Day Ninety-one - A question of time

My first order of business as soon as I settled in London was to get a job. I have no idea how it is like there now, but every single time I lived there getting a job quickly was an easy thing. So obviously I made that ggravest of mistakes : I immediately found a job, and a low paying, soul destroying one at that and I barely found the will to find another better job - I tried only once, and failed miserably. But that's a story for the near future.

So what did I end up doing? I ended up working at a bloody Starbuck's. And why did I end up working at a bloody Starbuck's? Because it was just across the road. And I do mean this in the most literal sense - it was just a matter of getting out the house and cross the road. I worked some twenty seconds away from where I lived. And just how did I get this wonderful job? Well, it just turned out that Carla would go there every morning and get lattes for the girls she worked with, and in that process she got to know one of the managers there, and she used that as an in to get me started. I went there, had a chat with the manager, did maybe two or three days of working experience, busted my ass off doing a damn great job of it, and then got an offer to go work there full time. Screw it, I'd already spent most - if not all - of the limited pocket money I had, and a job was a job. We got paid every two weeks, and it was such a measly pay that I was out of money usually within days of getting paid. 

And one of the main reasons for that was that I was surrounded by temptation. You see, right next to where I lived there was a second hand comic and book store, and they sold all kinds of shit on the cheap that I bought a metric ton of stuff literally every time I got paid. I became such a regular, that the guy on the counter started giving me stuff for free. Or rather, the cheapest stuff he just wouldn't add to the total. And even worse than that, there was a similar music store just around the corner. I was sure to drop a few quid there as well. And then, and then there were the other stores - HMV, Virgin, WS Smith - that had plenty of DVDs to keep my appetite well and truly whetted. And this was just in my very near vicinity... in the central part of London, there were the Virgin, HMV, and Tower megastores. There were the Waterstone's bookstores. It was just an abundance of everything, and I never wanted less than anything. So it's no wonder that in the end I saved no money, I accumulated crap that I'd end up selling yeara later for a fraction of the price. One could say that there was a pattern to be seen there.

Day Ninety - A question of lust

How that whole moving to London thing actually came about I no longer remember. I suppose it must have been my mother who initiated the conversations with Carla that led me there, but whatever the case, by October 2000 I was boarding a plane and leaving everything behind. The ticket had been bought for me by my grandmother, who also gave me some pocket money - not much really, but it was what she could afford, and for which I was immensely thankful for. There's so much about that specific period of time just before I left that I can't recall clearly now. Surely there must have been talks with Dora to see what she thought about me moving, but I don't remember much about it. I recall asking her if she wanted to, and in its due time, go there with Ian to live with me, but she never seemed that enthused by the idea. I don't blame her - she had some security and stability in her job, and I also think she yearned for the freedom that was coming her way. There was one final moment of intimacy, and it was probably the wildest sex we'd had in years and years, but it was just goodbye sex. The day after I was on my way to the airport, the whole family in tow, and we said our goodbyes there. I kissed her goodbye, I told her I loved her, and so did she, but it was a lie. I held Ian in my arms, kissed his cheeks and tried to carry with me that scent that babies have and that I knew I was going to miss - above all, I knew I'd miss him. I then turned my back, not fully knowing what the future held for me. Was I going to leave forever? Would I crash and burn only to return in shame, my tail between my leg? Only God alone knew. I boarded the plane, and a few hours later I was landing in London. Carla was waiting for me at the airport, and soon we were getting on the train to Victoria. From there, we caught the tube back to where they now lived, in Notting Hill. Now, if you don't know, this is a posh and pricey part of London. So how did they end up there? Well, it turns out that Carla was working at a travel agent whose office was located there. And on top of the office there was a small space that could be easily converted to living space for a couple, and that's where they made their home. And how they'd fit me in such a cramped space was I'd sleep on the couch -  and I never really complained, it was comfortable enough. Soon after me and Carla arrived at her place, her husband Jay arrived. Bear in mind that by this time I still thought he was a nice dude. Soon, very soon, he'd start to prove me wrong.

Day Eighty-nine - Interlude

Because from now on much of what I will be writing about will be heading towards the end of my relationship with Dora, I feel that now is the right time for me to pay her the tribute she richly deserves. I've written before that there's a part of me that wishes that we had broken up much earlier - like when I experienced that crisis regarding my feelings for her, or had she not gotten pregnant, then I don't think we'd've stayed together that much longer. And before we broke up for good, one year before that it almost happened, this time around on her own initiative. I was too afraid then - not afraid to lose her, or to lose whatever I thought we still had; no, I was afraid of being alone again, of being single again, of having to adapt to a reality I knew nothing about. I was afraid of having to start from scratch all over again, but for the first time, really. How little did I know that I would be doing it again and again the future. nad this time, it was up to me to do the begging, the pleading, the convincing. And for some unknown reason, she gave us another chance. I now wish she hadn't, and not for my sake, rather for her's. How I wish the had had that extra year to find her own happiness. 

Because it's something that I truly feel she hasn't had much of, really - happiness. Oh, she might've been happy with me in the beginning, but all the rest was just contentment, if I'm honest. And everyone that came to her life after me didn't really do a great job of making her happy either. While I was living in London, I think she might've started to get interested in one of her co-workers. Though I don't think that anything really happened between them, not much after our relationship had ended she was dating him already. It was neither long nor happy for her, I know. I disliked the guy as soon as I met him, I immediately saw through his façade of shit. Unfortunately, the heart wants what the heart wants, and she had to learn by herself just how much of a prick the guy was. I eventually was introduced to another guy - also a co-worker of hers - who actually seemed to be a real nice dude. It didn't really surprise me when they started a relationship, and they'd remain together for a few years, even moving in together and having a son as well. It seemed to be something that was going to stand the test of time, but it was not to be. 

Something had changed inside her a few years back - I guess it was when she was dating the creep I wrote about - and she became really religious, attending church on the regular and stuff like that. I always praised - and somewhat envied - that newfound faith of hers. In a sense it did seem to fit her character and her core beliefs really well.

Day Eighty-eight - Game of pricks

The worsts jobs I ever had were, as I recall it, within a short span of time of each other, but I can't remember now whether they were before or after going to London to live there with that couple who I was friends with. I think it might have been after, though. What did happen before I moved to London was I got a job working as a security officer in the headquarters of one of the big banks. Back then, whenever I was unemployed, I always sought a jobs like these. I think I might have went to some interviews, but for some reason or the other - maybe they weren't interested in me, and maybe I wasn't too keen on where they wanted to station me at - it never worked out, until just before summer 2000 when I got an offer that I found acceptable. The pay wasn't great, really, because I'd only be working week days, and then in one of the only two available shifts : either from 7 A.M. to 2 P.M. or from 2 P.M. to 9 P.M., but then again, one week I worked the morning shift, and the other I worked the night shift. What did I have in mind a job working as a security officer was going to be like? I sort of thought it would be a continuation of preety much what I'd experienced during my time in the air force's military police. Loads of hours just standing aroud, pretending to be guarding something, maintaining the illusion that I ahd some kind of artificial authority, that sort of thing.

And I wasn't wrong, not really. It was mainly just standing around for a bunch of hours, raising and then lowering an automated gate to let cars with the proper clearance into the subterranean garage, and that was it, really. I didn't do anything besides that, it was as mindnumbing as it sounds, and those daily seven hours always seemed to stretch on forever. I din't learn anything useful there, and nor did I make any friends - if anything, I found there a distinct lack of camaraderie like I had felt in the military. We weren't brothers-in-arms, we were barely eveb co-workers - honestly, it felt more like a competition than an actual job. There was an inner hierarchy of spots where you could be assigned to be on duty, and everybody else seemed to be stabbing everyone else in the back just for a shot at one of the primo spots. I didn't much care for my time there, which was short, really - by october I was already on my way out. One of the only things that made that job bearable is that it was, quite literally, next to where S. lived at the time, and whenever he had some free time he'd come and visit me, and we'd talk for a few hours - that would always help while away the boredom. Sometime during that time spent working there, the opportunity arose for me to move to London. I didn't think twice.

Day Eighty-seven - The forest whispers my name

After he was born, I was whisked away back to the waiting room, and in the meantime Dora's sister, Sara, had arrived. We were together in the waiting room for a while, and eventually we were taken by a nurse to go see Dora and the baby. She was lying in a stretcher, nursing and feeding the baby, and it was then that I first held Ian. I think it was then I really looked at him for the first time - even after he was born and was still covered in goo, I don't really recall looking at him intently. But then and there, as I held this baby of ours, and looked at him, I remember thinking 'so you are my son...', and hoping against all hopes that he would know nothing but happiness. We weren't allowed to linger for long, though. We were soon ferried off back to the living room, and then went back home. Naturally, I visited Dora every day while they were still at the hospital, and after a few days they were given the all-clear to go home. Me and Sara went back to the hospital, stroller in hand, and now it was time for us all to be together at home.

And I have no idea what I expected the paternal experience would be like, but for sure no amount of movies or TV shows that featured that kind of slice of life bit could have ever prepared me. You hear about the lack of sleep, you hear about the baby being always hungry, you hear about the crying, the cramping, the teething, but all those things are just abstract concepts until you have to experience them for yourself. And what we found out was precisely what the vast majority of parents found out : it was bloody hard work. Those first few months seemed to fly by, we eventually found a groove where we'd watch reruns of 'Hill Street Blues' late at night while we looked after the baby. Some nights were rougher, some others not so much. Dora had a few months of maternity leave - six, if I do recall it correctly - and I only had a few days off. Because I worked a bit far from where we lived, and because some days I had to work until 2 a.m., I had to stay at my grandmother's, only really being able to be home when I had my days off or when I worked the day shift, which was a bit rare. After Dora returned to work, we enrolled Ian in a nursery so he could be looked after while we were at work. So that was Ian being born in 1999, and sometime in early 2000 I quit my job. All the dodgy stuf I'd been doing was going to bite me in the ass sooner rather than later, and I preempted that by quitting. I might have been unemployed for a few months only, because just before summer I started working as a security officer - one of the very worst jobs I ever had. But not the worst, no. 

Day Eighty-six - Birth of the three (The unification)

I'm not going to lie - when we found out that Dora was expecting in March, we already knew that he'd be due by December, and a big part of me hoped that our son - and we had found out some time back that it was indeed a boy we were going to have, though I woulld have been just as happy had it been a girl; so much so that having a baby girl became that one unfilfilled dream I have, one that will always remain thus - would be born on December 31st - I wanted him to have been born on the last day of the century.. or of the millenium... or none of those really because I'm just a bit dumb. But I hoped for that date, I really did. After we returned from London, we made sure that everything at home would be ready for his arrival : we had the stroller, we had the cot, we had all the necessary baby appliances. There was a supply of diapers on hand already, and baby wipes, and talcum powder. We were ready, or so we thought. As December trudged on, my hopes of that birth date were looking increasingly good. But on December 16th, I was asleep and around 3 A.M. Dora woke me up saying that her waters had broken. She'd called up a taxi, and before 4 A.M. we were in the hospital. I wanted to stay there as long as I could, as long as I was allowed, and to keep me entertained I brought along a healthy selection of comics and magazines, and maybe a couple of books, to keep me entertained. Dora was soon admitted into the maternity ward, and I would only see her again a few hours later. I waited in the waiting room, tried to read a little bit, but I was just too tired and couldn't really concentrate. Somewhere along the way I fell asleep on the chair I was sitting on, and I was woken up by Dora, who had been advised by the doctors to walk around for a bit, so it might help induce labour. By that time she'd taken an epidural, the pain had been far too much for her to bear. She stayed with for a while, but then returned back to her room. A few hours more passed, I read some more, I played 'Snake' on my Nokia mobile phone, and eventually a nurse came asking for me : it was time. So I went with the nurse to the delivery room, and to this day I can't fathom how long I spent there. Minutes? Hours? The only clear memory I have is being always by Dora's side, and no matter how much she pushed, the baby wasn't coming through. Then a nurse leaned beside us and told her to push as hard as she could, or else our baby would die. Internally, I went into a panic, but I couldn't let it show. Dora was being incredibly strong, and I had to be strong for her. She pushed hard, and then the baby came out. Ian came to this world at precisely 4 P.M. 

Did he cry when he came out? I don't know. Did any of us cry? I don't know. Did me and Dora kiss each other like they do in the movies? Who knows, by now. Not that it mattered, our son had arrived.

Day Eighty-five - Deliverance

And was London everything I'd expected? Well, yes and no. Or no and yes, to be more precise. And now that I think about it we probably stayed there for more than just three or four days. Might have been between five days to a full week. And i have to say, I really didn't enjoy the first few days we spen there. And it's not that there were far too many people there, many more than I was used to, and many more than I ever actually really tolerated. And there always was a lot of walking around that we had to, and that left me feeling far too tired to actually enjoy anything. I mean, yes, I loved the music stores - HMV, Virgin and Tower floored me with how much they had on offer, and I wanted so, so many records I saw there. And there were arcades with lots of cool games, and computer and video game stores, and toy stores - they had everything. And though we went to all the recommended tourist-y places, like Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, St. James Park and Hyde Park, the British museum and the National History museum, and though these things were all of them fine in and of themselves, I just wasn't getting it. I didn't really see the appeal. And then, maybe a couple of days before we left, I started getting it. It also happened that during that time we also visited Forbidden Planet, London's premiere comic book store, but in fact so much more than that - it was a geek haven, a geek heaven. I spent pretty much all my pocket money there. But moreso than just that particular experience, there had been something happening as well , something unspoken, something barely understood orr noticeable to me... but I'd begun 'listening' to the city's heartbeat and I got so attuned to it that by the time we left London I felt like I was getting the groove of the city. And that has been a sort of talent I have, I felt the same in Amsterdam, I felt the same in Geneva, I felt the same in other cities I spent some time in. After those first few days, London felt different. London felt like... home. And when I left it, I honestly didn't know if I'd ever return there or not. Oh, I wanted to already, in fact I didn't want to leave, but we all had jobs back home, and Dora was expecting, so maybe if we were lucky we coulld go there one day with our child. And we actually spent some time there, surprisingly not that much longer after this first visit. All I knew was that some day I was bound to return. But before that happened, we had to welcome our son to this world, and restucture our lives around that singular addition. In many ways, I think, that actually ended up heralding the beginning of the end for us. Time, now more than ever was, indeed, running out.

Day Eighty-four - London

So, London, at least my first go around. See, after their mother's passing, and since it had happened while she was crossing the crosswalk, the driver's insurance actually litigated against paying any indemnity. The girls got a fine lawyer, and she won the case against the insurance company, meaning that there was a not inconsiderable payout coming their way in one lump sum. And one of the very first things they did was treat themselves to a trip to the UK. Because I wasn't any part of these conversations, when I was told that they'd be going on holiday to London, I thought that they didn't want me to come along, or maybe they just wanted some sister time, whatever. But to my surprise, they'd bought a ticket for me as well - I was finally going to London!

Now, I'd always wanted to go there. London seemed like that perfect hub of everything I enjoyed - the comics, the humour, the music - and it was also closer - and cheaper - than, say, New York or Tokyo. When we and Dora first began dating we'd entertained the idea of going to a trip abroad together, and we had either London or Paris in mind, but we never did end up going anywhere. And because I actually knew someone who lived there, I called her up and asked her if we could stay with them for a few days. I'm talking about Carla, who became a great friend to the family when my mother went back to the university to study law. She'd moved there a few years prior, and though in the beginning things got really tough for her, she perserved, and eventually met this guy who she'd end up marrying. We arranjed to stay with them for as long as we stayed there, which maybe wasn't that long - three or four days, if I do recall it correctly. We arrived in London, and then got on the tube off to meet Carla somewhere. By this time we all had mobile phones, so there was a chance to circumvent any unforessen situation that might have arisen, but thankfully it all went according to plan. After hooking up with Carla, she took us to their place, in Seven Sister road, North London. Carla told me that the neighbourhood wasn't actually that great, but it was cheap, it was what they could afford. And look, who was I to complain when we were being given a place to stay for free? Soon after we arrived at their place, we ended up metting her husband - someone who I'll call Jay, and that's me being far too kind - he deserves to be called far worse names, as you'll learn in the future. But you know how sometimes first impressions can be deceiving? This was one such case. He did seem like such a nice, stand-up guy. But it's not until you get to know someone skin-deep, when you have to deal with them on a daily basis, that you really get to know them.

Day Eighty-three - Innuendo

Out of all the stories I've been telling, and the ones I am yet to tell, this particular story is the one where I'll go into least detail. The truth is it's far too perilous for me to go into the specifics - I won't even mention anyone neither by real name, nor by alias. The internet being what it is, I could easily find myself in very dire straits were I to detail the extremes to which I pursued what I regarded as my righteous vengeance. I'll just say that for a long while, probably for over a year, I made enough to maintain my ever growing comics and CD buying habits. I could have made something actually productive, but nah, screw it - It was mainly just so I could keep buying crappy comics and a bunch of CDs that went unlistened and remained on their factory shrinkwraps for as long as I had them. But that part of the story was actually the least important thing to happen in my life during my tenure there. You see, from about 1997 or so, I started to feel like something was missing in my life. My relationship with Dora was stable, but it was also stale. We were having sex like once a year only, though we slept in the same bed for most nights of the week. I know that the attraction just wasn't there anymore, and neither was the willingness on both our parts to put in whatever effort it required. Because, and this is indeed true, we were so numb to how much we'd been drifting apart that we simply stopped caring. 

Oh, we cared for one another, in a friendly, sometimes fraternal way, and the only thing that broke that illusion was that sometimes things would get physical between us. And I thought - I hoped - that if we were to conceive a child, then our relationship could be saved. You see, we never took any kind of precautions - I'm not sure that she ever took the pill, and I never used protection with her. Why would I? She was my one and only woman. So.. getting her pregnant - and yes, I did do it on purpose -  wasn't that hard. Sure, it took me understanding in a far greater detail how her cycles worked, but that came down to just numbers, really. Now, sex being a rare commodity back then meant that I had to try my luck in those times of her cycle where the likelihood of her getting pregnant was higher. And it took a few tries over a period of almost three years - where it's likely I could count the times we had sex by the fingers on one hand - but it finally happened one day. She told she had been late, and after a while she decided to take a pregnancy test that confirmed that she was indeed pregnant. That was in march 1999 - the only other remarkable thing to happen to me that year was when we all travelled to London for the first time. And that, as you'll see, proved to have a great impact in my life.

Day Eighty-two - Eagle fly free

But before time ran out, there were still some good times ahead. Summer 1998 was a fun one, where me and 'James' - and sometimes Dora, when she could -  would meet up after work, and then spend the whole night drinking. That was the year when both 'James' and me got to know this guy who sold CDs at a fair - only metal, which was perfect for us - and every weekend we'd go to his stand to see what was new, and drop a significant chunk of change there. It also helped that many times we were drunk by the time we got there, so we ended up buying a lot of crap from him... which, obviously, he didn't much complain about. But those were some truly fun times, and though by now I'd know 'James' for about five years, this is the time where I really started getting to know him better and understand him at a deeper level. All his oddities and weird behaviour he'd displayed ever since we went to school began making more sense. There had always been something inside that was broken, or perhaps just maladjusted, and he could never fix himself - at least not then. He coped with that by drinking immensely and by being - at times - both unpleasant and aggressive. He needed something in his life that would fill that void he had, and that would only fully come to him much later in life. But yeah, that time we spent that summer really solidified our friendship, and both Dora and her sister Sara also got along with him really well. And, as summer ended and fall came, I decided to turn a new leaf and leave my job at the convenience store. Sure, them being hip to me swiping from the till might have helped, but I was on my out anyways, because I was being underpaid and undervalued, and no matter how much I liked some of the people who I worked with, it was just the right time for me to leave... and almost immediately start working on a different convenience store, one who wasn't a franchisee, but rather a proper, official store from the retail chain. The best part about it? It was within walking distance from where I lived - where I, in fact, still live. I gave them my CV and within a few days I was being called up to start my job there. To be fair, the job in and of itself wasn't any different from the job I was already doing at the other store, anfd though this was a smaller store, the team itself was bigger than my previous team. And I got along pretty well with almost everyone, and quite thankfully, both of the guys who I got along the least well with - one of them a shift supervisor - left not very long after I started working there. So, to replace the clerk who left, one of the other shift supervisorrs brought in his cousin... and I, though being really was a rookie there, thought that I would be a shoe-in for the shift supervisor position. But that went to the new kid, who, barely a few days after working there was promptly promoted. And that left me feelling scorned... slighted. And by now, you may have come to realize just how vengeful I can be.

Day Eighty-one - Mirror of sorrow

So, to put things into perspective, by this time in 1998 I'd been dating Dora for almost three years, and the only family member of hers I'd met was her sister Sara. I never met her mother, though very early on in our relationship me and Dora were out for a walk, and she saw her mom, and then she completely took us the other way around so she wouldn't see us. I always found that strange, especially because she got to know my family right at the beginning, but eh, it was what it was. Some people are like that, I suppose. And her father, him I only got to know when I went to her house right after her mother had passed, and pay my condolences to the family. So, altogether, I think I might have seen him maybe a couple of times only... because about a month or so after the passing of her mother, he passed as well.

You see, Dora's father was an alcoholic. He drank heavily, and though I don't see he was especially egregious to his family, I'm sure he was no model of a man. After his wife passed, he began drinking more and more, and according to what Dora told me, one day while they were at home, the man started vomiting uncontrollably, and he was spewing bile and blood and bits of flesh, and he was taken to the hospital, from where he'd never return. In a short amount of time, they'd lost both their parents, and though I know that the loss of her mother was harder on them, losing their father as well, especially so soon after their mother, wasn't easy on them either.

And Dora, bless her, she might just be the most resolute and strrongest woman I've ever known - she worked part-time as a cashier, and after this she moved to working full time without skipping a beat. Her sister - who is older than her by two years, if I recall correctly - was then still finishing her studies at university, so Dora felt like she had to step up, and she did so remarkably well. Where others might have caved in, crumbled and fell, she rose up despite the enormous pain she carried in her heart. And so did I step up in our relationship; If it's true that by that point I had felt things between us to be stagnant, and I wasn't really seeing much of a future for us, then everything changed after her parents passed. I didn't see how I coule morally justify me abandoning her, and to a lesser extent, her sister, in their hour of need. Soon, I started spending my nights at their place - they inherited the house which was fully paid by their parents very hard work, and in due time I'd move in with them. This though, wouldn't save the relationship - whatever was there that wasn't right between us would not ever get fixed. No matter how much we tried, or what we did. Time was running out for us.

Day Eighty - Bionic

After bombing that interview, I had all but given up on the idea of securing a gig in the World's Fair, and though I knew from the outset that it would have been for a few months only, I found the pay an enticing enough idea that having missed out on that opportunity sure stinged a bit. In the meantime, my buddy 'James' had started working at a convenience store, and spurred by that, I also quickly found a job a covenience store - the same chain, but from a different franchisee. I started working there part-time, and then I moved to full-time after a while. The pay was atrotious, but I really didn't care. I made enough to pay for my comics and for my CDs, and that was good enough. I don't think I had been working there for more than a few weeks when I got the call from that stinky interview saying that they had a spot for me, but me being the absolute blockhead I've always been, just told them no. Not even that payola seemed a prospect that was that alluring to me. Plus, I didn't want to work twelve hour shifts. Why would I ever want to make four times or more as much as I was making part-time, which really wasn't part time because I had seven hour shift, anyway? Dumb fuck me stuck to the crappy job. Which, admittedly, was crappy, the pay was super crappy, but I got along with everyone really well. And that, I suppose, was enough to keep me there for a few months. Oh, my stay there wasn't terribly long, I think I stayed there for some seven months or so only. It was a never a long term thing, and to keep things interesting, I eventually started swiping dough from the till - one of my duties was also manning the register when needed, and I do remember something happening that aggravated me, so to 'punish' that slight I swiped from the till intermittently, never a lot, but enough that I could put up what I was lifting together to muy me a Green Lantern powerb ring - something I have to this day. I know that from a certain point on, they were onto me, and that might have precipitated my choice to leave. But much before I left - I know this was before summer that year, so maybe mid to late spring, something terrible happened. One day I was working, doing my normal stuff at the store, when my pager rang - yep, these were the pre-cell phone days - and as I read the message from Dora that asked me to call her urgently because her mother had just died, I knew at once that things were never going to be the same again. I asked my supervisor if I could make that phone call, and after being given the go ahead, I called Dora to find out what had happened. Her mother had been run over by a car just as she was leaving work earlier that day... a damn stupid way for someone to die. Alas, her tragedies were not yet over.

Day Seventy-nine - Murder that sound

So, 1998. Right at the beginning of that year I, along with two thirds of the nigh 1500 people that were hired for this supermarket, was unceremoniously let go. For my part, I'm glad It was over, I really didn't like working there. Their 'security' or 'loss prevention team', which I use between quotes because they were no more than a bunch of thuggish morons, had started to call people randomly to their office and accuse them of stealing, and I'm not gonna lie - a lot of people who worked there did steal, and the stelaing went from the expensive perfume or videogame or whatever, to the more casual stealing like people like me did, which was to take advantage of the fact that our warehouses didn't have camera surveillance for the most part, and on the blind spots one could eat a piece of chocolate or cookies or whatever relatively unseen. In the massive freezers where all the yoghurts and butter and that stuff were stored there was no camera surveillance at all, and we certainly did take advantage of that. One night I was summoned to the security office where they tried this shtick on me, but them being relatively stupid, I just laughed them under the table. They accused me of stealing chocolates and eating them in the bathroom, something that, sure, I had done before, but not then and certainly not in the bathroom. Whatever 'proof' they said they had was risible, and after a few minutes of them trying to eke out a confession from me, they just gave up. But anyways, I left, Hugo left, and we kept in touch. 

Maybe one or two months later I was actively looking fo a job again, and I did apply for a bunch of different things then - including for a spot at the 1998 World's Fair, which was hosted where I live. The pay was good, I guess, much better than any pay I'd had so far, so I was definitely up for it. They called me up for a group interview, the irony of it being in the same school where I went for my seventh grade. For no kids to be there, that had to mean that the interviews were held during a small break. I guess I had no idea just how many people would be in this group, but damn, there were dozens of us there. I can only remember one thing from that interview - because of course you can never forget the moments when you humiliate yourself in front of a bunch of other people - and it was when one of the interviewers asked me if I could speak any other language. I said maybe a little bit of french, and of course I was promptly asked something in french, and of course all the french I knew seemed to just disappear from my mind, and I sat there slack-jawed for what seemed like an eternity before the interviewer just gave up on me, and moved to someone else. Oh well, that was that. Hmmm... maybe not...

Day Seventy-eight - Bullet

So, if memory serves me well, before we started working in the supermarket - which, when we were hired, was still being built, and we ended up having to do a lot of the assemblying of shelves and whatnot ourselves - we had to like a month of training. My mind wants to tell me that it might've been less, but I do think it was a month. Now, all this was 'training' really was just sitting in a room listening to a couple of different people feeding us info from nine to five... it really was a struggle not to fall asleep some days, as all that talking ended up being really, really dull. Sometime during that period, one day I was wearing my Dragonball Z tee, and I might have also been carrying with me that month's issue of Previews, which is Diamond's monthly catalogue of upcoming comic books, graphic novels and assorted merchandise. And oout of the blue, one of the guys who I was doing training with, approached me and we started talking about comics. Turns out he was an avid reader as well, a collector just like me, a fellow geek. And that, really, was enough for us to start getting along - but moreso than getting along, I really felt that there was a budding friendship between us, and I was not wrong, not by a longshot. The more I talked to the guy - his name is Hugo, and from now on he'll be a very regular fixture here - the more I realized that he was someone truly special. Just like S., I felt that Hugo was the kind of guy I aspired to be, and moreover, the kind of guy I could have been had I might the right choices. See, unlike me, Hugom had his head on straight, and he knew full well where his priorities lie. He stayed in school, went to university, graduated, and then got his own Master's degree. Life rewarded him for his hard work, and I am proud to have been by his side all these years. And that sense of kinship led me to do something that someone else might've found strange. I'd found out that Hugo's birthday was two days after my own, which makes me two whole days his senior, something I've never left him forget, and I decided to give him a birthday gift - in fact, it was bit of an extravagance on my part, but I gave him Peter Kuper's 'Give It Up!0, a collection of his illustrated adaptations of some short stories by Franz Kafka. I know he appreciated the gesture, and that friendshipo quickly moved from just workplace acquaintance to out of work shenanigans. Frankly, it made the seven months I spent at that job bearable I really don't think I would've stayed there that long had I not met Hugo. I did work with some really nice people, but other than him, I didn't keep in touch with anyone. I left that job in early '98 - and so did Hugo, just like he wasn't reupped - and that year would prove to be life-changing indeed.

Day Seventy-seven - Genesis

 In what proved to be a  a massive sign from the universe that maybe, maybe, me coming back to the air force wasn't that great an idea anyway, abiut three days into my return I'm summoned to the human resources wing and they asked something, that though I can't remember exactly what, but had to do with the length of my contract, clearly opened a window for me to get away from it. And, that window being open, I leapt eagerly through it. I still remember calling Dora on the phone and telling her that I was coming home, so to speak. I'm sure that made her feel somewhat disappointed me, but then again so was I feeling disappointed. Not only when it came to not having felt or experienced what I hoped would be there, but because when given the chance between making the right choice and the easy choice, I stumbled again. I know now, what with the benefit of hindsight - which as we all know is always 20/20 - that I should have just grinned and bear it, and accomplish all the things I didn't during my first stint in the air force. But I felt so disheartened then... it truly made me sad that my expectations were proven to be so far removed from reality. And so, only a few short days after coming back, I was on my way out again. I returned all the gear I'd been given, said my goodbyes, and embarked on that boat that connnected the air base to the mainland - the air base itself is an isthmus, and many who travelled to and from it took the ferry that the navy operated, they had a small detachment there as well -  for the last time. There was no going back, there would be no third chances, and though I would always regret my choice, it's now many years in the past.

Now, about the timing of this I can't be too certain, but I do know that very shortly after leaving the air force for the second time, I started looking for a job and I soon found one. If I'm honest, I can't have been looking too hard, because I said yes to the first thing that showed interest me. Back then, the buzz around town was this huge mall that was being built, and it'd would have everything in it. Somehow, I ended up applying for a job in the supermarket - the same retail chain that Dora has worked on since before I first met her, she's been there for thirty years now - and though I'm sure I applied to the loss prevention department, that was promptly denied to me during my initial interview, and I ended up being assigned to the department that dealt with restocking milk, eggs, yoghurts and suchlike. I was overjoyed at this... not! But screw it, the pay was decent enough, and I said yes. My intitial contract was for seven months only, which coulld be reupped if they so chose, but seven months was all the time I spent there. I didn't really enjoy working there, but I would come to someone who surprised the hell out of me, and we became fast friends - we're certainly the best of friends up to this day.

Day Seventy-six - It's on me

I can't now be sure exactly how this timeline actually played out, but after passing that medical and being given the all clear from the recruitment center, the next step for me would be to to go back to the air force early in the morning, then go to the gear depot where I would be assigned brand new gear, and after that was done I'd have to put on my official military fatigues, with all accompanying regalia and accoutrements, if they were necessary or/and mandatory for what was to follow. And what was to follow was that I'd have to (again) do that whole almost song and dance ritual of officially introducing myself to my C.O., but that went so bad that I had to do the whole bit at least twice. You see, this is nothing more than me performing a series of drill commands, in an automated manner, and by the end of that drill I formally intorduce myself. Now, this was something that I could have done with my eyes closed when I was still in active duty, and I thought that muscle memory would be enough to carry me through. It wasn't... I was actually reprimanded barely minutes into my return to the air force - which, I guess, was to be expected, though part of me also expected some kind of leniency - and I had to do things the proper way. And so I mustered what knowledge I still had, and did my drill command thing again, this time to a satisfactory end, with the C.O. welcoming me back to the fold in earnest.

But I'm not going to be a hypocrite and say that the reprimand didn't sting me a bit. It left a bad taste in my mouth for sure, it soured what I hoped would be a successful come back. And what did I, in fact, expect to find waiting for me? Well, for a start, that sense of camaraderie that I had felt before, though I didn't recognize it at first, and grew to appreciate only when it was too late. All the rest, I think, I already knew what it would be like. But in between me having been transfered to the other air force base, leaving the service, and the length of time I spent in my normie life until returning, a lot had changed... a lot of the people who I best got along with had left the service themselves, and there were a lot of new faces there. Some I knew because they were just getting started as I was being transferred, most were new people who seemed even younger faced than I did when I came in. And that left a gnawing feeling inside me. I mean, I'd just signed up for a three year contract, and I had no way out of that, no way of escaping something that felt more like a nightmare rather than a dream. Despondent, I made my peace with the fact, hoping that things would sort of fall into place in due time. Little did I know that I would be given a way out some three days into my return.

Day Seventy-five - Glory to the brave

Ah, pride. Eneder of empires, ravager of relationships, and enabler of stupid people keeping on doing stupid things - case in point, me. Feeling slighted at first, shortly thereafter I'd decide to actually prove them how wrong they were for not taking me back again. And the thing about me and my weight back then - and truly, until the very early '00s was that, though a part of me knew that I had put on weight, an even greater part of me didn't really feel bad about myself. Maybe I was in denial, or maybe I just really didn't care either way. But the fact of the matter was I either lost weight - and not a lot, but not that little also, or there would be no return to the air force for me. And bless me, the sort of dedication and discipline I drummed up to reach that goal, was awe-inspiring. I'd see the same fortitude in other similar situations in the future, and it's something I hope that I can somehow muster again nowadays. I think I need now more than I ever did, at least I feel that now there's more at stake than ever. 

So I devised a two-pronged plan : I'd have to cut off all the crap I ate a lot of at the time - mainly junk food - and all the sodas and fizzy drinks I drank, plus the large assortment of sweets and cakes and suchlike I was prone to devour. And on top of that, I forced myself to go through a daily physical regimen that involved running - though I never knew exactly how much I'd run every day, I'd just do laps in a nearby stadium until I felt tired - and also swimming in the swimming pool. Now, I've always been a very bad swimmer, adn eventhough I ahd swimming classes in my youth, it was never something I actually enjoyed doing, so naturally, I always went half-hearted. BUt swimming, I know, is a really good exercise, and what with me having a  swimming pool a few minutes away from home, I'd go every day, usually after running. The swimming bit, I think, I must have done all of it by myself, but when it came to the running part, and to help out with keeping me motivated, I sometimes had Dora running with me, but more often I had either S. or N. or both by my side and that always made it something much easier to do.

I'm not sure how long it took me to lose all that extra weight - there's a part of me that wants to say it was under a monthe, but it probably was a bit longer. There was a target weight I had to reach in order to get their OK, and I weighed myself every single day to see how I was doing. The day I finally hit that target, man, I pigged out a little and ate like half a roasted chicken and also some McDonald's. I went for a run that night to burn off some of that intake, and then on the following morning I also went for a run, and just after that I went back to the recruitment center, where - and though they said I was a tiny smidge off the mark, they gave me the go ahead. My military career was about to have a second chance. Or was it?

Day Seventy-four - Bling (Confessions of a king)

Hot damn, I digressed so much that I forget just where I was before going on that tirade about my past misdemeanours. I had to go back and see where I'd left off - I was about to embark on my return to the air force. Let's catch up, then : I joined the air force in 1995, stayed there for a year and a half, then left in 1996. I've stated before that a string of bad judgement calls on my part was one of the main reasons why my military career was so short lived and not as fruitful as it could have been.I left the air force in august 1996, and by september that year I was already back in school, hoping to first finish my ninth grade, and then hopefully, finish the rest of high school and maybe apply to university. But by the first half of that school year I was already on the outs with school, I was already feeling disillusioned about my return to school. Most of school, I was starting to feel that it was a waste of both my time and my patience, and above all, my money, which by virtue of being on the dole meant that it was very limited, and pretty much half of it I had to use to pay my tuitions fees. I knew that the likelihood of me staying in school was an increasingly smaller prospect, and I had to start thinking about what I wanted to do if I didn't stay in school. So sometime in early 1997, the thought came to me that I could back to the air force. After all, why not? I had been reasonably there, you know, after a while and in a way that I hadn't then fully realized, but now, having grown a bit older, and fancying myself more mature - though I really wasn't - I began putting the plan in motion that would take me back to the service. 

I went back to the same recruitment office I'd visited a few years earlier, and enquired about what was needed for me to get reinstated. The paperwork began that very day, and after a few days, I was asked to do a medical exam to see how fit I was to return. Only problem was that in the interim I'd stopped exercising, and was way too overweight for them to give me the go ahead right then and there. And me, being the oblivious dumb fuck I was, instead of immediately accepting that the fault of my sorry sate lay solely and squarely on me, I had to go on put that blame on the time I'd spent in the air force not exercising and stuffing my face full with fried egg sandwiches. That day, I left that rectuitment office feeling slighted, despondent, and depressed. Part of me thought that that was it, that if they wouldn't take me back as I was and assume responsibility for me - I know, I know... - then I was done with them.

But pride is a motherfucker...

Day Seventy-three - Make believe

And now to wrap up this sad tale, let me tell you a few things more. Whereas with comics I'd almost always re-read them, some so many times that they became just reader's copies, really, no one in their right mind would pay a dime for it, with magazines I'd usually just read them the once, and then probably never pick them up again, unless some issue or the other had something that really interested me. When I was in the eighth grade, there was a kid who I got along with - I can't remember his name - and he was this sort of middle-to-upper class kind of kid that seemed really out of place in that awful school I had to go to. But be that as it may, he was actually a really nice kid, probabçy one or two years younger than me, and though he didn't seem the sort, he was into metal as well. It's quite likely that I mooched some stuff from him as well. But he was also into a number of other things too... I can't recall if he was into comics or not, but for sure he was into pro wrestling and video games, and me being the sort of entrepreneurial kid that always made sure to pounce when given the chance, I started selling to this kid the magazines I was stealing, and I'd sell them at maybe half of the cover price, which meant I still managed to make some change. Before, I'd only steal video game and metal magazines, but I started stealing the WWF for him as well. It was a nice little deal we had going, and certainly made my time at that school a bit more bearable because I'd found a way to fund whatever else I wanted and couldn't steal. And, to the best of my knowledge, I only almost got caught once, though it was just a spat between me and one the girls who worked there, and I asked her what proof she had, and she naturally none, so that died down immediately. It also helped that I didn't just go there every day, sometimes I'd be a couple of weeks without going, or if I went, I'd lift nothing.

Fast forward a year or so later, and after meeting S. in the ninth grade, and we started going to our first real comic shop - at least we thought it that way, though we didn't know any better back then. Though this was a relatively small palce, it was packed to the brim with books - mostly graphic design - and laserdiscs, if you remember them. Then, there was a row of maybe four or five longboxes filled with back issues, and next to it a shelf with a handful of paperbacks that went all but unnoticed by us for a long time. And though a handful of people worked there, only a couple of them really cared about the comics bit of the business, and even then, probably not very much at all, really. Which meant that they cared little when my trusted grey neoprene folder started to leave that store filled with comics. I'm sure they knew - they just didn't care. That stealing continued well into 1995, when by now already going to almost a proper comic shop, I'd 'borrow' some stuff too. I didn't know back then, but years later I'd come to learn that they were aware all along that I was stealing from them. 

Day Seventy-two - A snowflake fell (and it felt like a kiss)

So, to continue this little litany of larceny that was so characteristic of this part of my life, I'm going to confess to you that stealing toys, tapes or from my parents and grandparents wasn't even the most prolific part of my stealing. No, that was when I stole magazines - usually music or video games mags - and comics. First about the magazines, because they came first. I'd say probably around '91 or '92 at the latest. You know the drill by now, around that time things were bad for us, there was preicous little money for anything rather than the truly essential, and I had a liking of comics and video games that wanted to be fed. And if comics were pricey for me back then, then magazines were even moreso. These would usually be about two or three times the price of a single comic. 

I used to go to a semi-large press center that sold pretty much every magazine imaginable, as well as very few comics and all the newspapers. Though they severely frowned upon it, anyone could just walk in, and read the magazines from off the shelves. Most people, I assume, ended up buying what they were perusing, I rarely did so. Because even for me, buying a magazine wasn't really a priority, not compared to how buying comics really was one. So I'd go there, browse the racks, and then spend some time reading whatever I wanted to. And somewhere along the way I acquired this gray neoprene folder that for some reason I started carrying with me everywhere, usually under the inside part of my arm. I can no longer remember what happened to it, maybe I eventually threw it away or whatever, but that would have been such a cool memento to have kept. I'd inscribe that folder with lyrics from metal songs, and would draw crude versions of metal bands logos on it, it really became such an iconic part of me. It truly went with me everywhere. And I'd noticed some time before that the price tags on the magazines, which had an alarm built into them, were very, very easy to peel off. And on one of those days that I was carrying my precious folder with me, and upon visiting said press center, I noticed that the size of the folder was just perfect for me to place a magazine just underneath it, and as I walked out of the store with a stolen magazine, it would be concealed by the outer side of the folder. So my strategy was this : I'd start reading the magazine I really wanted to take with me, all the while surreptitiously peeling off the price tag. Once that was done, instead of putting it back on the shelf, I'd lay it down where other magazines were, and place my folder on top of it soon after. I'd then read another magazine for a little while, then after I'd kneel down to pick up my folder, and grab the magazine along with it. I don't know how many I took home with me, but dozens for sure ended up coming home with me.

Day Seventy-one - Sweet and tender hooligan

That second time I was caught, I'd say was either as early as 1993 or as late as 1994 - no later than that, I'm sure. So it either was just as I was going to my ninth grade or shortly thereafter, because alongside with me was Victor, who was my classmate that year. It being a time when money wasn't exactly something we had a lot at home - quite on the contrary - and also due to the fact that Victor came from a working class family that wasn't that well off, and what with us being a lot into metal and not really being able to buy CDs very often, if indeed at all, the main source of music was the tapes I'd record ffrom off of Valter's huge collection whenever I visited him. But buying a pack of tapes wasn't exactly cheap as well, and whenever I did buy them, they were always the cheapest sort, mostly TDK, sometimes Sony, very rarely BASF. So what happened was that one day we started going to that very same supermarket I got caught shoplifting at a few years back, and again that damned hubris was our undoing. We did get away with it a few times, and man, me made sure to steal some really nice tapes... not the most expsensive, but stil of a better variety than either of us usually bought. And obviously, there came a day when we both got caught red handed. Again, as we were making our way out of the supermarket, we were grabbed sternly by our arms, and did the walk of shame. We were both sent to that small room where I'd been years prior, and though now I can't remember how Victor dealt with the issue, maybe he had money on him and just paid for the tapes, but I know I didn't... and I knew I couldn't ask someone at home for the money - it wasn't much, but it was much more than I had, and it was money I knew my family couldn't afford to part with - but I made a compromise with them, and told them that the next day I'd be back to pay for the tapes. I have no idea now what it was that I had to sell off, but I do recall it being something that was dear to me. Maybe it was some prized comic book, or maybe I sold some of the few CDs I had, but whatever the case I amassed enough money that the very next day I went there to settle that debt. Of course, we weren't really given the tapes we'd try to steal and then paid for, and I don't even know just thinking about it now whether or not the security guys just pocketed the money themselves, but screw it. It was done, it was paid, and my conscience felt a lot clearer. And this time, I did learn my lesson : I wouldn't ever steal again. Well, at least not from there...

Day Seventy - Severina

And how creative did I get? Well, quite so, I suppose, insofar as I developed a method of stealing where I got away with it scot-free amlost all of the time. But not always : I was caught stealing twice, and almost got caught at least a couple of other times. So, instead of me stealing from home, I started to shoplift. And sometimes.. yeah, sometimes the rush of it was just far too great for me to stop. 

The first time I got caught stealing was very early on my shoplifting career. This big supermarket in the city carried a lot of Transformers toys, and one time I went there for whatever reason and found out just how easy it was to open a box and slip one into my pocket. So, I might have done that maybe three or four times, and naturally I got so cocky that I legit thought I'd never get caught... and naturally, that damned hubris would prove to be my undoing. One afternoon I was doing my usual song and dance around the toy aisle, trying to decide just which one would be luckyenough to go home with me that day. I grabbed the box - and which one it housed I can no longer recall - slowly and carefully opened it, took out the toy in a way that I thought would make a professional burglar proud, and dropped it inside my pocket. I put the box back on the shelf, and by jove - it all but looked untouched and untampered. I turned around to make my way out of the supermarket, I felt a hand grabbing me by the arm, a firm, strong hand that let me understand at once that I had been caught and was in fact going nowhere, and some security guy leaned down and told me I was going with him.

So he took me to this tiny room, adjacent to the main security room where all the monitors were, and they sat down and maybe showed me footage of me pocekting the toy, but they grilled me good. I was in a panic, to be sure, and in my mind I was sure that either one of two things would happen : I'd either get arrested, and sent to some horror-filled juvenile prison until I came of age, or they'd call home, and talk to my grandmother or to my mother,  who would probably bail me out, but then give me a deserved hiding when we got home. And the likeliest of any of those situations actually happening was the second option - as they asked me all sorts of questions, they asked me what my home phone number was, and me being afr too naive too come up with a fake one, gave them the real number. I believe I was weeping tears of true sorrow by then, and whether they never managed to get someone at my house to pick, or whether they actually never made the call and just pretended they did, but after a while they just let me go with a stern warning.

I learned my lesson, right? Did I bollocks, a few years later they caught me stealing again...

Day Sixty-nine - Burn

What I am about towrite, I write with no sense of elation whatsoever. It's something that, though in a big way I feel no shame about having done in some specific instances, in some others I do bear a cross with me that will neverv fully fade away. So what am I talking about? Wel, in the early '90s, and I do mean very early, like either '90 or '91, I started to take a linking to stealing. And by this I mean stealing either from my grandmother's purse, or from a stash of rolled up coins she had. Only the once did I muster the courage to take money from off my father's wallet, but that was ultimately a let down. Where we were living at the time, and though my brother had a crappy scooter that could take us from home, we couldn't really go to the big city, so we settled in going to a somewhat nearby small town that had maybe a record store, and maybe you could find some toys in some shops, but ultimately we didn't find anything at all where we could spend that money on something we really wanted. I can't remember now if we actually bought something that time or not, but I don't think so. That took out all the oomph from the act of rebellion I'd just performed. But my father deserved it - I've written before that he was hard and harsh, and whenever he was mad at us, whether justified or not, he'd take our toys away and lock them somewhere. Some we got, some others we'd never see again. And I know, we weren't good students, neither me nor my brother - who was even worse at school than me - and maybe parents do take that measure of pride in knowing that their kids are good students. And also it may be true that we weren't always the best of sons, and he felt slighted, and that's how he took it out on us. 

But taking my stuff away - it was more my stuff than my brother's, who was now a teenager who cared very little for toys - also slighted me. And so I resorted to stealing, and I don't think I did it very often, but I did it enough times that my grandmother started to notice. She never spoke to me about it, but she did talk to my father. One day, as I was coming home - I can't recall if either from school or from somewhere else - I found him waiting in our living room. He was sitting down in the couch, with a smouldering look on his face, and as soon as he saw me come in - I don't think I even had time to say 'hello' - he leapt from the couch and grabbed me at once and started punching me, all the while my grandmother was watching what was happening. I think that hurt more than any pubch he landed on me, though I fully deserved them. That didn't keep me from stealling again, though. I'd just have to become more creative.

Day Sixty-eight - Ceremony of opposites

So, as I recenty illustrated, times would come where things got so lean for us that we could barely afford to eat. As such, niceties like birthday and christmas gifts became something that - moreso than ever - would have to be more funcional than exactly fulfilling. If we were in need of some new pants or some shirts or whatever, then that would be what we'd be getting. I guess as a kid you don't really deal well with not getting what you want, but I had to understand just how dire things were getting. The way I figured it, a time would come in the future - be it near or distant - where I could have all that I thought I would be missing out on. That time came, and then it went, and now, in a sense, I am experiencing it now again. Still, it didn't make it any easier, especially when I'd go over to Valter's for his birthday and see the enormity of presents he always got. I can't be sure whether or not I ever got him somethhing for his birthday, but he'd always get me something, usually a CD. 

But speaking of birthdays, there's one just before all hell broke loose - I'm inclined to say that it was in 1992, though it could have been as early as the previous year. I was still very heavy into Transformers, and though things weren't still as bad as they were bound to get, things weren't so good that I was getting toys all the time - far from it. I'd be lucky if I got something for my birthday or chrtistmas... and all the while, me and Valter had a very competitive sort of friendship, one which I could never compete with or against, really. He had much more than I did, be it comics, CDs, toys or videogames. And one of the thingsI did all the time back then was snooping around the toy stores we had around the area to se what was new. You really never knew back then, for the most part, when new stuff would be on the shelves. And, on one fateful day, I saw this Transformers toy that not only had I never seen before, but it was of such an enormous size, that it immediately captivated me. For days on end, weeks maybe, I went to that store every single day just to take a gander at this behemoth. I never quite knew if they only had the one unit, or if they had more, but I always dreaded arriving at the store and not seeing it there. And man, this thing was expensive. Much more expensive than any toy I'd ever had before. So expensive, in fact, that I knew I would never have it. But soon enough my birthday was approaching, and I just had to ask my mother if she could get it for me - I even told her in advance just how pricey it was. Obviously, I expected to be just laughed under the table, but to my great surprise she said yes, and on my birthday we went to the store to get it! The fact that Valter accompanied us and saw me getting the biggest Transformer any of us had ever seen was just the icing on the cake.

Day Sixty-seven - Far from any road

I'm going to go back in time a bit now, to address something I neglected to mention  in my previous writings. I had to do some mental backtracking to figure out exactly when this took place, but the only year it could have been in was in 1991, because by September 1992 my brother would already have been arrested, and as such he didn't spend that christmas with us already. And that year wasn't one of the bad ones, not yet. I have many fond memories of that year, such as my mother getting a used car fof her birthday from my grandmother, and sometimes on weekends we'd go for a car ride somewhere, and, especially during the summer, we'd pull the top down and feel that warm summer breeze flowing past us. My mother, I think, was still working for the TV station then, and one of her friends there lent us a second VCR, and I used up a lot of my free money going to video rental store and bringing stuff home that I could record for myself. I forced myself through a lot of bad movies that were the cheapest to rent.

Things would get tougher from '92 onwards, and one of the ways we felt that was on birthdays or christmases - we couldn't afford any kind of luxury whatsoever, and that was something that you just got used to. But in christmas '91, I managed to convince my mother to get us a Nintendo Entertainment System - the fabled NES - for christmas. It was actually my grand mother who bought it for us, but my rationale behind the reason for us getting was that since three games were packed with the system, then it would be a christmas present not only for me, but for my brother and sister. Super Mario Bros. would 'my' game, Tetris would be my sister's, and Nintendo World Cup would be my brother's. But the truth of the matter was that I hoarded the NES almost all for myself... and that would spawn an ongoing love story with me and videogames. Oh, as a kid we'd had a ZX Spectrum computer, where I'd played my first few games, but I always found it far too clunky, and I rarely managed to get much enjoyment from those games. But the NES changed everything... from my first adventures with Mario, and then Link and Zelda, I knew that these were the games I'd been anxious to be able to play at home. In the summer of '92, just before my brother got arrested, I worked for my dad during the summer, and with the money I pooled together from working those months I bought myself a Sega MegaDrive, which though I cherished a great deal, I'll confess to never having been a huge Sega fan, so much so that a year or so later I'd be selling it to S., who was more than happy to take it off my hands. And with the money I made from that, I went and picked up the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Now things were heating up!

Day Sixty-six - Black Mirror

Let's catch up on some loose ends. As I go about my writing, it's only natural that sometimes things end falling through the cracks, and I fail to remember them. Sometimes I'll think of something in particular that I'd not written about, but I always end up deeming it too irrelevant. If it wasn't relevenat to my life, it sure as hell won't be to this narrative. But some other things and events, them I have to give their proper due. One of those very omissions I want to address here is someone I met back in '94. Let's call him R., shall we? Now, to put things into context, around that time was when I first started collecting comics in earnest. And back then, we only had the one store in town, and they didn't carry a lot of comics. Oh, you could put whatever you wanted on a standing order, but they had a minimum of ten titles, and I couldn't afford to buy that many on a regular basis. Eventually, though, a dissatisfied ex customer of theirs, who also had the good fortune of possessing the necessary loot to back it up, opened a store of his own. But this was even less of a store than the one we already had : the new one was just a bit of his own office converted into a store front, while the other we had before was originally and mainly a graphic design store who also stocked some comics. But this new one had a lot of back issues, and they had a wider variety of comics. And eventually they'd start distributing to other vendors throughout the city. It might have been in one of these vendors that R. and I first met - I believe S. was there as well, but they never got to know each other very well, I don't think. But me and him got along famously, and though he lived a bit far from where we lived, he'd come over often either to buy comics or just to visit and hang out. He also had a couple of friends who'd come with him, one would be around our age, and the other a bit younger, maybe by a few years. He'd be in his early teens, a lanky, small kid who - as far as I know - eventually fell into hard drugs. I haven't heard anything about in close to thirty years now, so who knows what happened to him? But R., he was invaluable presence in my life back then because he'd show me a lot of comics I'd have not checked otherwise - stuff like Preacher and Stray Bullets. It was also through him that I first saw 'The Crow' and got to know Tarantino. We kept a distant friendship throughout the years, even going to the movies on a double date when I was going out with Dora and he with a girl who I think might have been called Nadia. As with so much in life, people end up drifting apart, and I eventually came to learn that he'd moved abroad, and when I still had social media, we talked sometimes. But he was one of the catalysts in '94-'95 that started me going down a different path regarding the comics I was reading and buying.

Day Sixty-five - I come with knives

The family situation, continued. So, by 1995 my brother had earned his release from prison, and not very long after that he'd meet a girl with whom he'd become involved for the next decade or so. His return to normal life, so to speak, might have not been an easy one - when you're an ex-con, getting a job becomes tough - but he eventually would start his own businesses, none of which would have much success, but they kept him out of trouble, at least. My mother's law degree was going well enough that eventually she started holding study sessions at our house, and two of her colleagues at uni I got to know well. It was through a guy called R. that I first really read Tolkien - I'd tried years before, but didn't go very far. He was always nice to me, incredibly intelligent, and I hope that life turned out all right for him. And then there was Carla. Now, bear in mind that my mother was by a long stretch older than most others she was going to uni with. These would have been kids in their early twenties, though some of them looked like proper adults - the forty five year olda type of adult. But Carla was always the goofiest among them, and for sure the one who became not only a friend to my mother, but a friend of the family as well. And Carla was... well, she was a big girl. And besides big, she was tall too, so there was a lot of Carla everywhere, all the time. And she had the personality to match that, and the heart too. She would come to gift us a kitten that remained with us for a few years until he ran away, sadly - Pancho. And though from a certain point in our lives onwards we'd come to lose pretty much all contact with her, some remained. And it was through this door that was still somewhat open that some years later I'd move to London to live with her - but that story is still a ways away from being told. 

My father, well, I guess he tried to start his life all over again. Some time after he resurfaced, he introduced me and my sister to his then girlfriend, a very kind lady whose name I can no longer recall, but who always gave me vibes of being a recovering alcoholic. I think my father was too, and they might have met in one of those support groups, I suppose. I never asked, and I don't think I very much cared. Sometimes, we'd spend the weekend at her place, and it was always torture for me - Id' much rather have stayed home playing Nintendo and reading comics or listening to metal. But one good thing at least came from that : I made friends with her son, a kid called Nelson, and his cousin, a kid called Valter - a different one from the one I've been mentioning, though. They were into music a lot, and though our tastes didn't really intersect, I still picked up some good stuff from them. 

Day Sixty-four - Under pressure

I neglected to mention a part of my life during this time - my family life. Having moved full time to my grandparent's in the very early '90s, and shortly after that seeing my brother arrested and sent to jail to do a three and a half year sentence, was very hard on my family. To make things worse, also around this time my mother, who'd quit her long-time job at a TV station to go to another, new TV station, ended up losing her job not very far into her time there. All this sent her into a deep depression, though I couldn't rationalize it at the time. It would only be when I started going through my own depressions that I started to recognize the patterns and the behaviour. I guess I sort of realized she was down, but not ever having seen someone who didn't have a job, I just imagined that this was how normal life was for them. I mean, it was something I fantasized about as a kid, that whenever I was an adult I'd sleep as late as I wanted, and pretty much do nothing all day and somehow still get paid for it. What did I know?

But to get her out of that stupor she was in, my grandmother convinced her to go back to university and get the law degree she'd always wanted but never was able to get before. All the while she was taking her law degree, and excelling academically, I'd be far less great at school, as I've illustrated. Maybe it was my way of coping with what we were going through, to experience that extreme detachment from school. As my brother was doing his time in jail, we would always visit him on the weekends - I confess I didn't go every single time, it was never easy for me. It was never easy for any of us, I know, but sometimes I just couldn't. The weight of it all was sometimes far too big a burden for me to carry. But he did his time, and for all acounts he was model inmate, and when the time came for him to be released, we naturally welcomed him back home with open arms. Ah, how could I forget? My father had been absent for a while after he and my mother split up, but maybe a year before my brother got arrested he resurfaced, trying to prove he could be the father he never was - at least not to me. I made the most of his newly acquired generosity, and managed to convince him to buy me a Nintendo Game Boy, though when I brought it home I had to say he'd bought it for my sister. My grandmother had, wisely, warned me about how my father might try to buy our affection. In truth, and at least for me, there's no amount of money in the world that could have bought him my affection. Not in any lifetime. 

Day Sixty-three - So long

And how were things between me and Dora? By 1997 we would have been going on two years together, and things were steady, though not spectacular. Mind you, me and Dora only had one argument ever, and that was very towards the end of our relationship. Most of the time though, we just got along, and settled in fine. But that was just the problem between us. We just kind of got along, and I think we stopped having strong feelings for each other very soon. At least I know I did - by our ninth month together I knew I wasn't in love with her anymore. I tried to break up with her, but she convinced me to stick it out. Was it a mistake? I often wish, and for her sake, that I'd been more adamant about my decision. I don't know about myself, but I'm sure she would have been much happier. But, having chosen to stay together, we did try to make the best out of it. Together, or with her sister Sara, or with S. first and then 'James', we would travel around the country and sometimes even abroad often. It would just be for the weekend or so, or sometimes we'd just return on the same day, but it did help us staying together. In truth, though, staying together was mostly what we did - we'd go to the movies, or to the beach, or go for walks or whatever, but there was an increasingly smaller amount of real affection between us. Things just sort of stopped happening. Sex became something that happened infrequently, going from once every few months to once a year if I was lucky. Oh, we slept in the same bed, we sometimes kissed goodnight, but that was mostly all, and I was, if not happy, then at least content. I was so numb that I convinced myself I didn't need anything else besides what I had and was receiving, maybe in kind, forr what I was probably also not giving.

But it was enough to maybe keep us going, though I sensed that we wouldn't last that much longer - but things always sort of seemed to happen that would help extend our relationship. You'll learn of one of those very instances soon enough, a personal tragedy that Dora and her sister unfortunately experienced. And it's something that I now realize that, had it not happened, then we'd probably have split up by then. What happened, the tragedy of it, made it impossible for me to morally do anything else other than stay by her side. 

And here's the truth : I could've been unfaithful to her all that time,I even had the chance to be with someone else. I mean, multiple times during that period of our relationship I phantasized and wondered how my life would be with someone else. But, weirdly, the only two girls I found remotely interesting looked a lot like Dora. So it stood to reason that it made more sense staying with the devil I knew, right?

Day Sixty-two - Subculture

But before we get how I got back in the Air Force, let's see how my friendships were blossoming during those years between 1995 and 1997. What had up to then been my most valued friendship - the one I had with Valter - had gone for good. I tried, in the very beginning, to make amends for what he perceived as a slight to him, and to maybe rebuild those bridges, but he was nothing if not very proudful, and he'd rather just lose me as a friend. It did hurt, and as I've said before I don't think I would've reacted the same way, but I had to learn without that friendship.

Luckily for me though, other friendships arose and would prove to be just as fierce, if not, indeed, even moreso. Let's begin with 'James' - he'll always have that alias here - and sometime around '95 he started fo become a more frequent fixture of my life. Again, when we went to school together we didn't really get along that well, in fact I don't think we even liked each other, really. But for whatever reason, after I left school we started to hang out more, and I got to know him better. He'd soon become part of my close knit group of people who I called friends, and me and him and Dora would go out all the time. Together with S. and N. we'd go to a lot of gigs together, and sometimes the bands would have these autograph sessions at the music megastore we still had back then, and we always scooped up some nice autographs. Gigging, too, was a lot of fun, we always got quite drunk, and we even sometimes travelled up north to go catch some gig that didn't tour through where we lived. It might've been around this time that I first started to notice just how bad alcohol was affecting 'James's' behaviour, but I did very little - if anything at all - to bring him to reason. I think that these two years were where we started forming a good frienship, but only a bit later - around '98 or so - did we become really good friends.

Now, with both S. and N. things were quite different. We all followed the same wanton path, I guess, at least for a couple of years. They - just as I was - were prone to truancy, and that cost them a couple of failed years at school. But whereas I learned nothing from what lessons could be gleaned from failing, they actually stuck with school, and both of them performed much better than I could have ever hoped for myself. I was always closest to S., though we and N. also had a good friendship. He was... challenging, to put it mildly. He was that kind of guy who always seemed to be twenty moves ahead of you, on some sort of endgame only he could grasp. But he was a voracious reader, they both were, in fact. And that spurred even further my reading habits. 

Day Sixty-one - Everything counts

I was still just barely nineteen. And for some reason, I thought that I had matured a lot since I'd left school, joined and left the Air Force, and was now ready to take on the world. I could have matured, really, and by a large margin, had I taken things a whole different way, but as we know by now... I did not. So I got back to school feeling pretty much full of myself. During my time away from school I hadn't stopped reading and learning, and both my relationships with friends S. and N., as well as mine with Dora, provided me with enough an intellectual challenge for me to feel like progress was being made. But I arrived back in school not only with an unwarranted sense of self-worth and superiority, but also a gigantic chip on shoulder that, while part of me sensed it was there, I couldn't exactly make heads or tails out of it. And that helps explain just how hard an effort I made not to connect with anyone that school year - I found them all so far beneath me, so brutally childish, whereas I was the erudite scholar who graced their lives with his presence. As you can imagine, that made me no end of friends. And a bunch of idiots at that school, who took an intense disliking to me, tried to get on my nerves every single day. Most of the time, In had my headphones on whenever I was out of the classroom, so I ignored whatever was being said. But here and there, there were some occasions where there were some verbal spats, and one time I even got a physical altercation with one of the other guys, which ended up with me being pushed down to the ground in front of a bunch of other people. One thing about me is that I've never been neither strong nor brave, and physical confrontations have rarely gone well for me. That, I think, was the beginning of the end for me. If I wasn't already feeling like going to school was actually a waste of time and money, I soon started to feel that way. I stuck around for a few more months, but I didn't even finish the whole year, I just quit.  And this takes us into 1997, where I started to formulate a plan for my life going forward. I know this will come as a shock, but that plan? That plan was me going back to the Air Force.

And why did I make that decision? Well, for one I realized that the chip on my shoulder I'd be carrying was due to some unresolved issues inside me about how my life in the military turned out. I realized the major mistake I'd made was accepting the transfer, and my reasoning was that if, indeed, I'd been happy where I had been once, then it only stood to reason that I would be happy again. But would I, really?