In 2004 when I moved to Phoenix with my current boyfriend of the time we had high hopes and dreams. New job, new apartment, early in a new relationship, things seemed like they could start moving forward. Right after the move the boyfriend wanted to detox from xanax for panic attacks before looking for a job. So I was supporting us until he got a job about a month later. At the time I was driving a 1995 Pathfinder with a ghost living in it -- it was the only car between the two of us. The Pathfinder had many problems during it's life but it's biggest problem at the time was it would lose its rpm power any time it idoled and would frequently die at stoplights or stop signs unless I had the exact right pressure on the gas and brake in order to rev the engine enough to keep it from dying. I wracked up credit card debt trying to fix it early into our move.
When Mark got a job I had to drive him to work at 5am, go back home for a few hours and then turn around and take myself to work. The situation wasn't working out. Mark tried to bike home from work the first time but it was a 15 mile drive uphill and he was suffering. So one day, when my truck was in the shop and neither of us knew the bus system we called into work sick and waited an hour for a bus to show up and take us to AutoRow to find a car for him.
We ended at Brown & Brown Chevy where we found a 2002 Chevy Cavalier that seemed right up his alley. I didn't want to co-sign for it and they said he could finance it alone. So they put in the paperwork and sent us home; three days later they call to tell us he needs to return the car, that the financing didn't go through because he hadn't had a long enough job history.
At that time I was frustrated and at the end of my rope. I was desparate. Mark asked me again to cosign. I said fine. I figured it would be okay, five years goes fast, things were looking up for us, we'd certainly be friends even if we weren't together, right? And Mark was more responsible than other exes so he'd surely pay his loan every month too, right? Little did I know the dealership put me on as the PRIMARY lender not the secondary.
Well things don't always work out the way you hope. Soon after we got the car, his brother
had a violent falling out with his girlfriend and Mark offered our office to his brother so he could sort things out. For the first few months it wasn't a problem, Mark was doing the right thing, helping his brother out. But his brother was a brother who wrote late and bad rent checks, a brother who was a bartending online gambler with a bartender girlfriend who would unleash her drunk anger on him late at night, a brother who picked up without a sound a week before Thanksgiving, when he knew rent was due and we were planning a big dinner that included him, a brother that then wiggled his way back into a 2nd stint living with us, and then later, after I had moved out, continued his antics, once borrowing the Chevy from Mark only to be picked up for a DUI, sent to jail and the car to the towyard, then even later picking up in the middle of the night again and moving out -- causing Mark to be late on his car payment, a car payment I was also tied to.
I moved out and moved on May of 2006, when we had the car just under 2 years. We were on good terms but the loan still had 3+ years on it. It was Memorial Day when I moved out, Mark helped me move. January 2007 I got a notice that the car payment was late, I called Mark. Mark got a girl at his work pregnant, he was going to be a daddy but the girl he impregnated didn't have enough money for the hospital bills and so he was trying to get money to help her. He asked me, his ex-girlfriend, a girl he lived with for over 2 years if I would loan him $1000. This is after I had already loaned him $3K for a video camera for his videography business when we were together. (To his credit he had paid me back 1/3 of it but he still owed me big). Now he was asking me for $1K for a baby to be born. A baby that was not mine, a baby that he did not plan for, a baby that he wasn't even sure he'd be allowed to be a father to because he did not have a stable relationship with the baby's mother. But he wanted money from me. I lent him $250 and paid the car payment that month.
Then later, two months before the car is due to be paid off for good, it was May 2009. Again I get paperwork showing it was late. I call Mark several times, he finally returns my calls, he was getting kicked out of his girlfriend's parents house because he and the girlfriend (baby's mother) had broken up again. He had just been laid off from his job. He didn't know what was to happen. I paid the last 2 payments on the car and the late penalty. The title was mailed to me in July. Both of our names are listed. I sent him a message asking if he wanted the title. The text message response "I'm driving" was the last time I heard from him.
Now, 9 months later I get a notice from the MVD telling me that they have no insurance on file with the Chevy of which my name is on the title/registration as the "primary". If they do not get proof of insurance the plates/registration will be suspended. This is attached to my driver's license as well as his. This means my driver's license will be suspended if they do not get the proof they need. All I want is to get the title out of my name and into his. I can't do this without his signature. I don't know where he is. I don't know where the car is.
I have left him a text message and a voicemail at the cell number I have for him. I have emailed him, I have emailed a guy I know he used to work with on video stuff occasionally, I have emailed two other guys we knew in Reno before we moved. I don't know how to rectify this without finding him.
What I want most is to leave this in the past and move on. I thought that by getting the loan taken care of it would be over. But it continues to follow me as long as my name is attached to this title. For all of this, and the hostility I feel over it, I hope nothing more tragic has happened to him. I hope he is just being an asshole. On one hand, if he is being an asshole it will make me even more hostile, but on the other hand, if something tragic has happened (as it seems to be with him) it would at least explain the situation. I don't really know. My life with him seems so long ago, but yet remnants remain that sit like a black cloud over my head.
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