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