Journal sm62704's Journal: Fireworks 4
I know it isn't true, love is just a lie made to make you blue. Love hurts. -Nazareth
Thursday was my wedding anniversary. On July 3, 1976, I wed Evil-X. And I just had my heart broken... again.
I'm an idiot. I keep getting used by women who pretend to have feelings for me.
Evil-X and I were going to be married on the nation's 200th birthday, and it appears that historians say we actually did, in a manner of speaking. Before my divorce it seemed a wonderful date to be married on. I would never forget my anniversary, and there would always be fireworks.
Now I wish we had chosen a different date, because I get grumpy on that day. I wish I could forget my anniversary.
I probably got grumpier than usual, because Tami and I hadn't been getting along.
I got home and she was busy with some errand or other; I had her drop me off at Felbers while she ran errands. Thursdays are seventy five cent drafts, so I had a few. And a few more with her.
I'd planned on going to visit Mike in Columbia on Friday. He always has a lot of good fireworks, and I need to be with true friends on that particular day, especialy on years I have no girlfriend. By girlfriend I mean one I have sex with, not somebody else's wife. Whether or not you believe it, and most people don't, I've never had sex with Tami.
That was a big part of the problem. I've needed to get laid in the worst way, especialy on that weekend. And Tami gets in the way of that. Everybody thinks she's my girlfriend.
She didn't want to go to Columbia. "We need some time apart", she said, and was certainly right. And I've needed some time to myself; she's had my house in the daytime, while I haven't had it at all; my house or time to myself.
Some time after finishing a half pint of cheap whiskey and a six pack of beer, we had words and she stormed out. I went to bed.
The next morning I got up early and called Mike, and told him I'd probably stop by Jeff's in Cahokia on my way down. I've known Jeff and Mike for literally decades; we were friends long before I was married.
As I got on highway 55 I saw what looked like two tractor-trailers laying on their sides, right before sixth street hits the highway. It looked like a dozen cop cars there.
The car was acting funny, and I started smelling burned rubber. Worried, I pulled off at the first rest area and checked the tires out. They looked fine, so I continued. A little more than halfway there there was a noise and what looked like debris, and the car started shaking. I pulled of on to the shoulder and checked everything out. The left front tire looked a little low but otherwise everything looked fine. I finished the trip with the cruise control set at fifty.
I went to Jeff's in Cahokia and knocked on the plywood sheet in the front where the picture window used to be. I heard the back door open, and walked around. Jeff's girlfriend's teenaged son was at the door. "Jeff here?" I asked.
"Yeah, but he's sleeping".
"Well, wake him up!" We went inside. Although it was ten o'clock, everyone there was asleep. Jeff came out with a bowl of hemp buds.
It seems I wasn't the only one with woman problems; in fact, his were pretty much identical to mine, only worse. Like me, he'd had a woman living there that he hadn't been having sex with. I'd thought she was his girlfriend.
She was getting an apartment and he was glad - "I'm sick of the psycho's drama. It's always something. I used to be able to watch TV in peace, but there's always a crowd of teenages there and she's always bitching."
Like Tami, Glenna's bipolar. She reminds me of Jeff's late brother's first wife. Now THERE was a psycho bitch from hell! In fact, one time we were all at Mike's watching a movie and her son, Todd, exclaimed after the first psychotic episode "Oh my GOD, that's my MOM!"
And indeed it was; the actress (Kathy Bates) even looked like Debbie. The movie was Misery. Jim, Todd's dad who I'd known since high school, had recently died of untreated heart disease; his employer don't offer health insurance. Unlike civilized countries, the USA does not have universal health care and it kills people.
Jim was my best friend. If you want to troll me, speaking out against universal health care is a sure way to press my buttons. Jim died in 1992, two weeks short of his fortieth birthday.
After visiting Jeff for a while, I asked him to come along to Mike's. He said he couldn't, there was stuff around the house he had to do. He walked outside with me, and my front tire was flat. Damn!
"I've got a pump", he said. "Open your hood and I'll get it."
We aired up the tire, I closed the hood and left. I was halfway to the interstate when BLAM! The tire blew. I changed the tire, and saw why I'd smelled burning rubber. Apparently the tire's belt had broken, because the tread was good everytwhere on the tire but one place, and there the cord was showing. I'd worn that spot completely down on the trip.
I went to Mike's on the donut spare. When I got there, I took his Dell apart.
He'd had something wierd go wrong with it. No matter what video card was in it, the card wasn't sending a signal to the monitor; it was in a permanent sleep mode. I'd told him I'd look at it, but with gasoline costing what it does it was a long time between trips down there so he'd paid some guy $90 to fix it.
Only after he got it back, neither his CD burner nor his DVD burner worked. The BIOS had reported "unknown drive". I decided I'd take a CD ROM from another old computer he had and reload the drivers from his Dell disks. I did so with my finbgers crossed - if the BIOS didn't recognise the CD ROM I figured I was screwed. But the PC did indeed know about the CD, I loaded the drivers, swapped the drives back and fired it up - and it still didn't recognise the drives.
I fail it.
I put the computers back together, made sure it was otherwise working (besides the CDs) and opened a beer. We went out on his porch and he handed me a bowl and some bud. I'd hoped to get some hydro from Chris, but Mike said Chris stopped growing.
Nothing was going right. First I'd run Tami off; had a bad trip down to the St Louis area, had a blowout, hadn't been able to get Mike's damned Dell fixed, and Chris wasn't growing weed any more.
After two bowls and a beer, Mike's teenaged son came up. His oldest had just moved out, and a little girl, maybe five, had moved in. Mike and Rita are already raising her three grandsons, as her daughter and son in law had the kids taken away for neglect.
Drugs. Now they were raising Rita's great neice as well, for the same reason.
Matt said "hold your ears and watch this!"
Mike said "God damn it, Matt, get that shit away from the house!"
Matt proceeded to show me a new way of blowing shit up. Blowing shit up real good. He had a bottled water bottle in his hand, walked way out in the yard (Mike has fifteen acres), did something to the bottle, shook it, dropped it and walked away.
BLAM! The bottle exploded in a shower of foam, as loud as a shotgun going off. It seems that if you put a couple of ounces of "Works" toilet bowl cleaner (will Microsoft sue?) in a bottle and drop in a piece of aluminum foil, screw on the cap and shake it, the aluminum and chemical react violently.
Mike and I drank and smoked and smoked and drank. Rita and all the kids left. Mike said Matt had some professional grade fireworks he was shooting off when they got back. We smoked and drank some more, and by nightfall everyone but Mike and me were still gone, and MIke had passed out. I went inside and crashed on the couch in the basement.
I slept through the fireworks.
I woke up about six thirty the next morning, and everyone was asleep. I went to the car for my thermos and poured a cup of coffee. It was cold.
I heated a cup in the microwave. Mike got up eventually, I took a shower and limped home the hundred miles on the donut, at fifty, stopping halfway home to let the spare tire cool off. The car's mileage computer said I'd averaged 32 MPG for the tip - not bad for a comfortable car like that!
I fed my daughter's cats, cleaned out the litter box, and went to DJ's for breakfast.
The phone rang - it was Tami. "Whatcha doin?"
"Eating breakfast at DJ's and feeling lonely and sorry for myself. What are you doing?"
"I'm at Ralph's. Come on over, we got a lot of movies!"
Linda and Charlie (Charlie's a woman) live there. They'd run off Ralph's hookers when Ralph went in the hospital with appendicitis. He's a tough old man, an eighty six year old WWII Navy veteran. Charley's asshole brother had moved in after he got out of prison for grand theift auto, so I haven't been visiting Ralph much. Now Tami was there as well.
I took Charlie and Tami to the Blue Grouch and bought a pitcher. Drinking with two ladies was best thing ever for my lonliness, even if they were only friends. But I'd started getting feelings for the married Tami; it was a good thing she wasn't staying with me any more.
Charlie went out for a cigarette. Tami went out after her. I went out as well.
Toothless Bill was hitting on Charlie and some twenty three year old kid was hitting on the forty two year old Tami, and she was loving it. I was feeling sorely neglected. Tami followed the kid inside, Charlie went inside and I said "fuck it" and left for Felber's.
I needed friends, and apparently had none. Charlie didn't know about my anniversary, but the thoughtless heartless psycho bitch Tami did.
I called Charlie's phone and cursed Tami out, and said she wan't moving back in with me.
Monday when I got back from lunch there was a message on my work phone - Tami was "sorry it had to end like this". End? It had never begun!
She called again after work. "I almost went to jail last night". The place had been a madhouse the night before and the cops had showed up, right as Tami was knocking Linda on her ass. We started to Felber's, and I told her how hurt I was that she'd ignored me for the boy toy, right when I needed a friend the most.
This pissed her off. I took her back to Ralph's. As she got out of the car she yelled "Sex with Brandon was pretty good!"
I'm miserable. I never even had sex with the woman but she still managed to break my heart.
Next: Fireworks Continued
Why so moralistc? (Score:2)
There is more sexual tension between you and Tami than the male and female lead of your local high school play. If she doesn't give a shit that she's taken, why is it your responsibility?
Since you're not going to hit it, you should really kick her ass out of your house. You don't need this torture.
Re: (Score:2)
She's out. I'll probably journal it tomorrow.
Re: (Score:2)
definitely best to get her out of there before any more feelings develop. "out of sight, out of mind" isnt the best solution, but it sure helps.
Re: (Score:2)
I booted her. Will probably journal it when I'm in less of a funk, there was violance and jail involved. Charley's brother got busted for parole violation.