Remember Phillip “Scratchy” Sorenson from post number 2? This is how he ended up in Modesto.
On yet another warm Saturday afternoon in the small tourist town of Kapaa on the island of Kauai in the state of Hawaii, Phillip “Scratchy” Sorenson drank two large glasses of lemonade. He could see the ocean from his apartment balcony and he sat there on an old lawn chair enjoying the ever-present breeze. Kauai, also known as the “Garden Island,” was verdant, slightly humid, and sometimes damp with tropical rain. He liked it.
Phillip was satisfied with his life in Kapaa. His girlfriend, Anatolia Caspian, though somewhat quirky and demanding, brought joy into Phillip’s life. He thought himself fortunate to be with her.
Phillip went inside and watched the news for about an hour. The lemonade made its way through his digestive system and he had to use the bathroom. Later, while Anatolia took a shower, Phillip saw her phone light up with a text message. He looked at it and saw that Anatolia’s friend Petra Milano left a message for her. The message read, “Gurl, I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon at two.”
“Hey Anatolia,” Phillip called into the shower, “Petra says she’ll see you tomorrow at two.”
“OK, thanks Philly,” came the answer.
The next day Phillip had an unusual Sunday shift at the warehouse where he worked. There were some inventory issues that needed to be ironed out, according to his supervisor. As fate would have it, Phillip and the other workers finished their work shortly after noon, and everyone at the warehouse headed home.
Phillip got to his apartment at about 1:30 P.M. When he saw the trail of clothing leading to the bedroom, he immediately grabbed the baseball bat that leaned against the wall behind the front door. Purple with rage, he chased Anatolia and an unidentified man out of the bedroom. He swung the bat wildly, hitting the wall and knocking over a lamp and a houseplant. He even managed to connect the bat with the back of one of the man’s legs, causing him to stumble momentarily. He chased both of them out of the apartment and they scurried away, both of them as naked as they were on the day they entered life on this earth.
Anatolia and her unnamed temporary boyfriend hid in the bushes that were part of the landscaping for the apartment building.
Phillip threw their clothes and personal effects from the balcony and yelled, “Here’s your crap! Now stay away from me forever! We are through!” Then for some unknown reason, his high school French and English classes bubbled up in his mind, and he screamed,” Bête femme! (beast/stupid woman) and foul strumpet! Rankest villainy!”
Phillip created such a ruckus that the other tenants in the apartment building opened their doors to see what the heck was going on in their normally quiet courtyard. They saw Anatolia and a guy they didn’t know hiding behind some bushes. They heard Phillip yell, “Don’t help them! She cheated on me! Let them get their own clothes!”
In the early 21st Century, people used their phones to film all sorts of unusual things, some hoping to sell their videos to a local news outlet or just to see if they could create a viral video that hundreds, thousands, or even millions might see online. In Phillip’s apartment courtyard, the phones were out, and a few hours later thousands of people saw “Naked Couple in the Courtyard” online.
Phillip went inside, slammed the door, sat on his couch, and cried like a baby, burying his face in his hands. He was an honest guy and the level of his now former girlfriend’s betrayal was almost too much for him to bear.
At 2:45 P.M. Anatolia’s friend Petra Milano knocked on the door. When she saw Phillip’s mournful, red-eyed expression, she instinctively knew something was really, seriously wrong. She was incredulous. “I can’t believe she would do something like that. I just, wow, really? She actually did that? She sure had me fooled! Well, I can’t be friends with a person like that. Damn, Philly, I’m so sorry. Wow.”
With the permission of the landlord, Phillip changed the lock to the apartment and packed up the rest of Anatolia’s possessions. He put them into a cardboard box and then dropped them off at her apartment a mile or so away. He was grateful that they never moved in together.
After a few lonely months, Phillip sought relationships with other women via dating websites. Anatolia, the ex-girlfriend, managed to shadow his online activity and created false identities on the dating apps he used, even one on a Christian dating app.
“He is so predictable,” she told her friends, “He didn’t bother to change his user names or passwords, the idiot. This will be fun. Just watch.”
Unsuspecting of her deception and the extent of her willingness to humiliate him. Phillip arranged a date with one of the false identities Anatolia created. When he showed up at the appointed place for his date, Anatolia was there with a couple of her friends and they all had their phone cameras on so they could film his reaction while they all laughed at him in an attempt to humiliate and emasculate him.
Phillip just shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. He turned toward her and said, “Dang, Ana, don’t you and your friends have anything better to do? This must’ve taken a lot of time, so thanks for the attention.”
He lost his job due to budget cutbacks, so he decided to leave the island and return to the mainland, to Modesto, where his parents still lived.
Several weeks after Anatolia’s breakup with Phillip, Petra confronted Anatolia. “Why, Ana? Why did you do that to him? He is a good guy. I’ll never understand this. Did you know he moved back to California?”
“Why do you care? I’m a pimp, girl! That chump didn’t know what time it was. So what? He caught me with one of my other man-bitches. It’s over when I say it’s over. I’m not apologizing or anything; I really don’t care.” This conversation permanently ended the relationship between Anatolia and Petra.
He found work as a warehouse worker in Modesto. Though the warehouse had a high employee turnover rate and mandatory overtime for new hires, Phillip found the job to be predictable and not intellectually demanding. Also, he received health and dental benefits as soon as he started working there.
He focused on work in an attempt to forget and move on from the evil harpy Anatolia, his former girlfriend in Hawaii.
On the late spring day in 2022 when Scratchy stood in the parking lot in Modesto, his cell phone rang. It was Petra Milano, the former friend of Anatolia, his ex-girlfriend.
“Petra Milano! Wow, it’s been what, like two, almost three years? So, you moved back to the mainland too? Was it because of that hurricane?”
“Luckily, the hurricane only brushed Honolulu, but that was last year. Anyway, I came back. I got tired of all the gossip and the lack of opportunities out there. I wanted to go back to school and finish my degree.”
“Seriously? I thought you already had a college degree. Where are you, anyway?”
“Believe it or not, I’m in Modesto. I enrolled at MJC (Modesto Junior College). I moved in with my aunt in the area off of Needham. So now, I am an older student finishing up my general education units, then in the fall, I’m transferring to Cal State Stanislaus.”
“Wait. You live off of Needham? I moved in with my folks too, sort of. They have a mother-in-law cottage behind their house that I rent from them. I found another warehouse job in the industrial park near Yosemite Boulevard.”
Petra and Phillip met at a coffee shop near the weird triangle-shaped block off of G Street, 18th, and Burney. Phillip was surprised. He thought, “Why did I even deal with Anatolia? Petra is really nice, and beautiful on the outside and the inside. Anatolia was so damned territorial and such an energy vampire that it challenged my ability to give any other woman even a passing glance. Maybe we can go somewhere with this, relationship-wise.”
Petra, as one might say, beat Phillip to the punch. She looked over the small table and said, “Phillip, when you lived in Hawaii, I had a major crush on you. I never said anything about it because you were involved with my so-called friend. That’s why I called you; you’re one of the good guys and I hated what Anatolia did to you. After you left the island we had a fight and ended our relationship. Did you know she called you one of her man-bitches?”
“No, I didn’t know that, but I’m not surprised. Back on Kauai, when I was with her, I was just too trusting, and loyal. Damn, I was so naïve, but that’s behind me; I should’ve had a wider circle of friends. As it was, I didn’t really have any friends over there, aside from a few acquaintances from work.”
“You know, Anatolia died last year. One of her so-called man-bitches killed her. They went out to the beach and played in the surf for a while. Then they swam out a little. The guy pretended to be in a good mood even though he planned to kill Anatolia. Basically, he pushed her down in the water and sat on her chest until she drowned. The people on the beach didn’t notice until her body washed ashore a little while later. By that time the guy had turned himself in. He told the police that Anatolia belittled him and said she had other boyfriends. Then he told the police he had a terminal case of leukemia and didn’t mind going to prison.”
“That’s a lot to process, Petra. Really? She was a truly awful person, but murdered? What a way to go. Well, I closed that chapter of my life after I left the island.”