So there's this idiot see...

Okay, this is going to require a backstory that rivals the various prequels to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Ironic that.

Years ago, in a land of wonderment known as Denver, Colorado, United States, Earth, Milky Way, 97whichever... I met Gremlin. Gremlin was this cool tallish guy that had the neat ability to write. As someone who can draw but not write, that was of major interest to me. That we got on well and both enjoyed a lot of the same activities, most of which the statute of limitations is still in effect for, was a bonus.

We decided to form a company, his words and ideas, my art and ideas. I'd been trying to break into comics with the fervor of a water buffalo on roofies. He'd been sitting round writing things in notebooks whilst consuming vast amounts of coffee. So we had a good idea. Unfortunately, for a great many reasons, that didn't work out. Yet. We went our separate ways on several occasions for various reasons up to and including my wife being a total bitch. But, now that I've divorced her and married someone who would sooner give her a good cunt punt than look at her, Gremlin and I have resumed communications and are talking about working on a couple of things together. Which is to say I'm outsourced. Not your business, let's move on.

This is an acount of a few things that happened in the mean time. Or one of those things in particular. Pardon me if this whole thing gets a little circular.

A.D. 2002 Post Gremlin: Married for two years at this point I went to my friend Charon's place one evening and met a person. This person was Jason. Also called J. Also called DVS_Wraith. Sometimes referred to as DVS_Wrath (he hates that). This person seemed pretty cool, joined my gaming group and we got on pretty well. I found out he was a writer. I needed one of those.

We started hanging out quite a bit, working on several different projects and gaming a lot. I ran Palladium Games' Robotech based on the anime of the same name. He ran Star Wars 3rd Edition and Dungeons and Dragons 3rd edition. My first experience with D&D was caused by something my character did in Star Wars. Long story, another time...

A.D. 2003: My Daughter was born. We started working on a roleplayer based on the Transformers. We're geeks. I'm such a geek in fact that if you take a digi-photo of any G-1 Transformer's head, remove the color from the image, and send it to my e-mail, I'll post it and tell you what it's name is. We got hooked up with an agency that not only handled license agreements and such, but also, for an extra cut of profits, would supply printing facilities. This is helpful as all hell.

Hasbro, who own Transformers, had purchased Wizards of the Coast, the company that produces Star Wars the Role Playing Game and owns D&D. We were using their base system, as they had an open gaming license at the time. So, since Hasbro owned both the company we were going through for base rules, and the license we were attempting to expand for them, we thought this would be perfect. The stars were aligned, yadda yadda. Also of note: The Transformers 20th anniversary was the following year, so the timing was also perfect.

Also around this time I was having much trouble on the home front, and had turned to a girl online I'd met several years before, also in Charon's basement(when she was his girlfriend). Online because she had moved back to her native land of Texica after she and Charon dissolved. Why her? Why anybody? She was the one that had caught my attention when she had been locally available, and we'd kept in touch, that's why. Willingness to relocate was also a bonus. At some point in here DVS_Wishmaster goes and gets himself simultaneously arrested and banned from all Safeway grocery stores in the known universe for shoplifting. He has an ephedrine addiction and just can't seem to get help. That comes up again later, look for it by name.

A.D. 2004: All hell breaks loose. Early in the year, DVS_Wart and I learned that the license for Transformers was exhorbitantly priced, and while the agency that was negotiating on our behalf was offering to front half of it, we had no means whatsoever of coming up with the other seven-hundred and fifty thousand dollars american.

So we were screwed like two emus humping a lemur.(Just try to go to sleep tonight after that pleasant thought. >:)

In February of 2004 my wife moved out and took the baby with her. DVS_Waterboy moved into the basement. He had a job at the time, so I figured we could make rent. I was wrong. Things were going smashingly with Texas, we were all about each other and on the phone or online with each other every goddamned day. He had this hot little number in Vegas he'd met online that he was always talking to, at least when he wasn't breaking his supposed monogamy to spend time with his meth-head ex-girlthing Jen.

In March he stopped working, I didn't know that for a few weeks. You know, right around the time that my job dried up. What followed was a lot of starvation and barely surviving on hand outs from his mother and an occasional food delivery from King Soopers(Kroger) grocers paid for entirely by his then woman Raiem. Thanks, darlin', I'd have died otherwise.

Around April or May he got her to spring for a bus ticket so he could go to Vegas and see her and her kids. Kids he was hoping to inherit in an eventual marriage. That he hadn't bothered to see his own five year old son in more than six months seemed immaterial. So off DVS_Worthless went, he spent a sum total of days there that was short by Ronald Reagan era terms. He comes back, and he's just elated about the whole thing. Good on him,about time one of us had something good happen in their lives.

My divorce was taking forever to exist. This of course caused very occasional upset on the other end of my phone. But for the most part, my relationship, albeit remote, was going well. Texas was even talking about moving back out here as soon as court was done with. As an aside, it's probably a good thing that didn't pan out, she hates kids and I love mine.

At some point here he follows me into the old Atheist vs. Christian debate room on Yahoo!chat's horrible little service. I have a lot of 'friends' in there, and a lot more enemies. One of those friends is this cute little girl from up north named Sara. I say little girl because in 2004 I was 27, she was under 18. She flirted at me a lot, I explained to her that she didn't want to get involved with someone like me, and I told her why. DVS_Wrong was privy to this conversation and claimed to understand my stance. I would ruin someone like her, legal age or no. Watch for her, she comes up again.

In June of 2004 Raiem and the kids were getting all set to move here from Vegas. Which is to say that Raiem and her ten year old daughter Mookie T. AxeMurderer were getting all set for it, and Raiem's 14 year old son Bubba T. Undecided was busy trying to find a way not to. After nearly five full months of eating one small, gneneric, frozen pizza and a single cup of ramen with a lot of garlic powder in it a week, July was upon us and I had found work. Yay. The family move to my house was scheduled for mid-month, I told work I'd need the weekend off to drive down and drive back. I was wrong.

I had had it with losing, life has this tendency to suck at me. A fucking lot. So I was ready to fight the suckage on someone else's behalf because godmotherfuckingdammit someone I know is going to get happy. I don't get happy, that's my life, someone I know isn't, that's got to change, and if I know how to change it, I will. Here was the perfect opportunity. See, he was going to get on another bus, and spend more of her money to get him there so he could cram into the cab of a U-Haul with her and two kids to drive 700 miles. I did him one better, he and I would drive down, he and Raiem could drive the U-Haul, and one or both of the kids could hang on for dear life in my Firebird.

So, on the predetermined weekend, off we went. Raiem ran into snags with the U-Haul people and hadn't gotten a truck yet. We'd decided she would drive half way and we'd meet her there. Long story short, we met her in Vegas. Oh, halfway through UTAH! I learned that my water pump had ceased to be and had to do fifteen miles under the speed limit in order to keep from over heating.

When we got there, two things became apparent. The first was that there was still no truck and I'd driven 700 miles myself. The other was that Raiem took exactly five minutes forty-seven seconds to figure out which one of us was actually me. It turns out he gets women to like him by pretending to have a personality. Mine. In person when I'm actually physicly present, this is a difficult task. She liked me, her mom liked me, her dad who I'd heard nothing but bad things about liked me. So did the kids. Wow, am I cool or what?

The next morning, there was no truck either. By noonish someone in the southwest had relinquished their truck back to U-Haul who then provided it to Raiem, who brought it home for us to load. Then we changed a tire on her car. I melted the soles off of a pair of combat boots. DVS_WillWorkForCrack did a lot of griping and generally not much else.

We load the truck, then, after all this bullshit, we get underway. We head over to U-Haul, they load Raiem's car on a trailer, I get a goofy photo with the kids and we bail the fuck out of Las Vegas, Nevada, home of the whopping hot fucking sunlight. We did stop to get a photo of the Adult Emporium, where duhmerica goes for it's low priced adults.

Eventually, Mookie gets carsick, I fall asleep at the wheel for twenty-two miles, Bubba notices this, we stop for the night in Green River, UTAH! Which wouldn't have utterly sucked, except DVS_Whitelines decided that she'd get a better deal if he went inside with her to check in instead of letting her claim herself and two kids. But then, he's kindof an ass hat.

I lost my job even though I managed to call them from Green River, FUCKING UTAH! to tell them my water pump broke. We get home, get everyone settled in, and for the first time since Clinton was president someone cooked actual food in my house. Raiem as it turns out, can turn a budget like nobody' business and is a phenomenal cook to boot. Yummy.

Amazingly, I instantly aquired a new job, and Raiem was here a whole four days before finding work. Since DVS_ToothlessWonder was always having kidney problems due to drug abuse that he'd "finally beaten" we made the house deal that he could stay home and pick up the kids from school and maintain the cleanliness of the living environment. That of course translated in his distorted little mind to: Occasionally forget the ten year old girl exists, take the car wherever, usually to have meetings with his ex, sell goods stolen from the family, and use money stolen from the lockbox to purchase ephedrine.

Also, no matter where he was, he was wearing his Spider-Man jammies for the next three months. He might have showered once during that time. Probably not. He sat round watching the History Channel, playing his electronic pocket Yahtzee, wondering what Raiem and I were up to once he noticed that A: We both smoke, and B: we tend to run into each other what with living in the same house. This little theory developed that we were sleeping together. He wasn't the only one to come up with this.

Texas had also decided I was cheating on her with Raiem. See, Raiem is the polar opposite of my ex-wife. She likes role playing games(she's been playing EverQuest since it was in beta test), she likes all the same sci-fi as me, she's the best wing man I've ever had in Star Wars Rebel Strike, and she's a hell of a sniper covering my ass in several Bond games. Not that any of that had really come up yet, she avoided any room with DVS_Whattaguy like the plague he likely carried, which usually meant the living room where all the video games were.

Anyway, because she and I got along, and my daughter called her mommy the first time she met her, relations for me were strained with Texas. Eventually the entire thing blew up and ended, badly.

In late August, on the way to drop Bubba off at school, DVS_Where'sthebeef wrecked Raiem's car with everyone in it but me. Thankfully I was off work that day. He'd made a left turn into oncoming rush hour traffic. Luckily the car is a 1985 Dodge Diplomat, so for a minor bit of damage to the passenger side wheel well the oncoming plastic Mitsubishi paid with it's entirety.

So the police show up, Raiem gets a neat stretcher and the neck-brace of you-don't-get-to-move and a free ambulance ride for herself and the children. " Baby, I'm going to jail now." He apparently had a warrant for being DVS_WhereamI and got a free trip in a squad car. Again. The car was impounded.

I get this phonecall at home, it's Bubba. He tells me there was a car accident and that he and his sister are fine, but Raiem is being x-rayed all to hell and has a neck-brace. I freak the fuck out. Eventually they're released and they're going to try to walk home fifteen miles in town that they can't even find east in. Super. Especially fantastic news since my car had broken two days after we got them to Denver. That's a whole other story about an idiot and a 1978 Trans Am.

I adamantly decline that plan and tell them to take a cab, I'll pay it when they get here. Raiem and I have the only argument we'll have for the next year and a half. eventually, I get her to let me walk to the car's last known location and go pick them up. Snag, when I get to the end of that journey, the car has evaporated. I find a cop nearby, ask him, he gives me an impound number and verifies that one DVS_Where'smycar is indeed a known criminal and in jail. I walk the remaining six miles to the hospital, where, upon locating Raiem and the kids, I learn that they had decided to meet me at the car and gone on a quest in the wrong direction for most of the afternoon. We all hop a bus.

Still nothing from DVS_Who'syordaddy the next morning. After five hours of talking on the phone with various agencies throughout Colorado and possibly the world, we locate the car, which has Raiem's purse in it. It's been towed to the farthest point in town from us. Coruscant to Tattooine. So getting it that day is already out. Finally we hear from DVS_Wonderwhathe'sinfor at 2AM. He's been released and needs a ride. Call your mom. He walks home, from downtown that's at least 18 miles. Good. We go get the car the next morning. By 'we' I mean Raiem, myself, and Mookie T. Axemurderer.

After three bus changes and a hike that would frighten Grizzly Adams, we aquire the car, pay a fee, and leave. Except we can't leave, the battery is dead. Why? Because the back door on the impacted side no longer lines up with the light switch in the door jam. The tow truck guy jump starts us, away we go. On the way we realize that the newly indented fender is cutting into the spinning tire below it, good times.

We get home, I take a mallet and bang out the fender as well as I can. DVS_Whatishegoodfor looks on griping about how I'm going to screw up the car.

Now we cut to the chase on this.

By mid September 2004, Raiem had had it with DVS_Whybother and all but moved out of her room. I had explained on several occasions what he was doing wrong in his relationship, but that wasn't helping. This is when the blow up between me and my Texican happened. We were now noticing all the things he was stealing from us, and his advancing alcohol abuse.

I tried to help him, I really did. I offered support and a ride to AA, I took him to the emergency room four times because of his kidneys, which had experience 80% renal failure. Not only was he swiping items from all of us, such as two-hundred dollars worth of DVD's from Mookie, the ten year old girl he wanted to be his daughter, but he was also stealing our medications.

Take Raiem for instance, she has scoliosis, so she has some good pain killers. She also has chronic problems with nausea, so she has a liquid medicine that resembles Predator blood to stop her stomach muscles from spasming. All of her painkillers, all of the Paxil I had left over from three years prior, everything in the house went down his throat. Including the green muscle relaxing liquid made from bella donna.

Which is what caused his anuerism.

We had had it. Then, a few nights before halloween, I wake up after my nap to go pick Raiem up from work, and find a note folded up in my bed...

I found it folded around this:

Now, this didn't really frighten me, so much as concern me. He was asleep in another room(he'd moved upstairs out of the room they had shared) and I had to go pick Raiem up from work. I didn't leave the kids at home this time, I didn't know what he might do. So I packed them into the car, and went to get her. I showed it to her, asked her what she wanted to do and she mirrored my thoughts on the matter, this was enough, he had to go, and he had to go right the hell then.

When we got home we sent the children downstairs to Raiem's room and they locked the door. We were in the living room and I was telling Raiem that I hated having to do this to a friend, but that her and the kids had to be safe, and as I was starting to see my daughter regularly, I was worried what he might do to her.

In the middle of that conversation DVS_Warandpeace woke up and zombie shuffled his way down the hall, glanced at us, and moved toward the door to go smoke. I stopped him and we showed him the note. He asked us what the fuck it was, we told him that we couldn't live with this shit and he had to call someone and get out, he could come for his stuff later.

DVS_wherearemypants chuckled at us, said, " I see, so that's how it is." put his shoes on and left. Over the next few months he did everything from claim his now six year old son had died in a wreck, to claim he had only a few weeks to live. Pity ploys I suppose. He came and got his stuff, and broke in to steal some things of ours a few times.

A few years later we catch up to the present. It turns out that in 2005 he went back into Avs. C and hooked up with that girl Sara I'd mentioned. He then did a good impression of a good guy and eventually, in January of 2006 got her to come here to Denver to see him. He paid her no attention, called her fat, and then left her alone in an unfamiliar town because he'd "recently run into Jen again and was ready to make that work."

These are the sorts fo retards I end up dealing with. And now I feel better for not only expunging DVS_Warpath/Jason Nuttall/fuckhead from my life, but venting the whole thing out here once and for all.

As a follow up, Raiem and I did end up later becoming an item. In June of 2005 my divorce from the horrible yuckymonster was finalised.(another rant unto itself) On December 13th, 2005, Raiem and I got married. Life isn't all roses and cherry blossoms, but our relationship has been both steadily growing in intensity and the hottest damned thing I've ever been involved with.

Maybe I get happy after all...

~Swyndle