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