They were a great eighteen years. I had graduated high school, went fishing with the Hart Foundation, met the Descendents and etched a million fond memories into my little place in history. Though I wasn't necessarily afraid of Meghan normally, she had a look in her eyes the likes of which I have never seen so I armed myself with the nearest blunt object I could find, a rolling pin. Now I would never, EVER strike a woman, but hyperbolic I am not when I say I feared for my life.

I back peddled into the kitchen and Meghan followed, nostrils flaring and the aroma of unflushed commodes emanating from her body. As the late Gorilla Monsoon would say, soon I ran out of real estate and found myself backed into a corner. As she closed in on me like a shark circling it's prey, I begged off like Ric Flair after taking a martial arts combination from Ricky Steamboat. With a deafening roar, the beast raised her fist into the air and began swinging them down towards my body. When just inches away from my head and upper torso, she flew backwards as my friends Katie, Amanda and Kristin ran in for the save. It took six people to forcibly remove the slippery sea beast from the house and when they finally did, Meghan reemerged at the window like the wing creature from The Twilight Zone. The cold, animalistic stare she gave me as her breathe fogged that large beachfront window is something that will be etched into my brain until the day I die, but when the sprinklers came on she retreated. But she retreated with the slightest hint of a tear in her eye.

Now I consider myself to be a pretty strong guy when it comes to the females these days, but my eternal weakness will always be a crying girl and when I saw this tear in the eye of the monster, my spirits turned from victorious to miserable. I spent the next two hours with my friends being asked to recreate the flapping more times than I care to recall, but when midnight came around I knew what I had to do. Making up a story about having to get up early the next morning, I left the party early and stopped off at Walgreens to pick up a box of chocolates for my future wife. I paid for them and as Edwin McCain's tear jerking anthem "I'll Be" blared through my '88 Taurus stock speakers, I charged towards the undersea lair of my precious one. I knocked lightly so as to not awake her mother from hibernation and as Meghan opened the door, I braced myself for the worst.

"We need to talk JoeJoe" she said calmly. She invited me in and led me towards her room. I took a seat on her bed and as usual, it smelled as though she had a year's worth of feces hidden beneath her bed sheets. I extended the chocolates to her and without even looking up at me, she tore the box apart with her twisted claws and began shoveling the candy into her mouth. With fudge on her face and almonds shooting from her piehole as she spoke, she explained how much she loved caramel. As I sat in shocked disgust, she told me that she needed to know what happened on the beach last night.

I honestly wanted to hurt her after everything she had done to me. My experience with the stranger from Kentucky taught me that I didn't need to settle for someone who wouldn't treat me right and I wanted to make Meghan jealous. I told her everything. I told her that I genuinely liked the girl more than I had liked any new companion in a long time. I told her that I didn't return her pages because I would rather spend time with my date and I told her that under the light of the Florida stars, I ejaculated on a stranger. Meghan began to cry.

Crying at a time like this was completely ridiculous I thought. She had spent the fourteen months not wanting me, and the second I found someone else who made me happy she suddenly started to have feelings for me. Guys, that's the way women like this ALWAYS operate so please don't make the same mistake that I did and continue to let it happen. As she cried, I put my arm around her. Then, suddenly the tears subsided as she turned to me and asked a question that shocked me.

"JoeJoe...do I...turn you on?"

"JoeJoe...do I...turn you on?"

"JoeJoe...do I...turn you on?" she asked with a crooked smile.

"What?" I asked.

"Do I...turn you on?"

"Hell yeah you do!" I shouted with the kind of enthusiasm that could only come from a child so brainwashed that he actually stroked his wand late at night to the thought of a buck nude girl nicknamed "The Pelvis".

"Do I JoeJoe?" she said. As she giggled, she slowly began snaking up her shorts until they reached the very top of her milky white thighs. Lipids had pillaged her thighs and her upper legs were so pale and covered in varicose veins that they looked like a sheet of college ruled loose-leaf.

Now this girl was such a prude that she wouldn't even consider so much as touching a man's tubing until marriage she claimed, but I was enchanted as I gazed longingly at her body. "Are you going to see your new girlfriend anymore JoeJoe?" she asked in her "sexy" voice which sounded eerily like Dikembe Mutombo.

"Never again Meggie" I shouted as hormones raced through my body. "Besides, she went back to Kentucky".

"She lives in Kentucky?" Meghan asked.

"Yeah" I replied. Instantly Meghan puller her shorts back down to her knees and sat up.

"Will you be my girlfriend?" I asked her, finally feeling as though I had the upper hand.

"No, I like someone else, I'm out of your league JoeJoe".

"No, I like someone else, I'm out of your league JoeJoe".

"No, I like someone else, I'm out of your league JoeJoe."

Once again I was devastated, wondering what I had to do to ever win over the girl of my dreams. "I think it's time for you to go now JoeJoe" she said, dialing Meech's number as she forcibly shoved me out of the door.

That night, Ken, my friend A.J. and Amanda and I went on a mission at 4am. None of us liked MEECH in the least bit so we did what any other group of eighteen year olds with a grudge would do...we went to Super Wal-Mart and bought four dozen eggs. We drove by her house three times that evening, dismantling her car with yoke. When the smoke cleared, we had caused an estimated $600 worth of damage to her pain job with $3.50 worth of eggs. It truly was a glorious night.

The next day, Meghan called an emergency meeting all of my friends, complete with a podium and poster board exhibits. I was the only one who showed up. Her entire spiel was ridiculous, bantering on about ow justice must be served and using a tiny notepad to take down "clues". Unenthused, I said I didn't know who did it. Meghan then looked at me and said "Well tell the gang that we are splitting up the cost of repair and all chipping in".

"The Gang" didn't like Meghan or Meech and laughed heartily when I relayed the message, but secretly I too was growing sour with them. I couldn't get out of my head what Meghan said about liking someone else, and since my group of friends were the only males every around the slimy porpoise, they ALL became a suspect in my eyes.

And suspect number one? Ken. "Kenboy" as Meghan called him was amongst the only males in town who could actually stand her. From time to time they would speak on the phone or hang out, and it made me furious. Often she would call Ken and my personal line and I would answer ecstatically telling her that I was hoping it was her. "I was calling to talk to Kenboy" she would say. When the three of us would go out, she would always slither herself beside Ken at the movies, in the restaurant or in our secret spot under the bridge.

You see, downtown became quite a Mecca for us during our senior year. Whenever we all just needed to relax, we buy a few packs of Black & Milds and a case of beer and head down to the park on the river. We had one special spot in the park where we would go to be at ease from the other park visitors, the heckling police and the rest of the world around us. Here we could drink because we were so out of view that if the cops saw us underage drinking, we could simply nudge the case into the ocean. This spot wasn't easy to get to. One had to walk through a miniature forest on the edge of the river and then cross a thin, uneven path of rocks emerging from the water. Once the path was crossed we climbed two six foot stone slabs and then we were there. It was the support beam of the bridge which stood above us, and once we had reached the platform suspended fifteen feet in the air, we could see the entire city from that secluded little spot. We would sit up their for hours and some of my fondest memories were born on that cold concrete. However, soon Ken, Meghan and I would all begin going there together.

Whenever we would go, the sea beast would always try to cuddle with Ken. It made me ill to see and though Ken didn't look like he was enjoying himself, I began to dream about casting him twenty feet down into the ocean below. It got to the point where I demanded that Ken stopped talking to her. I secretly called his pager company and blocked her pages from arriving and when I wasn't going to be around the house, I would covertly pull the phone cord from the back of the phone so that if she called, he wouldn't know. When she began relaying invitations to Ken through me, I wouldn't tell him and all things considered, I was turning into a very, very disturbed man.

The next weekend my parents were heading out of town for the weekend and I decided that I would invite her over for a home cooked meal by yours truly. She gleefully accepted and as I told her how much I looked forward to sweeping her off of her feet, she said "Hooray!" and said that she was looking forward to an evening alone at the Bower household.

When she arrived, I was dressed in my finest clothing and pointed her towards the dining area where our fanciest dinner settings awaited. "Dinner is just about ready, why don't you make yourself comfortable. Oh...and by the way, you look beautiful tonight" I said confidently.

"Where's Kenboy, I only came over because I thought he was going to be here?"

"Where's Kenboy, I only came over because I thought he was going to be here?"

"Where's Kenboy, I only came over because I thought he was going to be here?" she howled.

While many aromas filled the air that evening from Chef Bower's kitchen, musty urine was not one of them as the departed before I could even pull the food from the oven.

The next few weeks were more of the same. Meghan and I still spoke for hours each night, but the sea beast still wanted nothing to do with me when she surfaced. The most notable event of this time period was a contest between Ken and I in which we put up $25 each in a duel of who could go the longest without wand-stroking. When the sea beast found out about this, she began teasing me. She would call late at night in her sexiest voice and asked how I was holding up. Truth be told I was cheating in the contest from day one anyway, but I would inform her that it has been rough. Then it would happen.

In a voice that could only be described as a cross between the mating call of the Wooly Mammoth and a seal slowly being killed by a Killer Whale, she would moan and say "Ohhh JoeJoe....OHHHHH JoeJoe". I was disturbed and entranced at the same time and this continued for several nights. Then, just when I thought that my existence couldn't become any more humiliating, it happened.

Because Ken's phone line in our room wasn't working due to me coyly pulling the plug out of the back, he ventured out into the living room late one night to make a call. Two phones existed on our parents phone line, the portable which I was on and the old fashioned rotary phone in the kitchen. As Ken reached down and slowly lifted the receiver, what he heard next must of surely been to the catalyst in turning him into the full fledged homosexual that he is today. "Ohhhh JoeeeJoeee....Oh JoeeJoeee that feels SOOOO GOOOD".

Ken tells me that he froze like a dear in headlights upon hearing those words. However, he managed to unfreeze himself in time to wake my parents and let them listen as well. When I emerged from the humid garage late that night, dripping in sweat once my phone call had come to an end, there stood my Mom, Dad, brother and sister laughing hysterically at me. It was horrible and I have still yet to hear the end of the jokes nearly four years later.

The more things changed, the more they stayed the same. Every time I swallowed my fears and told the docile beast how I felt, she would shoot me down as if my feelings were the last thing that she was concerned about. However, if I so much as looked at another girl she would be furious. But luck was about to change for Jay "Don't call me Joey I'm not a baby kangaroo" Bower.

Ken and I were working at the finest restaurant in town at the time, an establishment rated one of the five best restaurants in Florida. The money to be made at that place was ridiculous as Ken and I would often bus a three hour shift at dinner time and walk with $150. When we began serving, we could often walk with $300 on a strong night if we sold enough bottles of wine. We were horrible waiters and only had the hardest serving job in town to get because Ken was dating a hostess whom the manager lusted after, therefore he wanted to keep an eye on us. Though we weren't fit to work there at first, we did for nearly 18 months using our ineptitude to win over the hearts of everyone, including a young woman who worked across the street as an Estee Lauder girl. She began to sit in my section every time I would work and we began to really hit it off. So much in fact that I asked her to go out with me for dinner one night. She gleefully accepted and I was thrilled to finally be buying dinner for a non-seabeast whom I wouldn't have to feel embarrassed about taking into public. Unfortunately for me, MEECH also worked in the same restaurant as Ken and I and watched over my torrid affair like a buzzard.

When I arrived for my first date with this lovely young tart, I saw something in the parking lot that shook me to my core. Parked directly beside Marcy's car was the seabeastmobile. However, Meghan wasn't inside of it nor was Marcy in her car. As I walked in, I saw Marcy waving towards me. As I sat down, I looked up to see Meghan sitting directly across from me giving a look so cold that it would turn even Robert Stack to ice.

She never uttered a word during our meal, just sat there staring with a deranged look in her eyes. I never told Marcy about this and somehow managed to pull a good enough conversation that a second date was arranged. I never breathed a word of the location to anyone inside of the restaurant for fear that Meech would overhear, so an hour before we were set to meet I called Marcy and informed her of where we would be meeting. When I arrived at The Olive Garden to meet her, I breathed a sigh of relief as the sea beasts vehicle was nowhere in site. As we were seated, I looked up and saw the cold glare of the monster looking me dead in the eyes from across the room. This happened again on our next date and the next, and before long Marcy started to catch on and I had to tell her the truth. 

Irate that the porpoise was beginning to ruin my romance with Marcy, I drove to her house late one evening to confront her. When I arrived, she opened the door as if nothing had happened and invited me in. As I entered her room and the scent of Raw sewage punched me in the face, I looked up to see her with her arms open. I approached her and she wrapped her arms around me tightly. I did the same and five minutes later, we were still hugging each other tightly. Now I didn't know whether to make a move or tap out, but I was desperately cocking my body to the side to avoid her noticing my sea beast induced erection. But then she did something that i will never, ever forget as long as I live. Her lips touched my neck and to this day I haven't a clue what she was trying to do. With lips as open as a large mouthed bass, she touched them to my neck. They stayed their like a leech for minutes and saliva literally streamed down my neck. It was at this moment that I finally started to realize that she wasn't right for me.

"JoeJoe, you're not going to see Marcy anymore are you?" she squealed.

I tried desperately to break the hug but she wouldn't release so I pulled my arms apart with such force that she went flying towards the floor.

"Yes, Yes I am." I said. "And you're being a real cunt."

Once again, the sea beast began closing in on me with a murderous look in her eyes.

To be continued…..

Copyright © 2005 Derek Burgan. All rights reserved.