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
Saturday, August 28, 2010
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
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