Sex and Crime: Oliver's Strange Journey (23 page)

"What are you talking about?" I asked her.
"You're fucking around with Papi and all these other people, so why
the hell would I stick around for that? I went to Florida with
Patty. At least she wants to be with me."

Alice was upset, but she admitted it was her
own fault. She asked me to come back. I told her Patty was going to
be there for a few more days, until after her birthday. Maybe
afterwards I would go get Alice, and we could spend some time in
Florida together for the first time.

Alice asked me how things were going with
Patty. I told her that I wasn't really all that happy having her at
my house, and I would much rather have Alice with me right now.

Later that day I texted Alice: "She's a
squirter, a scratcher and a screamer. Kill me!"

I looked at my phone, and suddenly I
realized that I had not sent that text to Alice. I had accidentally
sent it to Patty!

Holy. Fucking. SHIT!

I was sitting in the bedroom while texting.
Patty was in the living room. I didn't even want to go out there
and face her after sending her that text message. My heart was
pounding! But I figured I was gonna have to face that situation
sooner or later, so I went in the living room and decided to play
it off as a joke, and to pretend that I had sent that text to Patty
on purpose.

Patty was on the computer, chatting with
people on Facebook. They were fans of the rock band Blood, and they
accused Patty of having killed Rocky on purpose. She was totally
absorbed in that online argument.

I nervously giggled: "Uh, haha, uhhh, did
you get my text?"

She absentmindedly took her eyes off the
computer screen for a second, looked at me and said: "Yeah, I got
it."

"Uh, haha, uh, did you think it was
funny?"

"Uhmm, I guess," she said, and continued to
furiously type rebuttals on Facebook.

Wheeeww! That went a lot better than I
feared. I really dodged a bullet there, I thought.

Later that night we were in bed. The lights
were off. I thought she was sleeping. Suddenly I saw her cell phone
screen go on in the dark. She was re-reading my text message about
her being a squirter, a scratcher, and a screamer.

She put the phone down and the screen went
off.

Then the screen went on again, because she
picked the phone back up and re-read the text again.

The screen went off. She put the phone down
again.

Then the screen went on again. She re-read
the text again.

Her cell phone screen went on and off about
10 times. She kept putting the phone down and picking it back up
and re-reading my text over and over again, like a psycho. Then she
got up, locked herself in the bathroom and started crying
hysterically.

I felt like such a major ASSHOLE! Yeah, she
was way over the top with all that sex, but I really didn't want to
hurt her feelings about it. And now she was sobbing in the
bathroom, because I had been such a total jerk, when I wrote that
text about her.

I didn't even want to face her anymore. I'm
not a praying man, but now I prayed: "Dear God, please let her not
even be here tomorrow! Please make her leave before I wake up!"

God didn't answer my prayer. Go figure. Did
he not want to interfere with her free will? Or was the
confrontation I was about to have with Patty the next morning a
predetermined part of God's great plan for me? Or is there really
no God who answers prayers? Discuss! (Just kidding. Just checking
if you've been paying attention to my book so far.)

The next morning, I found her sleeping on
the couch in the living room. After she woke up, we both avoided
the topic and acted like nothing had happened. Later in the
afternoon, we finally talked about it. I told her that I was really
sorry I hurt her feelings with my stupid text, and that she was
just a bit too aggressive sexually. She teared up, and said: "I
know. You're not the first guy to tell me that."

Wow. All I could think was, damn, woman,
take a hint! If more than one guy has told you that you're too over
the top when it comes to sex, then maybe you need to dial it down a
little. But I didn't say that. I didn't want to hurt her feelings
again.

During our sex talk, she started to open up
more about her relationship with Rocky. She said that he had been
an addict for a long time, and that he didn't have any money left
when she met him. She said she definitely was not a gold digger who
tried to kill him for his money. And even if that had been her
plan, wouldn't she have waited until after they were married?

Then she told me about their sex life. She
said since he had been an addict for so long, he had erectile
dysfunction, and couldn't get hard. She said they expressed their
love for each other in other ways. Not sexually. And she said she
was probably so over the top right now, because she didn't have sex
in a long time and wanted to make up for it, and because while she
was having sex, for a few minutes she wasn't thinking about how
unhappy she was.

So, sucking my dick was part of her grieving
process. Ok. To each his own. But then the things she told me next
took a bizarre turn into the Twilight Zone:

She had told me a few days earlier that
Rocky had a few strange fetishes. She said he liked to play with
fire and burn things. "Significant things," she said. Whatever that
meant. She didn't elaborate any further on it at first.

But now, during our sex talk, she told me
what she had meant by that. She said Rocky liked to go to the pet
store and buy little hamsters, guinea pigs, rats, mice or gerbils,
and light them on fire. And while those poor critters died an
agonizing death, he'd get off.

"What?!?" My disgust was written all over my
face. "Did you ever do that with him?"

"Uhhh, no," she said. But she paused just a
little too long. My instincts told me that she was lying and that
she did do that stuff with him.

Patty told me that Rocky kept asking her to
burn animals with him: "Hey, you hate snakes. So how about we get a
snake, I scare you with it, and then we light it on fire?"

She said she never agreed to do anything
like that with him, and that she had asked him: "How about we get
one of those rubber Halloween rats and light that on fire?"

He said that wouldn't get him off: "It's not
the same, unless it's an actual live animal and it's squirming in
pain."

Then she told me at one point he said: "I
don't know if you've noticed, but I have all the symptoms of a
serial killer."

And then she told me that he said: "My
ultimate sexual fantasy is to kidnap a homeless girl, light her on
fire, and rape her while she's screaming and burning."

While she was in Florida with me, every day
Patty had been weeping about how she had lost the love of her life
when Rocky died, and every day she kept gushing about what a
beautiful mind he was. And now she was telling me that he wanted to
light homeless girls on fire and rape them. What. The. Fuck?!?

How sick in the head did she have to be to
think that sick fuck was a beautiful mind? Up until this point, I
thought that she was just weird. But now I was starting to think
she was really not all there in the head, or at least mentally or
emotionally disturbed.

She told me that she had bought a wedding
dress a few years ago, even though she had no wedding plans, and
she didn't have anyone to get married to. She just liked the way
she looked in a wedding dress, and walked around the house at home,
imagining what it would be like to get married.

To me, that sounded like something out of
one of those horror movies, where some crazy girl in a dusty old
wedding dress never got over the fact that her high school
sweetheart stood her up at the altar. And now, 30 years later, she
kidnapped the balding, aging ex-jock and re-created her dream
wedding in her basement, with dressed-up corpses she dug up at the
cemetery. (Come to think of it, I've never really seen a movie
exactly like that. Someone needs to get on that.)

Oh, and did I mention she talked in her
sleep? One night, she said, loud and clear as day, as if she was
wide awake: "You're going to hell! You know that, right?"

Another night, she said: "This isn't over
yet!"

When I asked her about it the next morning,
she said the anti-depressants she was on had to be giving her vivid
nightmares.

I was really starting to get very
uncomfortable around her. I felt like I needed to sleep with one
eye open while she was lying next to me, because it seemed more and
more plausible that she really did kill Rocky.

Before Patty came to Florida to spend her
birthday with me, one of her co-workers, Susan, had gone on a road
trip to Florida. Then her mother got sick all of a sudden and had
to go to the hospital. Susan decided to fly back to Scranton to be
by her mother's side. She left her car behind in Florida.

When Susan heard that Patty was about to go
to Florida to visit me, she asked her if Patty could drive Susan's
car back to Scranton. Patty had planned on flying back the day
after her birthday. But if she had to drive back in Susan's car
instead, it was going to take her a lot longer to get back home,
which meant she would have to leave 2 days earlier.

Patty asked me if I would take a road trip
with her back up north, so that she wouldn't have to spend her
birthday alone in Susan's car on I-95. She said once we get up
there I could stay with her in Scranton for as long as I want.

I really rrreally didn't want to. I just
wanted her to leave, because even after our sex talk, she really
didn't tone down at all. She still wanted to have sex all the time,
and she still tried to convince me that I liked her sloppy zombie
blowjobs.

But I felt bad for her. She was obviously a
train wreck right now. And spending her birthday alone, while she's
in this vulnerable mental state, certainly wasn't gonna be good for
her. So I told her I would join her on her road trip and spend her
birthday in the car with her, but that I probably wouldn't stay in
Scranton for more than a day or two.

This whole road trip thing actually worked
out pretty well, because while Patty was in Florida with me, I had
bought a condo in Liberty, NY, at an online real estate auction.
Liberty was not far from the famous Woodstock concert site, and
just a few minutes north of Middletown.

I figured once I'm up there, I could check
out my new condo. And since Alice and I had been texting every day
again, and she asked me to come save her from Papi, this all worked
out perfectly. And as long as we were driving in the car, Patty
wouldn't be able to rape me. As long as I wasn't alone in a room
with her, I'd be good.

Only three or four days after Patty had
arrived in Florida, I overheard her talking on the phone to her
friends, co-workers, and her family. We hadn't seen each other in
over a year, and now we had not even spent a week together yet, but
here she was, on the phone in my bathroom, telling everyone she
knew that I was The One: "Oh my God, he is sooo nice! He is one in
a million! I love him! I'm gonna marry him!"

I think that was really just her biological
clock talking. I think she was so desperate to get married before
she ended up old and alone, she was even willing to marry a guy who
liked to burn little animals. And compared to that psycho, I looked
pretty damn good.

And I don't mean to sound like I'm making
fun of her for liking me or having a crush on me. I think that's
sweet and I was flattered. But I think she should have talked to me
about it first, before telling her family, friends and co-workers
that she was going to marry me, 4 days after meeting me.

When the time for our road trip came, Patty
told me she wanted to stop in Tampa along the way, and introduce me
to her sister, Rita. She told me that Rita was a total bitch. Oh,
great! I can't wait to meet her!

I really rrreally didn't want to meet Rita.
I just wanted to get this whole thing over with and go rescue
Alice. But of course we stopped by Rita's house anyway.

As teenagers, Rita had always made Patty
feel like she was an ugly heffer. Rita was prettier and skinnier,
and all the boys wanted her. Patty was an overweight troll with a
hormonal issue. Too much testosterone. I guess that's why she had
such a manly voice now. She told me for most of her life, she never
got her period, and couldn't have a baby.

She obviously had a lot of issues growing
up. She told me she had been in therapy for it.

So there was this rivalry between Patty and
Rita, and I guess now Patty wanted to show me off in front of her
sister. When we arrived, Rita was arguing with her ex-husband, who
was dropping off their kid at Rita's house. I instantly disliked
her. She really was a total bitch.

After she had scared off her ex-husband, her
current boyfriend, Jake, arrived. He was a handsome, friendly guy.
I got along well with him. I asked him what he did for a living.
"Construction," he said. Rita seemed embarrassed by his answer and
tried to make his job sound much fancier than it is. I guess Patty
had told her that I had made a lot of money with cartoons online,
so Rita felt her boyfriend wasn't measuring up.