Yes yes yes i'm an asshole, even i could agree on that. In the brief moments before i passed out i copped to the fact that what i did was the actions of a selfish dickhead but at that moment the booze and exhaustion took hold and i fell asleep. I awoke in the slums of Podunk Park to my neighbor blasting death metal and a bright sun streaming through the spaces left by the makeshift curtain, i watched the dust float through the air and proceeded to take stock of things... as i saw it things were quite fucked.
The original plan before Cherry Red came into the picture was to go back to Ocean City and work the summer. When things kicked off with her the plan changed to going home for the summer, finding some shit summer job that gave me enough cash to buy drugs and hit the clubs, and basically have as much sex as possible. Seemed solid enough to me at the time. Now with the state of my childhood home in complete disarray there was no chance of me going back. The option of living at Cherry's place with her family was also rather unappealing. My options were dwindling fast and so i began to try and figure out where i could spend the summer. Word had it that the university hired a bunch of college kids to work on campus during the summer. I looked into it and found what i needed to do and where i had to apply. They preferred the students to not be taking summer courses though they'd work with you if you had to but since i wasn't taking any classes i thought i had a good chance of landing the gig. Otherwise i was proper fucked.
Podunk was a small town that seemed to have a definite prejudice against hiring college students. It was a strange attitude to take seeing that without the university this place would have been a fucking crossroads, a three traffic light town that would have been more mired in the 1950s than it already was, so the fact was without the uni gig i was going to be scraping and scratching and most likely having to face the rather unpalatable prospect of moving home, a move that probably would have been horrible for all parties involved. I waited patiently for the university to get back to me and when they finally did i was relieved to see that i'd been hired on. The next order of business was finding a place to live for the summer. I had three friends who lived above a gas station and since two of them were going home for the summer there was some space there for me to crash. One of those guys would be my roommate come fall and so i moved into his empty room when the semester ended.
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Things fall apart... and my relationship with Cherry was no different. When i broke the news to her that i wouldn't be coming home it was the beginning of a nose dive that would be quick and ugly... sort of. She was none to pleased with my decision and asked why i didn't even consider the offer her parents had made. What was i gonna tell her? the truth? In the back of my mind, well not really in the back of my mind per se more the brain in my dick was telling me be gentle, you like screwing her so work out a way to keep up the fucking while minimizing the, i don't know, caring and shit. I tried to explain that i didn't think it was a good idea and it sorta felt weird to me to be living with her and her parents especially since it wasn't like we'd been together for years or anything in fact it had only been five months or so in a mostly long distance relationship, i felt it a recipe for certain disaster. I didn't want to add that i wasn't big on rules and constraints especially and wasn't even sure how this would work? would i pay rent? buy my own food? or would they be setting a place at the table for me? Needless to say nothing about the situation appealed to me.
And then there was this... In my youth i had this almost mystical ability to bullshit parents. I came across as a very polite and well-mannered young man, a college boy with a bright future dammit!! Little did they fucking know that i was working my way towards a PHD in degeneracy and weed dealing, both of which i was working on and studying in depth. These things would be much tougher to hide (not that i was slinging weed yet but i did smoke copious amounts of ganja at the time) if i was living under the same roof. There was also the delicate issue of where i would sleep. Would i share a room with their daughter? would they be giving the okay to knock boots when we pleased? But the biggest reason, the one i didn't want to blurt at Cherry because i liked fucking, was it felt like a trap. Cherry had grown up in the same working class burb i had and then spent a year at college before failing out and moving home. She was working as a beautician at this point (the same thing my mother did oddly enough) and there was a creeping feeling that her parents were keen to marry her off and that i was the ticket. Little did they know the favor i was doing them by respectfully declining the invite. Yes it was a generous and kind offer but in my paranoid mind it felt like there were heavy strings attached.
And so it was that on a weekend visit towards the end of April i was giving my walking papers. Cherry had come up and we had enjoyed a fairly typical weekend of partying and screwing but she had worked it out ahead of time and so when Sunday morning came around and she had packed up her things and we had gone for one more session in bed she looked at me and said, i need to tell you something. I knew what was coming but with a month left before the semester was over it caught me a bit off guard. Why? i have no idea, maybe i thought like some class i was taking we'd finish out the semester... and so she began, i felt like a deckhand gazing at the iceberg, she explained how much she adored me but that with me not coming home and with all the things going on there, with my admitting i wouldn't be coming home often if at all, that there was no use continuing. I gave some half-hearted protestations but in the end she was right, it was futile. She had moved on and said so and stated she came up because she wanted to spend one last weekend with me, that she thought i was a great guy and was upset that it was ending but that it was most likely the best move for both of us. She gave me one last hug, kissed me on the cheek and then we walked down the steps of my apartment to her car, she got in and smiled, wiped at a tear and then pulled away and drove off.
Standing there in the dust cloud left by her tires i took a deep breath and trudged back up the steps. The cad was feeling sorry for himself. Not because his now ex-girlfriend had just dumped him but more because he knew how empty the town was in summer and he was wondering how he was going to get laid. Yes a true gentleman to the end our hero was most concerned with his Johnson... the guy is all class. (to be cont.)
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