The Paranoid Schizophrenic

J.R. is the name he went by, which was short for Eugene Junior. He was a 31 year old paranoid schizophrenic. 31 doesn’t sound too old I realize…unless you were 15 at the time of the encounter, like I was. At the time I thought I was so mature for my age and that’s why he was interested in me. Not because he was a crazy pervert who liked young girls. I’m not sure which is worse, the fact that I dated someone twice my age who was certifiably crazy, or the fact that I lost my virginity to someone named Eugene. J.R. didn’t have a job, yet he had his own apartment. I was never quite sure how he was able to pay the rent. Back then I had a fear of confrontation, and therefore rarely questioned anything. I had my own theory, which was that he must somehow get money from the government for being too crazy to work. Even though he had a fairly large apartment, for some reason he liked to sleep in the closet. Instead of questioning this decision, since that wasn’t something I did, I went ahead and just slept on the floor of the closet with him. As you can probably guess, this closet was also the super romantic spot where we had sex for the first time. Definitely a bit of a disappointment to say the least.

I originally met J.R. through a mutual friend. She is the only reason I knew he was a paranoid schizophrenic, since he would never have talked about it. She also warned me about the way he could be if he stopped taking his medication, and how important it was he remained on them at all times. I can still recall the first time I realized just how much of a nutcase he could be when he stopped taking his medication. Case and point, my prom. J.R. was my date. It wasn’t the prom thrown by my school. It was an alternative prom thrown by the parents of some rich kid who didn’t appreciate that the school had an age limit for your date. This is how I was able to take J.R. even though he was far older than any prom date should ever be. I knew the night was doomed when I walked into his apartment dressed and ready to go, and he came out of the bathroom disheveled, shirt unbuttoned, hair a mess. He looked at me and said “HEEEEY” in a really loud crazy voice, then ran into the bedroom and slammed the door. Oh Holy Fuck, I thought to myself. I probably should have left him at home, because the night just went downhill from there.

There were poker tables set up at the prom, which I normally would have thought was a fun addition, and did until the moment I saw J.R. crawling around under all the tables looking for poker chips. In another glance, there was J.R. sliding onto the empty dance floor and jumping all over, literally flailing about, while everyone stared in disbelief. I started to pretend I didn’t know who he was after a while. In fact, I adopted a new date. I worked at a movie theater and my manager K.C. was there. He saved my night. He helped me get J.R. home, and the way he handled the situation made me develop a big crush.

Well after that night I decided it was time to never speak to J.R. again and rid my life of him. This proved to be rather difficult. After I told him it was over he became a bit of a stalker. I put a block on his phone number, but he was sneaky and would call constantly from payphones. I think the creepiest part was all of the bizarre mail I got from him. Every day a letter of some sort would arrive, and when I say “letter” I use that term very loosely. When I opened some of the envelopes that were in the ever growing pile of J.R. mail, I saw either pages of nonsense writing that made no sense, with sentences that were highlighted for no apparent reason. Or most of the time it would just be random pictures or words cut out of a magazine that were thrown together in an envelope. Looking back, a restraining order probably would have been a good idea. Eventually J.R went away, but I can’t say I’ve ever forgotten him or his craziness.