mcgrew's Journal: -- Daze of our lies

I've been on kind of an emotional rollercoaster since Tammy had first dropped by. Unfortunately, this journal may read like a soap opera. Sorry. Maybe one of the five female slashdotters will start reading it...

I don't think I've ever told the story of how I met Amy, and a secret that nobody was supposed to know about. Lately she's not been too secretive about the secret, as Tami, Charlie, Alan, and a few people I've not even met know about it, so I might as well spill the beans. Especially since what comes later in the journal won't make any sense unless I do.

A couple of weeks after I broke up with Robyn I was walking into Farleys, a hippie bar and the most unrespectable dive in town. It's now closed, the Health department shut them down.

As I walked in, my ex-girlfriend was getting out of a car. "Hi Steve!" the young boy in the back seat said excitedly, and I felt bad for him. He was Robyn's son, and the kid liked me a lot.

I said to Robyn "I thought you were in jail?" She said "I got out the next day, it only cost me three hundred dollars. I blacked out that weekend and don't know what happened. Somebody told me you broke up with me."

I told her it was true; that about the only thing I wouldn't put up with was unfaithfulness, and she'd only lasted a month. "So what does this make us, nothing?" she asked bitterly.

"We're still friends" I told her. We sat down at a table and I was introduced to her ex-husband's daughter - Amy.

We all three talked for a while, and Robyn went to the bar to get another pitcher. Amy said she was going outside to smoke, so I walked out with her and lit her cigarette, gentleman that I am.

"Say," she said, "I hate to ask you this since I just met you and all, but since you're kinda like my stepdad or something I guess it's ok. I only have three more cigarettes, is there any way you could loan me five bucks for smokes?"

"Sorry, hon," I replied, "but I only have twenty bucks on me and the bank's closed, and I kind of need it. I'm going to hit the bars tonight and try to get laid."

She looked me up and down and said "I'll lay you. I haven't been laid in a long time myself."

We wound up at my house for a while, then to a bar. Then back to my house. She was the best looking cab driver I'd ever met, and we were not only friends, but "friends with benefits". She wound up moving in with me later, and our relationship only changed once, for six months after she met Connor, when we were still friends but without the benefits. The first time she had a serious argument with Connor, things went back to where they'd been before.

So anyway, the other day Tami called asking if she could get a ride when I got off work, so I said OK as I need the gas. Last payday was both rent and car payment, and I foolishly spent myself broke pursuing Tammy. I'd called Tammy two days in a row, and Tami suggested I let her call me. It sounded like a good idea.

She didn't call. GLOOM. Then I discovered that my phone had stopped working -- even if she'd called, the phone wouldn't have rang.

Somehow after giving Tami the ride she wound up at my house watching The Big Bang Theory with me. I have a hard time saying "no" to anybody, especially women. I'm an idiot.

I have a couple of problems with that show. They get a lot right about us nerds, but they get a lot wrong, too.

For one, none of the four nerds are fat. It's been my observation that half of us weigh too much, and the other half weigh too little. They should have cast the guy who played "Warlock" in Die Hard Four -- Nerd Rage as one of the nerds. And they should have given that guy glasses in the movie.

One that really popped out, though, was when someone pointed out to Sheldon that he had no friends, he replied that he had two hundred friends on Facebook. A real nerd would have said slashdot, not facebook.

As we were watching, a knock came at the door.

My heart sank -- I feared it was Tammy, despite the fact that it was unlikely she'd make the drive from Edenberg in the snow. Tammy hates Tami, and I think I figured out why.

I'm stupid. I'd stupidly let Tami spend the night on my couch one night last weekend, and Tammy had showed up. Her professed happiness that I'd made up with an old friend turned into "you need to get rid of her."

A good sign, and a bad sign. Good, because it showed a bit of jealousy. Bad, because if she'd had some guy spending the night with her, especially one that I knew she'd previously had an affair with, I'd probably not want to pursue the relationship.

But it wasn't Tammy, it was Connor. "Have you seen Amy?"

He doesn't know it yet, but she's fallen out of love with him and into love with another guy she'd been seeing, she said, for the last few months. I've never met him but he lives around the block from me. I'd been at Felber's two nights previously when Amy called wanting me to bring a half pint from Felber's.

"Gotta go," I said to whoever it was I'd been talking to. "I'm going to get lucky tonight".

When we got finished with our, uh, "benefits" she told me about her new boyfriend, and how she didn't love Connor any more. She'd left a few days earlier, taking her things from Connor's and had been with the new guy, who she'd now had some sort of spat with.

When the bottle was done she used my phone and called -- Connor! He'd come by and taken her home.

When he showed up while Tami and I had been watching Bang and asked if I'd seen her, I said "No. I haven't seen her since you came by and got her the other night."

"Well, if you see her tell her I've got drinking money and she's out of luck."

I feel sorry for the fool, and sorry for her new fool as well. Half an hour later I was putting on my shoes to go to Felber's when the doorbell rang. It was Amy again.

"Can I use your phone?"

"No, it stopped working." Like I said, I'd spent what little I had left of my cash on Tammy after paying the rent and car note, and forgot about the phone. "I'm on my way to Felber's now."

"Can I come with you?"

"Ok but I'm not buying you any shots. My tab's going to be too big as it is."

Kate was sitting by the door when we came in. She's an older lady I'd known since George Ranks. She collared me for my knowlege of how things with cables hooked together, wanting me to get her friend's TV running. Her friend was a woman probably Kate's age. I gave her my number and told her it would probably be a week before the phone worked again.

I sat down at the bar with Amy, and we talked about our respective love lives -- her about her two, and me about my none and how I was both hopeful and doubtful.

"I think she's in love with you," Amy said. Tammy had said that she loved my car, she loved my house, she loved my shower, which she had used New Year's Day after spending the night, not in my bed but on my couch. It seemed to fit; if she loved my things, well...

"Yeah," I said, "but there's two things that worry me. I don't think I can make it work."

"Why?"

"Well, in the first place I've never had sex with any woman that I didn't have sex with the first day I'd met her, except for one woman, and that woman was married when I met her."

"You didn't have sex with me the first... oh wait, you're right."

"In the second place, I've never seduced a women in my lfe! It was always the other way around. And I can't see Tammy seducing me. I just don't know how it's going to work. I wish I could call her, but Edenberg is a long distance call."

She had no answer to that, damn it.

"you know," I said, "if it does work out with Tammy and me we won't be doing any more..."

"I know," she said with a frown. "But you two make such a good couple. You just seem to fit together. And you deserve to be happy."

KY was sitting on the other side of me and handed me his phone. "I get free nights and weekends. Here, use mine." KY got his nickname not because of jelly but because he's from Kentucky. I called Tammy, and after a few rings got voicemail, and left a message asking her to PLEASE call me at work, explaining how my phone was dead. The last time I'd seen her I'd mentioned that it was probably going to die.

I handed KY his phone back and mine rang! WTF??? It was Connor; I handed it to Amy, and she walked outside. When she came back in she said "he's coming to pick me up."

That woman's crazy. "I'm glad you're not MY girlfriend" I told her. Then I asked Vickie, the bartender, to call my phone. "It says you're unreachable." I had KY try to call it too, and again it was unreachable. I have no idea how Connor got through.

A while later Amy went to the restroom, and Connor stuck his head in the door. "Where's Amy?"

"In the can."

"Tell her I'll be waiting outside."

She came out. "Connnor's waiting outside" I said. She put her coat on and left, leaving a full beer on the bar. I drank it, drank mine, drank another and took a forty ounce home. Tami was asleep on the couch, so I just went to bed.

The next morning as I was drinking my coffee, a bit hung over, she woke up and asked if she could cook the pork chops I had in the freezer for lunch. "Well, sure. It'll be nice having lunch without having to cook."

I hated leaving her alone there, fearing she'd steal something, but hoping she would so I could get mad and run her off.

Tami's a good cook and I had a great lunch. "Do me a favor," she said, "when you get back to work would you call Jess for me and ask if I can come over and wash my coats?"

Her boyfriend didn't answer, so I left a message on voicemail. John's mother, an elderly black lady who's on parole, called and asked if I'd give her a ride to get some drugs. "Sure, but I'll need some gas."

You can't make a long distance call from my desk, but I thought I'd try to call Tammy anyway. I'd forgotten that her phone was a cell, and she'd bought it in Springfield so it wasn't long distance. It turns out she'd lost my work number and had tried to call.

Before I left work my desk phone rang. "Acme, mcgrew".

"Uh, can I talk to Steve?"

"Hi, Tammy, this is me."

"What did you say when you answered the phone?"

"Acme."

"What's 'mcgrew'?"

"That's my last name!"

When I got home, Tami said she wanted a ride to the video store. I wondered where she'd gotten the money. "Don't ask!" she said. I dropped her off at Family Video and went to give Thelma her ride.

She was huffing and puffing when she got in the car. "I can't breathe and I'm too weak to carry my oxygen." See what those Newports will do to you? We went to the gas station and she bought some gasoline, to my relief, as I'd had no idea where I was going to get gas, then to Walgreen's to get her prescription filled, then I took her home and went back to Family Video.

"I left a message on Jessie's voicemail and I told him I was coming over tomorrow," Tami said. We went home and rather than watching one of her rented movies we watched Patriot Games. "I think I know what Tammy's problem with you is," I said, and explained the letting a woman spend the night at my house problem and made her promise to be scarce when Tammy came by.

"Yeah, I know. Jessie's jealous of you, too."

I wanted to go to Felber's, she said she wasn't feeling well and could she stay on my couch?

KY was in Felber's. "hey, your girlfriend called me today. Five times."

"Which one?"

"She said her name was 'Skinny Tammy'. She said to tell you she lost your work number."

RE: Soap Opera

[drachenstern]

I doubt the five females reading it are the soap opera kind, unless you consider things like Heroes or Fringe to be Soap Operas ... Just my take.