Notes to Stephanie

By E. McBride

This story is based on my recollection of real events that occurred between myself and Stephanie. It was a rather convoluted mess, but the basic gist of it, from my perspective, is that we became involved in a way we both would have rather not had to have happened as it did. She was broken-hearted and she settled on her friend-zone guy, but she wouldn't let me go. She decided that my interest in her, it had to be based on an affection and taste for her and her personality alone, and not grounded in sex. In the end, things became again as they were when they began. This is what happened, from my side of the story. It's been my intention and to her knowledge for the project to continue until January 23, 2014. However, she had me arrested for the project because she didn't want certain facts of her life revealed. HOWEVER. That gives me a malicious prosecution suit. YAY ME!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Feb 16, 2013
• ISBN: 9781300749608

Book preview

Notes to Stephanie

Notes to Stephanie: Revised and Expanded

When boy meets girl and all goes wrong.

Notes to Stephanie: Revised and Expanded

When boy meets girl and all goes wrong.

Second Edition

Copyright © 2012 Dr. Erik J. M

ISBN: 978-1-300-74960-8

This work is licensed under the Creative

Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported

License. To view a copy of this license, visit

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5

or send a letter to:

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Foreword:

To my readers:

I would like to humbly thank all those who have taken the opportunity to read this work of literature. I would also love to express my gratitude for those of you who have actually paid for your copy of this work. Although I do not create art for the sake of profit, I still must have a means by which to live.

The following account is true to the best of my ability. However, I am merely human. To err is my nature, and there will be errors found within this work. Some may be of grammar. Some may be of spelling. Some of the things I write may be ambiguous. It should also be factored in that this is my opinion, and I do not present any of this information as fact.

As it is my intention to write my account of this story, it must be addressed on how the human mind works. Perception may be keen, but it can miss details. There is a famous study, on youtube, relating to this phenomenon. In the study, individuals are asked to count how many times only the people wearing white shirts passed a ball, while ignoring the people in black shirts. During the middle of the study, a man in a gorilla suit walks through the individuals passing the ball. The majority of the individuals participating in the study did not observe the gorilla-suited man.

Such may be the case with this work. My memory can be flawed at times. While I cannot promise that my account is of absolute accuracy, I have made my best effort in giving a detailed and unbiased recollection of these events, as I participated in them.

Nothing written here is intended to insult, irritate, or inflame. I do not write this work to agitate. I write this work because I feel I need to write it. I could simply say, It’s an artist thing, but the truth is, it’s my thing. My purpose in writing this is to allow the reader to form their own opinion of what was really going on with the circumstances.

Again, please accept my most humble gratitude for spending your time on my art.

Merci, may your lives be peaceful and full of love,

Erik

P.S.: This book is dedicated to my children, as is most of my life. All proceeds from its sale will likely be used more to their benefit than to mine own.

E

Introduction

My name is Erik. I have a fairly long history, which comes into play with this story. I was raised by the woman who gave birth to me. My biological father was not in the picture. My mother went down to the Office of Vital Statistics and simply added in my step-father’s name, rather than going through formal adoption proceedings. This caused my legal name to be split, so I have, at the moment, two legal names. I intend to rectify this soon.

In and of itself, this isn’t a terribly bad thing. However, when you take into account the nature of the man whose name was thrust upon me, it is a terrible thing. I have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from a childhood of abuse. When I was a child, I was terrified to make a sound; there were many times where I was beaten in various places upon my body until I bled. I was told that my screams sounded delightful, and beating me was a pleasure. The woman who gave birth to me joined in on the merriment, to an extent. I found out this man was not my father at the age of 15.

At the age of 17 and after handing that man a considerable thrashing, I moved to South Florida to live with my grandparents. I had massive anxiety attacks, depression was setting in, and I had substantial difficulty in completing high school. I did complete it, although I spent most of my time at the gym studying to be a personal trainer.

A year of studying later, I was struck by a car while on foot at a party. I tried to play hero and shouldn’t have. After I recovered, I enlisted in the Navy in the advanced electronics field with nuclear technology options. I was sent home for medical reasons. This was one of my greatest disappointments. I lost my home shortly after this, and it took a while for me to get back on my feet again.

The government helped me more than my family ever has. I received disability, and that allowed me to become well enough to work for a while. I met a woman, married, had a daughter, and I was a diesel mechanic. Things went very well for a while until I became injured.

After being injured on the job, I spent two years with my right arm in a sling and went through multiple invasive surgical operations in order to repair my shoulder joint. I had torn everything within it, including the bankart. My now ex-wife began cheating on me at that time.

We moved to Virginia, not too far from Cumberland Gap. It’s a beautiful place. My daughter was born in Melbourne, Florida; my son was born in Big Stone Gap, Virginia. I love the oceans and the mountains (hence my decision to move to Florence, Oregon), so it was fantastic to have a child from both.

My ex-wife continued to cheat, so I moved to South Carolina and stopped my college education process with UVA-Wise in the process. In South Carolina, I sued her for divorce. I won the divorce on grounds of adultery, and I was given full custody of my two children with her ordered to pay child support and granted supervised visitation at my discretion. During the proceedings, she tried numerously to attempt me to waive her parental rights so she could get out of her support obligations. However, You gave birth to these two children. They can’t order you to be an actual mom; but, you will actually pay. I had her ruled in for failure to pay support three separate times, and jailed, before she made payments without fail.

During the divorce period, I broke my spine again. My Toyota 4-Runner had an issue with the power steering pump, and when I had it in 4-high in 5 inches of snow and the steering twitched, it launched me into a gully nearly 25 feet deep. This crushed two of my vertebrae and decimated the remainder of my discs. As a result of the car accident in 1997 and this one, I am now permanently on pain management. I take a very large dose of narcotics and barbiturates twice a day to combat this issue, but I’m still an A student, mostly, at the local technical college.

While enrolled at Midlands Technical College, I met many people. This particular story is about an individual I had…encounters…with, while I was still sorting out the issues from my divorce. Her name is, obviously, Stephanie.

Stephanie is an unusual individual, and she was not what I had first thought she was. On multiple occasions, she completely impressed me with her actual knowledge, her actions, and her insight into my situation. We were talking, as in talking to lead to dating, for a while. However, she chose another man and I was quite content to simply be her friend. I enjoyed being her friend. Her company relaxed me. She was grateful about the things I did for her without requesting anything at all. Most importantly of all, she helped me stop being angry with my ex-wife, and it was with her that I realized I was actually, finally, after years, over my divorce. I wouldn’t date until I was over it and all the baggage was gone, and it was with her that I realized this.

Most unfortunately, that came with a heavy price. Stephanie has her own personal issues, and she could not simply keep me as a friend. It left her feeling confused and conflicted, and she had to know if I was into her for a serious relationship, or if I just wanted to remain friends. It is my opinion that she cares about me considerably, and that what she wanted was for her boyfriend to act more like me, to be me. She wants the security she has with him, and she wants me for everything else - but security comes first. After all, she has, Never Alone tattooed on her feet, and she wears Toms without socks so she can always look down and see it.

It is my opinion, and I have expressed in this novel that it is my opinion, that the trauma of losing her mother in coordination with something that her and her adopted father did, with her adopted father denying that she was his daughter because of what they did, caused this particular individual to develop borderline personality disorder. I lived with someone with BPD for years, I dated other chicks with BPD, and they all act the same way:

I hate you, don't leave me. Please don't leave me by myself. Don't let me be alone, I feel like I disappear when that happens. Please help me know who I am.

I do not wish for my opinion to be the standing one here, or for this work to be me preaching my opinion and supporting it. I am laying out all the information I have on the entire situation. I’d like for you, the reader, to come to your own conclusions when you finish the book.

At the end of the book will be a long conversation I wrote in Facebook, with no response from Stephanie. This conversation was my attempt to have her collaborate on a story idea with me. Talking with her gave me many ideas for short stories and poetry, some of which I will include in this book. In addition, I wanted to have her opinions and suggestions on how to better tailor my sex scenes so they don’t come across as sleazy. But, that’s not quite what happened…

It begins

In April of 2011, after meeting people at Midlands Technical College, I began inviting other people who attended to my friends list. Stephanie was one of the people I invited. I thought she was photogenic. She had some really nice statuses that were quite poetic, and some like prose, which showed a dark, painful side. It appeared she had depth, and I complimented her on the amount of her soul she put into writing.

She worked a piercing kiosk in the mall at the time, and I saw her from time to time without stopping by. She was always busy with customers or just talking to people who hung out there by her. I never saw her at school, so I didn’t know her very well. I wasn’t going to introduce my children to someone I didn’t know.

In July, her birthday came around. It’s just a tad after the fourth. She wanted to have people get together with her at the lake. I offered to come and bring my kids and propane grill, on the condition that she play along with her Kim Possible theme and give my kids autographs. I never did attend that party.

A few weeks later, I made a comment about the tattoo and earlobe stretching fad. I said that in the future, many Millenials (generational term) would be having reconstructive surgery. As a tattoo and gauged-out-ear-person herself, she took personal affront and promptly unfriended me. It was no big deal.

Reconnection

In August of 2011, I ran across her again at school. She was boisterous. She tended to be very loud, and would shout-down the other people who gathered at what we call the gazebo.

MTC (Midlands Technical College) has non-smoking in all areas except for small gazebos. This gazebo in particular that we hanged out at was between Congaree Hall and Granby Hall. There was a select group of individuals who could be found there pretty much any time school was in session. The gazebo itself is scarred with scratches, broken boards from people trying to build fires when it’s cold, and covered with graffiti. The ceiling of the gazebo has a Where’s Waldo glued to the center. It was a place to come and smoke and talk and meet people.

One day, she brought a hookah out to the gazebo. She wanted to share her shisha concoction with everyone. She called it a creamsicle, because she mixed orange flavored tobacco with vanilla flavored tobacco. A group of eight or nine individuals lounged around it, and Stephanie called out to everyone who passed by and offered them some.

That is, she offered some to everyone but me. She called in people from around me continuously, but just ignored me as I sat there listening to conversations and talking to random people. When I picked up her tobacco, the shisha, to smell it, she gave me the dagger-eyes. I just shrugged as if it was no big deal. The woman didn’t respect me, and she wasn’t obligated to respect me.

I was curious about why she acted the way she did. As a former journalism student and a published writer, I decided it would be wise to keep my eye on her. So, keep my eye on her, I did.

A few days later, I was sitting with her and a few other people, and she was talking to other people. She said, See this tattoo? I got it for free! That dude totally wants my vadge. It’s fuckin’ awesome too man, because he’ll do more for free. This kind of added to my opinion that she was a little sleazy.

This type of thing was normal for her. She would spend hours every day sitting out there during the fall semester, just talking to people who went by. She showed off a picture of a guy with a broken arm she met at a club and took home. I warned her, based on what she said that the guy was a leech. But she hooked up with him anyways. She ended up with pictures of him and her taken with her webcam in her room slathered all over Facebook. The woman is going to do whatever the woman wants to do. This lasted through until the end of October 2011.

Bad things come in threes

The final week of October 2011, I was hospitalized. I hadn’t slept for ten days and I had to get rest. After I got out of the hospital, I had it out with a chick I knew, named Amber, who I had a love/hate relationship with since I started at MTC. She set off my PTSD, so when I saw Amber coming that final time, I swallowed enough Xanax and said, Do you want to work things out or do you want to stay mad at me?

What? Erik! You’re making a scene! Don’t  yell like that! Amber bellowed at me. So I started to walk towards her.

No! Stop! Don’t fucking come near me. You fucking abused our friendship. You abused it like three times.

Um…I think it was more like foooour… I was pretty messed up and relaxed on the Xanax.

You’re making a scene! screamed Amber, even louder. Then, she walked away and hid behind a column on another building.

I walked down to Subway to get a sub-sandwich, and as I’m eating it, Stephanie comes by to ask what happened. I told her that I told Amber I wouldn’t have sex with her if she wouldn’t tell me she loved me. I mean, if you want sex with me, please at least make the effort to lie to me? It’s not that hard. Amber didn’t want to do that, so she couldn’t get sex out of me. Stephanie was really pleased about the situation. She looked up to Amber and envied her at the same time. From that point on, Stephanie and I were on actual, friendly, speaking-terms. It was really nice.

Bad Month

One of the things that I learned about Stephanie from talking to her was that November was her bad month. It was the month her mother had died in when she was younger, and the month that all sorts of bad things always seem to happen to her out of the year. She regards it with the same superstition that some people regard Friday the 13th. And for her, Novembers can be bad.

This November happened to be a very poor one for her.

My boyfriend broke up with me! I can’t believe it. She always talks really, really loud when she’s upset. Her left eyelid squinted slighted shut and her lips stuck out, an unconscious tick she has when she’s about to reach for a cigarette. She lit it, inhaled, then said, He says I can’t keep him interested. I’m not interesting? I can’t fucking believe it. Just look at the tattoo on my chest, I looked at the ocean pattern and the sand-dollar, Sleeping with me is like getting to fuck on the beach every time! She turned and looked me dead in the eye, Am I really not interesting? Her face formed that same desperate, pleading expression everyone makes.

You don’t want me interested in you, I said, shaking my head no. Stephanie, you really do not want me interested. Not at all. I laughed a short laugh, still shaking my head, and flipped up my sunglasses to look her in the eyes. She stared back at me, unfolded her arms, tilted her head to the left. Then she gave me that look that said, "I do want you to be interested in me." That was a Thursday. This began a lot of trouble for me, as I tried to keep breaking things off with her, and she did her best to make me into her platonic, second boyfriend.

Stephanie, did you unfriend me from Facebook because of the comment I made about people needing reconstructive surgery?

Well…I unfriended a lot of people… I felt like she was being dishonest with me.

The following week, she showed up and told me she lost her job. She was sitting across the gazebo from the entrance, surrounded by people. She kept complaining, but never mentioned she had another job lined up. I listened to her complain, loudly, like always.

I can’t believe they fired me from the piercing booth!

What?

Obsessions, the kiosk that sells plugs and gauges in the mall. They fired me. They said I just wasn’t working out or something. It’s bullshit. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I have enough money for this month’s rent, but that’s it.

Stephanie, if you’d like, I’m smoking chicken this weekend and I’ll bring you some.

Well…I don’t want to take your food.

It’s like 5 dollars for a 10 pound bag. It’s no big deal.

Thank you so much, Erik…here’s my number. She gave me her number, written on my arm with my metal Zebra F-701 model. I really love that pen.

After I found out about all the problems she was having, I started texting her nightly to make sure it was ok. Sometimes we’d talk through-out the day, and sometimes not. It was good she had her PetSmart job. I kept encouraging her to work. Labor Omnia Vincil is the motto on my family crest: Work Conquers All. I really believe that, too. One of the things I posted on her Facebook account about her effort was a comment on how noblesse oblige had obviously not quite died. Her grandfather seemed to enjoy that, because he could tell I was complimenting his grand-daughter.

I continued to encourage her. It was really frustrating to see a woman who was obviously intelligent, and who loved to brag about having a photographic memory do very little for herself. It was my hope that she would actually work and put out the effort, and not waste so much time sitting in some dude’s garage, or playing beer-pong nightly and wasting all her money on fast-food and tattoos. Doing those things are counter-intuitive for a person who should be self-sufficient, for someone who has the means and the capacity to do that for herself without resorting to shampooing dogs or stocking shelves in a pet store.

Special Delivery

I brought the chicken to her apartment she shared with a few roommates. I was in a rush that day. I had to retrieve flower bulbs for my grandmother from Riverbanks Zoo, then I rushed over before she had work. I made it in enough time.

She was wearing her glasses, and a black hoodie with black sweat-pants and her worn-down black Tom’s shoes. She looked so absolutely adorable. If it weren’t for the tattoos still showing on her fingers and wrist, I would’ve said she looked like the perfect girl next door. I love the girl next door look - especially if it’s with a darker brunette and greenish eyes. And freckles. Freckles are nice. There’s just something about freckles that I adore. It must be in my blood.

My kids were with me, and we came inside. The apartment was kind of sloppy. There was an aquarium, and some very noisy birds; parakeets I think, but I did not look. There was a kitten on the floor, and I sat and watched Stephanie play with my son and show him the kitten. The sign on the wall of House Rules, stated that any objects left there were considered to be gifts. I tried to leave my kids, but they followed me out of the apartment! (Just kidding there folks. I love being a father.)

When Stephanie and my kids and I walked outside, I told the kids to go ahead and buckle up, and we talked for a bit. I decided at that point in time, since she was single and she’d already demonstrated to me that she was good with my kids and made a good impression on them, I wanted to get to know her better.  She’d also surprised and impressed me at the gazebo about them. When the conversation turned to me getting a girlfriend just to do housework and babysit, Stephanie was the first one to say, Erik can’t do that. He can’t just bring home any random chick or just random chicks in general as a single dad. It’ll fuck up his kids. I was blown away when she said that.

Stephanie, I said, standing in front of my car, on the sidewalk, I would really appreciate the opportunity to get to know you better.

Sure, Erik, she wiped her nose on her sleeve. I’d like that. I’d like that a lot. And she stepped up to hug me, and rested her cheek on my chest for a moment. We just stood there for a short while, holding each other, and the kids screamed at me.

I’m going to have to go, Stephanie. I’ll see you soon.

Thanks again Erik. Thanks for coming by. I have to get ready for work. It was good seeing you. Her voice was so soft. It’s my favorite tone of her voice. It means she’s happy-care about the situation.

So, we began to talk, and we spent more time just talking to each other at school, and not just at the gazebo. Sometimes it was just us, and sometimes it was other people too. I really liked talking with her. I felt so calm, and peaceful, and I hadn’t felt that way about anyone in so long. I wasn’t angry about my divorce anymore: I just felt warm and tingly in a non-horny kind of way. It makes me happy, so from that point on, I made sure to keep telling her how happy she made me, and how she was totally in my comfort zone.

The Carolina/Clemson Game

A mutual friend asked me to throw a small party for a local football rivalry game. I did, and I invited a few people. Stephanie was one of the people who showed up. During the game, Stephanie was sitting in a chair, and I was sitting on the floor beside her with my back to the wall.

Erik. I have a boyfriend now. She looked down at me as she said it, with a slightly guilty tone.

As long as you’re happy, Stephanie, I replied, then drank some of my beer. I meant it. I just loved seeing the woman happy. I know that I can’t choose who a person is going to be happiest with, and if it’s not me, I don’t want them to be miserable with me.

But, at that point, I also drew friends-only boundaries. And I expected her to adhere to them because I would. As I explained to her later, I have my principles. I will not sleep with a woman who is cheating. I will not date a woman who dumps her boyfriend for me. I will not date a friend who feels like they have me on deck, and I will not be friends with a person I feel like I want to be on-deck for.

Later that night, the subject ran into foreplay, and I mentioned hair-pulling. Stephanie commented that she liked having her hair pulled, so one guy reached out, grabbed the end of her hair, halfway down her back, and pulled.

No, you do it like this, I said. Then I slid my hand across her neck, twisted her hairs around my fingers, and made sure my nails scratched into her skin, as I tilted her head back, to the side, leading her face towards mine.

She screeched, Oh my god, Erik, oh my god, and she shuddered. Then she yelped, Oh my god, Erik, I have a boyfriend! I have a boyfriend! So I let her go, and she ran off across the room laughing. I could smell how turned on she was, and I could see the goose-bumps on her skin.

As things progressed between us after this, a status I would put up on Facebook repeatedly was, I’m not going to make this into something it’s not, because it was intended to be a friendship and nothing more. The next day, when we hung out at the gazebo, I was playing with her and I picked her up. She was shrieking and laughing, and howling with a pout, Put me down, Erik, put me down! She was light as a pillow. Her new boyfriend, Shane, walked up while I was holding her, and immediately got an expression of jealous rage slathered over his face. She introduced him.

Shane was a tall guy, maybe 6’3". He was at least 60 pounds overweight, if not more. He had the scruffy look of a person who can’t grow in a full beard or moustache, and doesn’t shave what does grow in until it gets caught in the zipper. His shirt was dirty and ripped, and his jeans looked like he’d been crawling around in the parking lot. He had a dirty zip-up sweatshirt with him that looked like it had seen better years. His shoes were worn down, with laces sporting loose threads. Neither one was laced up tight. I had no particular regard one way or the other for the man. I had no understanding of why she chose him, but it’s her life to do with as she sees fit and she said she was happy, so that’s that.

A few days later, I walked up to the gazebo after classes and Stephanie was sitting beside Shane. You’ll never guess what this motherfucker did! she  bellowed. Her voice always increased in volume when she was excited or upset. He called me a fucking whore!

That’s not what I meant! pleaded Shane, in a quiet voice.

Bullshit. Stephanie lit a cigarette, and inhaled. She propped her feet up on the concrete pedestal ash-tray in the center of the gazebo. I was riding him, and he was like, ‘oh, you’re good at this, you must have had a lot of practice,’ like I’ve slept with a bunch of guys. Shane turned crimson, and you could see he was embarrassed.

That’s not what I meant-

I think he was trying to compliment you, Stephanie. I interrupted Shane.