Sex and Crime: Oliver's Strange Journey (56 page)

Then my prescription sunglasses went
missing. I was sure the short latin girl had stolen them. She was
totally fucked up from smoking so much crack. I kept telling her
that the glasses won't do anyone any good, because of the
prescription. She acted like she didn't have them. We all started
to search the whole house for my glasses. And I ended up finding a
freshly used condom in Veronica's nightstand. She obviously had
fucked Tim earlier that day, and then quickly hid the condom in the
drawer, before I got there. I was so disgusted with her.

Later that day, she told me her friend
Shelly was going to come over, and that she wanted to fuck her. I
stuck around for a little while, and met Shelly. But once they kept
whispering to each other in the bathroom together, I left. I
couldn't bear to be around this psychotic shit any longer. Veronica
really didn't give a fuck how her behavior affected me. She was too
high, too brain-damaged, to consider anyone's feelings. I went home
that night. Shelly messaged me on Facebook. She told me it was nice
to meet me, and asked me why I left so suddenly. I told her I just
couldn't take this shit with Veronica anymore.

"Jealousy is the fear of comparison."

Max Frisch

The next morning I got a call from Lucy. She
had been released from jail a day or two earlier. Perfect
timing!

She was staying at the Super 8 on Colonial
Boulevard, with her newest pimp, G-Force. He was a black kid with
short dreadlocks. He had taken the place of Las Vegas. He pimped
Lucy out, sold her drugs, had sex with her, and took all her money.
These scumbags were the kinds of people Lucy thought were her
"friends." It made me sick.

She thought that as long as they didn't hit
her, they weren't really her pimps. I guess she had never heard the
saying "you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar." These
lowlives knew they didn't have to hit her to convince her to sell
her body. All they had to do was dangle some crack in front of her
face. They were manipulating her with drugs, and she didn't even
know it. Or maybe she just didn't care.

I met up with her that afternoon. After all
the crazy shit at Veronica's house, I had forgotten how pissed I
was at Lucy for throwing me under the bus during those two threeway
phonecalls with Cho a few weeks ago. And compared to the shit
Veronica had been doing to me these past few days, Lucy's
transgressions really didn't seem like such a big deal anymore.

Veronica didn't know I was with Lucy, when
she called me later that night. I didn't answer the phone. Veronica
left a message and asked me to come back. She told me she asked
Miriam to come back over and that she was going fuck her. She said
I shouldn't flip out about it.

I was so sick of this crap with Veronica.
Things had been bad when she was in jail. But now that she was out,
things were much, much worse. I liked being around Lucy so much
better. It seemed so peaceful, compared to the frantic insanity
that surrounded Veronica every minute of every day.

I had been with Veronica for almost 2 years
now, but in the few short months since I had met Lucy, I had spent
a lot more quality time with her, than with Veronica.

George was right, Veronica was a toxic
person. I was really just miserable the whole time I was with her.
She had never gone out of her way to do even a single nice thing
for me. She was the most selfish person I ever met. Nothing she
ever did was a selfless act of kindness. Absolutely every moment of
every day was about her, her wants and her needs, and how she could
get them. And any time she appeared to do something nice for
someone else, it was calculated, with an ulterior motive, to
benefit herself somehow.

For me, the most important thing in a
relationship is loyalty. But Veronica had no loyalty whatsoever, to
me or anyone else. If my special someone ever ended up in a
wheelchair, I would not abandon her. Even when there was a chance
that Veronica might lose her leg to MRSA, I wouldn't have left her.
But I knew that if I ever ended up in a wheelchair, Veronica would
abandon me in a heartbeat.

She simply was not the kind of person you
can build a life with. The sad thing is that most of the fucked up
things she did to me, she did while she was sober. She didn't even
have the excuse of being high.

Like I said, drug addicts remind me of
actresses who all audition for the same role in a horror movie.
They all start to think and act alike. So Lucy displayed a lot of
the same bad qualities I hated about Veronica. But I knew that deep
down she was not as rotten to the core as Veronica was.

When Lucy had left her clothes at my house,
she also left her diary. I was nosy, so I read it. These were her
most intimate thoughts. And a lot of the things she wrote were
prayers. She begged God to give her the strength to overcome her
addiction. She begged him to take away her mental anguish. A lot of
the things she wrote were brutally honest, and they showed how much
pain she was hiding behind her beautiful smile.

Although she and Veronica acted the same in
a lot of ways, because they both had the same substance abuse
problems, and the same mental and emotional issues, Lucy had a
beautiful soul. Veronica didn't.

Lucy and I spent the night together. We
slept late the next morning, cuddled up in each other's arms.
Veronica called me again. This time I answered the phone. She asked
me why I hadn't come back yet. I told her I was spending time with
Lucy. Veronica was PISSED!

While I had been staying at her apartment, I
told her that I had met Lucy and that I spent a lot of time with
her before going to New York. I was always honest with Veronica
about everything. I tried to lead by example. I wanted her to learn
to stop lying and be honest with me, and I needed to practice what
I preached.

When Veronica tried to act like I had
betrayed her, I reminded her of the fact that she had cheated on me
every day since I had known her, and that the only reason I even
met Lucy was because Veronica ran off with Kim, and then got
tattoos with Jasmine's and Urban's names, instead of mine, like she
had always promised. So she had no room whatsoever to act like I
was the one who betrayed her.

"Do you love Lucy?" Veronica asked me. She
knew to me the word love carries a lot more weight than to
Americans. German is a much more precise language than English.
Americans throw the word love around for everything: I love my
wife! I love all my friends! I love rock music! I love the rain! I
love comic books! I love peanut butter!

The word you use to describe your feelings
for your wife should not be the same word you use to describe your
feelings for peanut butter. In German, there are a dozen different
words that decribe varying degrees of liking something a lot.
Germans almost never use the word love, unless they mean a deep
romantic love. I have never told my parents I love them, because it
would sound melodramatic, inappropriate, and almost incestuous. In
German, you tell your mother that you hold her very dear, not that
you are in love with her.

"Yeah, I love her," I replied.

"Did you ever TELL Lucy you love her?"
Veronica asked.

"Well, yeah, of course I did."

I could tell that hurt Veronica's feelings.
Then I asked her: "And how many times have you told Kim or Jasmine
or all those other people you have cheated on me with, that you
love them?"

She didn't answer.

Later that day, Veronica texted me: "You
should bring Lucy here. We could all hang out together."

That seemed like a trap. I couldn't see how
anything good would come from that. I told Lucy what Veronica
wrote.

"Does she have drugs at her house?" Lucy
asked.

"Of course," I replied.

"Ok, let's go! But will you take me home if
I feel uncomfortable? I don't want to be stuck at her place."

When we arrived at her apartment on Brantley
Road, the three of us hung out on Veronica's bed. We chitchatted
for a while. After they did some drugs together, Lucy whispered to
me that she wanted to leave, so I took her back to the Super 8 on
Colonial.

"Well that was kinda awkward," Lucy said and
laughed.

Veronica had asked me to come right back to
her apartment after I dropped Lucy off. On our way to the Super 8,
Veronica texted me: "I want to fuck Lucy too."

I just shook my head in disbelief. What the
hell was wrong with that girl?

When Lucy and I arrived at the motel, I
parked the car and we talked for a while. She played around with
her phone, checked her make-up, fidgeted around with her purse, and
smoked a cigarette. But she wouldn't get out of the car. When
you're on drugs, and you're stuck in your own head, time just flies
by.

"I'm not sure if you realize this," I said,
"but we've been sitting here in the parking lot for about half an
hour now. What do you wanna do? Do you want me to come up to your
room? Or do you want to come home with me to Bonita Springs? Or
what's going on?"

Then Lucy gave me a mischievous look and
asked me to take her to Yogurt Mountain at the Edison Mall.

She showed me her favorite toppings and we
had a little competition, to see who could conjure up the most
delicious yogurt creation. Then she said she wanted to eat it
outside, by the little fountain.

While we sat on the bench, she spoonfed me
some of her yogurt. We had a lot of fun, talked and laughed.

Then Veronica called me: "Where the hell are
you? You've been gone for over an hour. It doesn't take that long
to drop Lucy off at the Super 8."

I told her we were at Yogurt Mountain. Lucy
was giggling in the background. Veronica got really upset and hung
up on me.

"I love our little date," Lucy said. "Do you
think you could ever have a moment like this with Veronica?"

"Probably not," I replied.

She was satisfied, and asked me to take her
back to the Super 8.

When I got back to Veronica's apartment, she
was livid: "What the FUCK were you doing with Lucy at Yogurt
Mountain? This shit gotta STOP RIGHT NOW! I don't want you hanging
out with her anymore! I'm putting a stop to this right NOW! You're
MY man!"

"Are you kidding me?" I yelled back. "All
you have been doing these past few days is tell me you want to fuck
this person and that person. You kept making out with some of them
right in front of me, and left me messages that you were going to
fuck them, and I shouldn't flip out about it. And you've been
fucking all these other guys behind my back. And now you're gonna
act like I'm doing something wrong when I hang out with Lucy? I
wouldn't even know her at all, if you acted like a decent human
being and not like such a total slut. You gotta make up your mind
if we're boyfriend and girlfriend or not. I'm sick of this crazy
shit with you. You can't have it both ways. You can't have your
cake and eat it too."

After a few minutes, she calmed down and
told me some dope boy called Norbert was going to come over in a
little while. She said she needed to talk to him about a business
deal. He was going to front her some drugs, and she would sell them
for a profit.

When Norbert got there, she told me she'd
have to talk to him in the bedroom.

"No fucking way!" I said.

"It's not what you think. I just gotta talk
to him. Don't worry, I'll leave the bedroom door open."

You couldn't really see the bedroom door
from the living room couch, so I got up every few minutes and
walked around the corner into the dining area, to peek through the
open door. I pretended to do something at the dining room table for
a minute, and then returned to the couch. I did that a few times. I
felt like an idiot. Then suddenly I saw that the bedroom door was
locked.

"What the FUCK?" I yelled and rattled on the
door knob. Veronica opened. "I fucking had it with this shit. I'm
outta here. Have a nice life," I said angrily.

"No, don't leave! Norbert is going right
now," she said.

After Norbert left, Veronica and I started
fighting with each other. We were both yelling.

"What the fuck are you doing with some
nigger in your bedroom?"

"I only called him to make you jealous,
because I was so jealous about you spending all that time with
Lucy. I just wanted to piss you off," she replied.

"Well, you did a good job," I said and
left.

The next morning she texted me at 8 am: "I'm
sorry. Will you please come back? I don't want to fight."

I replied that I was gonna head over to her
place right now. But she already fell back asleep and didn't see my
response. When I got to her apartment, Anita opened the door.

"Where's Veronica?"

Anita just pointed at Veronica's closed
bedroom door with a stoic look on her face. She didn't say
anything.

I opened the door, and found Veronica and
Norbert naked in bed together. They were both sleeping. Obviously
she had called him back after I left last night. They did drugs
together, had sex, and then passed out.