I have known the Golfer for about a year now, I guess. He is, I think, twenty-six years old. He was married right out of high school for seven years to what I have been told was a very crazy person but that's really all I know about that. He moved down to the city that I live in about a year ago to be with this girl who seemed all right the couple times I met her. Very laid-back pot-smoking individual living hippie-style with a bunch of other people. We'll call this girl Sea. He was living with Sea (and the other people that lived in the house) and working down here and he somehow managed to drive Sea away by being too cuddly. Seriously. That's pretty much how he explained it to me.
As a result of the fact that the Golfer was living with Sea when they broke up he came to "temporarily" live on our couch until he could "find his own apartment" because the Golfer is my roommate's brother. So the Golfer moved out of Sea's house and onto our couch. For a while after he spent a bunch of time "taking rides" with a chick that he was working with that I will call Elle. I met Elle a couple of times and she seemed okay but was obviously much more interested in dating the Golfer that he was in dating her. And by that I mean that the Golfer liked hanging out with her but didn't want to date her and was totally oblivious of the fact that Elle wanted to date him. So he hung out with this Elle chick for a couple of weeks until he started something with another coworker whom I will call Thorn. There's a reason that I decided this particular person's codename should be Thorn and I'm sure you'll figure out why as you read on.
So let me tell you what I know about Thorn given that I can't recall having met her (and I don't think I actually have met her at any point). Thorn is twenty-one and so just a little older than myself being as I am almost twenty-one at the time of this writing. Before he started dating her the Golfer already knew two things about her that would have made me not want to date her at all. Number one, Thorn has cancer. Not cancer in the way that I jokingly say that all of your cells are cancerous but cancer as in she has a tumor growing in one of her lymph nodes or something to that effect. Number two, Thorn also has Multiple Sclerosis. They say that the younger you are diagnosed the worse your MS is. I have personal experience with MS as my mother was diagnosed when I was ten and my aunt a few years later. My mother was diagnosed in her forties, had good health insurance to cover medications and the thousands of dollars worth of injections she does every year and she's still been noticeably affected by her MS. I cannot imagine being with a twenty-one-year-old who was diagnosed with MS. Especially not because she was diagnosed because she started falling.
So, maybe I'm a terrible person but I wouldn't have started dating Thorn. But the Golfer did. And she already seemed to have some relationship issues. Around the time they started dating she had just taken a restraining order out against her previous boyfriend whom she had been living with. Which, to me, was an obvious sign of trouble. You know, one of life's roadsigns that states "Whoa there, use your big head to think about this one" but should really be accompanied Ian McKellan's voice as Gandalf saying "You shall not pass." But at first Thorn seemed weirdly... generous by buying the Golfer a fancy phone
and putting it on her phone plan and such. But by the time their two-week anniversary rolled around her bitchy insanity started to become clear. And if I weren't a terrible person and had actually started dating her it would have been at this point that I stopped. When people who aren't ridiculously wealthy, fabulously beautiful celebrities are dating and one of them is insane at least one of them is going to end up hurt so it's best to end it as quickly as possible. The Golfer did not do this.
Instead he spent a lot of time at her place (when she had moved in somewhere her ex was not inhabiting) and not just while she was there. He started to get all buddy-buddy with her roommate(s?) and their friend(s?) because they liked Magic
and the Golfer does as well. He'd even sleep in her room when she was not there. This seems a little creepy to me but I guess that could just be my opinion. He announced one day that he was going to move in with her since he was spending so much time over there anyway. But he was not officially going to move in until the beginning of the next month. Before that could happen Thorn got cold feet or something and decided she needed to go and stay with some people (and not just some people but from what I understand these people were restraining-order-ex's family) to sort out her feelings. Then the Golfer announced that he would not be moving until August at the earliest (it being June still at this point).Things sort of seemed better between Thorn and the Golfer after she "thought about things". For a few minutes, anyway, because it was just after that things took a turn for the worse. Thorn went to go and get a IUD (a internal contraceptive device if you're not familiar) implanted upon the orders of a doctor different than her usual one. So after getting the IUD implanted Thorn went off to work and because she didn't want to lose any money by leaving she suffered through painful cramps and bleeding during her shift and returned to the emergency room afterward. It turned out that she'd had a spontaneous abortion because that's what happens if you're already pregnant and you have a IUD implanted. Despite the fact that she supposedly knew about it the doctor that ordered the IUD did not tell Thorn that she was already pregnant. I don't know about you but I feel like if I was a doctor giving orders for a patient who was already pregnant to get a contraceptive device implanted it might occur to me the idiotic redundancy of the situation. How about you?
The part that struck me as weirdly out of place was that when the Golfer relayed this information to me he told me about the spontaneous abortion first and then told me that wasn't even the worst part. He interrupted himself then to assure me that it was his and that wasn't the bad part. He then explained about how the doctor that ordered the IUD supposedly knew about the pregnancy but didn't tell Thorn because she knew from her chart that she'd recently had a painful miscarriage and didn't think that she would want it. The part that struck me as weirdly out of place? The assurance that it was, of course, his. I think if I were in that situation worrying about whether it was mine or not (as it was already gone anyway) would be sort of low down on my list of priorities. I'd be thinking a lot more about suing the doctor because hey, that is what malpractice insurance is for, right? I certainly wouldn't be thinking about naming the dead fetus or getting my skin permanently etched with ink to commemorate the life (if you can call it that) of the fetus.
So while the Golfer was busy designing a tattoo and thinking about suing doctors another thought had occurred to me. What if Thorn didn't have a spontaneous abortion because of the IUD? What if Thorn had gotten an abortion and made up the crazy story about the IUD and the emergency room visit and the doctor who knew she was pregnant because she, Thorn, didn't want to be pregnant and didn't want to tell the Golfer? I was almost inclined to believe that there was a sue-worthy doctor oversight because that somehow seemed more acceptable to me than the idea that someone crazy enough to make up a story like that to cover up getting an abortion existed. So my mind went with the slightly less insane option.
Meanwhile in Wonderland where it's starting to look more and more like Thorn lives, Thorn pushes the Golfer away and her ex-boyfriend (of the restraining order, if you recall) comes to stay with her for a while. At first it seems like she and the Golfer are merely fighting as a result of the emotional trauma that has happened but then, despite a lack of status-change on Facebook (a ever-important relationship indicator in this day and age), it seemed like they were not dating. There was nothing particularly definite about it but it seemed like it had been just a few days between my wondering whether they were still together at all and the Golfer getting a date invitation from a dating website. When did the Golfer sign up for a dating website? I have no idea. What possessed him to want to get involved with another girl so soon? Well, let's just say I don't think those were thoughts that went through the head he keeps on his shoulders (apparently for decoration).
Not only did the Golfer get a date but he got a date invitation from a hot Asian chick. The Golfer is, admittedly, not the hunkiest studmuffin in the world despite the fact that you might get that impression from his string of girls. Now, when a hot chick who is on a dating website invites a guy who isn't swimming in riches to go on a date it should be obvious that there is something about this girl that makes her undesirable for dating. And the first time the Golfer met up with the hot Asian chick (whom I will be calling Ruska because despite the fact that she is extremely Asian she has this really obviously inappropriate and incredibly Russian name) in a sort of pre-date thing he found out what it was. Ruska, whose age I do not know but is (hopefully) at least mid-twenties, has two children. One child is four and the other one is just a year old. During the pre-date she invited him to go on a second non-date ostensibly to see if her younger child was going to be okay going to movies. But this was not a date. This was a test. I even flat-out told him that it was not a date but a test.
Now, the Golfer claims that he is not looking for a serious relationship especially not after the thing with Thorn. And yet despite knowing that the non-date with Ruska and her children was a test the Golfer went anyway. Maybe I wasn't clear enough with my warning about the test. Going meant he passed the test. So while he may have verbally said to Ruska that he just wanted to be "friends" or something and that he wasn't looking for a serious relationship the signals he sent to her by passing the test were quite the opposite. Going to a kid's movie with someone else and their children and being cool about it sends long-term relationship signals whether you like it or not. Regardless of the signals the Golfer sent Ruska sent some of her own as well and not just by being the one to initiate contact and set the date. The Golfer and Ruska and her older child (the younger one ended up not even going despite being the pseudo-reason for the outing) were the only ones in the theater and the kid wanted to be all grown up and sit a few rows in front of them. So the Golfer had a little x-rated Winnie the Pooh experience.
To continue with the mixed signal-sending the Golfer has gone to hang out with Ruska on multiple occasions even though they're just supposed to be friends and he isn't looking for a long-term relationship. Not only that but the Golfer had Ruska (and her children) over to our (and by "our" I mean mine and my actual roommate's not the Golfer's because he's just supposed to be crashing with us "temporarily"... since March) apartment on at least two occasions while I was home. This is wrong not just because of the mixed signals thing but also because not only is our apartment not particularly child-friendly but also because the Golfer sleeps on our couch and doesn't have a room. My roommate was not very happy when he found out that the Golfer took Ruska into his room and did ... I don't know because they shut the door one of the days that she was over (the day when she just brought the one littler kid who seemed to be sleeping both when they arrived and left).
Meanwhile in Wonderland Thorn has apparently decided that she still wants to be together with the Golfer. At this point the Golfer is not so sure he wants to be together with Thorn and it might be that sanity is kicking in or maybe it's the "friendship" with Ruska that's giving him courage but he basically tells Thorn he doesn't want to be with her anymore. Despite this (because she lives in Wonderland, after all) Thorn text-messages him constantly, sends him messages on Facebook and whatever else and perhaps they even have face-to-face conversations. Having read some of their text messages her tone in these conversations varies wildly between sweet and loving and all "I love you and want to be with you, the Golfer" to angry, resentful, mistrustful and quite "I want to cut off your balls and roast them over a fire because everything bad that has ever happened in the world is ALL YOUR FAULT!" Not only that but Thorn is trying every manipulation card in the book. Up to and literally including a manipulation ("greeting") card she gave him to tell him about what for the moment I will call the surprise plot twist.
Because the card just so happens to be sitting on one of the end-tables in my living room I will include the complete text here:
"As long as I have you, no problem will ever be too big, no day will ever be lonely, no smile will ever go unshared... because as long as I have you, I'll always have everything I need to be happy." That was just the text that was printed on the card though the underlined words were done by Thorn. On the inside cover in her hand Thorn writes: "Whats Meant to be will always Find away~" On the opposite page underneath the inner printed text Thorn writes (note that "Claire" and the replacement of -illegible-
Oh yes, you read that correctly, in Wonderland through the magic of plot twists dead fetuses become live festuses again. I know that was a bit crude but I feel I can be nothing but blatant in the face of that reality. Because that seems to be the reality. The medical explanation for this being that she did not have a spontaneous abortion but rather the bleeding was from her body rejecting the IUD and she was still pregnant with this child they'd been mourning. I feel like it has been long enough that she may have noticed prior to saying anything at all to the Golfer. So why wait until now to tell him? Maybe because she wanted to go to the doctor first? But she didn't wait for the test results. So maybe because of Ruska? Or maybe she got pregnant again (possibly from the restraining-order ex she was seeing again)? Or maybe she's not pregnant at all because she's been threatening to get an abortion (after mourning this clump of cells)? I have no idea. Because this is now. Right now it's a soap-opera choose-your-own-adventure of futures.
Oh wait, one more thing, because a good soap opera does not stand for just one major plot twist. Sometimes they're super-sneaky and throw two major plot twists together. Because the morning the Golfer comes home to report about Thorn's apparently pregnant state he also asks my roommate (the Golfer's brother) how he feels about being an Uncle? Which is confusing because the Golfer and roommate's older brother has three children. But then the Golfer added the single word "twice" and his meaning was suddenly, weirdly clear, because as it turns out not only is Thorn still pregnant but Ruska is pregnant as well.
Today's lesson: Condoms are cheaper than children.
What happens now in the exciting new adventures of The Man Who Golfs in Thunderstorms? I really have no idea but I think I can feel some August thunderstorms brewing.
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