Operation Secret Eck-STRAC-shun

Todd Fox, the only picture
I could find.

[For an update on this ongoing saga, read this post.]

The whole situation was fucked up so bad from the very
beginning that any amount of money I "owed" later on
was really irrelevant to how messed up things had gotten
and why I felt it easier to fuck off the way I did.


Here's the story from the beginning:

I hadn't talked to Todd Fox for several years. He
thought he was cool... finally... after years of
sucking on my dry teats pretending that hanging out
with me made him cool. I never understood why he
thought I was cool back in junior high and high school.

I understand why some guys I know do,
but they aren't interested in being MTV rock stars.
That 'mo wanted to be cool like that.

So of course he eventually began to resent me in later
years for HIS having thought I was cool. It's kind of
a trend I've noticed. It's like finding out that Mel
Gibson is nuts or that Dennis Miller is so greedy
that he threw over being a hardcore fighting liberal
to be a Neocon chickenhawk pussy. It makes you hate
them and part of that is because you used to love them
and feel betrayed. Even though they never did anything
to me, owe me nothing, I feel betrayed. That is Todd
Fox in a nutshell.

He even borrowed about 20 bucks from me and my Mighty
Lemondrops tape just so he could "dump me" like a
bitch the summer after I graduated ISU. I had no money
that summer and he never managed to see me a second time
or pay me back in spite of the fact that he had a job and I didn't.
It would be just like him to do something like that so he could feel
superior and up one.

Fast forward a few years and he is calling me from
Hunstville, Alabama. His mommy got him a job at Boeing
probably by blowing some guy she knew that worked there
named Charlie. This might have been partly why his parents divorced
later. In any case, Todd was a very lonely boy because all
the dorks he hung out with in college didn't think he
was cool enough to stay in touch with later. So he actually
fucking called me up out of the blue one cold winter night to
apologize for not having been a very good friend.

I would have said, hey that's great I accept your
apology, it takes a big man to know when he's wrong,
now please piss off and never contact me again. But
the fucker caught me off guard so I just said OK and
let him feel unjustifiably relieved and back in my
good graces.

This was back in 92 when e-mail was just coming on so we
e-mailed a lot and even played an RPG that
was of my design. You'd dig it. It was just a bunch of
totally made up bullshit. We were time cops (just like
that fucking cartoon only years ahead). I conceived
it as being something like the Restaurant at the End
of the Universe though. Lots of people on a big space
station in orbit over a huge black hole looking time
vortex where time travelers from all over the
multiverse could get together and converse, but when
someone tried fucking with history, we would go back in
time to set things right.

A couple years after that, I was pretty much done with
grad school. It sucked, I wasn't getting anywhere, my
prof was a bitch who didn't want to work with me so
Todd said I should go down to Houston with him when he
got transferred because it was "a boomtown" and I could
"easily get a job down there." His real motive was he was lonely,
no one thought he was cool and he needed a friend or at least an audience.

It's like this: If a poser tree thinks it's cool in the
forest and no one is around to oo and aw at it, can it still be
delusional?

So I moved down there. I had about 300 bucks, no car and we didn't
even live near a busline. We had to have an apartment by the lake
though so poserboy could feel cool. Whoohoo.
There weren't even sidewalks in front of the apartment.

Houston is a shithole considering it is the fourth largest city in the U.S.,
it has no mass transit outside the central district.
You can commute to downtown for over a 100 bucks a
month. If you don't have a car in Texas, you are screwed.

I found a job driving a cab which paid pretty good and solved a lot of my problems, but
that didn't last because these hayseeds were a vicious
and brutal lot who "let me go" one night because
they brought back an alcoholic they fired two weeks
earlier. They replaced him with a woman and they didn't
want to get rid of her because she lived in the
trailer park the cab co. owners ran so if she couldn't
pay the rent it would have been half their fault.

It was at this exact same time that Todd told me when
our 6 month lease was up, he was moving in with his
girlfriend. I was fucked of course and pretty pissed
off. It cost me about 1500 total to rent moving vans to
and from Houston not to mention paying the rent and
bills that Todd had originally said I wouldn't have to
worry about paying until I got a job because he was
making so much money at Boeing (14 an hour plus 65
per diem and perks out the ass) that it wouldn't be any
different than when he was living in his own two bedroom
apt. in Huntsville, Alab. by himself.

He was so relieved that I didn't get pissed off at him
for bailing on me and our plan to start a comic
book/game store (the main carrot for moving down there)
that he pretty much felt content to go about his business
guilt free.

Meanwhile ...

I kept a cool facade, but I was shitting myself. I had saved
up a lot of money driving the cab 12 hours a day 6 days a
week, but that money was going pretty quick. I had
about 600 left after paying rent and utilities. With 6 weeks on
our lease, I had no intention of sticking it out just so I could
be homeless in Houston while Todd got to go off happy as
Larry after fucking me.

My honor system doesn't include paying dicks
for being dicks. I consider that asshole tax, man.

I had a couple weeks before the next rent was due and
wanted to leave before that. Enter Mark Schonberg.
Just by pure luck, his wife, Kum Ju, was in Korea, he
had all the time in the world down in Kansas and a love for
adventure. Most people would balk, but not Schonberg.
This was his literal definition of friendship. Any number of times,
Schonberg would tell me and anyone who'd listen that a real friend
is someone who'd drive down to Mexico to bail you out of jail.
This was basically the same thing or at least as close as he is
likely to get until I actually go to Mexico one day and get arrested.

He still had his doubts. I told him I would pay him back
for renting the van if he would get it in Kansas or Omaha
and drive down to Houston. I found out later, he honestly
didn't think I was going to be able to pay him right there and then.
It wasn't clear if he thought I was planning on dicking him
or if he just thought I was kidding myself, but I most certainly
did intend to pay him with the last of my cash. I appreciated his
willingness to help me out in spite of his doubts, but I was a
little offended. Only because I would have told him I didn't have
any money and asked for help like a proper beggar should.
I am not that big of a scumbag, after all.

So Mark is slated to show up on a Friday in February. Todd usually
came home after work just long enough to pack some
rubbers and then spend the weekend on his bitchy
but hot girlfriend, Pam, the red-headed Alabama skanksnake.
The other roommate, Catfucker Jim, was an
alkie and went to the bar and got absolutely tore up
every Friday. I figgered, if Schonberg showed up by
noon, which was his plan. We could pack up the van and
fuck off before anyone noticed.

What happened was, he overestimated his endurance a
bit and showed up around 4:30. He made good time, but
that was a real bad time to show up. So we went out,
got a burger, hit the bookstore, saw a few sites and
went home when we saw that Todd and Catfucker's cars
were gone. Everything was packed in boxes, we had a
dolly, it took 20 minutes. It was beautiful. The best move ever.
Then we got faced at Croc's right across the street.
$1 shots of tequila. How good is that? Mark confessed
to me that he liked hentai that night.

We hit the rack about midnight, got woke up at 2:30 by old
Catfucker tripping over a lamp. Woke up at 5, grabbed
our pillows and blankets and hit the open road without so
much as a HEY WHERE'RE YOU GOING? To which the answer
would have been, "out to breakfast. See ya later!"

Now, the "Operation Secret Extraction" bit comes in to
play the day before we took off. We were going to keep
this secret because we didn't want a hassle when we
tried to move shit out. That's a bad scene. I knew
we'd have plenty of time on Friday to move without
hindrance so all we had to do was time things so that
even if Mark was seen arriving, everyone thought it was just
for a visit. Then all we would need was a half hour
window and no one would be able to say shit.

So even knowing that he just needs to just keep his mouth shut,
Schonberg calls me up on Thursday to tell me he is on his way and
rather than just say on the answering machine, oh,
nothing, or "Hey Greg it's Mark. Everything is cool with
me, just thought I'd call to say 'see you soon, buddy.'"
He decides that he need to be cryptic. To him, that meant
saying "Greg, this is Mark. Operation Secret Extraction is under way."

Now talk about FUCKING OBVIOUS. Anyone with an IQ
over 68 could figure it out and both of my roommates, though dicks,
were ROCKET SCIENTISTS. Todd certainly would have figured it out
had he heard it. Catfucker heard it and asked me what
it meant. I told him Mark was in the army and liked to
talk like that because he is one of those gungho gamer
closet fags who gets turned on by that sort of shit.
What else COULD I say if I had any hope of fooling
him? As it is, I can't believe ANYTHING worked.

I think CF figgered it out and couldn't wait for the fallout.
He is one of those guys who really fucks his friends
over with evil intention. He hit on Todd's girlfriend
once right before she picked Todd over him and rather than get
over it or just fuck off, he tried to play Roman
intrigue. He even suggested to me after Todd told me
he was moving out, "Boy if it were me, I'd have to get back
at him in some really fucked up way."

Really Catfucker? Like by fucking his cats or
something? Like anyone needs to be reminded that
revenge is an option.

So he probably thought all of this intrigue was of his
making instead of being just about the only thing I
could possibly do with no money, no prospects, no car,
no sidewalks, no jobs and no busses.

Todd called me up the following Monday and tried to
guilt me. As a good person, I felt bad because we were
clearly not going to be friends after something like
this so I let him have his say, but he brought it on
himself.

He used to have a kill phrase he liked to use when
gaming or arguing. It was "you're just mad because
you're losing." It was the funniest thing in the world
to him to say that to someone just to piss them off
a little bit more than they already were. He said
that to me once when we were playing Space Hulk, a board game
with a rulebook it took an hour to read. I know, because he
insisted on reading the entire rulebook to me right
before playing my first game. Oh, that was helful.
He was a sadistic little fuck that way. It all stemmed from his
"I can't believe I used to think you were cool" mental disorder.

I strongly considered using it on him when he called me
up the Monday after my move. I didn't. For me, it was the
end of a long, sick and twisted friendship with a guy who
used to do the most wicked things he could do just to score
points on some stupid "purity test" that made the rounds one
year. He once had group sex and gave a girl a pearl necklace
in his parents' living room while they were asleep upstairs just
to score points on that test. I don't doubt he would have screwed
a goat, too, that was on the list as well. He is no doubt a Republican
today. He confessed to me once, I think I really am a racist.
No shit? I wasn't surprised.

He changed his name when he got married to a
woman named Dark . He is now legally named Todd
Dark-Fox. Can you believe that shit? What a fuck.

Mark said of him, "Well he always did want to be a player
character."

That is true and funny if you ever played D&D.

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