I didn’t sell my sexual soul to Marie. I never met Madison Porter-Hawkins and I never worked for Alt City Magazine. But hey, you win some and you lose some. And sometimes not winning something is worth more than losing another thing. Not that I hadn’t lost my innocence much earlier in life but declining Marie’s favour felt like some kind of rebirth at the time and I can’t recall ever regretting it. For a couple of months I thought about it every time I bought the magazine, but then I just stopped reading it and the memory faded. It can be that simple.

I have written many words on the dramatic downfalls of my love life so far and the flagrantly erroneous choices I have made for the sake of it. But I have no idea where I would be right now if hadn’t fallen for Nathalie or Claire. It is part of life’s intricate plan that meeting one person places you on the path of another. The end of my affair with Nathalie indirectly introduced me to Theresa and working for Theresa led me to Claire, whom I considered to be the great love of my life, up until my twenty-sixth birthday. Losing Claire was about the hardest part of my twenties. Let’s face it, and I can finally say it now, she treated me like shit. But I loved her so ferociously, I took the mental beatings she gave me every time she told me she had fucked someone else and then I let her do it again. I was addicted to seeing her melt at my touch, to spying the lust she felt for me in her glance, to softening her up and hearing her say she goddamnlovedme. Even though she was a pretty unlovable person, I was crazy for her anyway. And for all her faults, she was the one who got me a job at the company I still work for now. Because that’s just how life goes.

My savings were getting low as I was nearing six weeks of unemployment. I was sharing a house with three other people but rent was still pretty steep and life in general wasn’t exactly cheap either. I went on several more interviews for jobs I had little or no enthusiasm for. It started to look as if the two only viable options I had were moving back in with my parents or taking another assistant’s job. I wanted neither, obviously. But then I got the call. Did I want to interview for an entry-level writing position at Blogging The Globe? Huh, yes please. Back then I couldn’t be sure Claire was behind it but I had my suspicions, I mean, why else would I get a call out of the blue with someone offering me a job like that just when I really needed it? Life is funny but not that funny. So I scraped together some articles from my job in Paris, dressed accordingly and got myself hired. I now manage the Hong Kong team. Claire may believe I still owe her for it but as far as I’m concerned she will always owe me, what with the scars of the open relationship and all. I still shiver when I hear someone speak the words.

I guess you could still say I shagged myself into a job but the way I see it, it was just well-earned compensation for all the gruelling heartbreak. Either way, I was happy. I could pay my share of the rent. I was independent. I had drinking money. And it was a great job. It still is.

To be continued…