way. They helped my sister with her wedding and some school finances, so they felt it was fair to help me out with something like this. And they didn’t buy a house and just give it to me. They got it with the intent that I rent to own from them. I was going to be paying them rent and after a few years they’d sign the deed over to me and I’d be the owner. Until then they were going to be slumlords.
The house that became The Oregon came into being on March 2nd, 2001. Jim had helped me move all my earthly belongings into the house that day and then we went to buy me a bed. For sleeping and fucking and possibly building a pillow fort. So I’m reading the classified section and there is an ad for new mattresses for $80 any size! I make a call and agree to meet this cat that night at about 7. The meeting place? A shady looking garage behind Rent-a-center on West Tusc. We pull up and there’s a Cadillac with the vanity plates ‘Lenny 3’ and an elderly African gentleman in the drivers seat. I get out of the van, and tell Jim if he sees shit go down, drive like the wind and find help. Needless to say, he didn’t need to. I bought my mattress and box springs off Lenny 3 and we went back to the house to set that monster up.
Three gets off work and comes to see my new digs. She’s suitably impressed by the fact that I have actual furniture and not big wire spools as tables and milk crates as furniture. As are my parents the next day, actually. So after Three arrives we head to Wal-Mart to pick up the essentials that I’d forgotten to get like milk and dude soap and drier sheets. We get back and Sexy Glen was waiting with the case of beer I’d given him money for earlier in the day. We had a drink to dedicate the new house and Sexy Glen left for his old house to finish packing his stuff. That left Three and I alone in the house, which ended the way you’d think it did.
The next day my folks show up with some housewarming things for me and my mom asks if Three had seen the house yet. She then sees the HUGE hickey on my neck and answers her own question with a “well…I guess that means yes…” Sick burn mom, sick burn.
The next weekend began the Legendary parties that The Oregon would be known far and wide for. You can read more about the first party in my other story The Oregon Year One: The Biffing. Although a detail I left out of that story is that the next day after cleaning up everything I found a whole fried chicken wing behind the toilet. No joke. A chicken wing with a single bite taken out of it. Just chilling behind where we poop. No idea where it came from, no idea how it got there.
I’m getting off topic here, but the parties were something that was a part of our relationship. When she started at Kent I’d call her and Carolina and they’d come down and party. I’d even place orders for her to bring friends with suitable faces and next to no morals for my roommates. We were just that considerate. She’d come over and drink with the best of them. Until midnight when she’d pass out. One time she passed out on my bed while I was washing sheets and I couldn’t wake her. So I did what you’d probably do in the situation: I made the bed over her. I left her head exposed so she could breathe and all. But I’m not sleeping bare skin on a mattress I bought from Lenny 3. She wakes up suitably unimpressed with my drunken problem solving skills and I get yelled at.
The night I made the bed over her, Carolina and I stayed up and out drank pretty much everyone at he party. We’d killed like 3 bottles of top shelf liquor and she made out with at least 2 of my roommates, so we both considered this a fulfilling evening of debauchery. That happened pretty often. Three and Carolina would get there early while I was still at work and proceed to drink with The Council of Evil. I’d come home to a completely smashed girlfriend and a roommate making out with Carolina on my couch.
The parties were fun for everyone, but apparently they work thin with Three. Even though she enjoyed attending them, she thought I should be “doing more with my life than playing ‘Animal House’ with (my) friends…” And yes, that is a verbatim quote. But what she didn’t understand is that while she only saw the fun parts of the house like the parties, it was a lot of work. Bills had to be paid, and for that to happen roommates had to be shaken down on payday. I had to keep track of like 5 people owing me various amounts of money, when they got paid, and how best to broach the subject with them.
Then there was the damage control aspect of the house. Shit was always getting broken. I had to replace windows, a door or two and various pieces of furniture during the two and a half years we lived there. Add to all that I was in school, working full time and having to drive an hour up to Kent State to see my girlfriend and you’ll see its not all college shirts and toga parties.
She was selfish. One night she went to hang out with Slick. They met at my house since Slick had moved and she didn’t know where he lived. Now I’m not the kind that had a problem with the girls I date having male friends, I’m just not a jealous person. But this….I had a bad feeling about. But I said fuck it and went to sleep when she wasn’t back at my house by 1 a.m. she rolls in at around 4 and comes to bed quietly. Nothing is said as she leaves the next day. Later that night she calls me crying, saying she made out with Slick and felt like a terrible person. Never mind that Slick and I were friends and I haven’t seen him since. Never mind the fact that she got super jealous about any girl I worked with, regardless of what they looked like. There was one girl I think she was justified in being jealous. She was the one girl that seriously thought about cheating with. But I’m just not that way. She had a boyfriend, I had a girlfriend. And I’m just not about splitting up two relationships because someone is super hot and wants me to fuck them on the desk at work.
She put her own wants and needs above the feelings of other’s. The Vacation Blog will tell you that. Anyone who puts their own sexual gratification about the health and safety of their partner is like that. The vacation was the point at which I knew we weren’t going to be together forever. We’d discussed marriage after college and all the pitfalls that go along with it. I remember lying next to her in the hotel bed, looking at her and thinking “this isn’t going to last”.
We dated for two years, and I didn’t want to let it go, even though it was over. You know how that is? Part of it was I really had no idea how to start talking to girls again. Part was I was scared to be alone again. It was depressing and miserable. I wasn’t ready to do that again. What the final straw for her was I was getting sick of her being bossy and berating me for not doing things her way. I had my own way of doing things, she had hers. Everyone is different. She didn’t quite get that concept. She thought that if it wasn’t her way, it was wrong.
I was always the one making compromises to go see her. She didn’t like smoking so I had quit. Well, quit for the most part. Carolina still gave me the occasional “Super Secret Cigarette” when I’d leave the dorm and she was out smoking late at night. I had class early one Monday and I’d go up on Sunday night to see her. The rule was I’d leave at 10 so I could drive home, get cleaned up and get to sleep at a decent hour. At 10 shed always want me to stay longer, and most of the time I did. So wound up leaving there at like midnight, getting home at around 1 getting to bed at around 2 and not waking up at 8 for class. I wound up failing 2 of my classes that way. Seems you don’t show up for class they fail you.
I got real sick and tired of her always making the rules and one day in the late summer we were going to the thrift store in Akron. I wanted to go at around 1 so I didn’t have to get up early since it was a sleep in day and I'd had to wake up early for work and doctors appointments all week long. She insisted on going at 10 a.m. I told her I'd see her at 1. and set my alarm accordingly. At 10:15 she KICKS in my bedroom door and says “You can’t even get up for this!?!”. Then she left. I shrugged and went back to sleep.
The kicker? She called my mom to tell her that I’d effectively stood her up. For a date that I'd changed the time for ahead of time. About a week later she left for school and that Sunday invited me up for the evening. I told her yes but that I didn’t want a deadline, so I had no idea she time I’d be up there. She took that as an insult and told me to not bother coming up at all. Then she said “We need to talk on Tuesday” Tuesday?!? If we need to talk, we need to talk now. But she wouldn’t talk to me until then. So I had two days to stew and think about everything. In that time I had decided that it was over, she cheated and I’d forgiven her. She wanted everything her way, and I’d made it happen. But no more. I was done, it was over. We had a lengthy conversation via the internet Tuesday night and both decided it was over. I was heartbroken, but we both agreed we weren’t happy and it was probably for the best.
A few weeks later I go through my internet history looking for a webpage I stumbled upon one night and I find her email password saved on my computer. So naturally I decide to do a little bit of post-breakup reading. Turns out she had been seeing a guy from work for the last few weeks we’d been together. AND she’d been making out with a guy she went to High School with a little bit before that. With that, I definitely decided it was for the best and that I should move on with my life and that my love life deserved better.
To Be Concluded….
Thanks for reading. But that’s it for now, kids
Heart,
The Doctor
Anyhow, I should probably get to the next girl in the story, right? That would be Three. I had seen Three around school and whatnot, I think I had lunch with her my senior or junior year. Not really sure, and it’s not really relevant. But I had been checking her out a bit, and had suspected she had been checking me out too. But then graduation came and since I was dating Two, I didn’t really give it another thought.
It was mid 1999 and graduation parties were plentiful. I decided to go to the good Captain’s party and actually sit down and talk to Three. While at this time I was still dating Two, unlike her, I had morals and standards. Sure my girlfriend was in fucking France, but throwing game at someone else just wasn’t my style. Again, I didn’t really think much about her aside from she was this cute little sophomore who wore the Radiohead shirt and could carry on a conversation about cool movies.
About a year passes, and it’s the fall of 2000. I had dated a few girls here and there, nothing really serious. I really wasn’t over One completely since there was no real closure and Two had left me so jaded and whatnot, that I really wasn’t that in to getting into something serious with anyone. I hooked back up with One, one night, gotten some closure after realizing she hadn’t changed at all, and decided to start looking for another serious relationship as soon as one seemed to present itself.
I was working at HP with The Captain and a bunch of other pretty cool guys and all is going pretty well. Aside from the hectic schedule, it was an extremely decent job. Why only decent? See, I went to school from 8 am until noon. And then I worked from 3:30 pm until 2 am. There in lies the dilemma. It cut into the social life quite a bit when you’re working 10 hours a day, going to school 4 hours a day and only sleeping 4 hours a day. Well, that and the little nap I took everyday between class and work. Point is it cuts into the whole meeting and wooing of the young ladies.
One day I was sitting there during some downtime at my machine, wishing I had something to do or read. My homework was, ironically, at home, and I hadn’t thought to bring a book. So I scurried over to the shipping department to ask the Captain if he had anything readable on him. All he had was some old Louisville Heralds that they used to wrap fragile things with when they ship them. Success. That would do in a pinch so I decided to read up on the old home town as I waited for my machine to be up and running again.
Most of it was the same old bullshit that you usually get in a small town paper: Wedding and engagement announcements, anniversaries, who died recently, who had a baby and all that. Then I stumble across an article, with pictures, about the High School Choir concert from the spring before. And who is looking back from one of the pictures? Three. I walk over to The Captain to ask him if he remembers her being at his party and the vital babetistics. I tell him that I was somewhat interested and for him to find out if she has a boyfriend, or whatever. Yes, he does remember her. Even better yet, he says if I’d like, he’d call her on my behalf to see what he could do. I love it when a plan comes together.
The weekend rolls around and with no class or work I’m sleeping my extremely tired ass off, and the only thing on my day planner is putting together a desk I bought at Sears the night before. Then at about 11 am my phone rings. “*sleepy grumble* It’s so EARLY! This had better be good…” I mumble into the receiver. It was the Captain. He had apparently done some fairly clever detective work while I was starring as the elusive Snorlax in my bed and looked up Three’s phone number in his year book the night before. He calls her, has a nice conversation about her last year and a half, catches her up on the day to day details of his life for the past few months and then gets to the nitty gritty of why he called. He has a friend, she might remember from his graduation party, and said friend is somewhat interested. He then asks if it’s permissible if he gives me her number, and says he’ll talk to her later. She consents, and I write the number down, planning on calling her the next night, for that evening was filled with desk assembly and drinking with the guys.
That night after the assembly, I head over the D.W.’s and we make a beer run to Giant Eagle and I want to stop by the video store in the plaza to rent something to play on my bright shiny new DVD player. Guess who’s behind the counter? That’s right, Three. So I look around for something non-offensive to rent, something that wouldn’t make her think that I'm a perv or serial killer loser or something. First impressions and all that garbage. Ah ha! The Toy Story box set. Perfect. It’s cute enough to score some points, and a disc I had actually wanted to see. So D.W. and I go to the counter and I check out, and I ask in passing if she’s going to be home the next night. She said, yeah, she would, and I should call her after 8 or so, since it was a Sunday and she had school in the morning.
I call and we get to chatting and I find out we actually have a lot in common. We like the same bands, she plays video games, and then I drop the bomb: “Want to go do something next weekend?” “Sure” she answers. A date was made and aside from another week of not getting enough sleep it was shaping up to be a decent evening.
The week passes and we email back and forth and make something that resembles a plan. Her friend (and my future roommate) Sexy Glen was having a get together at his house, but if we’d like to go see a movie first, she was down. But Sexy Glen saw going to chaperone to make sure I wasn’t a complete turd. Understandable, really. You’re a 17 year old girl, going on a date with someone you barely know, and that a friend from high school who called out of the blue wants to set you up with.
The only thing playing at a decent hour is The Exorcist. Not exactly what you think of when you think first date is it? Yeah, I thought the same thing too. But you have to make do with the cards life deals you, so to the movie we went. Three sat in-between Sexy Glen and me, but that didn’t stop me from making clever little quirks and jokes to both of them. If you’ve been to a movie with me, you know how this is. I like to talk during them. A lot. MST3K style. If I’m not ripping the movie apart, it’s either really good, or boring enough that I’ve fallen asleep. The movie went pretty well, and Three and I decide to go get some late night food at Denny’s. We sit and talk about all the things people talk about on first dates, and decide it’s about time to get back to Sexy Glen’s apartment.
By the time we get there the little get together had pretty much worn down and Sexy Glen and his roommate Slick were sitting there playing Mario Golf or some such thing on the Nintendo 64. Being that the party was kind of beat we decide to go to Wal-Mart in Alliance to wander around for awhile. By about the forth or fifth isle we are holding hands and grinning like idiots. Ah, young romance.
We leave with our items in tow and head back to the East Canton lair of Sexy Glenn and Slick and put in a movie. I’m sitting on the floor and Three is sitting in the chair behind me. The couch is occupied by someone or another sleeping off the mikes hard lemonade of a few hours earlier. She starts giving me a backrub. I hadn’t had a backrub in like a year and a half. Let me tell you, after working 10 hours a day, going to school 4 and sleeping next to none, a backrub is like Thanksgiving fucking dinner when you’re high. It feels amazing. Then she starts kissing on my neck. Somehow we wind up making out on the floor until like 7 a.m. All in all, not a bad first date.
We start to date, and months go by. The L Word gets dropped. We are pretty much inseparable. The first year was really fun. Lots of dates were gone on, and since she was in High School (she was 18 a week after we started dating, and I was only 19 at the time. so shut up) our schedules seemed to mesh pretty well. Families met each other, holidays and things were celebrated. Fun couple things were done and generally I wasn’t a complete depressed wreck anymore. I had finally found someone to get me over One and Two. That was a good feeling.
We started dating in October and by March I was ready to move out of my parents’ house. D.W. and The Captain shared my sentiment, and Sexy Glen’s lease was up. What’s the logical thing to do? Buy a house. Or rather, my parents bought me a house. Now before you go and think my parents just up and BOUGHT me a house, there are several details to get out of the way. They helped my sister with her wedding and some school finances, so they felt it was fair to help me out with something like this. And they didn’t buy a house and just give it to me. They got it with the intent that I rent to own from them. I was going to be paying them rent and after a few years they’d sign the deed over to me and I’d be the owner. Until then they were going to be slumlords.
The house that became The Oregon came into being on March 2nd, 2001. Jim had helped me move all my earthly belongings into the house that day and then we went to buy me a bed. For sleeping and fucking and possibly building a pillow fort. So I’m reading the classified section and there is an ad for new mattresses for $80 any size! I make a call and agree to meet this cat that night at about 7. The meeting place? A shady looking garage behind Rent-a-center on West Tusc. We pull up and there’s a Cadillac with the vanity plates ‘Lenny 3’ and an elderly African gentleman in the drivers seat. I get out of the van, and tell Jim if he sees shit go down, drive like the wind and find help. Needless to say, he didn’t need to. I bought my mattress and box springs off Lenny 3 and we went back to the house to set that monster up.
Three gets off work and comes to see my new digs. She’s suitably impressed by the fact that I have actual furniture and not big wire spools as tables and milk crates as furniture. As are my parents the next day, actually. So after Three arrives we head to Wal-Mart to pick up the essentials that I’d forgotten to get like milk and dude soap and drier sheets. We get back and Sexy Glen was waiting with the case of beer I’d given him money for earlier in the day. We had a drink to dedicate the new house and Sexy Glen left for his old house to finish packing his stuff. That left Three and I alone in the house, which ended the way you’d think it did.
The next day my folks show up with some housewarming things for me and my mom asks if Three had seen the house yet. She then sees the HUGE hickey on my neck and answers her own question with a “well…I guess that means yes…” Sick burn mom, sick burn.
The next weekend began the Legendary parties that The Oregon would be known far and wide for. You can read more about the first party in my other story The Oregon Year One: The Biffing. Although a detail I left out of that story is that the next day after cleaning up everything I found a whole fried chicken wing behind the toilet. No joke. A chicken wing with a single bite taken out of it. Just chilling behind where we poop. No idea where it came from, no idea how it got there.
I’m getting off topic here, but the parties were something that was a part of our relationship. When she started at Kent I’d call her and Carolina and they’d come down and party. I’d even place orders for her to bring friends with suitable faces and next to no morals for my roommates. We were just that considerate. She’d come over and drink with the best of them. Until midnight when she’d pass out. One time she passed out on my bed while I was washing sheets and I couldn’t wake her. So I did what you’d probably do in the situation: I made the bed over her. I left her head exposed so she could breathe and all. But I’m not sleeping bare skin on a mattress I bought from Lenny 3. She wakes up suitably unimpressed with my drunken problem solving skills and I get yelled at.
The night I made the bed over her, Carolina and I stayed up and out drank pretty much everyone at he party. We’d killed like 3 bottles of top shelf liquor and she made out with at least 2 of my roommates, so we both considered this a fulfilling evening of debauchery. That happened pretty often. Three and Carolina would get there early while I was still at work and proceed to drink with The Council of Evil. I’d come home to a completely smashed girlfriend and a roommate making out with Carolina on my couch.
The parties were fun for everyone, but apparently they work thin with Three. Even though she enjoyed attending them, she thought I should be “doing more with my life than playing ‘Animal House’ with (my) friends…” And yes, that is a verbatim quote. But what she didn’t understand is that while she only saw the fun parts of the house like the parties, it was a lot of work. Bills had to be paid, and for that to happen roommates had to be shaken down on payday. I had to keep track of like 5 people owing me various amounts of money, when they got paid, and how best to broach the subject with them.
Then there was the damage control aspect of the house. Shit was always getting broken. I had to replace windows, a door or two and various pieces of furniture during the two and a half years we lived there. Add to all that I was in school, working full time and having to drive an hour up to Kent State to see my girlfriend and you’ll see its not all college shirts and toga parties.
She was selfish. One night she went to hang out with Slick. They met at my house since Slick had moved and she didn’t know where he lived. Now I’m not the kind that had a problem with the girls I date having male friends, I’m just not a jealous person. But this….I had a bad feeling about. But I said fuck it and went to sleep when she wasn’t back at my house by 1 a.m. she rolls in at around 4 and comes to bed quietly. Nothing is said as she leaves the next day. Later that night she calls me crying, saying she made out with Slick and felt like a terrible person. Never mind that Slick and I were friends and I haven’t seen him since. Never mind the fact that she got super jealous about any girl I worked with, regardless of what they looked like. There was one girl I think she was justified in being jealous. She was the one girl that seriously thought about cheating with. But I’m just not that way. She had a boyfriend, I had a girlfriend. And I’m just not about splitting up two relationships because someone is super hot and wants me to fuck them on the desk at work.
She put her own wants and needs above the feelings of other’s. The Vacation Blog will tell you that. Anyone who puts their own sexual gratification about the health and safety of their partner is like that. The vacation was the point at which I knew we weren’t going to be together forever. We’d discussed marriage after college and all the pitfalls that go along with it. I remember lying next to her in the hotel bed, looking at her and thinking “this isn’t going to last”.
We dated for two years, and I didn’t want to let it go, even though it was over. You know how that is? Part of it was I really had no idea how to start talking to girls again. Part was I was scared to be alone again. It was depressing and miserable. I wasn’t ready to do that again. What the final straw for her was I was getting sick of her being bossy and berating me for not doing things her way. I had my own way of doing things, she had hers. Everyone is different. She didn’t quite get that concept. She thought that if it wasn’t her way, it was wrong.
I was always the one making compromises to go see her. She didn’t like smoking so I had quit. Well, quit for the most part. Carolina still gave me the occasional “Super Secret Cigarette” when I’d leave the dorm and she was out smoking late at night. I had class early one Monday and I’d go up on Sunday night to see her. The rule was I’d leave at 10 so I could drive home, get cleaned up and get to sleep at a decent hour. At 10 shed always want me to stay longer, and most of the time I did. So wound up leaving there at like midnight, getting home at around 1 getting to bed at around 2 and not waking up at 8 for class. I wound up failing 2 of my classes that way. Seems you don’t show up for class they fail you.
I got real sick and tired of her always making the rules and one day in the late summer we were going to the thrift store in Akron. I wanted to go at around 1 so I didn’t have to get up early since it was a sleep in day and I'd had to wake up early for work and doctors appointments all week long. She insisted on going at 10 a.m. I told her I'd see her at 1. and set my alarm accordingly. At 10:15 she KICKS in my bedroom door and says “You can’t even get up for this!?!”. Then she left. I shrugged and went back to sleep.
The kicker? She called my mom to tell her that I’d effectively stood her up. For a date that I'd changed the time for ahead of time. About a week later she left for school and that Sunday invited me up for the evening. I told her yes but that I didn’t want a deadline, so I had no idea she time I’d be up there. She took that as an insult and told me to not bother coming up at all. Then she said “We need to talk on Tuesday” Tuesday?!? If we need to talk, we need to talk now. But she wouldn’t talk to me until then. So I had two days to stew and think about everything. In that time I had decided that it was over, she cheated and I’d forgiven her. She wanted everything her way, and I’d made it happen. But no more. I was done, it was over. We had a lengthy conversation via the internet Tuesday night and both decided it was over. I was heartbroken, but we both agreed we weren’t happy and it was probably for the best.
A few weeks later I go through my internet history looking for a webpage I stumbled upon one night and I find her email password saved on my computer. So naturally I decide to do a little bit of post-breakup reading. Turns out she had been seeing a guy from work for the last few weeks we’d been together. AND she’d been making out with a guy she went to High School with a little bit before that. With that, I definitely decided it was for the best and that I should move on with my life and that my love life deserved better.
To Be Concluded….
Thanks for reading. But that’s it for now, kids
Heart,
The Doctor
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Doc Robinson and the Heartbreakers Part I
PARENTAL ADVISORY:
This blog contains explicit sexual content, violent imagery, and comic mischief. If you are related to me in any way (Including Auntie Nat; Excluding The Professor) PLEASE don’t read this blog. Should you choose not to heed my warning, the blame falls on you, not on me. Like the end of ‘Seven’.
The first time I had my heart broken was a little over ten years ago. Late in 1997 my friend Arch stopped by one evening after school to see if I could procure them some cigarettes from the highly illegal Drive-Thru down on Mahoning Road, as I was the cigarette dealer to all the misspent youth in the area. Smokes were still about $1.75 at the time, so I could charge the kiddos $3 a pack, still a deal, and make myself a handsome profit in the process. At the time I drove the Delta 88, which got upwards of
One Friday evening in mid November Arch stopped by to get some smokes. I was grounded for the weekend for doing some retarded shit (a story for another time). The only thing I had on the agenda for the weekend was to watch all three Star Wars movies. Preferably in a row. I had just gotten back from Lanzer’s house where I had borrowed the VHS box-set, when the doorbell rang. I went from my room in the basement to the front door and Archie and this brunette girl (who we’ll call One) I had never seen were sitting on the stoop. I sat down, lit a Camel and starting talking to them. One was new in town and had just moved in with her father and step-mother, who lived about half a mile away. Then this Girl who I’d been talking to off and on walked up to my house and asked me for a ride to work, and having nothing else to do, decided to drive her into town to the restaurant she worked at. I really wasn’t impressed with One and honestly forgot about her for the time being.
So the Girl I was talking to as the time was friends with One, Arch, and a few other kids that lived in my general geographic location. We all began to hang out, and being smokers, I was their nicotine pimp. Part of the joys of being the only one with a car and a license in the area, I suppose. I was over at Girl’s house listening to music and getting my teenage flirt on and One just wasn’t getting the hint to bug off and let me and Girl be alone for some quality make-out time. Taking the cock block a level further was when One asked me to give her a ride home after screwing up my flirty fun make-out time. Sure, anything to get you to shut up and impress upon Girl that I was a nice guy to her friends.
Then one day, out of the blue, One calls me and asks if I can take her to get smokes. Sure, no problem. I was heading out to get some for myself anyway. That soon turned into “Want to go hang out at the park with the guys?” which morphed into “Want to go to the park and hang out with me?” Girl and I had pretty much stopped talking due to a guy in her grade, so I figured what the hell, why not? And all that led to us starting to date.
I spent pretty much the whole summer between junior and senior years at her house. We enjoyed the same music, the same shows, and the other random bullshit that make a High School relationship a High School relationship.
A few months go by and her parents go out of town and leave her and her dirt bag step-brothers to watch the house. Now what do dirt bag kids do when asked to watch a house? Yes, you in the back with your hand up? That’s right: throw a party. Not being allowed out past 11, and with a party at my girlfriend’s house I do the only thing a seventeen year old can, nay MUST do. I kissed my mom goodnight, went to my room, shut the light off, waited until the old folks sent to sleep and snuck out the window to walk to the party. Was it an eventful party? Not at all. But it did have one consequence. Seems one of her dirt bag stepbrothers got drunk and either passed out in the yard with a plastic bottle of cheap vodka, or got drunk and decided to throw said bottle in the yard. That bottle got missed when they did the perfunctory post teenage party cleanup. Who found the bottle? One’s father. So he calls the police and everyone at the party gets in trouble. Everyone but me. Her step-mom thought I was a nice boy and knew I would get my ass kicked for sneaking out to go to a party at a girl’s house that my parents disliked. So she failed to mention to her husband that One had told her that I’d been at the party. Everyone at the party gets put on probation and gets random drug tests and whatnot, pretty standard stuff. It was then that I found out the One partook in the marijuana on a pretty regular basis. So she had to stop smoking pot and get her shit together due to legal constraints, and from what I could tell, did so.
Her probation went by and she was no longer drug tested on a regular basis, and we’re sitting in her room watching TV on her bed. I start to doze off and her phone rings. Its one of her friends congratulating her on getting off probation and saying pretty much good job on stopping smoking pot for 6 months. Then she said the words that wake me up and kick in my teeth. “Well, the thing is I didn’t really stop smoking. I just hid it from everyone and got some of that tea from my sister that cleans out your piss.” I sit up, look her dead in the eyes and say “You’re a fucking liar” and storm off. The Delta 88 got well over its
The thing with me and pot was that I kind of outgrew it. I used to get high and all that stupid teenage shit, but it just kind of petered out after I stopped hanging out with the stoner crowd. Pretty much like after I turned 16 and could drive places and do things other than sit around and get high in someone’s basement or barn it was just kind of played out for me. It was kind of “Holy shit, I can do other stuff that’s WAAY more fun AND legal now! Fuck smoking pot and listening to Pink Floyd man, I’m out of here!”
It was the lie that really pissed me off more than anything. Plus here was a girl I’d spent the better part of a year with who was high pretty much all the time. So I decided to get high with her and show her that it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. That didn’t work at all like I though it would. It pretty much just encouraged her to smoke more pot. At my wits end I typed up an Ultimatum. It pretty much said “It’s the drugs or me” thinking the choice was clear: I’m a pretty decent boyfriend while pot was just sketchy green stuff that made the Grateful Dead tolerable. I drove over to her stoner friends house and gave her the note, telling her I’d see her tomorrow at lunchtime after she’d had time to read it and make a decision. Know what the decision was? Pot.
I was destroyed as a person. It wasn’t just the getting dumped; it was the getting dumped for drugs. I was like ‘Really? Over pot? Goddamn stoners….’ And I had to spend the rest of the day at school completely wrecked, telling everyone everything was OK when they asked why I wasn’t being the funny sarcastic guy they’d all grown to know and love. The kicker? I get into my car after the longest day ever was over and drive out of the parking lot. What comes on the radio? ‘Why Can’t This Be Love’ by Van Halen. I turned to the radio and said “*Sigh*….Fuck you Eddie Van Halen…” Then I went home to be left alone. Alone with my hatred for Van Halen.
This is why I really have no love for drugs or the people that use them.
During the few single months to follow I had the prerequisite Rebound thing going on with a friend of mines ex-girlfriend and future ex-wife. You see, the day after One threw me under the Technicolor VW minibus to be with her one true love, drugs; Ex-Ex gave me a note in First period English class. I came into school looking like a bag of shit and generally not caring at all about life. Hair a mess, bags under my eyes, unshaven, same clothes I wore the day before, smelling like I slept in an ashtray, the whole first heartbreak falling apart thing. The note kind of kicked me out of my self-induced stupor. What did it say? “I want to molest you 12 different ways. <3"> Naturally being the honorable person that I am, even after my first big breakup, I go to said friend and ask his permission to …..well, I’m not really sure what I asked his permission to do. Date her? Bang her I guess?
But we didn’t really date, per se. It was more of a “My parents aren’t home, let’s go to my house and make out” type of thing we had going on. And at that point, that was fine with me. The permission was granted with a “But Dude…you know she’s the Congressional Representative of Slutsylvania, right? Like after her and I broke up, she decided to change her career choice to ‘Full Time Whore’. Yeah, go for it, I guess. Better wrap your rascal though.” Then over Christmas break my mom and I drove out to
The second day I was back from
This is why I don’t do One Night Stands.
The second girl to break my heart was a whole different story. See to explain this one properly we have to go way back. Like Junior High back. I was in Eighth Grade, and she was in Sixth. Turns out that even though I was one of the kids that kept to myself and she was one of the popular preppy click girls she had a bit of a crush on me from seeing me in the hallways and whatnot. Did she tell me then? Nope. This was all learned after the fact. When you’ve just gotten out of a relationship based on lies and then went against your better judgment and banged a slutty girl in your English class, it kind of swells your pride to hear shit like that, you know? Buy yeah; I went stag to a High School dance my senior year, shortly after One used my heart for rolling papers and burned my emotional well being to ash like so much cheap Gondo bought from a sketchy guy at the park. A mutual friend that knew of her love from afar set me up to dance with her. This apparently made her night. A few weeks go by and while looking up local people on AOL I see Two’s profile. So I sent her an Email and we start chatting. We meet up for coffee and start to hang out pretty regularly. I tell her that after what happened between me and One, I really didn’t want to put myself out here and have a girlfriend for fear of getting my heart kicked in and having Van Halen mock me yet again. She pleads her case, saying she’d never lie to me, that she’s been pretty much in love with me for years and that I should give her a chance. I think about it and decide I need to get over myself, and that everything she said was true. That is the event that leads to us starting to date.
This is one of the few girls to make me mad and piss me off on a regular basis. I mistake that for “Gee….I must really care for this girl if she can get to me like this.” Nope, she was just an irritating twat. So I meet the family, who love me by the way, and we get fairly serious. Her 12 year old little brother in particular. But I think that had something to do with the fact that I played video games with him and took him to McDonald’s and shit. Oh, and I bought him a Darth Maul Lightsaber. You know, since I had the Qui-Gon Jinn one. Anyhow, she meets my family and they like her. This is a welcome change from dating One. The folks HATED her because she was kind of slutty and whatnot. And I think Big Liz could smell the fact that she was a degenerate stoner. So I come home from work one night and see Two and Big Liz sitting in the kitchen talking. “Uh oh…..What’s all this then?” Turns out they double teamed me to get me to go to the prom. I had already told Two ‘Absolutely Not!’ on the prom front. But when your mom and your girlfriend team up on you? You don’t stand a fucking chance. My only condition? A Tux with Chuck’s. Prom goes off without a hitch and I’m bored as hell. Graduation nears and the school year draws to a close.
With the school year wrapping up, the Sophomore French class has the option to go on a trip to
She starts babysitting for someone her parents know on a fairly regular basis. And with that comes sex in a stranger’s house, which is pretty fun if they have a pool. I go over there one night to get my groove on after the kids go to sleep and she’s not there. In fact, the parents aren’t even going out that night. I’d been lied to again. OK, I’m going home to be irritated and call her house. Her parents have no idea where she is, they assumed she was out with me. Nope. This was not the case at all.
Turns out she had lied to her parents and me and was at the County Fair with some friends. And by ‘some friends’ I mean ‘some friends from work and a guy who was in the grade between us. Turns out the fact that I was broke at the time, from spending all my money on her, wasn’t getting the promotion I was being promised at work, and assorted other reasons that didn’t make sense to a rational non-twatty human being I wasn’t worthy of being her boyfriend. So instead of dumping me like a human with a heart would, she decides to cheat on me and then lie about it. Oh and when I call her on it she confesses that this isn’t the first time this has happened.
She first cheated on me with a guy she worked with about three months prior. While I was at her house playing Pokemon with her little brother waiting for her to get off work. Wonderful! The second time she cheated on me was in
When she gets home and finds me on AIM I pretty much ask “Where the FUCK have you been? You stood me up AND lied to your folks. Anything you need to tell me?!?” The answer was yes. She confessed that she’d screwed around on me, crying, and told me that no matter what she still loved me. I’m not even crushed by this news, since I’d suspected something like this for some time, so I’m fucking furious and told her I should have followed my instincts and never dated her in the first place. She then broke down and confessed her repeated infidelity, in pretty fair detail, out of spite. This is NOT what someone wants to hear at any time for any reason. I support telling your partner that you cheated if you’re really sorry about it, but don’t go into detail and don’t rub it in. that’s just crass and rude.
She goes on to say that the reason she can’t date me is because I’m a loser and she doesn’t think I’m going to go anywhere in life. Due to the fact that it was the summer after Graduation and I was treating nowhere near as such. I was however, going to school full time and working 36 hours a week and working on taking my tests to get promoted from head cook and cashier at KFC to Shift Supervisor. Yeah, that shows that I’m lying around being a lazy fuck and not doing anything with my life, like bettering myself instead of fucking random dudes in foreign countries. At this point she’s pretty much TRYING to piss me off by saying I never meant anything to her, calling me pet names I’d shot down because they weren’t cute, clever, or accurate and, this is a direct quote, saying “your fuck was fun.” Who the fuck says shit like that? Like you screw up a relationship by cheating and you try to shift the blame to other person when they say “Jesus, I told you this wouldn’t work.”
One of the hardest things about splitting up with Two was the family. Her parents loved me and her little brother adored me. When I went over to her house to get some CD’s and shit I’d left over there, little brother asked me all teary eyed “Can we still be friends? Are you still going to be coming over to play Game boy with me?” I kneeled down and looked him in the eyes and said “Kiddo, I don’t think I can. You’re a really great kid and we’ll always be friends, big guy. But I don’t think I can keep coming over here now that your sister and I aren’t dating anymore.” Then I hugged him goodbye, got in my truck and waved at him and the parents as I drove off.
This is why I can’t date a woman with kids. You’re not just breaking up with the girl; you’re breaking up with the kid. And I'm not sure I can do that again.
To Be Concluded………
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