Sex and Crime: Oliver's Strange Journey Page 11

  If it was snowing outside, and she told me to put on a jacket before I go outside, I would leave the house without a jacket, just so that she wouldn't get the idea that she got to tell me what to do. And then I stood out in the snow, freezing like an idiot. If she hadn't opened her damn mouth, of course I would have put on a jacket. I'm not a child!

  So, yeah, that caused a lot of conflicts, too. I explained to her many times that we can be equals, but I would never allow her to boss me around. If anyone was going to boss anyone around, I was going to be the one bossing her around. I really didn't want to keep fighting with her about who gets to dominate whom. But no matter how many times we went through this conflict, it was like it never even happened, and she tried to fight for the top spot on the pecking order all over again the next day. And the next day. And the next day. It was like the movie Groundhog Day with Bill Murray. I fought the same battle with her over and over again. It was a giant waste of time and energy. So after a while, I learned to choose my battles wisely. Instead of daily conflict, I chose the path of least resistance to get through the day.

  I knew that if I wanted to go to the Poconos the next day, and I didn't want to have yet another major fight over nothing on my hands, I had to tell her that I was going to have to go at some point during the next week, but that I really didn't feel like driving all the way out there.

  Inevitably, she would tell me to go the next day, to get it over with. And I would reply, "Hmm, yeah, I guess you're right. I might as well go tomorrow, even though I really don't feel like it. It's such a pain in the ass."

  Those kinds of crazy, manipulative mind games were really the only way to get anything done, without constantly fighting with her about it.

  If we decided to rent 2 movies from Blockbuster, of course I had to go alone, because she wouldn't leave the house. If I picked out any movies on my own, she would make my life miserable afterwards, because somehow whatever movie I picked was the wrong kind of movie. If I picked a comedy, a comedy was the wrong kind of movie that day. If I picked a horror movie, that was wrong, too. You get the idea.

  If a movie I picked contained brief nudity, she accused me of being a pervert, who specifically picked this movie for its nudity: "What are you looking at? You like her? Why don't you go fuck her?!"

  But if she picked a movie, and it contained some nudity, it was no problem at all.

  So whenever I was at Blockbuster, we were on the phone, and she told me to read off the new movies they had. If I made any kind of comment that I wasn't in the mood to watch a particular new movie, that would be the movie she wanted me to bring home. Every time.

  So when I went to Blockbuster, while being on the phone with her, I simply didn't read the names of the movies I didn't want to see. So she could only choose from the movies that I knew I was going to like.

  When I brought home her two movie choices, and it was now a matter of deciding whether we were going to watch movie A or movie B first, she would always, always pick the opposite of what I picked, and then start an hour long tantrum or walk out of the room, if I didn't cave in and we didn't watch the movie she wanted to watch.

  So eventually I learned to always say the opposite of what I really wanted to do. If I wanted to watch movie A first, I pretended to want to watch movie B first. Then of course she picked movie A first and I politely gave in to her wishes like a gentleman.

  I did the same thing with the divorce. I told her I really wanted her to move to that new house in Florida with me. But of course I knew she wouldn't, and that she would use her kill-all argument divorce again, like she always did. I was prepared. I had hired a lawyer in Guam, and he sent me the divorce papers. All I needed now was for her to sign them.

  When she said we'd have to get a divorce, I said, "You don't really mean that. You wouldn't want to get a divorce just because I want to move to Florida with you."

  "Yes I would," she replied.

  So I pulled out the divorce papers, and told her, "I know you're bluffing. Here are some divorce papers. There's no way you're gonna sign them, just because you don't want to move."

  "Oh yes I will," she said, and signed the papers.

  Checkmate.

  Four years earlier, when I had first learned the fact that Guam is the divorce paradise, it wasn't necessary to go there in person, and you could just mail the divorce papers.

  But by now the government of Guam had decided that they should make more money of all these people who wanted to get a divorce there. So they changed the law and suddenly there was a seven-day residency requirement, before you could get a divorce. In other words, they wanted tourists to spend a one week vacation in Guam, and spend some money there, before getting a divorce.

  I hopped on the next plane and spent a week in paradise. Guam is on the other side of the world, near Japan. It's a lot like Hawaii, but because it's so close to Japan, most of the tourists there are actually Japanese, not American.

  A week later the judge stamped my papers and I was divorced. On the way back to the States, I stopped over in Tokyo for a few days. It was the first time I had ever been in Japan. It was pretty cool. Tokyo is like New York on steroids.

  When I got back, Donna said that I could have my divorce if I wanted to, but she would fight me every step of the way, and make my life miserable. She said she would take me for everything I have.

  I told her: "Sorry, you're too late. The divorce is already done and over with. Remember those papers you signed last week? That was the divorce."

  She couldn't wrap her head around that and called a few lawyers in New York, to see if the divorce could be reversed or contested.

  Nope.

  PATTY

  "I can sympathize with people's pains but not with their pleasures. There is something curiously boring about somebody else's happiness."

  Aldous Huxley

  After my divorce, I moved into the mansion in the Poconos.

  It was still not completed, but I explained to the building inspector that if he didn't issue a certificate of occupancy, I would lose a fortune in bank penalties, because the deadline for the construction loan had long expired. Thankfully he agreed to let me live in the house even though it wasn't finished yet.

  The house was way too big for just one person. When I walked around, I could hear the echo of my steps. The loneliness was soul-crushing. I really missed Donna. I was so depressed, I spent hours just lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling, lost in thought. I was so used to having her around me at all times, that now there was a big gaping hole in my life.

  But at the same time, I felt at peace for the first time in... ever? Finally I didn't have someone constantly telling me that no matter what I did, it was wrong. I didn't feel like I was constantly walking on egg shells, because if I said or did the wrong thing, someone would punish me with some psychotic tantrum.

  That feeling of inner peace and serenity was nice. If only I had someone in my life to share it with.

  The nearest town, Milford, was about 15 minutes away. My house was literally in the middle of nowhere, in a beautiful albeit desolate gated lakefront community in the woods.

  As a teenager in Germany, I had gone to an all boys catholic school. So I never had any girls around me in school. And because my dad was the town drunk, I was embarrassed to try to meet girls in my neighborhood. I didn't want them laughing about me behind my back, because they saw my dad passed out drunk lying in a ditch somewhere.

  The fact that my mother always wanted to move once my dad had humiliated her in front of the neighbors again, didn't make it any easier for me to meet someone as a teenager.

  Then I met Donna over the Internet. She was my first girlfriend, and I ended up marrying her and spent the next 15 years with her.

  I never cheated on her. Not just because she would have made my life a living hell if she had caught me, but because I really had no desire to cheat on her. I just wasn't interested in other girls. I was perfectly content with her.

  I guess some
guys enjoy the chase and love to bang a new girl every few days. To me those guys are total douchebags. Like animals in heat who will fuck anything that moves.

  My mom and my stepdad have a really great relationship. They are each other's best friends. They do everything together, and they miss each other terribly when they are apart for even just a day. That's the kind of relationship I want to have. Like one soul in two bodies.

  And despite its flaws, that was the kind of relationship I had with Donna. So for 15 years I had never even looked at another girl or flirted with another girl. I really had no dating skills whatsoever at this point. I had never experienced the things normal teenagers go through, when they begin to date: a first kiss at the prom from your high school sweetheart, casual sex with female friends, make out parties, or learning how to deal with a break up.

  I felt a little bit like an alien from another planet, who had beamed down to Earth and was now posing as a human, but was unfamiliar with even the most basic human customs. And now I had to start meeting girls, if I didn't want to sit in this huge house all by myself every night. Terrific. What could possibly go wrong?

  Patty was the first girl who answered my online personal ad. I think I was 38 at the time. She was 39 and lived in Scranton, about half an hour away. We decided to meet at a Chinese food restaurant in Lords Valley. Somehow we ended up at two different restaurants, waiting for each other for about 20 minutes, until we figured out the miscommunication.

  When I met her, her voice instantly turned me off. She wasn't bad looking. She had natural blonde hair, a nice smile and big boobs. But she had a deep man's voice. I almost felt like I was sitting across the table from a drag queen.

  But the small talk with her went surprisingly well, considering that this was the first time I had to do that kind of stuff. We had a lot of fun and laughed a lot. Then she went to the bathroom, and tripped along the way. When she came back, her whole lap was wet. Somehow she had managed to spill a bunch of water on her lap in the bathroom. When she sat back down, she almost knocked her plate over. She was even worse at this than I was.

  After we had dinner at the Chinese restaurant, we went back to my place. We sat on the couch in the living room. She kept gushing that this was the most beautiful house she had ever been in.

  The building inspector, a no nonsense bureaucrat, had said the same thing when he had issued the certificate of occupancy a few weeks earlier. He walked into the kitchen and quietly looked around. Then he matter-of-factly told me: "I usually don't say this, and I don't bullshit people, but you got the nicest house in the whole county." That made me feel pretty good.

  While Patty and I were sitting on the living room couch, I told her that building this house had been my dream, and that I had designed every little detail, from the type of crown moulding that was used, down to the color of the tiles and the type of door handles throughout the house.

  Then I told her that I was thinking about selling the house and moving somewhere else. Maybe Florida. She couldn't understand that: "Why would you want to leave your dream house?"

  "Because my dream has changed," I replied. "I thought having a beautiful house in the Poconos would make me happy. But it didn't."

  It was getting late, and she went home. It had been nice to have some company for a change.

  She came over again after work a day or two later. She made meatballs in tomato sauce for me. She made the sauce from scratch, using fresh tomatoes. She really went all out, and put a lot of effort into making dinner, to impress me. She was a good cook.

  Patty ended up spending the night. We went into the huge hot tub in the master bathroom. It was big enough for 4 people. You could float in it on an inflatable mattress. I loved that tub. The hot, bubbly water was so relaxing. I could spend hours in it, and just forget the whole world for a little while.

  I felt kinda weird seeing her undress in front of me. But hey, I wasn't complaining. At least now I knew she wasn't a transvestite. She had all the required lady parts to qualify as 100% female.

  I got into the tub first, and then she got on top of me, facing me, with her big boobs dangling in my face. I kissed them. In my head, I compared them to Donna's boobs. Patty's breasts were smaller than Donna's. And Patty's nipples where bigger and darker. Almost too big and too dark. Then she started playing with my dick and she tried to slide it inside of her and ride me.

  I couldn't believe how easy it had been to meet another girl after Donna, and how quickly I ended up having sex with her. I really had thought it was going to take much longer, and that I was going to have to slog through dozens of awkward blind dates, until I finally connect with a girl, and we get close enough, where she would want to spend the night and have sex with me.

  Somehow being in the tub seemed to be too distracting. I couldn't have sex with Patty. So we decided to go into the bedroom and try it again on the bed. Same thing. I just couldn't do it. My mind wanted to, but my dick apparently decided that this was a good time to go on strike. What I learned that night was that I really don't like one night stands with strangers.

  Patty came over a few more times after that. She was a counselor at a drug rehab in Scranton. I thought that was pretty interesting, so I asked her a bunch of questions. All I knew about drugs or addicts at that point was what I had read in that book Zoo Station, when I was a kid.

  We did end up having sex a few times, but it always felt forced to me. Fake. I neither felt horny, nor did I feel like I had a deep emotional connection with her that would make me want to make love to her. I really just did it, because I figured, hey, there's a naked girl next to me. Might as well have sex. But for some reason I really didn't enjoy sex with her. I wasn't sure why. There was just something off-putting about her.

  I guess it wasn't even one big thing, but many little things, like her manly voice, and the way she would lie next to me in bed and closely examine my naked body, like I was under a microscope. She was looking for zits on my stomach, or my shoulders. She was a pimple popper. Hey, if you want to pop your own pimples, knock yourself out. But leave my zits the hell alone! Somehow she seemed to think that looking for a zit on me, and popping it, was very intimate. To me it was just crrreepy.

  And while lying in bed, every few minutes she checked my belly button for lint. There usually wasn't any in there. But she'd stick her finger in it anyway, stir around in it for a second or two, and then examine her finger tip for traces of lint. Who the fuck does that?!

  Two or three other girls had answered my online ad as well. I stopped seeing Patty after we got together 4 or 5 times and I decided to meet some other girls instead.

  Jennifer was 26 and she looked like a model. She had actually been a stripper in the past. Now she worked as a realtor, selling time shares. She had long bleach blonde hair and huge breast implants. She had the perfect body and a beautiful face. She could have been Jenna Jameson's prettier sister.

  The first time I had sex with Jennifer also started out in my hot tub. Her boobs were about as big as my head. And they were just perfect. Holy crap, were they perfect. Everything about her was perfect. I loved having sex with her. I could see myself getting used to that.

  Then, after we had seen each other a couple of times, she finally told me that she was actually still in a relationship with this guy Ron, and they were living together and they had 4 children. Holy fuck.

  She had 3 kids from her previous boyfriend, a drug dealer in Philadelphia. She left him when she met Ron. Ron was the father of her 4th kid, but he was raising all 4 of them as his own. He also worked in real estate.

  Ron was an abusive alcoholic who beat Jennifer, and she wanted to get away from him, but couldn't do it on her own. So she was looking for someone else who would take care of her and her 4 kids. She figured my huge house would be perfect for them.