TMI Thursday: Car Jacking

If this does not sate your thirst for awesome TMI stories, then check out all the other glorious tales of things we probably shouldn't tell at LiLu's home for the staunchy raunchy, TMI Thursdays!

Yesterday, I told you of the girl I dated briefly my senior year of college, Carrie Nation. I call her that because she was a violent teetotaler. Which is understandable. She had a friend in high school die in a drunk driving accident. Well, actually, there was a drunk driving accident, and her friend drove by it. He was rubber necking and the road was icy and then her friend, while not paying attention to the road, ended up in a ditch and was killed from the accident. So, it's not really understandable at all.

This was at a point in my life (my senior year in college) where I would make trips to Illinois with a $20 bill in my pocket and swoop down into Scotchman's East and Scotchman's West liquor stores. Therein, I would promptly buy up all of their 32 ounce Old Milwaukee beers. 32 ounces of beer for $1.09? I'm sold. I would come home with cases of the shit. Will dubbed me "Beer Tsar".

So, here I am, freshly broken up with the Ex- (again), when Carrie Nation "befriends" me. And by that, I mean that she invited me to see one of the on campus movies with her. See, we were sort of friends before. The previous semester, I had met Carrie Nation because some friends of mine had invited me to come and watch a movie with them. The movie was in Carrie Nation's room. When I knocked on her door, I saw a little picture of Sports Voldemort hanging on the door. Someone yelled "come in" from the interior of the room and I swung the door open, struck a dramatic pose, and asked "are you a Packers fan?" Carrie Nation said she was. Jokingly, I said, "Oh, I think I'm in love."

Apparently, this was enough to convey to her that I was proper dating material. So, the fall semester of my senior year, she invited me to come and watch a movie with her and the rest of her friends. I ended up sitting next to her and we watched...Scream, I think? You can see how memorable our time was together. Anyway, during the movie, I sort of held her hand a little. A couple of nights later, she shows up at my room and asks me if I liked her. The only thing it was missing what a "circle yes or no" on a note. It was so junior high. I circled yes, and we started dating that night.

The great thing about that night? I was watching some nature documentary on bugs, because there wasn't shit else on and because I have a strange fascination with Praying Mantises. So, Carrie Nation shows up and we talk until after visitation hours are over (visitation hours were until 11 pm on week nights...remember, Catholic college). She was all worried about getting caught after visitation hours were over, despite the fact that I was friends with all of my RAs. I mean, hell, the RA on my floor was Sweet Mic Mancuso, the most melodic voiced RA in history--there was no way she was getting in trouble.

Anyway, we ended up talking until midnight and I finally was like, "Well, I'm going to bed. You can stay if you want--I don't want to throw you out or anything. You can even have the bed. I'll sleep on the couch." It ended up, she slept on the couch, I in my bed, and at 6:00 am, when I had to get up and get ready for class, I escorted her out of the building. Fortunately, she lived in Halas hall, which was next door (and named for former Chicago Bears owner, George Halas) to Gallagher, so her Walk of Shame wasn't so terrible.

This went on for about six weeks. She'd come over, we'd chat or watch a movie, she'd invariably end up staying the night, and then walk home in the morning. Ah, the luxuriant life of a senior with a single room. The plus side of all this was that I kept my room clean and smelling good. I mean, I made my bed nearly every day--and I was in college!. Shit, you'd only make your bed if you were getting a visit from your parents.

I digress. So, there we are, Carry Nation and the Beer Tsar. And, you know, something had to give at some point. Now, at this point in my life, I watched NASCAR. I was quite the fan. Carry Nation? Not so much. She detested NASCAR, and for all the right reasons--there were cars who were sponsored by beer companies. I do not lie when I tell you this.

And so...on that fateful night when Sam was stinking up my joint, Carrie Nation came over to watch the football game for our normal Monday night affair. Except, there was a replay of the NASCAR race being shown on ESPN2, so I would flip over during the time outs on the football game to see what I could of the race (despite already knowing who had won). This infuriated Carrie Nation. She stole the remote from me and shoved it down her shirt. So, I did what came natural--I went after it. This infuriated her more. She made a reference to how nice Sports Voldemort's butt looked in his tight football pants (as luck would have it, the Packers were playing that night). I made a reference to wanting to bang one of her friends. Something else happened, and I sat on the bed, and then sat in the hallway (the door was open). This really cheesed her.

Needless to say, she didn't stay the night that night.

The next night, she had to work until 10:00 pm at Wal-Mart across the street, so I didn't see her. The night after that, she got off work early, so I told her to come by the computer lab and we could hang out. I worked in the computer lab as a lab monitor. It was awesome. I always signed up for the less popular lab, so all I would have to do is sit there, do my homework, and occasionally restock the printer with paper or--on particularly tough nights--I'd have to put a new toner cartridge in. And all of this for a sweet $6.00 an hour, which really helped fuel the Beer Tsar trips--literally and figuratively.

Anyway, Carrie Nation comes shuffling in, says high in a clipped, curt fashion, and sits down two rows away to check her email. I'm quiet while I'm sitting there, reading about the nervous system in vertebrates (I was working on filling out my biology minor and was taking Comparative Vertebrate Anatomy...which was one of my favorite classes of all time). She gets up, and I thought she was coming over to see me, and I look up and say "Did you know that you shrink an inch during the day because the disks between your vertebrae compress while you're walking upright?"

I've always had a knack for knowing what to say to a woman to turn her on...

She kind of gives me a look and says, "That's fascinating." She then throws a folded up piece of paper at me. "That's for you." I stare at it for a second, without opening it, and I look back up at her.

"You're kidding, right?" I asked. "You're breaking up with me? And worse, you're breaking up with me in a note? What the fuck, is this Junior High school?"

She didn't respond and, instead, shuffled out of the lab and, out of my life. In response to the note (which was, indeed, a break up note), I wrote a very long, and very carefully constructed email in which I told her that I wanted to talk to with her and we could sort this out and that I really didn't want to break it off with her and blahblahblahblahblah. She didn't respond. Two days later, I had moved on. On the third day, after I had said something about dating someone else to one of my friends during dinner, she must have overheard me. She stood outside of the cafeteria and lit into me when I was finished (she usually sat at the next table over from ours during meals) about how I didn't want to work things out after all and some other such shit. I countered that I had written a long letter to her, extolling her virtues and the greatness of our relationship, but when she hadn't written back, I got over it. Fast. I suggested she should, too.

And, that was pretty much the end of the story of Carrie Nation...or is it?

I graduated the following spring. The following fall, for Homecoming, I arrived with a cooler full of beer that I was planning on drinking with my buds still at St. Joe, Will and Giles. At this point, I'm well over Carrie Nation. I'm back with the Ex-, and we finally decided we loved each other more than cheese, and that we should get married. I had asked her over the summer, and oh we were happy together. Spinning around in a circle holding hands with flowers falling from the sky and cheesy montage music playing in the background happy. Is that a flugelhorn I hear?

So, for Homecoming, I'm celebrating the fact that I've got a job, a fiancee, and a future. I had already been accepted to two different graduate programs, and I was waiting for word from two others, so this book store bullshit job wasn't going to last forever. It's time to drink.

When Homecoming hit that year, it was time for the baseball playoffs. The Cubs, by all manner of miracles, had actually won the wild card in the central and were playing the Braves. And badly. This led to a series of events that are cloudy in my mind, but involved me and some Freshman girl sitting on the couch in my friend Derek's room watching one of the final games of the Cubs series. Since I had a shit ton of beer at my disposal, I was pretty well toastified. I kept giving her beers, too, because, hell, I could. Plus, she was cute. Ish.

Sadly, I don't remember her name, but I do remember that she wore an orange shirt. Briefly.

As things progressed, we got more and more toastified. Apparently, this was a girl who "got hot" when she got drunk, and as we were sitting there, she took her shirt off. And then her pants. And then she put her hand on my knee. And suddenly, I found myself at a moral crossroads.

I had been engaged for a couple of months by this point, to a woman I truly and genuinely loved. Here was a cute...ish...drunk college chick taking her clothes off and making amorous advances toward me. Did I want to? Fuck yeah. Did I want to NOT cheat on my fiancee? Fuck yeah. So, I carefully explained the situation to this young lady and kindly excused myself and ended up back in Will's room. Or Giles'. Or someones. Fuck, I don't remember. I just know it wasn't her room.

Anyway, I spent the whole weekend pretty much in a drunken stupor. But, after having a young woman essentially give me a private strip dance, I was on a slow burn. Come Monday morning, I gathered up whatever soldiers had not fallen over the weekend, packed them into my car, and prepared to drive back across the lonely expanse of North Centeral Indiana so that I could get to work by 2:00 that afternoon. When I describe it as lonely, I do truly mean that. It was corn and soy bean fields as far as the eye could see, dotted occasionally with tiny towns that no one's ever really heard of--Royal Center, Lucerne, Twelve Mile (which was fourteen miles from Logansport), just to name three.

As I was pulling out of campus, I saw the girl who had stripped for me a couple of nights earlier. I waved, because I'm chivalrous like that. I then pull out onto US-231 south and head down to turn onto Indiana-16 east and head for home. The stretch between US-231 and Monon, IN on 16 was one of the most desolately boring and lonely places on the face of the earth. And I was horny after having had a private show and then seeing her again on my way out.

So, I pulled it out. While I was driving. The glorious things about roads in North Central Indiana is that they are fucking arrow straight, and the alignment in my car had recently been fixed, so I could get away with not really paying attention to the road. All I had to do was make sure I didn't hit any deer. So, there I was, in the throes of autoerotic ecstasy, thinking about this young lady who had shown me the Holy of Holies just two nights before. Finally, I finish myself off as I pull up to a stop light. There's another car at the stoplight, which turns and heads west on Indiana-16.

It's Carrie Nation, coming back to campus after finishing her student teaching assignment that morning.

So, I honked my horn and waved at her with my cum-streaked hand, a big smile on my face. She looked over as she was turning, saw me, screwed her face up into a scowl (moreso than normal) and sped off into the west.

I cleaned myself up with a handkerchief, laughed triumphantly, and continued on down the lonely road, wondering where I could find a good cup of coffee.