Erin and the Florida Incident (Part 1)

Please Note: While this is a mostly factual account of my life, I have had to embellish some of it for the sake of entertainment and just plain fuzzy memory. So, while this is mostly a work of non-fiction, always remember that this is written from the perspective of an overactive imagination. Names have been changed to protect the Universe.

Also, spread throughout the blog, you'll notice links and embedded videos. Click on them. I put them there for a reason.

I. Fying Pool Chairs

The pool chair flew in a lazy arc across the starry night sky, before landing with a rather anti-climactic clank after one of its fellow chairs, which was already floating in the pool. I’m sixteen-years-old and exploding with rage that I had been repressing for a week, all through this farce of a trip to Florida. I was dealing with feelings of rejection the best way I knew how at the time: destroying things. It continues to be a stand-by tactic when dealing with such intense emotions. Hey, it beats destroying people, right? There’s not a single pillow I own that hasn’t suffered my wrath.

The humid, Florida air kissed the sweat that I had worked up in my temper tantrum, effectively cooling me off, both literally and figuratively. I had thrown every piece of outdoor furniture I could find into the pool, except for the chair I chose to sit in to bury my face in my hands, as I entered the next stage of my post-rejection grief: self-pity. So much work... and all for nothing. This wasn’t the plan. This isn’t how things were supposed to work out.

Hmm, while we leave my 16-year-old self to mope a bit, let’s go back to the beginning of this mess, all the way to Freshman year of high school.

II. Welcome Freshman

I stood in the stark, drab lobby of Russellville High School, where the walls were tiled in the unfortunate "vomit green" color, similar to the decor of Russellville Middle School. I looked around, holding my book bag slung over one shoulder, as seemed fashionable at the time, completely disoriented, and wondering how any sane person could think decorating a school as if it were the bathroom of a mental institution could encourage anything less than despair.

In that case, the asylum decor was certainly working its magic. It was the first day of high school and I was practically filled to the brim with anxiety as I tried to make sense of the chaos around me. Much to my utter confusion, and dismay, the group of friends I had made in 8th grade had inexplicably, and without so much a memo, splintered into different sub-groups. I would try greeting my friends, only to be barely acknowledged in favor of hanging out with the upperclassmen. As far as high school was concerned, what little popularity I had achieved the year before meant less than shit. I gave a meek wave to Lauren, but I don't even think she looked in my direction as she returned it.

Even my ever stalwart friend, Johnny, was unavailable to help me in this situation, because he came to school with his mom and wisely chose to hang out in her classroom, which I couldn’t go to without getting yelled at to “stay in the lobby until the homeroom bell rings”. I tried to slyly integrate myself into a nearby cluster of people I knew who were in conversation with some upper-classmen. I had nothing to contribute but obviously fake laughter whenever everybody else laughed. Eventually, everyone realized that an intruder was in their midst, and they carefully shifted positions to shut me out. I nodded, as if quietly accepting the group’s judgment that I didn’t belong, found a lonely corner in which to sit, popped out a Star Wars novel, and read by myself.

***

If practically losing all of my friends wasn't enough, it was around this time that I also lost my sight. I didn't notice any change for the first week or so of high school, and then one day, as if overnight, I realized that I couldn't see what the teacher was writing on the dry erase board. I squinted and strained my eyes to the point that I halfway expected an optic blast to shoot out, but it all looked like gibberish to me. All of those years playing Duck Hunt in the dark, with the light gun pressed up against the TV screen, had finally come back to bite me in the ass. I was, for all intents and purposes, blind.

So, a week later, I started a fresh week of high school, all but friendless and now saddled with the trendiest line of pedophile glasses one could buy in the mid 90s. I was well on the way of losing any vestige of coolness I attained before high school, and with it, much of my already fragile self-esteem. One day I was sitting in Biology class, feeling particularly sorry for myself. My friend Josh bumped me with his elbow and said, "Hey, tell Erin that joke you said about Mr. Roser earlier." Mr. Roser was the science teacher at our school. He was the kind of guy you’d expect would be teaching high school biology – thin build, with a bushy mustache, thick glasses, and trusty pocket protector in his shirt pocket. He looked like he should be host of a public access science show. Another distinguishing feature was that Mr. Roser was a paraplegic. He was able to get around with the aid of crutches, which made a curious suction noise sound whenever he used them, making it easy to detect his presence whenever one was in the middle of a clandestine cheating operation during a test.

Truth be told, aside from how insanely difficult his classes tended to be, I didn’t have any problem with Mr. Roser, but, having lost all of the notoriety I had attained in 8^th grade, he had the dubious honor of becoming my foil to regain the attention I had lost from middle school. I began drawing my comics again, this time featuring Mr. Roser in a variety of predicaments related to his disability. One such comic strip featured him running from a pack of dogs with the use of two, giant salami sticks instead of crutches. It was real high-brow stuff, reminiscent of Woody Allen’s best work. Nevertheless, it did the trick in that people began paying attention to me. Once again, comedy was my social salvation, even though I was most certainly messing with the Dark Side of the Force – using comedy to make fun of someone in order to make me look better. If you, the Reader, find this repugnant, don’t fret – I get a taste of my own medicine in the near future… but we won’t go into that in this chapter. That’s a college story.

Along with the comic strips, I had also written a fake journal by Mr. Roser called “Diary of a Cripple” (karma totally kicks my ass for this). Josh wanted me to read Erin the first excerpt of the diary which read:

I woke up today to the disappointment that my legs still didn’t work.

I was unexpectedly rewarded with what remains, to this day, the most charming, sweetest, distinctive laugh I have ever heard.

III. The Golden Plan

I had actually met Erin in 8th grade, but was so preoccupied with my crush on Lauren that I barely paid any attention to her. Don't get me wrong, I thought she was attractive; I just never had anything to say to her. I always found Erin to be strikingly beautiful: she had dark, naturally curly hair; high cheekbones that gave her prominent dimples, giving her a gorgeous smile that complimented her perfect laugh. She had some other physical attributes that I hesitate to mention, so I’ll let my mom do it for me.

“Whoa, is that Erin?” my mom once asked after spotting her standing outside of school, while dropping me off. “Have her boobs always been that big?”

I spit out half of the Arby’s sausage biscuit I had been eating for breakfast, and nearly choked on the other half. “Oh my god… did you really…?” I sputtered, taking a quick sip of Dr. Pepper to wash down both my biscuit and the shock of what I had just heard. “I mean… yeah, I think so? I never really thought about it.” Oooh, yes I have…

“Huh,” mom said thoughtfully, shrugging, and the subject was dropped (for now).

I’m getting ahead of myself though. Let’s ever-so-briefly revisit that Biology class again. Erin’s laugh became like a drug and I had to get my fix at all costs. I’d spend all of my time in class goofing off, doing things like making funny comments during a boring educational video, or making shadow silhouettes whenever the teacher used his projector to show slides. I did everything short of juggling and card tricks to entertain Erin, and my little vaudeville routine was having its desired effect – she was eating it up!

The reason I began to fall for Erin went beyond the fact that she laughed at my jokes, though. Ever since moving to Russellville, I had been starved for female attention. If you’ve read this far, then you know that little attention I got was a formality at best. A problem I kept running into, and would continue running into well into adulthood, was that I’d expend way too much energy into pursuing a girl with whom I had almost nothing in common. My rationale was that I could get any girl I wanted; it was just a matter of changing myself ever so slightly to fit the paradigm of what they were into. Easy peezy. Of course, this never, ever worked out because no matter how committed I was to “the act” my real self would eventually work its way out, and when it did, hoo boy, would it be irritated.

When Erin laughed at my joke that day, I had a revelation. All this time, I had failed terribly with the likes of Chelsea and Lauren because, with them, I was not comfortable being myself. I had unknowingly fallen into the habit of hiding my true self from girls, almost out of reflex, because I felt that my true self was so repugnant, so awful, and so immature, that no girl on Earth would be interested in me. If I had any chance with the likes of Lauren, I had to be someone else – I had to be better!

Erin was a different matter entirely. She seemed to accept who I was at face value, and not only that, she liked who I was. Every time Erin laughed at my ridiculous behavior, it was a moment of validation that there was nothing wrong with who I was if a beautiful girl like this could like me. Her laughter encouraged the mischievous, charmingly obnoxious, devil-may-care part of my personality – the Beetlejuice within, so to speak:

On the surface, it seemed like I had finally met my match. There was one small problem though:

Erin had a boyfriend.

***

It’s a sad fact that whenever I meet an attractive, beautiful girl, my first thought tends to be, Oh my god, this girl is wonderful! She’s perfect for me! Now how do I trick her into liking me? It’s also a sad fact that whenever I meet such a girl, she almost inevitably has a boyfriend. My experiences with Erin seemed set this unfortunate pattern of behavior.

I was lying in my bedroom, my hands cradling my head, while I listened to “Midnight in a Perfect World” by DJ Shadow (my favorite thinkin’ music), and contemplated my feelings for Erin.

Her boyfriend hardly seemed like much of a hindrance. They had been dating since 8^th grade, but I never saw the guy around, plus, I naively believed that true love beats all. It’s like playing dynamite in a game of Rock-Paper-Scissors; it doesn’t matter what the other guy has, dynamite always wins! Once Erin realized she was in love me, this dude she was seeing would hardly matter. I just had to think of a way to help her to that particular conclusion. Synapses that had never been acquainted before began firing, exchanging information, the result of which was the conception of an idea, which then mutated into a scheme, before asexually reproducing and evolving into a plan – The Golden Plan. I had never met a girl I genuinely liked as much as Erin before that point, and I had especially never met one I was so damned compatible with. I was going to need a full-blown plan of attack!

The first thing I needed to do was concoct a way for Erin and I to get together outside of school, but in a way that was not an obvious date scenario. One might argue that my decision to keep the nature of my interest in Erin ambiguous was my first and most fatal mistake, but at the time, it seemed ingenious. In my mind, I was a hunter, and one of the rules of hunting is to have patience so that you take your shot when the time is perfect. If you take your shot too soon, you’ll miss, spook your prey, and it’ll go scampering off into the woods. I didn’t realize at the time that this analogy was probably a little too similar to the mental reasoning of a serial killer.

One day I was chatting with Erin after class and she made mention that she was in desperate need of money.

I cocked an eyebrow. “Really?” I asked slyly. In a rare moment of cunning, I seized upon this opportunity immediately. “I will pay you a million dollars… to sleep with me.”

I let the offer hang between us for a moment before Erin broke the silence. “Pfft, you don’t have a million dollars.”

I nodded. “Okay, fair enough, so how about…” I opened my wallet. “…three bucks and I’ll steal you some Oreo Brownies from lunch for a week?” She just looked at me. “For a month?”

She laughed. “Sorry, but I will have to decline.” She started walking out of class.

“How about this,” I said, darting in front of her. “My parents are looking for someone to babysit my sister.”

“Why don’t you just babysit her?”

“Uh… because…” I desperately looked around the classroom and spotted my friend Johnny discreetly eating a Hot Pocket he would smuggle into class after his mom would heat it up for him in the teacher’s lounge. “…I almost burned the house down while cooking a Hot Pocket last time, so they don’t trust me anymore. Yeah.” That’s the ticket.

Erin shrugged. “Huh. Well, sure, if your parents will have me, I’d love to babysit your sister. It sounds like fun. Plus, we’d get to hang out, right?”

“Why, yes, I had not considered that,” I said, stroking an invisible mustache and laughing maniacally in my mind… although, my memory is admittedly fuzzy, so I may have laughed maniacally in front of her. It’s entirely possible.

***

At the time, my mom and dad had been testing the waters on whether or not they could go on a night out while leaving me in charge of my siblings. Both my brother and sister were old enough to basically take care of themselves, and I was smart enough to cook pizza rolls for dinner without burning the house down, so after a couple of trial runs, they became more comfortable going out… a lot. My parents weren’t negligent by any means, but once they figured out they had a live-in nanny in the form of their oldest son, they wasted no time in taking full advantage of it. As far as we kids were concerned, we were fine with it. On the nights my parents went out, my dad would be at his most generous, leaving us with money for pizza and temporarily waiving the 1-Coke per day rule of the house. Plus, as payment for babysitting, my parents would come back with a brand spanking new Mystery Science Theater 3000 tape for me, which I’d snatch to my chest like Gollum, and scuttle off to my room to obsessively watch for weeks.

One afternoon I was doing the dishes after dinner. Aside from taking out the trash, this was one of my only responsibilities in the house, and yet even then, I could be a bit of a boar about doing it. On those particular nights, my mom would get so agitated at my stubborn refusal to do the dishes that she’d sometimes stand by the sink, and methodically smash each dish onto the floor until I relented. My mom’s ability for mind games was always a league of its own. This time I leapt at the opportunity to do the dishes, as I was hoping to get into her good graces for what I was about to request. “So mom,” I began. “There’s this girl I like at school, and I’m trying to think of a way to hang out with her, so I was thinking…”

“…you want us to hire her to babysit your sister so that you can get a chance to get to know her?” she finished.

“Holy crap, how… how did you know…?”

“A mother knows,” she replied. “Didn’t she ask why we don’t just have you babysit your sister?”

“Meh, I just told her I almost burned the house down.”

“Clever,” she said, nodding in approval. “You’re a good liar, Craig, which is a good quality to have if you’re going to be a cult leader one day.” My mom was convinced that I would grow up to be one of two things: a great writer, or a cult leader (or maybe both).

“What’s this about hiring a babysitter?” my dad asked while putting his dinner plate into the sudsy sink.

“Craig likes a girl at school, so we’re going to have her babysit Lindsey for a while,” mom informed him. It was at this point they made eye contact, and formed a telepathic link that only parents can do on the occasion as they both have that moment of mutual realization that their child is not gay. The jubilation passed oh-so-briefly over both their faces, like the headlights of a car sweeping through a dark room, before they snapped out of it.

“Sounds good to me,” Dad said as casually as possible, before walking back into the living room. I could have sworn I saw him pump his fist in victory though.

IV. The Babysitter

In 1995, a movie called The Babysitter was released, starring everybody’s favorite 90s jailbait, Alicia Silverstone. I had an insane hard-on for Alicia Silverstone at the time, which was difficult not to if you’ve ever seen the videos she did with Aerosmith, especially “Amazing”.

In the movie, she plays a very average teenage girl who babysits for a married couple on the verge of divorce. Meanwhile, her ex-boyfriend, and a nerdy guy who is in love with her, stalk the house she’s babysitting at, both with respective plans to bag her. All the men in the movie, including the husband she’s babysitting for, completely sexualize Silverstone’s character, indulging in a myriad of fantasies that involve either her seducing them, or the other way around. Eventually, one of the male characters decides to act on their desire, which leads to a really uncomfortable reality check.

This movie was very much on the forefront of my consciousness the first night Erin came over to babysit. Of course, the moral of the movie, that fantasy and reality very rarely make good bedfellows (literally and figuratively) was completely lost on me; my mind was running rampant with fantasies of how this night could go… oh, the many ways the night could go…

“Craig,” my little brother, Jon, called from the hallway. “Stop sitting on your bed with your fingers steeped like Lex Luthor. Your girlfriend’s here.”

“Shut up, gawd, she’s not even my girlfriend,” I protested with more than a little false modesty. It should be noted, too, that at this point in my life, I had a propensity for exclaiming “gawd”, much like Napoleon Dynamite, any time I was irritated. My dad’s usual comeback for this was, “Talk to someone ya know!”

I hopped off the bed and ran to the living room. As Erin entered my home, I posed against the door frame to the living room with my right arm, and, if I’d had a pipe, would have been smoking it with my other hand if I could. I looked like Hugh Hefner welcoming a new Playmate to the mansion, minus the money, the smoking jacket, the pipe, the charisma, the aura of success, the looks, the… okay, minus lots of things. Erin was wearing a hot pink turtle neck and had styled her hair back. As bounded over to Erin for a hug, one thought kept crossing my mind: Oh my god, she’s in my house, oh my god, she’s in my house, oh my god, she’s in my house….

What came out of my mouth was: “Oh my god, she’s in… uh, I mean… so how did you get here?”

“Oh, my boyfriend gave me a ride.”

I looked out the window at the headlights that seemed to glare for a moment, as if in warning, before they slowly backed up, started driving away, stopped for one more threatening glance, and then drove away. I narrowed my eyes. Good riddance.

Erin got along with my family better than I could have possibly anticipated. She laughed at the right things, made funny jokes, and just possessed an abundance of good cheer that, like me, my family found charming. My mom even broke out the old video camera and somewhere, lost in storage, there exists video documented proof that this night actually happened - that I actually had a pretty girl in my house.

When my parents left, the gravity of the situation dawned on me… the girl of my dreams was here, in my house! I’d never had a girl I liked so much as cross the threshold of my home before. Sure, when I was younger, a girl that I had a crush on came to my birthday party, but she was there for the free cake. Even when I lived next to a girl I liked, the thought of her coming over to my house, for any reason, was beyond the pale. With blind panic, I realized that, although I managed to finagle Erin to hang out with me at my house, under the auspices of “babysitting”, I neglected to think of what to do beyond nervous fidgeting!

I stood up, and with finger pointed in the air, boldly proclaimed: “I shall order a pizza!” I then ran to the kitchen to dial up Papa John’s.

The guy who picked up on the other end sounded as he was minutes away from calling the Suicide Hotline before I called. “Thank you for calling Papa John’s, how may I help you?”

I spoke quietly, as if making a 911 call. “Yeah? Hello? You have to help me. I have a girl over at my house and I don’t know what to do!”

The Papa John’s guy hesitated for a moment before asking, “Is… is this a joke?”

“No!”

“Look, guy, I deal in pizzas and breadsticks, not the facts of life.”

“Give me something!”

“Uh… let’s see… when a cheese stick likes a pizza very much… no, wait, that won’t work. When a cheese stick likes a thing of garlic dipping sauce, it may feel compelled to dip itself in such a sauce, but… but it should only do so under the sanctity of marriage?”

“Ugh, nevermind, I’ll just place an order for a large pepperoni pizza.” I thought for a moment before adding, “Go ahead and throw in some cheese sticks with garlic dipping sauce. For the love of god, hurry!” I gave him my address and hung up.

Erin was waiting patiently. “Soooo…” I droned for a second or two, leaning on the couch, and tapping my finger nervously. “...how about that Batman Forever?”

“I haven’t seen it,” Erin replied.

I quickly sat next to her, and crossed my legs. “You don’t know what you’re missing. The batsuit has nipples now. It’s exquisite.”

Erin nodded thoughtfully. We sat in silence for a moment. “Oh!” I exclaimed, momentarily startling her. I pulled out a large binder and placed it on my lap. “You want to see my Spider-man collectible cards? You should consider yourself lucky – I don’t show these to just anyone.”

At that point, my little brother Jon walked into the room. “Craig, have you seen… Hey!” he spotted the binder on my lap, marched over, and snatched it up. “Those are my Spider-man cards, butthole! Quit trying to steal them!” He left, grumbling the whole time, while I twiddled my fingers awkwardly.

Then, as if on cue, like a blessed angel trained to save nerds from geeking out all over the faces of attractive, innocent women, my sister ran into the living room and mercifully redirected out attention by dancing to the theme of Sister, Sister, which was playing on the TV.

Erin clapped, delighted. “Aw, look at her dance!”

“Yes!” I cried out victoriously. “Dance! Dance!” My sister dancing soon turned into a wrestling match between her and I, which soon turned into a wrestling match between her, me, and Erin. I played “the bad guy” wrestler, otherwise known as a “heel”, and put Erin in a variety of submission moves, all the while daring Lindsey to rescue her, which she would do with surprising gusto. Lindsey was not averse to using foreign objects, such as a pillow, or a nearby shoe, to save her new babysitter. I would reel, pretending as if Lindsey’s attack was devastating, but as she tried to pull Erin to safety, I’d attack again! As I put the girl of my dreams into a figure-four leg lock that would make even the great Rick Flair tilt his head in mild approval, it dawned on me that this was the most physical contact I had ever made with any girl, well, ever. Oh, sure, I got into the occasional wrestling matches with my female cousins, but they didn’t count, even if this was Kentucky.

When this revelation dawned to my brain, it also took into account the mutual sweating as we both began to get tired; the smooth texture of Erin’s neck while my arm was firmly, yet gently, wrapped around it in a fake-choke hold; the sound of her rapid breathing as she pretended to struggle. All of this sensory information was placed in a capsule, and shot through the pneumatic tube that is my nervous system, directly to my penis who was startled to realize it was within only mere inches of contact with not only a real, honest-to-goodness female, but the female of all females! Suddenly, with horror, I realized the hormonal recklessness of putting her in a wrestling hold that involved the tangling of legs and the alignment of genitals – no! I could hear the mission control in my brain begin launch sequence, as the rocket in my pants prepared for lift off. Then the most appropriate onamonapia ever occurred:

Ding-dong.

Great merciful Zeus, it was the doorbell! I yelped, quickly untangled myself of Erin, and sprang (being the operative word) to the door to pay the pizza man. While we ate pizza, I turned on one of my most beloved episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 featuring the movie, Mitchell, starring Joe Don Baker. Erin didn’t seem to understand the appeal of the show, which was mildly heartbreaking, so I turned it off and we watch Toy Story. The rest of the night was spent with Erin and my sister playing, while I watched and made the occasional witty commentary. It wasn’t too long before my parents came home, paid off Erin for her services, and she was swooped up by her boyfriend, who arrived to pick her up with amazing promptness, and without bothering to introduce himself to us.

I went outside to our deck that night, riding high on the euphoric feeling that, for once, everything was going according to plan. I sat in a chair next to out above ground pool, which, due to our negligence, had literally turned into a bog, complete with live frogs, lily pads, and what I could swear was a live crocodile, though I was never able to confirm it, though it would explain the mysterious disappearance of our 24^th family dog, Shaggy. Seriously, this pool, which was the primary reason my family moved into this house, had become so gross and ominous we all began to fear it, as if any living thing unfortunate to fall into the murky depths would mutate into a bloodthirsty creature and kill us all. A part of me was even afraid to sit too close to it for fear of a scaly hand reaching out and dragging me in. I began calling the pool “Swamp Thing”.

However, as I stared out at the night sky, my thoughts were elevated from the toxic cesspool next me to the rainbow hued fantasies of my future with Erin. Sure, she had a boyfriend now, but how could that possibly get in the way of destiny?

TO BE CONTINUED….