During the year between Cooper and I breaking-up and Peter and I starting to date, I continued on the journey to try and find someone. That has to be the most complicated year of my life and I had so many boyfriends that I can’t seem to remember them all. True, they never overlapped, but still, they were many.
Aah, Manny. Manny was the first one. The rebound right after Cooper. We dated for three weeks and he dumped me for being clingy. Don’t really blame him. Actually, I knew it was coming. Still, he was the perfect rebound and he served his purpose perfectly.
You see, the thing with rebounds is never the relationship, it’s the break-up. You know the whole thing won’t mean a thing, especially right after something that was so meaningful, so when it all blows up, it doesn’t hurt. After all, if you were able to replace the big guy, getting over this one is a piece of cake. I’m grateful for Manny and every time I think of him, I wish him well. I am positive I have been a lot of guys’ rebound as well and I hope I have done my job right.
Along the way, closer to the turn of the year, there was Octavius. Sounds important, doesn’t it? Well, that’s exactly what he wanted me to think, that he would be important for me. He truly knew how to pamper me. I had some special feelings for Octavius that I couldn’t really explain. He was so different from the type of men that I liked, still I was immensely attracted to him. That was some real power right there.
By the end of our first weekend together, I was already madly in love with him and thinking about him even in my dreams.
Cooper was richer than me and he made me feel aware I was poorer than him. Octavius was probably richer than Cooper and I put together (not that I would have much to add to the sum anyway), but he wanted me to not think about it. Somehow that was all I could think about.
He would call me at night just because he was lonely and wanted to have someone hear him to talk about his day. Young and in love as I was, I would always gladly listen, but his talks never drifted much from work, an expensive one. I was always trying to find something in his words that indicated things he liked, so I could have a shot at pampering him.
Now, don’t go thinking I treated him as a sugar daddy. First, he was only a year older than me, second, he liked to pamper me with actions, not objects. I never wanted anything from him in that manner and I really enjoyed the lazy afternoons we just slept away in his incredibly comfortable bed.
I was, as usual and expected, pretty broke by then. I actually loved that we would stay in most of the times because I always felt uncomfortable around rich people and I’d be damned if I had to go out with him anywhere, financially speaking. One Friday night I went to his place and I was feeling very accomplished. I had finally discovered something he liked and I was carrying it in my bag: a bit pot of chocolate ice cream. I would go on to spend a penniless fortnight because of that (yes, that’s how broke I was), but I was happy and proud of myself.
He was really happy with it and I served us both some generous helpings and we went to do our favourite thing together: sleep. I forgot to store the ice cream away, though, leaving it in the sink. I woke up to a pot of chocolate milk. Unceremoniously, he tossed it away. I could see the last of my money, the height of my effort to please him, going down the drain with water. He washed the pot free of residues and also tossed it.
During the upcoming week he didn’t call me much and before I noticed it, we had gone four months without talking, during which I even dated another guy.
That other guy is Phillip and he is a true asshole. Although he doesn’t deserve it, I want to do my story with him justice, so I’ll save it for another time. The only reason I’m doing this is because this shitty jerk at least brought me a very dear friend and one of my favourite people on this planet, so I’ll won’t tell it here.
Douche.
Around April Octavius contacted me again with this huge cinematographic tale of being tricked by a guy who only wanted his money. I lost interest halfway through it, but I had some vindictive plans in mind. Not at first, really. That came after another weekend.
He had finally convinced me to go to his house, now a different one in a different neighbourhood, that took me forever to find. We would spend the night together and the next day we would go to the movies. I wasn’t as broke as the year before, so we arranged that dinner was on him that night and movie tickets were on me the next day. They were pricy tickets. Imax tickets, so that was something, even more so considering his dinner consisted of take-in pizza.
Still, when it was time to get dressed and go to the movies, he came with an excuse not to go. That was my final straw. I left him home and went to see the movie. It was a special occasion of a gigantic blockbuster celebrating its 15th anniversary and being released on Imax 3D and I wanted to be a part of it. If he didn’t, screw him.
In the end I ghosted him just like he had done the year before. I never regretted it, but every time I think of him nowadays, I wish for him to be happy doing whatever it is that he does.
Cooper never gave me the attention I longed for. Manny complained that I didn’t give him space, even though every time we went to his house, he would lock us in his tiny bedroom. Octavius spent two thirds of his time with me sleeping me as the big spoon and yet I never felt he connected to me in any sense.
No other hug made me feel loved and calm the way Oliver’s did.
Our first months living together changed a lot once the year turned and I had gone back to teaching. Now we had a dog, our arrivals were met with a lot of happiness, joy, love, and a huge and exhausting mess for us to clean before we could even take our clothes off.
The first half of 2014 was considerably hard. The bills kept piling and my depression aligned with some awful jobs made me still bounce from company to company. The first one was such a toxic environment that on my birthday they greeted me saying I was 'one step closer to death'. I was always so burned out I ended up in the hospital twice in two months. One day I simply refused to show up. Another one, who had taken me from a smaller school, fired me for being gay, which left me without either job.
Things were really complicated. During so many days all we had was corn porridge (the cheapest thing you can make, it takes only corn flour and water) to be shared between two adults and a dog. Things had been difficult when I lived in a different state the year before, but it was nothing compared to that situation. I could barely keep any job, Oliver's wasn't enough to make ends meet and I felt useless.
On the day I was fired for being gay, I had no idea how to gather the courage to tell him I had lost another job. But I was certain it wasn't fair to keep forcing him to go through all of that. I greeted him at his job with a gloomy and foretelling face.
'I just want you to know' I completed my whole thought without even breathing or looking at his face, 'that I understand if you think this is too much for you and if you want to go back to your grandmother's house.'
He would eventually tell me that was the most disappointed I've ever made him feel. Not for losing another job, but for thinking he wouldn't stand by me when things were difficult. I understood what he meant, but refused to apologise. I still didn't think it was fair to make him endure such hardships. We were bearing starvation. I remember getting two bonbons for Easter and I ate one right away and stored the second in my shirt pocket. I cried my eyes out on the bus home out of guilt because I really wanted to save Oliver that second candy, but it had been all I had eaten all day. In the end I thought that facing a later and greater guilt would be too hard to bear and I managed to keep it safe in my pocket until I put it in our empty fridge.
However, the most painful memory I have of that time was a phone call from my sister. She had called to scold me because I wasn't financially helping my mother and now I was an adult it was my obligation. I heard her words as I stared into an empty fridge and pantry and, sounding arrogant, hung up on her and started crying. A few years later, when I told mother about that call, she said my sister wasn't helping either.
When the second semester started, I got another teaching job that sounded a little bit promising. At least it seemed better than the others and we'd finally be able to pay rent and buy food.
Things were finally seeming to improve, until one last offer came, an offer we knew to be dangerous, but it was too good in our condition to refuse.
Comments (0)
See all