Day One hundred and twenty one - Rubicon

One very important thing to note is that my friend Hugo had a close group of friends who I got along with, for the most part.I got along really well with his then girlfriend, Patricia, and with another guy who was one of his best friends, curiously also called Hugo, and henceforth to differentiate them, he'll be 'Hugo C'. Unbeknownst to me, there would eventually be a rather sad and complicated story that would break those friendships and relationships, and it all sort of came crashing down in this time period. It's not my story to tell, though, and I am only using it as reference to explain how the other Hugo and I actually became good friends as well. After I'd made the final decision to move back to the UK, I started making all the necessary arrangements - I had kept in touch with Catarina, who was the guy who I worked with sister's, and her offer for me to stay at her place was still up. I said yes, and yeah, she said I jst had to tell her when I'd be landing and she'd pick me up in the airport. That was one thing sorted. Then all I had left to do was quit my job - I'd already put in the paperwork for that, and pack up and leave. Some goodbyes needed to be said, and I think I was with Sara one final time, hoping against hope that she would give some sign - I was more than prepared to drop everything if she asked me to stay. But alas, no such thing was ever on the horizon. I'd told Catherine that I was moving to the U.K. and she was excited about it, which helped assuage whatever doubts I might've still had.

As I made my final preparations to depart, Hugo C. drove me to the airport and stayed with me until I had to go to the boarding area. I had my mind made up to go there, build my life there, and only return here whenever I had holidays. I wanted to leave all the drama and the pain behind, start afresh, and try my damndest to be happy - be it alone, with Catherine, or with whomever.

Me crossing that line that separated the bit of the airport from the boarding area was like my Rubicon - the river Julius Caesar famously crossed as he entered Rome with his army, thus precipitating the civil wat that would see him become emperor. This was my point of no return. Or so I thought.

I said my goodbyes to Hugo C., thanked him for driving me there and for staying with me, and went to the boarding area. As I waited for boarding to begin, something strange happened. I got a text from a girl who I worked with - a girl called Claudia, and we got along pretty well. There was even one instance where I thought she was making a move on me, but as I wasn't sure whether she was or not, I did not act upon it. In this text though, she was not only saying goodbye to me, but also telling me that she wished I'd given her a chance. And boy, let me tell you this : Claudia was so far out of my league that never in a million years did I think she might be interested in me. She said that I didn't have to go. And I hesitated. Before two roads awaited, both filled with possibilities and mysteries. I stood looking at my mobile's screen reading and re-reading her words. The words of Robert Frost's 'The Road Not Taken' echoed in my mind. There's not a day where I don't wonder how my life would have turned out had I stayed.

'I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.'

Day One hundred and twenty - Take me somewhere nice

Before I left though, wheelds had to be set in motion for that to happen - and set in motion they were. Though I was madly in love with Sara, I knew deep down that she'd never see me that way, and though it hurt a bit, I fully understood why. Eventually, though my heart still beat for her, I came to be involved with someone else. You see, in 2004 my friend Hugo had moved to Brighton to get a Master's Degree, and during summer 2005 he came back with a bunch of his closest friends he'd made there - and among those was a girl that took a fancy to me, and well, who was I to say no? Catherine, her name was, and though we only spent a little time together - they were there for a few days only - we got along really well, and we kept in touch after they'd returned. And the more we talked, the more I realised that maybe - just maybe - there could be something there. And so, when a bit later on I had some time off, I went to Brighton to spend some time with her, but also because I managed to score an interview in Luton, though what it was for I can no longer remember. Here'd the rub - a soon to be important one : a guy who I worked with had his sister living in the U.K., and I met her once while she was on holiday here. We struck a conversation, and she said that if I ever wanted to move back to the U.K., she could do a couple of things for me : one of them would be getting an interview for me, and the other was - should I need it - letting me crash at her place until I could get a place of my own.

So now I had two reasons to want to leave : the Sara situation was becoming emotionally unbearable, because I still couldn't fully let got of what I felt for her, but also because she, even after everything I'd told her about how I felt, and how I felt whenever she demanded of me, she never really changed her behaviour. And I never thought she was a bad person, nor a sad person - I just think she was broken, but hey, I am broken too. And that, coupled with the fact that Catherine seemed to be really into me, truly set those aforementioned wheels in motion. But as always, I made mistakes. When I went to the U.K. to be with Catherine, I completely shat on that interview I had, and the reasons for that weren't that great. But suffice to say that Catherine kept me, erm, mostly locked in her room, in a drunken, sexual haze. And... to be honest... the sex we had was always kind of bad? It was far from what I'd consider decent, even. Did that put a damper on my desire to go live in the U.K. again? Did it bollocks.

Day One hundred and nineteen - Your hand in mine

Let me be perfectly here : nothing ever happened between me and Sara. I don't think there ever even was the ghost of a chance of something happening between us; the closest it got to 'happening' - and by 'closest' I mean 'not really close at all' - was one time when we were at work, and I texted her 'let me kiss you', to which she smiled, and replied 'not now'. I knew that it would neither be then nor later, and that I dared cling to a phantom hope in that moment was all completely on me. So, nothing ever happened between us. But... Sara demanded. And, whether she knew it or not, she demanded a lot. And what she demanded was time, attention, an unspoken and unrewarded devotion towards her. I don't really remember, but when I met Sara she was either still seeing someone - albeit on its very last legs - or she'd just broken up. And Sara regaled me with any number of sad stories of people who left her, and for the life of me, I couldn't understand it - why would anyone ever want to leave this fascinating creature?

And then, people who we worked with, and who knew her far better than I did, started to give me some very serious warnings. That Sara was prone to conjuring up some tall tales, that were all fabrications - well, for the most part. They told me I would do well to take everything she said with a pinch of salt, because it might just be lies, or something she came up with in order to create some sense of empathy and/or pity towards her. But I paid no mind to these warnings. How could I not believe Sara?

Soon enough some of the things I was warned about started happening to me. Sara would call me or text me at 2 or 3 a.m. saying that she was going to kill herself. I called her back to soothe her. Often, I would have to get dressed and go out to top up my phone. When she got her fix of attention, she'd 'disconnect'. The following day it would be as if nothing had happened. And then the cycle would begin anew a few days later. She'd also tell me more of her stories, and as I started to feel doubts about them myself, she'd be... not pleasant towards me. But I couldn't let her go, I was too far gone. Even though she demanded, and gave me not one bit in return, I stuck by her. Until I felt that I was being drained of something I didn't even know I had. I think she met someone around that time, and I took that opportunity to distance myself a bit from her. By summer's end I had a couple of weeks off, and I spent a few days on another city, and of all the people I could have bumped into, of course I bump into her and her guy. That hurt a lot - and I realized that I wasn't just in love with her, I really loved her. 

And so I decided I had to leave.

Day One hundred and eighteen - Dangerous days

Susan... She's certainly one of the very few I had in my life that could have been the right one for me. But the circumstances were never right. So, through the fotolog platform I started to check out who was following him, who he followed, which profiles I actually enjoyed, and there were definitely some interesting candidates there. But if I'm honest, I always thought that they were way out of my league. Thus, it turned out to be a surprise when Susan started following me, messaging me, starting to show an interest on me. She was always a girl whose natural beauty was very striking, and she had clear green eyes and a husky voice. She knew how to look after herself, and she always cut a fine figure of a woman. Soon after we started talking, we went out together for the first time, and things got rolling from there. Because we had busy lives, we really didn't have the opportunity to be together every single day, but we made the most out of it. But by far the best thing we had going on between us was our sex life - she had the exact same energy as I did then, and it was always, always bombastic. But... as with most anyone that came before her, and quite a few that would come after... I just wasn't there. I was already running on fumes by then, and though I tried to keep it going, I just couldn't... I just couldn't feel. A part of me was indeed growing colder. Jaded. No wonder that maybe a couple of months into our relationship she was ready to ditch me.

And I never really fellt bad, or sad, that she did. Because one of the reasons I wasn't there was another girl called Sara. Well, this is not any of the same Saras from before - and as far as I can recall, there hasn't been any other since. This is a girl who worked for the same company I worked at, and I met her at company party thing - maybe there was a dinner or something, and we all ended up in a club until very late, and by the end of that night I'd be hopelessly in love with her.

Now, Sara is story unto herself. Actually, a bunch of stories. But let me preface this by saying that I never imagined that girls like her existed in real life - she was as close to being my ideal woman as possible, and she was that kind of girl that had that kind of -girl-next-door quality mixed with timeless silver screen beauty, behind a fragile, endearing, captivating façade. Things would get even more complicated when shortly after we met she had a haircut, and my God, how beautiful she looked with bangs - something I always loved on women. But Sara... she would not be easy. In fact, she would be very hard. So hard that, in fact, I had to move back to England just to get away from her. But that was later. 

Day One hundred and seventeen - Crushing the scepter (regaining a lost dominion)

Before I move forward much more with the story, let me talk about a few important things that happened late 2004/early 2005 - the common denominator being that I got that telecoms job. So, and chronogically, first thing is someone I met during my training, and it would be remiss of be if I didn't speak of her a bit - even though her presence in my life was mostly limited to that time frame, and though a few years down the late we'd meet up again. Her name was Mafalda, and damn, she was really young when I met her - I think she was 18 or 19. She couldn't have been twenty yet, though she was far more mature than her age might have indicated. We met during our initial training, and we were the only ones who didn't really buddy up with the others, so we usually just kept to ourselves. This actually led to us getting to start to know each other, and we really got along well. The other lot we had training with didn't take kindly to this, and they were always trying to insinuate that there was something going on between us - there wasn't, really, not then. Some months down the later we'd come to make out about twice, but we always knew that we'd be better off as just friends. After training was done, we kept in touch with other, and actually hung out a bunch of times. There was a time in my life where I sort of wished that maybe we could have actually tried something back then - other thn the occasional snogging - but I'm happy we didn't. 

Another important bit was when I first got to the store, and I got along pretty well with everyone there, but there were a couple of guys I got along with better - and one of them introduced me to the concept of social networks. One of them wasn't a social network as such, or at least not as we understand them now, but it did have a social aspect about it. He had an account in the old Fotolog platform - dead by now - and he said that he'd met a lot of people, and by 'people' I mean 'girls', through it. I thought why the hell not, and created an account as well. Now, I've never been one to have many pictures on my computer - either of myself or of something else. I never had a digital camera, and phones back then still weren't that great at taking decent pictures. So somehow I managed to get a friend of mine to take some pictures of me, and do some cool edits on them, so I could start uploading them. I always wrote something to go with them - something that, were I to read it now, I would find cringe-inducing and trite, I'm sure.

And so it was that through this platform I'd come to meet a girl with whom I'd start dating in early 2005 - Susan. 

Day One hundred and sixteen - The loss and curse of reverence

I started looking for a new job straight away - it being the high summer, and me having just come off what I thought would be a pretty good job to have on my CV, and as such, people would be in a rush to hire me, I actually found it shocking that nobody did. At least not straight away. And this time, even moreso, I decided not to be picky - I found myself applying to a bunch of places I'd never really thought I'd be interested in working in, like surf shops or clothes stores... really, I was just looking for anything and everything that would hire me. I did go to a bunch of interviews - I guess this was one of the times in my life where I went to the most interviews - but I'd only be called up for a spot in November that year. Until then I had to make do with whatever savings I had.

It was just a temporaty thing, I was told, to cover for the coming christmas rush, but depending on my performance there was a small chance a longer term contract could be offered. It was for a mobile phone store, selling phones, accessories, gadgets, insurances and what have you. Part of me thought that I'd be done with that whole thing in a month or two, and then I'd move on to something else - hopefully something better - but twenty years, I'm still in the telecoms business, though on a decidedly different part of it.

But this was a - dare I say it - life-changing experience for me. Because not only did I find out that I actually really liked my new job and that I was really good at it, I was also lucky enough to start my journey there with an amazing team that taught me everything I needed to know and who, without exception, were an asbolute pleasure to work with. Unfortunately, it was quite a long way away from where I lived, and I had to wake up every day around 5 a.m. to get ready for work, and that just wasn't an easy thing to do long term. By the time my temp contract was up, I was offered a long term contract, with the option of going to a store much closer to me. It really hurt leaving that team, but getting up so early every day just wasn't feasible for me. I moved to a different store - and a new team who I really didn't gel with, bar for a couple of guys. My stay there wasn't long - maybe a couple of months only. I was ny leagues the best sales rep there, and this didn't sit well with them, so they tried to oust me. There was a team meeting with the regional manager, and they had it in for me, but it backfired spectacularly for them - impressed by my numbers and my performance, I was sent to the highest performing store in the company. As the regional manager relayed this info to my now previous team, they just stood there slack-jawed. 

Day One hundred and fifteen - Black wind, fire and steel

This succesion of people, coming in and going out of my life at a steady pace, would have some very adverse effects in me, but on a mental and emotional level, but on a professional level as well. Let's break this down, the mental and emotional part first. There are a few bits in my life where I look back and feel no measure whatsoever of pride for the person I was. The guy I was then... as much as I want to say that I was a product of all the circumstances, ultimately the responsibility lay on my shoulders, for the greater part. I felt like I wasn't worthy of love - something I feel to this day - and so I stopped caring. I stopped getting attached. I stopped feeling. I was becoming someone cold. There was far too great a number of people that wandered in and out of my life after Sara - some I bitterly regret having allowed them in, others I felt that had the circumstances been different, then something interesting might've been eked out. None of them were ever to be. After Sara there was another Claudia, then almost another Ana - a bullet dodged as well - and then another Sara. Then there were the countless others whose name I can't remember anymore, and whose faces are now all but a blur to me. I doubt I'd recognize any of them now, and to be fair - none of them would recognize me now. That guy they knew and had their fun with doesn't exist anymore. Hasn't existed anymore in many, many a year.

All the while this was happening, I was leading my life at the most bohemian level - I'd go out and get drunk pretty much every night, sometimes I'd sleep in, sometimes I'd not go to work at all, or arrive late. I'd fallen out of love with what I was doing there. I no longer felt that urge I'd once felt to go to work and stay there for 12 hours or more. In fact, I started feeling like I'd like to spend as many hours there as humanly possible, and I managed to have a cut in working hours, and started working part-time only. Not that it did much - if, indeed, anything - to bring that spark I once had. My work days, even though they were now just half of what they had been, were something that I felt I had to power through. I'd really begun disliking my time there. But here's the thing... I was under permanent contract, and I had in mind to negotiate with them my exit - it could be something that was mutually benefitial. But I never had time to act upon it. Sometime during mid-summer '04, I went on holiday for a couple of weeks, and on my first day back I was summoned to the manager's office - not my boss, but his - and I was told in no uncertain terms that I had been fired. They accused me of something which I was sure I didn't do... and I didn't do this was tactic they employed to get rid of people they didn't want anymore. I was stupid enough to fall for it, and quite a few people that I viewed as my friends there and in whom I'd placed my trust, turned out to be nothing but backstabbers. Karma is a motherfucker, though, because they'd all get their comeuppance soon enough.

Day One hundred and fourteen - Where you are

Our end came just as abruptly as our beginning - in the end we had differente piorities, and she made it clear to me what hers were, and I let her know what mine were. There was a distance between us - a distance that could not be covered, and Sara - being the in demand sort of girl she was - soon replaced me with another. A part of me was relieved - the larger part, probably - and another part fo me felt like I hadn't done enough. But I never thought that I'd been slighted or that I'd been done wrong. We remained friendly ever since, and for a while there was somewhat of a sexual tension between us, albeit never acted upon. Our break-up was a weird one : I wanted to get a new mobile phone, she said that it wouldn't be wise for me - and for us, for some reason - if I bought it, though I could afford it. I got it anyways, and she got royally pissed off at me - apparently I wasn't allowed to make any decisions without her - and she broke up with me. For a little while afterwards there was a sort of moment where we got somewhat closer, but it was far too late. Eventually, I'd come to learn that not only had she met the guy who would be her next boyfriend - and also father to her child - but that she was already very likely involved with him even more we split up. Utlimately, it really didn't bother me that much, and I was glad she moved on quickly to someone more deserving of her.

There were some good takeaways from this relationship, though. She was friends with a few people I got to know well, and I got allong pretty well along them too. One of them - a guy whose nickname was 'Fi' - was someone who I lost touch with not bery long after I got to know him. He was a nice dude, though, and some part of me wishes we would've kept in touch. Besides him, there was another girl Sara was friends with - nicknamed 'Dark', she was. And she really had the hots for me, she did. In more than one occasion she tried to get me to sleep with her, but I just wasn't interested. Both at my place and at hers, she really tried her wiles on me, but I didn't want to cross that line. But did she give up? Did she bollocks - not long after me and Sara broke up, me and this girl went to Hugo's to watch a football game on TV. After that we went out for some drinks, me and her, and sometime around 2 a.m. I was tired and drunk, and I told her I was going to crash at a friend of mine's who lived nearby. I told her she could stay there, or go home, or if she wanted to, she could come with me, and we'd find somewhere for her to crash as well. We got to my friend's, he gave us a very thin set of sheets, some pilllows, and we slept on the floor. I fell asleep almost immediately, only to be woken up by her servicing herself on me. I said that I really wasn't interested in anything, but soon after she was riding me hard. Funny how the question of consent and being drunk doesn't apply to a man, isn't it?

Day One hundred and thirteen - Say hello, wave goodbye

You know, to the surprise of absolutely no-one, Sara and me really didn't last long. No one ever did with me, and you'll only hear about one single long term relationship I've had, and that would be a couple of years in the future - Sara and me split in up early 2004. We lasted more than me and Claudia, and a hell of a lot more than me and Ana for sure, but it really wasn't by that much. A couple of months, maybe three months tops? What we had wasn't very tangible. I knew it then, and I realized that that feeling was true even later on, but I was never really there. I did like Sara, but I don't think I really felt love for her - though I think she did.

Sara was... wilder than me. She was on a different level. And I don't know if I had mentioned this or not, but she had turned 18 not long before we met. There was a disconnect between us, to be sure, and not just because of our age gap. I was 26, going on 27, and already I felt I was several gears slower than her. She was very into that whole BDSM thing - her job was actually as a well paid dominatrix, and I never got past the feeling that she might've been up to other stuff, like being an escort or something like that. A couple of times I went to meet her and she was arriving with some other guy, and I always felt like that was really odd. Maybe that contributed to me not connnecting? 

I'd venture to say that what we had was all but immemorable. I know - though I do still have a soft spot for her, because I did really like her as a person - that much of what we experienced together isn't what I'd call the highlights of my life. But I also would be remiss if I didn't say that there were good moments for us - though I don't think we were happy together, there were moments of happpiness between us. The very time we slept together was a fun one - I told her that I didn't want to have sex straight away, and her sleeping buck naked next to me was really hard - on a number of levels - for me, but the following morning when we woke up, she didn't give me any choice, really. It's funny, I know we had sex a bunch of times, but I can only remember about three different times : this one I just wrote about, which was the first one, then a little later the time when she let me have anal with her - she was into it - and then the time when she first told me she loved me, all the while I was happily drilling her, on the hotel room where I'm pretty sure her norwegian lover was sleeping right next to us. Or listening to us having sex. I don't know. I just knew that all this really wasn't for me. 

Day One hundred and twelve - Kiss the whip

And when the day came to go to that special event, I hesitated. Something kept me back, almost as if telling that going would not be neither a prudent nor wise decision. I was at Hugo's and we were discussing whether or not we would go out. I don't think I was feeling inclined to go anywhere, if I'm honest, but at the last possible moment i thought 'screw  it' and started to make my way to where the 'party' was being held. It was still quite a ways away from where I was, and as I was getting there I hooked up with this couple I was friends with - Pedro and Marta. In fact, Pedro wasn't just a friend, he was also someone with whom I worked with, and got along really, really well. In the not so distant future he'll be playing a big part in a story that involves him and Ana.

So, after meeting them quite close to the place, we made out way there. We were greeted at the door not only by 'John' himself, but by Sara as well. And Sara... oy. She was clad in a corset that left her ample breasts completely bare. Pierced, her large, round nipples were, and I... I had no idea what I was getting into, did I? So, in I come, and Sara pulls me to the side to let me know that I would be going up for sale in that 'slave auction' I spoke of. I'd never agreed to it, but boobs. I really tried to look her in the eyes as much as I could, but boobs. Shortly after, she took her leave - it might've been that she had some responsibilities/duties regarding the event itself. I met up with Pedro and Marta again, we talked for a bit, I felt completely out of place there, and proceeded to get as wasted as I could. I knew what was soon coming, and I wouldn't be able to go through it sober. 

So eventually me and a few others were rounded up to be put up for auction - and I don't want to tout myself, but I was by far the most attractive prospect. I might've been the last one sold - the other 'specimens' were sold for measly sums. Myself, I was subject to a dispute between Sara and multiple other parties, and she came out winning. She picked me up, we went to sign a 'contract', though I told her that I wasn't into kinky stuff. What happened next I barely remember now, and I could only half remember the following day. I know that I stayed with Sara until we were asked to leave because the place was closing down for the night, and then we stayed together until morning. Somewhere along the way we started kissing, and probably we agreed to start seeing each other from then on. I don't really know - sometimes it feels like everything about that night happened to someone else, not me.

Day One hundred and eleven - Sara

This is a weird, wild story. Even to this day, it's one of the weirdest things that ever happened to me - if not ,indeed, the most wild and weird thing. Again, this all happens because I was - and remained always thus - mostly oblivious to when a girl showed an interest in me. It might sound very self-deprecating, but I never thought myself worthy of any kind of attention, and even when it was pointed out to me that, in fact, someone was keeping an eye on me, I rarely took it seriously - because, after all, why would anyone ever be interested me? And so Sara was one of those very same instances. I'd noticed her before in the store, she was a semi-regular there, but little did I know that one of the reasons she went there was to make herself noticed to me. The thought of this had never crossed my mind, I'd never dare presume that someone would go out of their way just to make notice them. And so it was that after a few times of her going there, and me not noticing her, she enlisted the help of the aforementioned 'John' - the same guy who introduced me to Ana - to get things going. And this is where things start getting weird...

Now, this 'John' guy, he was of that cyber-goth crew that was heavily into sexual fetishism, and these things were always sort of restricted to those in the know, it was - and understandably so - a very underground thing, maybe because some public figures were involved in the scene and they'd rather have that remain a secret. So one day he tells me that he's organizing a BDSM sort of thing, invitation only - and not only was I invited, I was told that should I put myself up for sale in the 'slave auction', I would be bought ny none other than Sara herself. And I can't even begin to tell you how strange this all seemed. Especially because Sara, god damn, she was one hell of a looker. She had style in spades, the quintessential hot goth girl, and a personality to match. I did not know it then, but Sara had a legion of followers that would kill to be in my place. A few days before the event tha 'John' was organizing, I had a visit from Sara at the store. Now knowing who she was and what she was up to, I made sure that she knew just that, and made sure she knew she now also had my attention as well. It was late one night, just about maybe a couple of hours before the store closed, and I was manning the listening point. She came up to me with some CDs she wanted to listen to, and I stood colly there, while I attended to her requests. As she left, and knowing how things were slated to pan out, I made a double entendre, to which she replied in kind. Weirdness was coming my way.

Day One hundred and ten - Ana

Ana didn't just break my heart, though she really did. It's an uncanny thing, I know, to write about something that lasted maybe two weeks, but I fooled myself into thinking that she was my soulmate. I'm the type of romantic idiot that believes in that kind of shit. I blame no one other than myself for being like this - I always end up setting myself up for heartbreak, but still... Ana hurt. But she didn't just break my heart. No, she also broke the trust I placed in her. You see, with Dora we spent years barely talking to one another, other than the most mundane things. We rarely had deep, meaningful talks, we'd stopped having them years back. And with Claudia, I don't think that we had something that was truly deep - the more I think about that iteration of us, the more I realize just how carnally driven it all was. But Ana... I opened myself uo to her. I told her things about me no one - not even Dora, with whom I spent nigh on eight years of my life - ever knew. I told her what dreams I had, and how I would love nothing more to have them come true. That bit where I told her I'd love to have a baby girl, and she'd be called Cassandra? A few years later she'd be having a baby girl, and what was she named? Cassandra. And yet, that's just a tiny bit of it. I really told her a lot about me, quiet likely too much. And I gave her too much, as well. I gave, and I gave, and I gave. I fucking gave her too much. One of the very first things I learned about her was that her favourite band was Moonspell, and me being a longtime fan and collector, I just found myself gifting her the most treasured items of my collection - vinyl editions of their very early material. Not that she asked for it, and not that she offered to return it afterwards; rather, she displayed an arrogant, cavalier attitude that made it look that it was only befitting that I part with my prized items and give them to her. What an absolute idiot I was -  and indeed, still am.

Though me and Ana were a couple for a short time only, unfortunately we went out to the same places, and I always ended up seeing her with someone else. I always felt sad, but I understood that the choice wasn't mine. I know now I dodged a big bullet, one that - just like Claudia, and at the same time, would eventually try to come back into my life. 

So, Ana being gone from my life, I just had to stay put. I wouldn't have do do anything, because back then, trouble would find me. I wouldn't go looking for it, but oh boy, would it find me nevertheless. And so it was that after a few months of lying low a hurricane of a girl called Sara would come a-knocking.

Day One hundred and nine - Like a child again

I don't use this term lightly : regret. But when it comes to Ana and maybe almost a handful of others - funnily enough, also called Ana - regret is something that I truly feel. Not when I met them, no. And not after they'd left. But later, much later in some cases, I'd come to regret ever having spent a second of my life with those people. 

Anyways, this Ana. This Ana was a weird girl, though unfortunately I always did have a tendency to fall for the weird ones. A goth/electro/metal combo, she (obviously) was into that occult shit that I'd been into about a decade before but had since grown out of, and she projected this air of being utterly unapproachable, such was her resting bitch face. And of course alll that made her that more alluring to me. I was intoduced to her one day while having a break at work - the store had an in-house caffe, and sometimes I'd go there to grab a bite to eat, or to drink some tea. So this one break, I was sitting there with 'John' and some of his mates, and maybe she was already there, maybe she joined a bit later, but soon enough me and her were already engaged in conversation. I told her I was feeling a bit down on account of the whole Claudia ordeal, and she told me she was feeling a bit down because she had also gone through a breakup. And, well, I'm pretty sure you can paint a clear picture of the disaster this turned out to be. And If a part me maybe felt kind of wary and sensed that not so great things were coming soon, then there was a part of me that was feeling something different. With Claudia, I knew and understood just how much of that which bound us was spurred by the physical and sexual chemistry between us, but Ana was... different. Though I felt very attracted to her, the sexual bit of it was almost imperceptible. In fact, we had sex only the once, and it just wasn't good. Maybe we didn't chemistry on that level. But on an emotional and intellectual level? Damn, that was off the charts. What free time I spent with her, day, afternoon and night. We'd talk about absolutely everything - I'd even confess to her about how I dreamed about having a baby girl one day, and how her name would be Cassandra. Remember this bit, it will be important some years down the line. We were - or so it seemed, or so I thought - madly in love with each other. And then things started to get... strange.

'James', my buddy who'd got me that in for the job at the store, and who also worked there, had left earlier in the year. He was also vying for a spot in the music department, and when I got it and he didn't he felt somewhat irked by it, and quit the job. So one day I find out that he and Ana were going for walks together and having a few drinks together, and how they met I can't even remember. I had a talk with him, saying that going out with MY girlfriend wasn't cool at all, but he swore up and down they were just friends, and nothing had happened. Not that it made much difference : me and Ana were done soon after. And the lunacy of this whole story was that all this happened in roughly two weeks.

Day One hundred and eight - What have you done?

From now on, I'll be talking about a number of different people that I've had in my life, and my goal is to be as fair to them as I can. Some I will sing their praises, some others I fear I won't have enough in me to describe just how harmful they turned out to be - for me, at least. They might have become the world to someone else, but to me they became just another metric ton of pain my soul had to carry. Now take Claudia, for instance : what we had was good, and all too brief, but intense as well, and though in the end it was sad - certainly for me, I wouldn't say the same for her because I never knew either way, I hold no grudges towards her. No, we were young, and we needed to make certain mistakes, we needed to go through some things to get our lives going to the next stage. We didn't remain friends, because we only saw each other maybe twice, and that was back in 2006 already, but Claudia will always be someone I think of very fondly. Some others, I do not think at all, some others still hurt when I think of them, but such is life. 

So after Claudia, I naturally felt hurt, and I felt lost once more - all these things were still too new, too raw to me. Again, I found myself delving deeper into my work life. I was always with someone at work whose company I enjoyed, and that made the hours easy to bear. I really liked the dynamics of that team back then - things weren't beginning to get awful yet. In a year or so they would, but not yet. One of the regulars there was this goth kid - I won't name him, because he was known by a very specific handle, but for this story's sake I'll call him 'John'. Now, this kid 'John' was an interesting cat - something like a very fat Neo from the Matrix, always clad in black from head to toe, even in summer. But he was definitely an interesting guy. I got to know a lot of music I'd just been getting into myself through him and his cadre of cybergoths. And among that cadre was one girl, and maybe I'd already seen her before in one of the goth bars I sometimes went to, or maybe she too was a regular at the store - I've always been mostly oblivious to such things; even when/if I had girls plainly flirting with me, this stuff just flew over my head. And believe me, I'm not full of myself, not by a longshot, but this version of me with the long hair, and the rows of hoop earrings on either side, and the fact that I was in good enough shape, did make me something of a desirable object. Maybe I was too dumb to notice most of the time, but not always. Not always.

And so it came to pass that a few short weeks after me and Claudia had split up, I was meeting someone who I mostly regret ever having met : Ana.

Day One hundred and seven - Even the spirits are afraid

One very important thing I neglected to do right by Claudia was to properly say how beautiful she was - a natural red-head, whose fiery hair was well complimented by her cool green eyes, she was somewhat reminiscent of one of my then crushes, dutch singer Anneke van Giersbergen, who sang for the band The Gathering. I'd been into them since the mid-90s, and Anneke thoroughly captivated me back then. Claudia had a number of similarities to her, and she was a fan of the band as well - whose 2003 album was quite likely my favourite album of that year. So it would have been only natural that I would have felt lured by her siren charms. And if I'm honest... I hoped, I really did, that we could have something lasting... but alas, we did not. 

After our first and only night of sex together, the following day I immediately noticed that something was wrong. We slept together, but she had to leave to go home and get ready for work. We kissed goodbye, I went back to bed - I wouldn't have to go to work for a few hours yet - and when I woke up a bit later, I texted her something along the lines of how special ournight together had been to me, and how I hoped we'd have many more, and usually whenever I texted her she'd reply within seconds - minutes, at the most. But she didn't reply - I thought it was weird, but hey, maybe she was busy. I got ready to go to work, sent her another text - nothing. Just before I started my shift, and because we worked in the same place, I asked someone who worked with her if they'd seen her, but I was told she didn't come in for work that day, though she was scheduled to. I immediately thought the worst - that something bad had happened to her, maybe that psycho ex of hers got up to some shit, or she'd been in some sort of accident. I frantically continued to call her all day, texting her every so often, but the hours passed and I got no reply. That reply, though, would come only a few days later - probably closer to a week later. All the while, I'd been feeling like shit, wondering to myself what horrible thing I'd done to her that marked me as deserving of such treatment. Had it been the hardcore sex and all the naughty talk involved? Maybe she was more prudish than she said she was. Could it have been that? No, of course not. What happened is that she had unfinished business with the ex, and her heart told her that the best for her was to go back to him, piece of shit though he was. And I understood that - it hurt, nonetheless - but I understood. Claudia didn't come back to work again, and I wouldn't know anything about her until some three years later. I don't think that relationship of hers with the ex lasted much longer, but whatever. The cylce had now well and truly begun for me.

Day One hundred and six - Angel's decay

Claudia was a lot of things. Me and her, I mean. It was brief - probably around a month or so, it was exhilarating, it was sexy, it was fun, it was whimsical, and of course, it was sad too. After our initial hook-up, she now had the unenviable task of breaking up with the guy she'd been in a long term relationship, so we could make it official between us. But easier said than done, right? The guy refused to go down without a fight, and Claudia, naturally, felt unsure if she was making the right decision or not. But I wasn't going out without a fight either. Ultimately, I presented my case - so to speak - in a better and more decided manner, and soon me and Claudia were a couple. I should've known, though, that things wouldn't that simple - she and the guy lived together, and though she moved out, as I recall it she moved out to her mother's... who lived in the same building, so they ran into each other all the time. From what Claudia told me, the guy had a tendency to be abusive towards her, mostly verbally, sometimes physically - though as far as I know he didn't get up close and personal after all this had come to pass. But that did leave the burgeoning relationship we were trying to build in somewhat shaky ground. And things would get a bit more difficult - only maybe a week or two into our relationship, we went to an Iron Maiden gig and of course, out of the thousands of people there, we had to bump into the guy. But me, thinking all the time that I was the best prospect, made sure that Claudia felt protected and had made the right choice. And so it came to pass that things were flowing really well with us. This being the summertime, there was always some boozing being done, and long nights that would turn into early mornings where we would spend as much time possible just talking and making out. One of those nights included our first sexual experience - not sex, but I'm pretty sure it can figured out what. That promise of the threshold we'd noy yet crossed stoked the fires of desire deepn within me, and soon thereafter, we had sex for the first - and only - time. For what wouldn't be the first time in my life, I'd be with someone, and after the first sexual experience, they'd break up with me. Certainly not because of my performance - of that I can rest easy - but most definitely because I commited that cardinal sin of not being who they really wanted to be with. 

But sex with Claudia was good. It was really good. No doubt the best I'd ever had, certainly up to that point. Claudia was - and still is, I'd wager - a very pretty woman, with a husky voice and green eyes, and we had a great chemistry. She was on the same wavelength as me, and after a very hot night of very hot sex, Claudia would decide to not be a part of my life anymore.

Day One hundred and five - The sky beneath my feet

Ah, Claudia. I loved her. At least I thought I did. But did I really? No, of course not, but I was madly in love with her, and just like anyone who hasn't had sex in a long while and who now had a good prospect in hand of having it again, I was incredibly horny. And maybe all that made me feel like I loved her. She was, ultimately, a disaster that would inevitably happen, and the likelihood with it happening with anyone else was just as high. I mean, whoever became my first girlfriend after that long relationship was bound to fascinate me endlessly, naturally I'd end up idealizing her, thinking that I'd struck gold with the first swing. No, what this did was begin a cycle that would go on for a very long time - up until a few years back, when I juts gave up. That cycle boiled down to me meeting someone, getting involved with them, either develop great big feelings or none at all, and most often than not, after a few weeks or a  couple of months at the most, it would all crash and burn.

But getting back to Claudia, after she came back to work at the store, nothing had really changed - we got along really well, we talked all the time, and she still had a boyfriend. Right then and there, I had no expectations that we would ever be anything other than friends. But that all changed one night when we went out for drinks - not just us, mind you, it was a bunch of people from the store - but as so often would happen, me and her ended up in a world of our own, talking about this and that, whatever came to mind, really. And we talked well into the night, until we all started to dirft apart and head on to our respective homes. Now, though Claudia didn't really live near me, we had to catch the same bus home, and as we sat side by side during the bus ride, we somehow ended up exchanging phone numbers. And that was, really, the true inciting incident for all that was to happen from that moment on.

So, what that did was facilitate communication between us, right? The distance barrier was slowly being eroded. We'd be texting all the time, whenever we weren't both at work together, sometimes deep into the night. And this at a time, mind, when you had to pay per text sent, so I had to go out a number of times during the early hours of the night to go to an ATM and top up my phone. Jeez, how different things were at the time. 

And late one night as we were texting each other, close to midnight, there came a moment where we felt we wanted to be together. I asked her if she wanted to meet me, and she said yes. Just before 1 a.m. we met up, and stayed together for the rest of the night, until dawn. Something had started that night, and something was about to end.

Day One hundred and four - You learn about it

After we broke up, I naturally felt lost. I really didn't know what to do next - Dora having been my first and only girlfriend up to that point, I'd never really even gotten used to the idea what being single was, let alone now that I was coming out of nearly eight years with someone. So I kept my exercise routine, I kept to not eating and drinking crap, I devoted even more time to work - anything to just keep my mind from processing the changes that had happened, and were bound to happen. In December 2002, a bunch of temps were recruited for the christmas period at the store I worked at, and among those was a girl who immediately caught my attention. Hell, she'd catch anyone's attention, she was that good looking. Eventually me and her started to talk, mainly about metal - she was big into it as well - but early on I learned that she was on a relationship with some guy. Ah well, no matter, more's the pity and all that. What with her being a temp, she was gone soon after, and I thought I'd never see her again. Claudia, her name was.

My exercising and my dieting made me lot a lot of weight, I was becoming very, very slim, and I'd started growing out my hair a while back. Eventually, this started bringing me the attention of other women, though not only I was mostly oblivious to it, I didn't find myself ready to be with anyone else, not even for the most casual of things. In a matter of months, two girls I worked with and got along with really well let me know they were interested in me. One, the first, a girl called Elsa, was very casual about it, she said that if I was into her it would be ok, but if I wasn't, it would be ok either way. The other, a girl called Carina, was much more insistent. She hounded me both on and off work, talking to me insistently on the internet and messaging me on my phone, asking me all the time if she could come up to meet me. But neither of them interested. I don't think anyone did. I'd rather be alone, and make the most of my alone time. And that time was spent laying in my bed reading - this period of my life saw me significantly upping my reading intake - or listening to music or playing videogames. In my off days I'd try and be with Ian, and that kept me reasonably sane. Sometimes, I'd go out with Hugo, his girlfriend and some other friends of theirs. I'd only deviate from my usual diet routine if I hung out with them, and we had a meal together, or went out for drinks. Those were some months I'd sorely needed to get some healing done, and to get me ready for what was about to come. A few months into 2003 Claudia had returned to the store, this time on a contract, and we picked up on where we'd left. And things would start to get complicated after that.

Day One hundred and three - May nothing but happiness come through your door

The end of my relationship with Dora was a sudden affair that was years in the making. Though about a year prior we'd decided to give us another shot, nothing really changed, nothing got better. What precipitated that final moment was one night, and we were just lying bed, and just before trying to fall asleep, I tried a desperation move. We hadn't had sex in ages, and I asked her if she wanted to. And it wasn't that she just said 'no' - I had long been used to it - it was that as I was asking her I had put my arm in hers, and she grabbed it, pushed it away, then turned to me and told me how much my touch disgusted her, and that, I think, is something no-on ever prepares you for. I could understand the distance between us, I could understand how there was no love left between the two of us, I could even understand how sometimes - probably more of then than I care to admit - we just didn't like each other, but realizing that she felt disgusted by me, by something that she'd welcomed so many times before - my touch - was devastating. We spent the rest of that night talking, and by dawn it was official : we had broken up. 

I saw at once that it was a relief for her - I always understood why it would be; and not only with her - with anyone else I could always understand why they'd not want to be with me. For it was a relief as well, but not right then. I was hurt, and hurting. Oh, I know she was too, but I think she dealt with it better than I did - at least for a while. But though we weren't a couple anymore, for a while at least I still lived there, I still slept in the same bed, and - strangely - sometimes we'd even shower together. There was never anything physical or sexual between us, but there seemed to be something that brought us slightly together. Nothing that could rekindle anything regarding the relationship - that was dead and gone - but at least we managed to stay friends, and every now and again we'd go out together for a drink or something - also something we had stopped doing years before. It was completely the right decision we had made about us not staying together, but I knew things couldn't remain as they were. Even before we broke up I already had the nagging feeling that there was someone in her life already - she often talked to me about this guy who worked with her, and how they talked all the time, and good she made her feel, and I'm not completely stupid. Sometime in the first quarter of 2003 I packed up and left, moving back to my grandmother's place. I still had a bunch of stuff there, stuff that would take me quite a while to completely pick up, and because I visited often to be with Ian, it would be a long while until I felt like I had truly left the house.

Day One hundred and two - The only moment we were alone

You know, yesterday's post didn't really come out the way I intended to originally. I'd been thinking about what I was going to write for a few hours, and when I sat down to write I just couldn't focus. I was all over the place. Maybe it was because of the events I wrote about, certainly the artist's recentt passing has been weighing heavy on my mind. It's really left me out of sorts these past few weeks. All this has left me thinking about my mortality - and I've stopped being afraid of dying a long time ago. I've begun to fear dying a stupid death, like being run over by a car when I didn't look the other way, or walking down the street and being hit by a falling piano or a safe or whatever. But when I think about death, I also think about how I've never really known someone who's died, other than my grandfather. At least not to my knowledge, that is. I mean, over a decade ago I worked at a place for a couple of years and some years after I left I learned that one of the managers there had died. So that sort of makes up the total number of people who I've known and have passed away. And again, this makes me think about my own father. I don't even know whether or not he's still alive, and I'm not normally inclined or otherwise moved to ask my sister about it. But now i do find myself wondering if I shouldn't do something about. Ask. Maybe visit him. Would that give him some sort of peace of mind, before his days are up? Does he even deserve such from me? I really don't know. The last thing I want my father to be for me is a cause of regret. And I also think of my granmdfather - I've written before how he was already positively ancient when I was small, and of course when you're of that age there's a lot of things you don't care about... lots of things you don't even think about. And for many years now I feel like I should have gotten to know my grandfather better - my grandmother always told me how alike we were, both physically and in terms of certain specific things that happened in both our lives. I know that I inherited from him my love for my football club, and one of my dearest memories from my early life is when I got my very first comic book - a book featuring the Incredible Hulk - and he was there, along with my grandmother, in a tiny, tiny shopping center that I doubt exists still. But mostly all I remember is being quite afraid of him - what with him being old, and barely being able to move, he had no patience for children whatsoever, and I always felt like when he spoke to me, he was yelling rather than talking to me. But could I have made an effort to try and understand him? To try and learn from him? I didn't know any better then. I wish I did.

Day One hundred and one - The Siren of The Woods

I need to take a break from the regular programming, so to speak. Today I found that a guy with whom I've been working for the past ten years unexpectedly passed away. Now, this guy was never someone I really actually got to know, I think we might have talked no more than a handful of times, and only for work related reasons. But he was a face I saw daily for years, and hisn unmistakeable voice could always be heard in the office. He wasn't, I think, that much older than me - I'm turning 47 in a few months, I think he was 50. This, coupled with the passing of an artist whose books I enjoyed, have made me question a lot of things lately. Well, not really that lately, I guess. For maybe a couple of months now I've been at odds with a very big part of me - my materialistic side. Now, I've always loved physical things. That will never change. And adding to that is how much I've always collecting things. Not like a hoarder, not ny any means, but I'm often so fascinated by something that I won't rest until I have everything I want. What happens then is that I eventually fall out of love with that particular thing, or just become desinterested in collecting whatever, but soon enough I'll find something new. And, above all, there are two things I've always loved buying - books and records. I've sold off pretty much every single comic book I ever bought - only a handful remain, and even those I'm trying to get rid off. But other than that, I've amassed a library that boasts hundreds and hundreds of books.

Well, I say boasts, but the past tense is rather more apt. Boasted. About a year I did a huge purge on my library : one day I found msyelf staring at my bookshelves and looking at row upon row upon row of books that I'd never read, and honestly? Maybe I wouldn't ever read. There were also many other books that I'd read times enough in the past that I knew I'd hardly ever want to read them again. So, with those gone, I thought I'd whittled my library down to just what was important to me. But even those I've been letting go of late. And not just the books : I acrued a metric ton of merchandise, both from bands or from comics, and I've been putting them for sale. I have much of my loot for sale, in fact. I've gotten rid of dozens of books, CDs I'd never play again, action figures that meant little to me, you name it. I don't  do this out of necessity, no. I'm doing it because as I ponder just how transient our life is, why do I accumulate so much? I know that if something happens tome, then my son gets everything, but he'll have no interest in any of this shit, I don't think. And yet... I'm already buying more things again. I'm already fascinated by somethhing new, something I foresee I'll really be going down that rabbit hole.

Day One hundred - Lights & music

And whilst I was taking care of myself, trying to get to a better place in body and in mind, work was going well. I got that transfer to the music department, and I got along with my new team even better than I could have ever hoped. I made friends with a bunch of the guys - and girl, our team only had the one girl - and me and the new boss - David - got along really well. I was shown the ropes, which to be honest, weren't very hard to learn. I basicallly had to make sure that the shelves were stocked, and whenever new stuff came in - which was pretty much all the time, what with being new releases very regularly - we'd have to make sire that we had plenty of it in store, and we had to also find place for whatever was left back at the storeroom. We'd also have to make sure that whatever promo materials came with the biggest releases were properly set up, and that included showcasing the big releases as well as an in-store selection on the dedicated listening stations. Different times, those... and because we sold far too many things and we could only showcase a limited selection, we'd all have to man a central listening station, with a  number of CD players at the ready so any customer could take a listen to whatever they wanted, up to three records at a time. If they wanted to buy it, we'd seal it up, put a new price sticker in it, and off they went. If on the other hand they didn't want to buy it, we'd toss into a large plastic container, after which everything would be sorted into every different section we had - pop, jazz, metal, world, classical, whatever. We also had to manually price every single new item that arrived, and on top of that, some of the new arrivals also had to have special stickers denoting that they were part of some ongoing promotion. Lastly, we had to deal with the customers themselves, which wasn't terribly hard - they'd just ask if had this or that record, we'd check on our databases whether we did or not, and sometimes, if we only had maybe one or two in stock, it would be like finding a needle in haystack. It could be an item that was stolen and as such was never written off, or it could be an item that was on hold for another customer. And not always, but sometimes, we'd have a customer that threw a hissy fit if we couldn't find whatever they were looking for - and really, we just left them to it, if they made a bigger fuss, then security would only be too happy to escort them out.

And happiness was a key factor here : I was really happy at work, something I'd never felt before. I used to come in way earlier and leave later than usual because I truly enjoyed being there. But soon I'd have to face what was coming.

Day Ninety-nine - Y control

And there was a lot of good. I can safely say that for about two thirds of my stay there, it was amazing. Probably the job I had I enjoyed the most, certainly up to that point. And what was not to like? The pay wasn't bad, the job wasn't hard, and I got along famously with pretty much everyone there. Well, maybe not really that much with the folks that worked at the book department, those mainly lived in their own bubbles. So, bearing that in mind, those first few months were really great - this while I was still in the customer care department. We worked really well as a team, and a bunch of us - plus a bunch of people from other teams as well - used to hang out after work a lot, generally just for a few drinks or maybe depending on the occasion, even a proper night out. I had fun, I really did, and I never did not like what I was doing. Because work was increasingly the solace I could find due to my family life being not all that good, really. Whatever communications problems me and Dora had faced were only getting worse, and the only pretense we kept that we were a couple was us still sleeping in the same bed. And also this should be noted, mentally and physically I was at my lowest ever. I'd put on massive amounts of weight, and though I never felt too bad about it, I can also see why that would make me not all that appealing to Dora. It was, in fact, during a routine medical check-up at work that I finally realized how badly I'd fallen. See, I did feel good about myself. But that was because I didn't see myself as an overweight person, and certainly not as a fat one. But that doctor who was doing my check-up weighted me, and made some calculations, then hit me with a ton of bricks. She used a word nobody had ever used to describe myself, and by jove, I didn't see myself as it either. But she said I was obese, not merely someone overweight or with a few extra pounds, but obese. And that hit me hard. Hard as hell. So much so that on that very day I started down the path that would see me getting much fitter in due time. All the crap I'd been eating and drinking, I quit cold turkey. On top of that, I started exercising daily. Every single night after work - I used to leave at 10 p.m. and get home around 11 or so - I would wait a couple of hours and around 2 a.m. or so I'd go for a run around the neighbourhood, and - jesus, thinking aabout this now is cringy - I did like 500 sit ups, little kowing that I was ruining my back in the process. And I kept at it, every single day, week after long week, for months on end. I was on my way.

Day Ninety-eight - Wolf like me

When I started working at that big-box retail store, I began by doing customer care related work - cashier, but I never felt the tempation to lift anything ever, and sometimes I'd be in the booth for the sort of store/club card, or I'd be in the ticket office. It all fell under the purview of the customer care department. Very early on I realized that a significant chunk of the people who were working in that store were bound to leave in a few months, to go work at the new location that the company would be opening later down the year. So with that in mind I started strategizing to see if I couldn't place myself where I wanted to be - the music department. Now, back then, this encompassed a whole lot of things, and this being 2002, a lot of what is now called legacy media was still being sold : we sold CDs, very little - if indeed any - vinyl, audio cassetes, some MiniDiscs and possibly some DATs, and though DVD was just taking off, we still sold a whole lot of VHS. And to be fair, the guys and gals that worked in that department all seemed incredibly cool. In my mind's eye, I saw myself working in that team, being one of the cool guys. And, as that transition began to happen, with some people coming from other stores to replace some of the staff that was moving to the other store that was about to open, the new head of department also arrived. So, I made sure that whenever there was a chance to shine - and there were quite a few, like when we did a full, store-wide stock take, and there were also some other times when nights had to be worked to change some of the store layout, and I volunteered for those - that those moments would not be wasted and I would shine brightly. And so it came to pass that after a few months in customer care, and the new management team being fully in place, that the openings were officially open. I jumped at the bit, got myself an interview with the new boss - all the while not being aware that in those moments where I shone, a lot of people had their eyes on me, both from the teams that were migrating to the new store, and from other teams in my store, though my heart was well and truly set - and I aced that interview, eventually getting the higher up approval to move to the new team. To the dream team. This, I think, was around September 2002 - by year's end things would change drastically for me. Dora and me would finally split up, then in the first few months of the following year I'd move back to my grandmother's place - where I still live to this day - and that would start leading towards what would be a downward spiral for me, but mentally and emotionally. But for now, let's focus on what was good.

Day Ninety-seven - Rhiannon

Now for a story that precious few people have ever been told or know about. To be honest, I myself don't know the precise number of people I told this story - no more than a few, certainly less than a handful. Probably really only a couple of people, other than the other people who were involved in the story - the instigator and my 'partner in crime', so to speak. This sad story pertains to the one and only time I was unfaithful to Dora. And I tell it now, because I want no more secrets. Let the worst of me - at least so far - stand revealed. 

So, by then, regular sex between me and Dora had been off the table for a number of years. We'd do it maybe once a year, if I got lucky. And if for a great while this actively bothered me and messed me up inside, then from a certain point on I stopped caring, really. I stopped thinking about sex. Sex, to me, was something that happened to other people -  and that was ok. So, withing Hugo's circle of friends, people who he'd worked with or went to uni with, there was a somewhat strange girl that was always very nice to me. And one day Hugo texts me and says that she... huh... she wanted to jump my bones. And I couldn't understand why - at the time I was at one of my lowest points both mentallly and physically, so I couldn't quite grasp why she'd want anything with me, least fo all sex. And then Hugo explained - the girl - and she was our age - had never had sex before, and really wanted to do it with this guy she was in love with, but really didn't notice her. So she wanted to get some... experience. And, ok, but why? Why me? Why have your first time be with me, of all people? Well, because I was the designated dumbass. I agreed to talk to her about it, and we eventually set a date for the thing. It was all terribly official, with a date, time and place set by her. But I must say that I struggled with this decision. It was a line I had never wanted to cross. So, it wasn't neither an easy nor immediate 'yes' from me. What drove me to finally acquiescing was Dora not being amenable to my advances once more, and as I knew that we were living on borrowed time anyway, I went ahead with it. 

So on the day that had been agreed upon, we  met up - she was very nervous, and had to have a drink before - and when we got to our room we started... trying. And it didn't go well. Well, it didn't go... in. It would't go in. It was like she had a vagina Gandalf telling my penis Balrog : 'You shall not pass!'

And after a couple of hours of trying and failing to have sex, we gave up on it, and went our separate ways. Moral of the story : she ended up having sex for the first time with the guy she had always intended to.

Day Ninety-six - Roscoe

But sometime during 2001 I ended up returning to the convenience store where I'd worked between '98 and 2000. I think one day I was just passing by there and saw that they had like a 'now hiring' sign, and I went inside and flat out asked the manager if they'd take me back. He said sure, and probably the next day I was back there, filling the necessary paperwork, and starting again. And this time around I promised myself that I wouldn't be up to my past antics. And I did keep true to my word... at least for a while. I have no idea what prompted me to start doing that stuff again, maybe it was just too easy, maybe the temptation was far too great, but soon enough I was at it again, and very very soon - maybe a few months only into my return - I was already on my way out. I can't place the timeline, but I'm guessing that this was even before 2001 was up. Because what I do remember about late 2001 was the night were me and Dora almost broke up - something or the other happened that precipitated a sort of state of the union kind of conversation, and she was adamant that the best for us was for us to call it quits. Nothing had been working out between us, there was no intimacy whatsoever, our family life wasn't great either. To top it all off, somewhere along the line our boiler had broken down and we had to resort to having to wash ourselves with water that had to be heated on the stove and on the microwave oven. It didn't make much difference in the summer, but come winter it got really tough. Add to that that Dora was still the only the one getting a regular paycheck, that meant that our budget for anything was rather limited. We survived on basic cheese and ham sandwiches for a lot longer than I care to admit, sometimes there was pasta and rice and soup, but not always. I can understand and empathize with just how tired she was all of this. How tired she was of me. And I can't blame her. I was tired of her as well, but most of all I was also tired of me. I couldn't give anymore, I couldn't find in me the motivation to do anything worthy of neither myself nor anyone else. And then, also somewhat out of the blue, my friend 'James' started working at a big box retail store that back then was kind of our dream job. We used to go there all the time to buy CDs and we always thought how cool it muste be like to work there. So through a guy who he'd worked with, who used to date a girl that was one of the customer care supervisors, 'James' started working at one of their locations. Oh, how I envied him. But I also used him as an in into that gig - I gave him a copy of my CV and shotrly thereafter I was going to an interview which led me to working there for roughly the next two and half years.

Day Ninety-five - Slave to the wage

If you thought that was a crazy story, wait 'till you get a load of the next one. I can't be sure now precisely how it came about, but as I best recall it, it was through my mother, who maybe knew a guy who knew a guy, one of those things. And you know by now that back then whenever I found myself without a job, I'd always try to find a security gig or the other. So it's no wonder that what I found was doing security work, but this time with some caveats. Firstly, it would only be for a few days - I can't remember how many, but maybe more than a weekend and less than a week. So the pay wasn't exactly great, but for just those few days, it wasn't shabby either. The proviso was that a more steady gig could be offered to me when this ended. But it was doing security work in a funfair sort of thing, and I'd have to be there until the day was done, god knows at what time that would be. All I know is that it would be an ungodly amount of hours per day. But we needed the money, things weren't going great financially at home. So, my first day there - and let me tell you this was quite far from where I lived back then - I get to the place maybe a little bit after lunch time, to talk to whoever was responsible for the operation. I have no idea what I was expecting, maybe something at least semi-professional and well organized, and instead I was greeted by a gaggle of what looked like nothing more than random teenage hoodlums, who you think you'd rather sooner find being the cause of a disturbance, rather than actually be providing security. It's quite likely that I might have had a few words with the - and it's no exaggeration here  - kid who was running the gig, but a few minutes after I'd arrived, I turned my back on that whole thing and came back home.

Making the choice to leave was a hard one, because of the financial situation. When I got back home and talked to Dora she was visibly disappointed. She told me she had, in fact, already made plans for the money. If things weren't already great between us, then this really didn't help at all. Around this time, we’d also received some financial help from my mother - and by this I mean she'd sometimes do some shopping for us. She and my sister would sometimes visit us at our place and drop off some supplies, but I know that never sat well with Dora. It was in one of those instances that the only time we ever fought happened. Hell, it was the only time I ever had a fight with anyone I've been in a relationship with. I can't remember what sparked it, but it went from zero to a hundred in a pico second. Tick tock, tick tock. Time was running out, faster and faster.

Day Ninety-four - Heaven knows I'm miserable now

For the life of me, I cant really recall where exactly on the timeline of events these next two stories fall into. I mean, most of the time I do get that feeling that they happened after I came back from London, but other times I get the feeling that they happened before. And just as plausible, one - either one, really - could have happened before and the other after. Who cares? 'It's not the destination, it's the journey', like Ralph Waldo Emerson so brilliantly put it. Whatever the case, these truly were the two worst jobs I ever had.

Let's begin by the one where I lasted half a day : these would have been the times where I still didn't have the Internet or even a computer, for that matter, so looking for a job was mostly trawling through the newspaper classifieds and see what was on offer. I'd buy the paper maybe every other day or so, and then when I saw something that made me go 'screw it, why not?', I'd call them to see if I could get an interview. I went to a few around that time - some for security gigs, but it never panned out. I then remembered that, even though not officially and I didn't have a licence for it, I did learn how to operate a forklift. So in one of my intrerviews, precisely for a warehouse that was looking for a forklift driver, I used that to leverage my way in. The interview went great and they wanted me to start like the beginning of the week that was coming next, and I said sure. The pay wasn't great, but it was enough. Soe my first day there, I get there expecting to be shown around and to start putting stuff into trucks or whatever. Then they told me that they'd had a slight change of plan - I guess they might've been lying through their teeth, but they told me that apparently that vacancy had already been offered to some other guy. But they did have a job for me on the factory floor, if I wanted to. I said sure, though not without some internal protest... I was already feeling ill at ease there. I was then taken to where the conveyor belts were, and there were two other people working there - a much older man and a much older woman - and they tried to explain to me what I had to do while they manned the conveyor belts. I really didn't get it, and soon I was being told off. They explained again, and I still didn't get it. Anyway, I winged it, and by the time I thought I'd been there working my ass off for hours, it was still barely 11 A.M.

I felt like crying when I saw the time. When the lunch break came, I told the people there that I'd not brought anything to eat, and I was going to get a bite to eat from one of the nearby restaurants. I made my way out of there, never to return. As I was making my way home, I rang the head guy and told him sayonara. That was one dead-end job I really didn't want.

Day Ninety-three - Peeping tom

Some months after I moved to London, I'd say either in January or February 2001, Dora and Ian visited me for a few days - I know it was a short time only, probably no more than three days, but it was a balm that my soul sorely needed. I'll never forget that trip I made to the airport to go and meet them, and I was deathly afraid that by then Ian would have forgotten all around me already, but when I saw them arrive and as I approached them to give them my welcome, I saw his baby face light up and he flashed a great big smile when he saw me. I kissed Dora, and then knelt down to take Ian off his stroller, so that I could hug him close. I had missed his first birthday, and that stung. Together, we went back to where I was living - I never referred to it as 'my place' - and got settled in. As I recall it, I might have had some days off too while they were there, so we spent as much time together as we could. I don't remember much about that short period of time they were there, other than taking Ian to my workplace so they could meet my kid, and maybe a couple of intimate moments of bad sex between me and Dora. But the seed had been planted : London, however much I loved it, was not where my heart was. I needed to go back home, to be with Dora and Ian. The only thing left to do was wrap up my stay there : first I had to put aside money for a ticket - I think I might have bought it from the travel agent Carla worked in, possibly with some employee discount. I can't remember now whether I actually quit my job or if I ghosted them and just stopped going as soon as I got my ticket. Pretty much everything I had taken with me was already packed, I just jept on adding to it with DVDs, comics and records. Nothing really kept me there, not even my love for the city. What good was it to me, if I was unhappy all the time? Home was where I wanted to be. Home was where I needed to be. And my return home began that final stretch of my relationship with Dora.

I came back and was welcomed by my mother and my sister - no Dora and Ian, I suppose she might've been working that day. I went home, and everything was as it had been. I now found myself jobless, broke, and with no real perspectives in sight. I had to look for a job at once, because if I remember it right, her sister was without a job as well. But the two jobs I managed to find that year  - we're talking about 2001 here, and I'm pretty sure both of these jobs came at this point in time - didn't last long. One, lasted half a day, the other lasted all of five minutes.

Day Ninety-two - So long, Marianne

When I moved to Carla and Jay's place, there were never any formal conversations that I'd have to contribute with any money, though I guess it was expected that I'd chime in... but I never did. For one, they did know just how badly I was being paid, and though they never knew where I spent my money on, I told them that I was sending money home. And I wasn't lying, I just did it like twice. One time I did send all that I'd made that month, and the other time I sent like half my paycheck. But some friction was starting to pop up, for sure. Jay started to show me his real colours - I didn't know him that well yet, so I didn't know he was an alcoholic, I didn't know he was a violent, abusive prick. He only got 'physical' with me once, grabbing me by my arms and shaking me while he hurled verbal abuse at me, but that was one time too many. Carla would then let me know about all the antics he'd been up to - how his alcoholism had destroyed all their savings, how she had to borrow - and heavily at that - from her own father just to feed his beast. She said that every so often he'd try and get violent with her, but Carla - being a big, big woman, strong and resolute as well - always kept him at bay. But a rift started to grow, and I took an intense disliking to him. I wouldn't say 'hate' , not downright, but it bordered on that. He became to me that kind of person that could ruin your day just by saying 'hello' to you. From that point on, I had to learn how to better navigate around him. One of the things I did was work double shifts - that meant more money, yes, but it also meant being incredibly exhausted. I did that for a month, with only one day off, and it left me on the verge of collapse. That not being a viable long term option, I started spending more time outside, but what with winter having arrived, that too didn't prove to be something that I could stick to in the long run. In the meantime, sometimes Carla would ask me to help her with the shopping, and during those occasions she'd try and broach the contribution conversation with me, but I always shot her down. Both of them had, meanwhile, taken a part time job doing cleaning at night. And since I wasn't contributing, I got drafted to cover for either one of them on the regular. It was only fair, I suppose.

But I did feel a sense of disenchantment... I wasn't happy there, I missed my family, I hated my job, and really, I had no true will to change any of that. I tried looking for a different job, and I got an interview for a spot at second hand video game store that was, unsurpisingly, right next to where I worked, but my working experience day there didn't really pan out into anything. I was already feeling lost.