The Year That Pretty Much Sucked

By Eric Tomeo

A young man deals with a break up of mythic proportions and a crazy old boss, but learns what true love is and who his true friends are.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 30, 2011
• ISBN: 9781257271726

Book preview

the year that pretty much

sucked.

eric tomeo.

©eric tomeo.

all rights reserved.

eISBN: 978-1-25727-172-6

dedication::

I could dedicate this book to those great

men who fought in the trenches of fort the

tower with me, or those who talked with me

on the phone at 3 am, because I was losing

it, or those who are still willing to do

that for me, but I think it is more

appropriate to dedicate it to those who

raised me. If they had never decided that

it was a good idea to raise me up right,

this year would quite possibly have ended

tragically. Seeing no purpose or point,

would have been absolutely devastating to

a young man in my position. So the

foundation was laid long ago, one that

I could stand upon and fight off the bad

feelings with a little (a lot) of help

from my friends.

So this book is dedicated to mom, dad and

the Beatles, too.

chapter one::

Humility was never something I had to strive for in life. It seems that when you have a low opinion of yourself in the first place, people tend to assume you are just being humble when you say ‘I am really not that cool.’ They think to themselves, ‘that guy is cool because he pretends like he isn’t.’ All the while you’re saying to yourself, ‘I wish I could be better. I wish that people would like me.’ I guess that is all a part of growing up, though. We all feel awkward when we are jr. high, right? I guess I just extended the awkward feelings straight through to college. Maybe everyone does that. Perhaps that is just the way life is.

I hope that I am not alone. I hope that as you read my story, it connects with you somehow. I hope you say to yourself, ‘this makes sense.’ I hope this for a simple reason: if it does not, there is no point in reading this book. You might as well go and clean your room or paint the garage that you have been meaning to paint. Perhaps you could ride your bike or bake some cookies rather than waste another moment of your time on me.

Perhaps that is just my ‘humility’ showing through. Maybe it is this fear of vulnerability, my insecurity, that is trying to scare readers away.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I believe that if you continue to read this book you will gain something from it. Of course that something could be a lifelong disdain for my writing and me. Heck, it could be a life-long disdain for all people and all literature. However, if you read closely enough, you just might gain some hope that will carry you through a hard time. You may get some laughs or you may shed some tears. You may come out thinking that the world is a great place. You may come out with the feeling that Eric Tomeo is just a cry-baby and a sissy. If that is the case, send me a self-addressed stamped envelope and I will send myself to you through the mail and sock you one in the jaw, just to prove how manly I really am.

Of course, that last sentence was a lie, of sorts. You could say it was just a hyperbole. But I will not really do that because (a.) I would not fit in an envelope (even one that is self-addressed and stamped), (b.) I have never really hit anyone before and (c.) I am not that manly. However, I do want to stress that this book is a non-fiction book. That means it is a real story. Everything in this book is accurate. I may embellish at times. I may exaggerate and I may change names or places, but I will never lie outright.

I also want to stress that this story is not told objectively. It is told completely from my side of things, but I figure that objectivity is impossible no matter what story you tell and when you are telling a story that you are closely involved with, it is nearly impossible to not be completely subjective. Besides, this is a story that is supposed to be full of emotion and heartbreak and hope. To tell it objectively would ruin the whole point.

If I were writing a personal ad it might run something like this: SWM: hot! Sizzling hot! Tall, dark, and downright gorgeous. Hobbies: staring into your eyes and watching you melt and, of course, the obligatory, long walks on the beach." However, everyone knows that anybody who is willing to reduce themselves to a single paragraph is in a desperate place. After writing the first draft, being insecure like all of us are, they start to embellish and add nice things that they think the opposite sex is looking for. Soon the whole paragraph is a lie.

Not only that, but the paragraph is based on a person’s perceptions of what someone of the opposite sex might like. However, these perceptions are seldom right because men do not get women and women do not get men.

Men take pride in that fact. If you walk into their poker party late at night, with a cigar in his mouth and a beer in his hand, you might hear Slim or Johnny or Chuck announce to the rest of the group, Yes sir, I do not understand the fairer sex.

Women take the opposite approach. If you walk into their beauty salon in the afternoon, with curlers in her hair and the latest People magazine in her hand, you might hear Sally or Janet or Christine say to her hairdresser, I have guys all figured out. If you stayed for the rest of the conversation though, you would find that the lady that made this claim is continually frustrated with the way men act. (If there are any females out there reading this, just know that we men make sense to ourselves, so stop worrying about our sanity and just relax in the fact that you cannot understand the manly mind, just as much as the manly mind can not fathom the depths of the woman’s knowledge, wisdom and intuition.)

So, because the paragraph I would write in a personal ad would be marred by the fact that I do not like myself enough to be honest and would be trying to impress, not just a person I do not know, but a person I would not even understand if I did, the paragraph I wrote is a complete fabrication. I am a single white male and I am super hot (you might say that this is a hyperbole as well) but everything else is made up. I am pretty darn white, if you ask me, and the average male and I can see eye to eye.

However, I do not like staring at people (even the average man). It makes me feel a bit awkward. In fact a lot of times, I am pretty shy with someone I do not know and look around at the scenery a lot before glancing at them for a quick moment while they speak.

I don’t believe I have ever taken a long walk on the beach with a female and I don’t plan on it for one simple reason: beaches suck.

I do not even know how this whole ‘beach craze’ started, but it is like someone thought up the stupidest thing you could ever do and sold the idea to Florida. They said, Here’s a great idea to get tourists into your state. You have lots of water around you that smells rank and tastes bad. So, since you can not sell it in bottles or use it in any other useful way, we could have people swim in that shark infested water that dries out their skin and makes them smell like dead fish. Then when they are done with that they could roll around in the sand. Sure the sand will coat their bodies like an unwanted rash and get in everything they own, but it will be fun. Just add in crabs, jellyfish and undertows and people will eat up the idea.

If the girl I am dating wants to take a walk on the beach, I’ll just call up David Hasselhoff to take her for me.

I have tried my best to keep this manuscript away from the usual personal ad traps so you should learn more about me as this story drags on (Dragons!) and I hope you like what you see. But remember, since this is not a personal ad or pathetic fabrication to get you to like me, you might not like me at the end. So ladies and gentlemen if you ever feel like you hate me or any other character in this story, remember we are real people with real feelings and Jesus tells us to love one another. So don’t send anybody mail bombs or nasty letters.

chapter two::

If this were a romance novel I might pick a sultry setting like Rome or the high seas to place my two star crossed lovers whom, of course, would have saucy names like Lucious Leroy and Vivacious Victoria. It would begin with a description of our hero, Leroy.

His long wavy hair reached down past his shoulders and the wind ran its cold hand through his locks like Leroy’s ship cut through the smooth seas. He steered his ship with two massive arms that rippled and bubbled with every slight twitch of the wheel.

Of course, this description would be my estimation of what every woman’s dream guy would look like and would most likely miss the mark. It would seem grotesque and stupid to most women because I do not understand them. However, I think we all ready went over this in the last chapter.

Victoria would be just as ideal and they would meet, fall in love way too quickly, confess this passionate love to each other and consummate the relationship with some pretty steamy vignettes.

This, however, is not a romance novel. If you are a 37 year old single lady and that was what you were hoping this would be, I am sorry to disappoint you. Now may be a good time to start on that laundry that has been calling your name or to start writing that personal ad you have been meaning to make up.

The hero of this story is not the ideal. He is not really even a hero. He is me: a slightly odd, insecure college student who fell in love with an equally imperfect girl.

The setting for our story is not as glamorous as the high seas that Lucious Leroy navigates daily. It all takes place in the city of Cincinnati.

It has come to my attention that Cincinnati has become a kind of joke to our great country. Occasionally when talking to a friend about an exciting place someone might say, I went to Atlanta the other day. It was awesome! I mean it was no New York, but it was lots of fun. Cincinnati gets the opposite. Dude, I went to Indianapolis the other day. It was horrible. Don’t get me wrong it was no Cincinnati, but still.

Cincinnati does share some characteristics with Rome, though (like the fact that it sits on seven hills). So if you believe, in your heart of hearts, that Cincinnati is not a good enough town to set my story in, than imagine the story is set in ancient Rome.

Of course you will then have to apply your imagination more than those who just read the story how it happened because you will have to eliminate all references I make to pop culture, electricity and the United States. But if you insist, I give you the permission to do that. Just don’t write it down and sell it. I will sue you and you will give me all the money you made.

Anyway, you all ready know my name is Eric. If you did not know that you have not been paying attention and I will implore you to go back to the title page and read all of this again. This time read with comprehension. This tip could save you a lot of time. It is possible to read an entire book and not even know what happened or who was in it or what the plot was. Then, you have to read the entire book over again to see what you missed the first time.

However, if you all ready know who I am, let me introduce you to June. June is the other half of this delightful love story.

I don’t think that if I wrote out a description of Vivacious Victoria June would match the description exactly (of course, I know she doesn’t match the description of Leroy), but she would be pretty close (to Victoria’s description, not Leroy’s). June was incredibly beautiful. Her hair was long and brown, which complimented her sometimes blue, other times green eyes nicely. If I had to say what I found most attractive about June: it was those eyes. Then again, they were what I had always looked for: eyes that peer innocently and, yet, powerfully, wonderfully, beautifully.

I shy away from eye contact usually. I guess I feel almost guilty taking pleasure in a person’s attractive features.

We have been taught to respect a person for who they are, not what they look like on the outside. In order to accomplish this difficult task, we must ignore a person’s outer blemishes to see the beauty within. However, that person’s beauty must also be ignored. If we do not ignore the beauty along with the flaws, we will start noticing at least the absence of physical depravity, if not the ghastly presence of it. Soon we find ourselves focusing only on the cover and never reading the contents. So if there is a feature we find especially attractive (not to mention especially repulsive), we must ignore it all together and only focus on those parts of a person that do not really interest us. That helps us to fulfill our civic duty: to look only on the inside. (A bit Burgeronesque? I know.) The problem is that people want to be looked