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