ok, here's how I got OTR installed. I decided to compile it from source.
Go to http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/#downloads and grab the source for both libotr and OTR. Also, I grabbed the patch for gaim beta 2 (even though current is beta 3).
Compile and install libotr. Copy the patch file into the OTR source directory. Patch OTR with the beta 2 patch:
patch -p0 < gaim2b2-otr.dff
Do your typical "./configure && make && sudo make install" goodness.
Now, this was all obvious, but what was happening to me was that I was getting a make error about missing header files (*.h files). Apparently, the Debian package manager is installing gaim's headers to /usr/include/gaim, but OTR's source was looking for them in /usr/local/include/gaim. So, while it probably isn't the best solution and might cause some problems later with gaim, I just copied the libraries over to /usr/local/include/gaim. This got rid of the make errors. However, this will install OTR to /usr/local/lib/gaim and gaim will not see the plugin. So, you need to copy the OTR files from /usr/local/lib/gaim to /usr/lib/gaim. Now OTR works just fine.
If anyone has some better suggestions on how to fix this better, please let me know. I have a feeling there was a much easier and better way, but thought I would share anyway.