Rebirth

The past few weeks must rank among the weirdest in my life. I had vaguely anticipated a few more difficulties after recovering from my last spin. Some unexploded emotional ordinance that might detonate even if the worst of the fire had been put out. It happened with Easter. My ex informed me that the only son of her partner had committed suicide. My Chinese girlfriend had broken up. For the third or fourth time since I got to know her, which is only since Chinese New Year, which is less than three months ago. So I had nothing much to do and felt bad myself. So I thought it would be good to get out. To go somewhere. So I decided to go visit her.

I biked to where she lives. In her beautiful house on a hill a good 100+ km from Brussels. I stayed with friends whom I had not seen in years. They kindly allowed me to drink more than I should have when I arrived, and the next morning I visited her and her partner. I will spare you the details of the story out of respect for their suffering. Any case, I told both they should not blame themselves and that it might be an opportunity to cement and heal all what has to be healed. To enter the heart of darkness and come out stronger. They appreciated the few words I spoke. I then biked home again. The muscles are good but I will have to stop smoking at one point. It does limit my cardio fitness.

My daughter and her boyfriend were biking in southern Italy and had created a WhatsApp group on which they posted wonderful pictures and happy stories. I enthusiastically commented. My ex then phoned and asked me to stop doing that because it disturbed her partner and, I must presume, her partner. It made me realize that, a good 15+ years after our divorce, she still thinks I am hers. Somehow. By some coincidence, I had stumbled upon a wonderful song that talks about the damage from abusive relationships, and I felt like I had been in such abusive relationship not only with her but with all of the women whom I have loved. They all used me. And they still use me when in trouble.

I suddenly felt it was time to tell her clearly that our children have grown up now and that it was time for me to move on. That it was time for her to move on too and solve her own shit. I felt good about that. That all happened more than a week ago now and I still feel good about that.

My Chinese girlfriend came back again. A few days ago. She apologized and she feels different now. I think she had trouble accepting the fact that she is in love with me. We are a very incongruous couple. Hence, I understand. We talked a lot over the past few days. I feel stronger now. For some reason, I feel this relationship is much more solid now. Because I feel much more solid now. My weird adventure in Ukraine and the rather emotional episode that followed it have done me good. For the first time in my life I am really confident the next 10 or 20 years will be really good. Because I will be guided solely by what is good for me rather than what might be good for others. I enrolled in an edX course on blockchain technology and I have a few interesting projects lined up. In short, my brain, heart and soul are finally in sync again. I think the dark period which started with the demise of my mom almost five years ago now is over. Finally. It was about time.

Post scriptum (three weeks later): The Chinese love affair fanned out. I am not sure why. I feel it was one-way love anyway so I do not mind too much. One really gets used to pain. All kinds of pain. Physical. Heartbreak. Whatever. I went to booze all night and I am now getting up. We are alone. Again. We are always alone. It does not matter. It’s life. It is ok.

Another goodbye

I broke up with Lily. Yesterday. She is the Chinese woman. China is a bit too large a concept to be meaningful so let me add that she is from Liaoning province. That is somewhat more precise. Somewhat. I do not know a whole lot about her – she is obviously more Manchu than Han Chinese – but I do not know where she was born exactly, or when. I do not know her family name but I know both of her parents are still alive, and that she has a younger sister and brother. She misses them. A lot. She has not seen them since she came to Europe to do what she is doing – and that is to earn good money as a sex worker. But she calls them regularly.

She has a boss who gives her appointments if she cannot find them on the street. She told me she came to Europe about three years ago. Before she came to Brussels, she was in Madrid. Since I met her – just a few months ago (she had just moved from Spain) – her business boomed. She took my advice: go for regular customers who are well off and avoid abuse. I told her that should be easy for her because something inside of her has remained very pure. She gives clients more than sex. She fills their souls. Prostitutes are the bests of therapists for wounded men. Temporarily. The proof is that she did fall in love with me. Our relationship transformed from easy pay-for-sex to something that we both believed in. I showed her the city (Brussels is not bad), introduced her to my friends and we talked a lot about spirituality, love, friendship, intimacy and sex. We communicated through Google translate on her phone, and the usual more-than-intensive WhatsApp chatting one does with a lover. It made for slow but deep conversation.

I did not pay her anymore but showered her with small gifts. Decently priced jewelry, funny plushies (we both have Lilo and Stitch in our beds now), fresh flowers every week. She kept telling me to take it day by day and not think of the future but one inevitably does when one has good love. It consumed me. It consumed her as well. She kept complaining about not being able to take late-night customers when seeing me, and I kept complaining about the unpredictably of our encounters. Like I had to be on standby for her all the time. Just as much as she had to be on standby for customers. She does not drink. She does not smoke. Or once in a while only. When she is with me. She felt safe with me. I would never take advantage of her. I was happy just to see her sleep and recover next to me. When we had sex, it was because she wanted it. I never took any initiative on that front. She had healed me and that was enough for me.

I gave her confidence. I told her it was the customers who should be ashamed of paying money for sex rather than her feeling bad for selling her body for money. I told her prostitution was an honorable profession because it fulfills a real need and may well be the oldest business in the world.

But yesterday I felt my love for her was draining me. One should not calculate in these things – one should give without expecting anything in return – but I suddenly felt very weak when she texted me to tell me she had just lost 280 Euro on gambling on slot machines. She said she had felt restless and just wanted to waste money. 280 Euro is the price of the jewelry I bought her. It is about the price of all of the plushies I bought her. The money that has gone into flowers so far. The money I spent in bars with her. It is far less than the money I had paid her to have sex back in January. Far less than the money I spent on other prostitutes. But it felt like a slap in the face. We wrote some more up and down, and then I asked her if she would see me that night. She said no. She said she wanted to earn that money back. The evening before she had cancelled an appointment with me because of a late-night customer who paid 250 Euro for midnight sex. I suddenly felt very tired and weak and told her my love for her seemed to have suddenly evaporated. I told her I felt very bad she could not see me the night before because she wanted to earn 250 Euro on some other man, and that she could not see me this night because she wanted to recover the 280 Euro she had lost in gambling. I told her that – as far as I was concerned – she had gambled me away.

She sort of agreed. That was it. She asked me not to block her on WhatsApp and keep her number but I did block her and erased all traces of her on my phone. She knows where I live – just ten minutes from where she walks the streets – and she can come here if she wants to. She probably won’t. Not anymore.

I was obviously restless and could not sleep. I went to have tea in the Albanian bar inbetween her area and another rather nasty neighborhood. I took my tea outside to watch the ladies and men go about their business: selling sex, selling drugs, or just hastily passing through to some other destination. Suddenly an Iranian woman walked up to me. I had met her before but I could not immediately tell when or where. She knew and told me. I had picked her up from the street in December. I remembered because she was in as bad a state as she was then: high on cocaine, almost freezing to death and very confused. Her name is Myriam. She is tiny but speaks Arab, Farsi and a few other languages. I think she might have bossed others around before she got so terribly addicted.

Her mind had a few sharp spots left as she talked about what had happened last time: I had taken her home to let her rest and sleep. She had an appointment in a rehab center the next morning. She told me things I had told her and asked me if I could take her home with me again. She wanted to sleep. I did not need much convincing. She was in a mess. Nothing in me called for sex or anything indecent.

Unlike last time, she really misbehaved. She asked for snacks and chocolate and ate fast and hungrily while taking more cocaine. I had paid her a good meal on the way home so it looked like she had not eaten for two days or so. I did not try to stop her taking more and more drugs as she was clearly not in any mood to be stopped from what she was doing. I put up some Zen music to calm her down. She searched on YouTube for Iranian love songs and cried as she was listening to them. After two or three hours of restlessly getting herself more and more into a gradually deteriorating physical and mental state she fell into sleep. Only to wake up after fifteen minutes or so to try to take more drugs. I calmly but firmly prevented her from doing so.

It was a bad night. She peed in bed. Next to the bed. The whole room stank of her urine. She kept opening and closing the window. Wake me up to turn the computer back on and then tell me to go sleep again. She had brought a bag of sunflower seeds on which she snacked but littered everywhere. She asked for paper napkins which she used to spit in. When these were finished, I brought her toilet paper.

We both finally managed to sleep for four or five hours. We both woke up around 10 am. Me a bit earlier. She a bit later. I brought her coffee on the bed and rolled some cigarettes. I was angry but kind. The fresh tobacco did me good. I did tell her firmly she should go. Within the next hour. That this had been the first time someone used cocaine in my house and that it was definitely the last time I would allow someone to do that. She got angry and pathetic. She shouted at me. I told her to go. She looked much better. I could see she still felt bad but she was more in control of herself and could walk and do whatever she would want to do. Otherwise I would not have asked her to leave the house: you can only ask someone to leave the house if he or she is capable of doing so. If not, one calls the police or an ambulance. When she said she did not want to leave, I did tell her I would call for medical help. Or the police if necessary.

I trusted her too much. I let her walk around. She showered. She rummaged for food in the kitchen. While I went down to make more coffee she took my wallet. I only noticed when she had gone. I was too tired to feel angry. I had given her 100 Euro as that was what she had asked for: to pay some debt, get food and a taxi. My wallet was in a drawer in my bedroom and so she could see where it was. I had never expected her to steal so I had not taken it with me when going down. It felt like a slap in the face. Of course, I had been stupid to expect some kind of gratitude for giving her shelter for the night, and a lot of patience and heartfelt advice. That she should stop killing herself. That she should deal with whatever it was that had made her dependent on drugs (she talked about a lover who broke up one year ago – but I do not believe much of it).

I called the bank to block my bank cards and order new ones. My ID card is gone too. I did not mind the money all that much – it was only a few hundred Euro so that is one of the reasons I never really thought about it – but she is smart enough to know that the loss of bank and ID cards and other small stuff in a wallet is quite a headache. I feel sad for her. She has beautiful eyes and spoke flashes of wisdom inbetween her rants and moaning. I felt abused already but I cannot believe she took the whole wallet. She could just have taken the money only. I would not have been upset too much. I would have been angry as well but it would just pass as I understand how drugs distorts one’s judgment. Now she is alone. Truly alone. It is probably a good way to say goodbye because now I do not have to think of the prospect of her dying from some overdose in a cold corner somewhere. She probably wants to die but she is just not courageous enough to make it happen.

That is OK. Not every human being is equally courageous. Some are just smart animals whose programming runs haywire. One should not worry about problems one cannot possibly solve. She is such problem. Lily is not such problem. I love her still.

Post scriptum: Love and God are related concepts. They are equally empty but they are sort of a two-stage psychological mechanism to fill any real or perceived gap in our souls. Love is the illusion we can solve our existential loneliness by solving the existential loneliness of someone else. The concept of God is one we invoke when nothing else works. Both are useless. Life is about facing loss and decay and, ultimately, plain simple death. Our body keeps us going until it falls apart. That is all there is to life. It is enough to keep me going – even if it sometimes feels like I am just scraping through.

[…] That missile strike missed me. Some saw the sky turn red. I did not. It was just another close call. I just saw the explosions – pretty huge (I got used to smaller stuff) – and instinctively knew what to do and where to go. There had been an air alarm just two hours earlier and I had kept my clothes and boots on. I calmed down others and everyone evacuated orderly. Only my guardian angel seems to truly love me. Otherwise she would not save me as many times as she does. Clean the gun, reload your magazines, and make sure you keep a few bullets in your pocket. Make sure you aim well before you shoot. Always. You want the thing that will ultimately hit you have a good aim as well. Preferably, you do not want to see it coming – but I guess that is a bit too much mercy to ask.

What happened with Lily and Myriam feels a bit like an emotional missile strike. Just like the Yavoriv strike it came just because of presence: we attracted shit just because we were there and the Russians knew it. Something inside me also signaled that Myriam would just take advantage of me. She did. It is OK. One gets used to it. Some people jump off cliffs expecting God to save them. I do not. I broke up with Lily to avoid more hurt. To avoid big trouble further down the line. Once in a while I feel I am really good at navigating cliffs – or that I am getting better at it, at least. 🙂

To be honest, I am still reeling from it all – but I am confident these were just loose ends to be tied up. Or to be cut loose. Whatever. It is done. The bleeding inside will stop. One day.

A strange journey

I had never thought Putin would actually invade Ukraine. When he did, I went with the first batch of volunteers to join the International Legion. I survived a missile strike on the Yavoriv base near the Polish border. We then went under cover. I was on television. Anonymously. My friends and family knew I was there and asked me to come back. They did not feel safe. So I came back after two months. There was nothing much I could do anyway there. There are many volunteers and we did not add any military value. Foreigners taking the same risk as Ukrainians gives more of a moral boost.

It has been two weeks now since I crossed the border back to Poland. I bussed home. I think I needed those two weeks to make sense of what I have done and why. I found new purpose in life. I am going to lead a normal life again. A valuable one. The Chinese girl contacted me again. She loves me. She does not need my money. She only comes back to me late at night. After work. I know she shares her body with many men but I do not mind. Maybe it is the kind of love a child has for a teddy bear. The love is real but the teddy bear is not. Or is it?

I have always had trouble distinguishing between what is real and not real in love. I do not care too much about the difference anymore. I am reasonably happy and that is all that matters.

Looking for love

Over the past few months, I went on a new quest. I tried everything: online dating (tiring and boring, really – dating sites seem to attract a lot of bores), real-life encounters in neighborhood bars (my neighborhood bars are full of pretty young smart women but I am too old for them, so no chance there), and – of course – I went to see the professionals in the business: prostitutes. [I should probably be politically correct and say ‘sex workers’ but I do not see why I should be PC here.]

With two of them, I went quite far. I am speaking money-wise now: I ended up paying for all kinds of costs of family members far away. For stories about sick moms and small kids that are probably not true. So I ended up disentangling me from both. One was Bulgarian, one was Chinese. The Bulgarian woman was the funniest but also most cunning one. And, yes, damn pretty. The Chinese woman was more honest (she told me upfront I should not try to save her) and, frankly, very sweet. In fact, she was probably true – in the sense she would not say all that much (her English was not that good) but laugh about my naivety in short and very pointed remarks.

I should, perhaps, reveal a bit more here. Just because I am sure you are curious about these woman. The Chinese woman was far more business-like than the Bulgarian one: she simply charged an above-average fee by the hour (with free walks through Brussels afterwards – as long as I paid for the drinks in other nice places) and never complained about sick family members and kids or asked for money beyond the usual agreement. So I felt she treated me much better than the Bulgarian one: less romance but more value. The escort type of thing. I also got great food from her and the place was nice and clean etcetera. Next time I am in need for sex, which is not any time soon, I’ll surely go Chinese or Asian again.

Now for the Bulgarian woman, I have to be fair: she may have been smarter. I have to credit her for the nice conversations in German (she had journeyed around in Germany before she picked Brussels as her new home), so my German is up to date again. Also, I think the story about her sick mom and her two small kids back in a village in Bulgaria was actually true, although I have to admit I probably like to believe that because of the money I gave her for that. Last but not least, I have to credit her with bringing out all that I have left in my body after that prostate cancer surgery last year. For that, I have to be grateful forever: it felt great to have some kind of normal sex again after seven or eight months (the surgery was in May, last year). I am still only half the man I used to be, but I feel confident now things might come back to some kind of normal.

[…] OK. I will now not talk about these women anymore, but about me. How I feel about it all.

I think I know all about love now. I wrote a couple of times already that, when looking for love, we look for a combination of friendship, intimacy and sex. It is the sex part that brings in the jealousy and all the things that come from wanting to be special: we demand exclusivity. That is just how we work. Genetically and socially, probably. But the real point is this: we look for love because we need something. Not necessarily because the other person needs it. It is us who want to fill a void, and we are disappointed when the other person does not fall in love with us or, after a while, does not want to continue the fling. Or, in the case of the two prostitutes, because they abuse you the way you wanted or offered to be abused. It means that other person does not feel such void or, if he or she does, that he or she does not want to fill it with you. So love is always your problem. Not the problem of that other person. Always.

When you pay or date a prostitute, the game is most ambiguous. Deep inside, you know a relationship is impossible: she is in a business – often not a bad one: the two I met earned more money than I do – and she will not leave that business for you, if only because she knows customers are highly unreliable and are usually everything but serious about being serious. So they will not take the risk of leaving their business and then be dumped. And you engage because you are dishonest too: deep inside, you do not really want to engage or get entangled in what would be some kind of proper relation. Why would you see a woman like that otherwise?

In any case, I got what I wanted. The emotional entanglement I was looking for was there and, as usual, it ended up hurting quite a lot when things went south. When it became clear I was just being abused in the way I offered to be abused. As for the women, they got away with money and even more experience. And surely with another nice story to tell their friends.

I have to tell myself that, each time when I mess up, I learn something from it. What I learned now, is that a relationship with a professional love woman is OK but that you really need to go into it by telling yourself this is only going to be love by proxy: the woman you get intimate with is never going to be the woman you want.

I think I finally managed to disentangle from it all today. I did so by listening to an old song: ‘Died In Your Arms‘ from Cutting Crew. I usually do not copy lyrics here (you can google them and not every line is always apt or relevant) but, this time around, I think all of what Nick Van Eede sings so beautifully is very relevant, so I’ll copy-paste all below. Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. I hope that day comes and goes quickly. And then the Year of the Tiger starts. The Year of the Water-Tiger, to be precise. That goes well with my Chinese sign of birth, which is the Phenix (often depicted as a rooster, but I prefer to stick with the French translation of it). I will rise again. [And, yes, it is the Chinese woman who pointed that out to me, so she gave me a lot of hope too.]

Oh I, I just died in your arms tonight
It must have been something you said
I just died in your arms tonight

I keep lookin’ for somethin’ I can’t get
Broken hearts lie all around me
And I don’t see an easy way to get out of this
Her diary, it sits by the bedside table
The curtains are closed, the cats in the cradle
Who would’ve thought that a boy like me could come to this

Oh I, I just died in your arms tonight
It must’ve been something you said
I just died in your arms tonight
Oh I, I just died in your arms tonight
It must’ve been some kind of kiss
I should’ve walked away
I should’ve walked away

Is there any just cause for feelin’ like this?
On the surface, I’m a name on a list
I try to be discreet, but then blow it again
I’ve lost and found, it’s my final mistake
She’s loving by proxy, no give and all take
‘Cause I’ve been thrilled to fantasy one too many times

Oh I, I just died in your arms tonight
It must’ve been something you said
I just died in your arms tonight
Oh I, I just died in your arms tonight
It must’ve been some kind of kiss
I should’ve walked away
I should’ve walked away

It was a long hot night
She made it easy, she made it feel right
But now it’s over, the moment has gone
I followed my hands not my head, I know I was wrong

Oh I, I just died in your arms tonight
It must’ve been something you said
I just died in your arms tonight
I, I just died in your arms tonight
It must’ve been some kind of kiss
I should’ve walked away
I should’ve walked away

Happiness (2)

I had a relaxing massage yesterday – termed ‘holistic’ by the lady who gives them (with scents and candles and all that – no speech allowed), so I feel good and relaxed… It made me think of human interaction – physically, emotionally… I had this picture in my head of moving blobs of energy – or blobs of conscious and unconscious human emotions being separate, meeting, and separating again – just like before-during-after the massage, I guess. I kinda like the idea so I quickly googled and found this 3D animation. It does symbolize that dynamic balance between being alone and together in relations a bit, I think. In whatever relation: family, friendship, or what is loosely referred to as love too – perhaps.

Happiness

I am lazily dragging myself to Christmas and New Year. 2022 should be a better year. Micro and macro.

On the macro-scale, we are almost two years into this global pandemic now. Rich countries, like ours, will reach some kind of herd immunity through vaccination while, in poor countries, it is just natural selection: more people get infected there, and a higher proportion of those infected will die. The A/H1N1 influenza pandemic after the Great War killed 25 to 50 million (more than the war itself) also abated after two or three years. Hence, there is no reason to think this pandemic will not fan out in very much the same way.

WHO reports about 5.4 million deaths now, but it is obvious one should apply a factor three or more (so we are probably at 15 or 20 million deaths now) because poor countries cannot even track it and are, therefore, grossly under-reporting. Whether or not this is a lower-mortality pandemic than that influenza pandemic is, therefore, an open question. Having said that, it is probably lower-mortality. All is relative: there were only two billion people on the Planet in 1918 (a bit less, actually), so 50 million people is 2.5% of that. Hence, if COVID-19 would also claim 50 million now, then 50 million deaths would represent just 0.5% of today’s world population. The ‘just’ may be misplaced here but then not: we are effectively talking about a war-like situation here, aren’t we? This pandemic might shave 0.5% off the world’s population (yes – that is 1 into 200, with most casualties in poor countries, unfortunately), and that will be it, right?

On the micro-scale, things are OK. My gypsy girl did not work out (she loves me like she would love a sugar daddy), so I need to move on again. I do not think we are made to be happy. Love, God, happiness are all emotional or intellectual concepts we invented to try to forget about our actual state of being and keep reaching out for something higher. That is useful, but it should not make us feel depressed or unproductive. We just have to keep going. Till we die in battle. Or simply fall. No heroics needed.

In regard to the latter, seize global depression as a unique opportunity to be the leader you always wanted to be – in your family, social group or at work. Just smile and be positive, and everyone will flock around you. There is no need to be smart nowadays: just carry on, do your job and be graceful. It is all that is needed, for the time being.

Being Normal

My darling, my Gypsy Girl (I will call her Denise), came back. Today. A day earlier than she had planned. She had re-arranged her work schedule to come today. We spent a nice quiet morning together. In bed, yes. Intimacy, yes, but not as explosive as Saturday. Hugging, kissing, relaxing, but no going down south. It was good. I think expectations came down a bit. From both sides, which is good. She is not going to leave her current partner any time soon, and I will adjust to not wanting her to do that. I will manage. We talked more. I talked more, this time around. About what I feel, about my life, about her. We agreed on a meeting schedule and I feel it will do both of us a lot of good if we stick to it. I hope she will, but not in any kind of desperate way. Not any more. I will try to meet more women because I now know what is missing in my life: a stable relationship with a woman. I will ask friends to look out for me. I will explore new things. I will not be exclusive.

I learned more about her. Her five kids are from two men – not one. There are probably more relationships she does not want to talk about. That is fine. She is not Romanian-Italian. She thinks of herself of Romanian-Italian because of the connection with the Italian ex. Because she has lived there for a long time. Because she likes Italy more than Romania.

Funnily enough, she admitted she actually is a gypsy girl. Her father was a Roma gypsy who married a Romanian woman. Her mother is still alive. Her father drank himself to death. He died young. At 42. But so I know where her gypsy looks come from: she got them from her dad. I find it rather pleasant that all makes more sense now. That I called her my Gypsy Girl because of the right reasons: she is a gypsy girl. I understand her better now. We will continue to try to understand each better.

My daughter came back from her Africa trip with my American ex. It was good. Great, she said. I can imagine. I sent a last email to my ex thanking her for having organized that. She wrote back to say she had enjoyed it, and that it has been one of the best trips in her life too. I briefly wondered if I should continue the exchange, but I decided not to: we have reached closure on our divorce. My daughter will live with me for a while again. She is going to start her professional life in a hospital in Brussels, and backed off from the idea of renting her own apartment (mine is large enough for someone extra). I feel good about that too.

I think I have never felt more normal in my life than now. No agitation. No unrest. Emotions, yes – but manageable. Ups and downs in the future should be manageable too now. I have friends calling, and I call friends. I feel I will make more and more friends. The end of the C19 epidemic makes me go out and meet real people. My daughter and myself will be organizing home parties with our respective bunch of friends. All good. Social interaction lifts spirits and avoid depression. Being alone, meditation or other lonely activities make one depressed. So it is all rather simple, really.

I will probably be moving up professionally: I have applied for an internal promotion, and I might get it. If not, there are other options. A headhunting agency contacted me for the kind of job for which I had been unsuccessfully applying when I came back to Belgium three-four years ago. And if these two options do not work, I will work half-time and do consultancy half-time: I have one or two potential clients who want me to help develop their business.

This feels remarkably normal. I lead the same kind of life now that other people in my age bracket in Belgium are leading, and it feels like my life. I have finally adapted to my 14th life: a normal non-exciting one. I will, therefore, not write much about it. Because it is just a very normal life. I am very happy I got here. I talked to my daughter about it. I told her I feel great. Really great. I am content with myself, and the world around me. I am good. I will enjoy life. I told her to do the same.

This may be my last post on this blog for quite a while. Because I will have nothing to write about. Normal lives are boring. I do not mind. I wish you a very happy boring life as well. It is the best life we can lead as far as I am concerned.

I may take this blog offline, heeding the advice of a friend: do not write about yourself like that. Do not go public, even if you are going public as anonymously as you can. You go to deep. You expose too much. Too deep into what? Life is all about Dreams, but it is about Gory Detail too, and the Gory Detail often matters more than the Dreams. Writing here on this blog has been therapy for me, however, so I will not take any hasty decision in that regard. It has helped me to return to normal. To accept myself the way I am. To deal with stuff. I am, therefore, not ashamed of anything that I might have written and that may have shocked other people. It is normal. Part of life. Part of my life. I am not ashamed of anything. After all, I am a normal human being, and I should be able to express myself freely.

Post scriptum: The good thing about the unfolding story with Denise is that she made me realize what I want in terms of ‘a relation’ with ‘The’ Woman of my Life. If it does not work out with Denise, then I will marry a divorced Muslim woman (I asked my Kurdish friends – and they say there are plenty of wonderful obedient divorcees who want a second chance at life). Else, I might go to back to Bangkok or another love hub (Prague or Bucharest, for example) and find a worn-out prostitute: a woman who is still pretty and has lots of energy, but who is tired of sucking men and not as attractive as the younger girls any more. And I will chat her up and take her with me to Belgium. In short, I will seek a younger pretty female version of myself: a total disaster in love and all that. I only want her to have a fraction of my intelligence only (being intelligent does really not help at all when it comes to being intimate with the second sex). In contrast, she needs to have at least the same (preferably more) emotional energy as me. Why? Because Oscar Wilde was right: “Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.” My perfect or not-so-perfect woman will, hopefully, think the same about men.

Sounds obnoxious? To me, it sounds like the perfect plan now. Or one that makes sense to me, at least. 🙂

On the Highway to Hell – Again

I met a new woman. As usual, I think she is The One. But this time she feels more like The One than all previous women taken together. For all of the wrong reasons. The basic one is that the age gap between her and me is larger than the gap between me and all other young women I have ever dated. Another wrong but even more powerful reason is that she is an extremely beautiful creature.

37 (she told me her age too). Petite: 45 kg of bodily energy (she told me her body weight the next morning). That’s exactly half of my bodily energy. She speaks Italian. I do not. She speaks the language of love too. She breathes sex. That I do understand. Rather fluently, I think. So we used that language. I met her by accident. She met me by accident too, I think. I am not sure from her side. She might have been sent by the Devil. Just for fun.

She looks like those beautiful gypsy women in Peaky Blinders. Raven black hair. Dark mysterious skin. Smoldering big dark-brown eyes. Perfect body – despite having five children (yes – 5!) with a previous man. She is Romanian-Italian. She has no degree whatsoever. Secondary school level. At best. I did not ask her. I just know. From the level of conversation, which was not very sophisticated. From her knowledge of languages: perfect Italian, but scrappy French and English (she had picked up some Dutch words though – like dank u, en leuk! (I am not sure how many more words she knows) – which I liked, because it is my mother tongue). I like simple conversation. With women, at least. With men, I prefer a mix of simple and complex. Not with women. Not anymore. Any case, my description of her should convince you that she meeting me cannot have been a coincidence. That she comes straight from Hell, and that she has got me on her Highway back there. I can feel it. It feels good. Thank you, Lucifer !

We met in one of my neighborhood bars which serve coffee in the morning. She was sitting alone. Drinking coffee, and smoking. Like me. I noted she was rather sloppily dressed. So she was not there to chat or pick up guys. Not now. Perhaps tonight. Perhaps she was thinking and preparing for the evening. When the coffee bars around change to night-time bars. My neighborhood, St Gery, has become the hub for lovers and love-seekers here in Brussels. The late afternoon and early evening sees a gradual decrease of the average age of the crowds, and a gradual increase in their numbers. Until everything is full of young and beautiful people. Guys like me go for their evening meal and a last coffee then. Perhaps she was part of the crowd. Perhaps our ways had crossed before, when she walked into a bar and me out of it. But so now it looked like we were both having a morning coffee to prepare for the rest of the day. That is what I thought.

I asked her if I could join her small table. She nodded. As soon as I sat down, she asked my age. Pretty straightforward question, I thought. I told her: 52. She said: You look like 42. I took the compliment because I liked to believe it. I asked hers: 37. I complemented her back: you are very pretty. With the emphasis. I just thought: if you give blunt compliments, I can do that too. She smiled, and immediately said: I have five kids. I told her I was amazed. Five ! Wow !

She smiled again and we started talking. Her French was extremely simple so she spoke in Italian to Google Translate on her mobile from time to time and then showed me the French translation. When I had read it (quite atrocious translations, frankly), she would ask if I had understood everything. I always said: yes, no problem, go on – even if I saw the translation did not make much sense.

She showed me pictures of her kids. Because her body looked so strong and beautiful, I could hardly believe she had five. I told her that. She showed pics of their father – her ex. Italian. An older man (57, she told me). He looked nice. Not handsome, but nice. A warm friendly face. A good man. Obviously. I told her: he looks like a great guy. He must feel sorry he lost you. She said he was nice, and that he is taking care of her children, and that she travels up and down to Italy regularly. And that he is OK with the kids. That she misses him. And her kids. But that she had discovered that he had a relationship with another woman. On his computer. [I must admit that I do not know quite what to make of that story. She may be lying through her teeth. She is that kind of woman. I don’t care.]

Maybe she sensed I did not quite believe her, so she showed me pictures of the other woman. I agreed she was much less attractive than her and that I did not understand why he had dropped her. She switched to other topics. Extended family pictures followed. Pictures taken here in Brussels, in Romania, and in Italy. Then she showed me videos of her dancing. Make-up parties. Belly-dancing. I spoke little and watched the pics and videos. That was what she seemed to expect, because she just nodded at everything I said. Then asked some more. I am good at answering by questions by asking a question myself, so that is what I did. She did not seem to mind.

We finished our coffee. I said I lived in a nice place nearby – a two-minute walk just down the street – and that I had more coffee or whatever she would want to drink there. She said OK. And that was it. We moved. I do not remember us talking during the two-minute walk. Perhaps we did not. Not sure. It was just a move from a bar table to my kitchen table.

So I made coffee and we had more coffee. She asked me if I drink. Alcohol. I told her I had quit drinking years ago (which is only half a lie). Because I felt it did not do me any good (which is true). But that I smoked. Good, she said. We smoked together. She liked my hand-rolled cigarettes and the smell of the fresh tobacco. She asked what it was. I told her: classic Flemish Wervicq. Fleur du Pays No 6. Heavy but pure tobacco. My favorite. No chemicals. I asked her if she had ever wondered why her filter cigarettes keep burning even if you just light them and leave them in the ash tray. She said: no. I said: chemicals. I pointed to the half-finished cigarettes in my ash try. See: they only burn when you actually smoke. Natural tobacco. I lit one of the half-finished cigarettes to show her. See: you stop inhaling and the cigarette stops burning too.

She thought about that for a moment, and then nodded and put away her large packet of commercial filter cigarettes and asked me to hand-roll a cigarette with strong Flemish tobacco for her too. I made it light for her. Thin. I did not compress the tobacco from both sides, as I usually do – using a simple Asian wooden chopstick. She lit it up, inhaled deeply, and admitted it was much stronger than her filter stuff.

She finished that one and I rolled another one for her. I then proposed to move from the kitchen table to the large leather sofa at the center of my apartment. [Most people want to see my apartment when they come in. She did not, which was good: I thought I should move her around myself.] She agreed so we walked over there. She installed herself on the sofa, taking a small cushion to install herself comfortably. I did the same. At a safe distance. A safe distance that I did not want to be safe, obviously. She knew that. She wanted that, obviously. She moved up almost immediately. Her cushion was all alone now. I did not move. So she moved up more. Right next to me. Close. Sitting but not touching. I moved my leg to touch hers while further watching pics and videos on her phone. Her leg did not move back. I felt mine and her body relax.

At some point, I looked her in the eyes, shamelessly. Hopelessly, I guess. Hoping she would see the fire and desire in my eyes. Feel it going to my leg, into hers, and that the heat would be enough to melt her heart. It did. She saw the fire. She leaned into me, and we started kissing and hugging. We only stopped kissing and hugging for cigarette breaks inbetween the kissing and hugging. Then she said she had to leave. I told her that was OK because I had to prepare for a party in the evening.

We exchanged phone numbers and checked if the numbers worked on WhatsApp. She told me to only send a message when she would send a message because her current partner is checking her phone. She said she would immediately delete any messages, and that I should do the same. I told her that was fine. That I hated Whatsapping with women. That she could call and come whenever she wanted. That I would not engage. She looked me in the eyes again. I looked back. She gave me a last kiss and got out. And that was it.

In the late afternoon, she texted to ask if she could come back the next morning. I replied: yes. And added a dozen loving emoticons or so. A love or sex chatbot-like reply. The kind of message that turn a woman either on or off. No inbetween. It worked. She replied with one of the heart emoticons from my series. And asked what time. I wrote 9 am. And that was it. I deleted the messages. As agreed.

The same evening I had the party with friends at my place. All couples. I was the only single. I did not mind. All guests mingled very well. It went on to midnight. A nice and decent home party. Relaxing. Nothing wild. And in the morning, she rang the bell sharp on the dot. 9 am. For some weird reason, I was pretty sure she would come. That she was a woman who would not let me down. Not on an appointment like this, at least. But I had not expected her to be on time. I was sleepy from an evening party with friends. But I had changed the bed sheets. Because we would go to bed. I knew it. Not for sex. For rest, some sleep, hugs, whatever. But I wanted her in bed. The first meeting had been her call. The second meeting was my call. I was going to make the most of it.

So I gave her a cup of coffee and said I had not showered yet. She could see. I was still in my pajamas: worn brown discolored Afghan pants, and a grey T-shirt. She wore a white polka dot shirt. Decent but revealing enough. Tight black stretch pants. Easy gym shoes. Casual but not sloppy. Not at all. A bit of make-up. Some skin primer. Eye make-up too. A hint of perfume. She had made herself pretty. She was clearly ready to rock and roll. If I was. If I approached her the right way. I was not ready. I had not made myself pretty. But I felt I could still approach her the right way.

We had talked the day before. About me being single, and she being in a non-satisfactory relationship. I had told her I was looking for friendship, but that I had many male friends so they took care of that. That, with a woman, I would want intimacy and sex. But that I cannot have sex because I am recovering from that surgery down there. Nothing more, nothing less. She wanted to know more, but I told her she could google the answers to her questions and that I did not want to talk about it.

I was not sure about my approach. The kitchen table was a mess with the dirty dishes of yesterday and empty and half-empty bottles of wine. I looked at it and thought: it looks like I did not prepare for her arrival. Maybe she thought the same. I thought it was a rather arty set-up.

She looked at the mess and said she had not come to do the dishes. I told her I did not expect her to do dishes, and that I also thought she had not come for that (even if I had gathered from our conversations so far that, in daily life, she was actually a household help). She then pointed to the wine and asked: you did not drink? I said: No. It was the truth. I had stayed on tonics. Not gin tonics. Zero sugar tonics. And coffee. Strong coffee. To make sure my guests could drink more wine. I had ended up drinking half of the pot. I guess that was the more important reason why I had not slept at all, but I did not tell her that. Why would I? I did think about her the whole night. Coffee, music and infatuation. Bad recipe for sleep. Very bad. I suddenly realized I did not quite know what to do with the rock-‘n-roll feeling and that it was actually good that I could just go down and shower and come back to life and think about what to say or do next.

She nodded. I pointed to the coffee machine and said there was more coffee there. I then got up, went down to my basement bathroom, and took my shower. I took my time. Usually I take a cold shower when finished with the hot water. This time I did not. I did not want a cold shower today. I went to the basement apartment next to the bathroom, and found my Afghan garb. I put it on, and some perfume too. The Afghan clothes – simple salwaar kameez – look like pajamas too. They are comfortable. And I also find them rather sexy with the easy buttons and the embroidery on the chest. So I thought that would be the right thing to wear. I looked in the mirror. I saw someone telling me: “Do not worry. All will be fine. Whatever has to happen, has to happen. You’ve got this. Whatever happens.” I thanked the guy in the mirror for his advice, told him I would do my utmost to clear the mess upstairs – my mess – and went up.

I moved my chair closer to hers as we sat next to each other at the kitchen table again. She started another Google Translate stories and pictures session. She also started to go through WhatsApp exchanges with friends in Italy, Romania and Belgium. So the series of short videos and pictures seemed endlessly. That suited me just fine. Just as I was thinking that she probably had an extra memory chip on her phone to store all these images and videos and that I, therefore, hoped that she would not have to stop talking about herself, her family and friends, she stopped.

She asked me to show her some pictures. About my family. If I did not want to talk, at least I could show her pictures, right? I did not really want to do that but, yes, why not? I took my phone and logged onto my Facebook page. All my albums are there. But, for some weird reason, the first album that popped up was the marriage album. My second marriage. So I scrolled through a few of these but felt that it got me emotional and made no sense whatsoever. Why show happy pictures of a past marriage when the woman in front of you is hitting at you?

So I put the phone away and talked about how, from all of my family, I loved one brother and the sister the most. And why: because they were happy people. Better people than me. Stuff like that. She wanted to know about Afghanistan (I had told her I had worked abroad – quite a while in Afghanistan – and had come back to Belgium four years ago), but I did not want to talk about that either. What about my clothes? Was I Muslim? No. Religious? No. What about my job? I had told her I work at home. A government job. Telework. I pointed to my desk in the salon with the sofa and the two computers on it. I told her that I had given her my name, and that she could go on LinkedIn to find out about my job. Why should I talk about it? Family and friends. Go check on Facebook. Oh – I understand: your partner, right? He checks your new friends on Facebook too? Seriously? So I told her, politely, that I did not want to talk too much about all that. That I had no real problems or issues to discuss, and that I had told her everything she apparently wanted to know. I did not tell her that I am actually tired of talking. So I asked her to talk some more herself (women like that, no?), and that I would listen and answer any other question she might have.

I had noticed that she did not talk much about her current partner. A Romanian man who looked younger than her. Around 30, perhaps. Handsome but no smile. All she had said about him, was that she was not happy with her. That he did not cuddle her. That he only kissed and hugged when he wanted sex. And that it was not much: that sex was the only thing of interest to him. That he had told her kissing and hugging and cuddling is for children only. That they actually slept in separate rooms (I am not quite sure if I should believe that). Things like that. And then she stopped talking about him, and looked at me. Probably waiting for me to ask more. I did not. I just agreed he never seemed to smile on the pictures she had shown me. I asked more about other people. But I did not want to engage in a discussion on her current relationship. I am not sure why. Perhaps I am tired of hearing such stories. Perhaps I did not truly believe what she was saying about him. He wasn’t there to defend himself, was he? And experience tells me women usually talk a lot of bad about their current or past men without having much actual evidence or facts. Judgmental. One-sided. Or, worse, plain lies.

Just to mention some bad experiences over the past month: one woman told me she had ended her relation, but then admitted that was just two weeks ago, and that it was a temporary separation only. And that they were still in touch. And that she took the initiative to WhatsApp him and ask how he was. How he felt about the temporary separation. Come on ! You call that a separation? Another said she was single, but it turned out she still lived in the apartment of her ex. To take care of the children together, right? Sure. And that someone whom she had been madly in love with – someone else than her ex, obviously – had just let her down. OK. Point well taken. You’ve been let down, right? And so can you please explain me why you want to chat me up now? Am I to offer any guidance or advice on what you should do now? I am sorry, but I do not quite see your point, and I am not a free psi. And I am not dumb either. Capito? Remarks like that usually send the conversation south but that is probably where such conversations should go and stay. At least we are clear, right? Muddying the water is not my favorite pastime. I try to clear it.

So that might be why I did not feel inclined to ask any more questions to this new woman. To a woman who – at first sight – clearly seems to be The One. In any case, she acknowledged I did not like to talk much and took my advice and started talking herself again. She talked even more about herself and asked even less about me. I just kissed and hugged her from time to time. Just like yesterday, right? She let it happen. It worked. I felt good. She felt good. Sometimes she gave a kiss back. So that went on for a while. And it went well. I felt happy just being with her and hearing her talk and work her phone.

Then she put the mobile on the table, and looked at me. She asked me if I wanted her. Point-blank. I asked her what she meant. She said: “Just what I said. Do you want me?” I like point-blank questions, because you can answer them point-blank too. So I said: “Yes. Of course. More than anything else. Any man would want you.” When she had shown me her dance videos the day before and asked me what I thought about it, I had given a similar answer: “Now that would knock any man of his feet, wouldn’t it?” She had laughed and had scrolled to more images and videos of herself. I was not emotional. Rather serious, I think. That always helps when you want to get a point across: do not get emotional. Be real.

She seemed to liked the answer because we started kissing and hugging even more now – she taking more initiative in this session – and so we got a bit uncomfortable on our kitchen chairs. So I told her we would be more comfortable on the bed upstairs. In my bedroom.

Bold? Why? I thought: if this is going nowhere, then I want to know. Now. So that is why I went straight to the point. I had been open so she knew all she needed to know. I had told her upfront – the previous day – that I could not have sex because of my prostate cancer surgery. That sex was off the cards for at least six months from now. She had said she did not care. She must have meant it. Otherwise she would not have texted me yesterday. Otherwise she would not have come to kiss and hug again.

I told her that I needed some rest anyway because I had not slept very much. Not because of the party but because I was totally in love with her and I had been listening to music all night. She laughed aloud, but double-checked. She asked me to say that again: I had not slept because of her? I reconfirmed. Did she not see I was actually tired? I did no effort to hide it. I really wanted to rest for like an hour or so. She looked at me again, and then gave me another big smile and said it was OK to talk in bed in the bedroom and rest together for a while. She felt tired too, she said. So we moved upstairs.

She took off her gym shoes, arranged some cushions to sit on the bed, and I did the same. I took a safe distance again. I have a large king-size bed so plenty of space. I put the ash tray and the Flemish tobacco, cigarette paper and lighter between us. Spaced it out so we had a meter or so between us. We talked some more while I rolled a few cigarettes. I like to smoke in bed in the morning, and told her so. She agreed it is one of the pleasures of life. After a while of chatting and resting, I went down to get her and my coffee cup, with a refill. She took the coffee and, as I installed myself again, she asked me to put the ash tray and the stuff between us next to the bed. I did. She then moved to my side and settled in my arms. It felt good. I had nice soothing music playing on my Bluetooth speaker.

We did not say anything for a while. We just listened to the music. I was perfectly happy. This is all I could aspire too in my current state. With ED and all that. Intimacy. A female body next to mine. I had reached my goal in terms of what I actually wanted from her. I thought about the guy in the mirror and gave him a thumbs-up: done. Goal reached. Thank you, buddy. We’re good. I have all the friendship and intimacy I need from a woman right now. Let us see in six months where we are, then. When everything works again. When I can have real sex again. As for now and here, this is OK. This is better than anything I could have expected. This is what I cannot get from my male friends, and I cannot get it from a prostitute either. Unless I would develop a relationship with a escort girl or a prostitute, which I do not want to do. Because I want something exclusive. And me holding her in my arms the way I did, the way she let herself be held, now that felt pretty exclusive to me.

So I thought I could stay like this for quite a while. As long as she wanted. Stroking her face and her hair. Touching her body. Kissing her tenderly. And getting kisses back. But she then said she did not quite like the music. And she asked me to talk, because she had finished talking. Why did I keep so silent? I told her the truth: I do not need to talk. I write. She asked: What? Where? I was honest again. I keep a bit of a diary. I have a blog. She asked me to share the blog. I refused. I told her I do not know her well enough to share it, that it was anonymous, in English (a language she clearly did not master at all), and not on topics for casual conversation. Too complicated. A bit dark or sad, even. Too much philosophy or psychology and all that. I told her I prefer music. I could put another playlist if she wanted. French songs, perhaps. I told her I have a few playlists and I know the lyrics of what is playing pretty well. And that these songs said all there was to say. From my side, at least. [I did not tell her I played the guitar and that I like to sing, but she must have noticed the two Spanish guitars next to the sofa.]

She repeated that she did not quite like this music. That it was not her music. I thought that was interesting. I could learn more about her by letting her chose the music. So I asked her to connect her phone to the Bluetooth box and play music she liked. She did.

Her music was nice. A Lebanese love song first. I looked at the singer – one that she apparently loved a lot – but I did not recognize her. I am not so good with Arabic names. But I know these songs: Fatima had made me listen to me. They are all about love, and the pain that comes with it. Inevitably. Then she put on something more lively. I recognized the belly-dancing music from the videos she had shown me – it sounded like Eastern European versions of Hindi pop, or some kind of mix between house, lounge, and EDM, which I like too – and so I said: that is your dance music, right?

She said yes, and moved out of my embrace. She looked at me and smiled with all of her face this time. Only now I noticed she did not actually have a Signal-like bright-white-teeth smile. That she must smoke a lot: her teeth showed it. But. Yes. Music. She got out of bed, got around it and occupied the space between my bed and the window. She was small, and the dancing space rather large, but she occupied all of the space. I could see that. She started very slowly, but then started dancing more energetically, and surely more and more sensually. Belly-dancing. Hips and ass-shaking. The dances she showed me. Videos from home parties. Videos from herself, dancing in her bedroom or I do not know where. Beautiful. No porn-beautiful. No pole-dancing. Just beautiful. But, yes, amazingly enticing.

She rolled up the bottom of her polka dot shirt and tied i up just under her bra so I could see of all her muscled belly and hip bones. I saw she wore a black bra. I was mesmerized now, and she could see that. I have a fairly large mirror standing on my small nightside table. It is angled and positioned strategically: she could see herself dancing in the mirror. It enticed her. I could see that. She danced for me, but she also danced for herself. Admiring herself, her beautiful legs in the tight pants – the wonderful mix between muscle and female fat – everything perfectly proportioned and in balance. The rhythmic motion of her hips and her ass. Showtime. Or good practice for showtime, at least. Or, no. That sounds too demeaning. She was getting into a trance too, it seemed. She looked at herself while dancing, and she looked at me. Gauging my excitation and reactions. While being in her own trance, my trance connected with hers. Our two trances started to mix and dance with each other.

I had stopped smoking and just watched. My brain told me: this is going totally wrong. You do not want to go there. Not now. Stay here. It is good here. The other side is a bridge too far. I hesitated for a few seconds, but then told my brain to shut up and get out: Now ! Right now. If this is going to go wrong, then it had better go wrong right now. I am on. My rational brain became defiant: “You want to play, lady? You want to play with me? Don’t. You do not know me, lady. Play. Do it. See where you get. I’ve got this. You are on my terrain now. You want full body contact? I’ll give you body contact. You have no idea. Just don’t go there. I’ve warned you.”

She played. She won. I think I was down at her first hit. It was a big blow. Warrior gone. Defiance gone. Brain gone. I could see she knew she could do anything she wanted with me now, even if she knew close to nothing about me, my life and my past. And she could. I did not care anymore.

[Warning: The next piece of writing has nothing to do with this love story. Just skip through it.]

In a fight with a drunk, you put him out with one punch. Straight on his noise. Both the move and its execution are controlled by the brain. There is no anger. You do not want to hit the guy too hard. Just a bloody nose. That is it. If he would happen to get up and insist, your second blow will be slightly harder. It might break his nose. But it will not kill him. Just a bit of damage so he understands he needs to back off. Same with a youngster – muscled or not, trained or not – who just wants to impress by seeking trouble. A brawl. Just for fun. Deal with it. Do not start pushing and pulling. He is likely to be physically stronger than you. Because he is younger. Built up muscle in the gym. Hit him hard between the eyes. A big first blow. No testing. That is it. Do not demonstrate force. Demonstrate aim, control and speed. No show. Just one hard hit. That is all. That should put him down. If not, make it clear your second punch is really going to land him in hospital. [Of course, better to scare a drunk or some random bully off just by giving him a real mean look (the few witnesses who saw me mentally switch to fighting mode told me eyes do turn dark and dead – instead of sparkling, shining and smiling, as they usually do). Also practice cracking your knuckles and other small moves – like rolling your shoulders and getting the stress out of your neck muscles by tightening them. If you sit, go sit straight and lean a bit forward. Show that you are alert and ready to take him to the wall – with the table if needed. Do not engage in talking. Do not take your fighting position yet. I have done that with a few guys who were far larger than me. You just look at them, crack your knuckles and show that you are ready for the game. I do it slowly, so they can hear the series of clicking sounds as I pop my fingers. Loud and clear. It does remind them of the sound of a breaking bone. I do not talk. No threats are much better than talk. Just make it clear that you will hit or hit back when he makes one more move. And that you will hit hard. That you have not exploded yet (radiate calm), but that you will explode if he pushes this game one inch further. It often works. If not, be ready. Feel the adrenaline rushing and direct it to where it needs to be: the brain and the shoulders, so your fists are ready to flash out. The small prep motions just before you get in a proper boxing stand position will be noticed – even if your opponent does not quite know what it is that you are preparing for: a big first hit. No fooling around. Don’t fight: eliminate.]

When things are more complicated – more guys, or one guy who is really serious about hurting you – then you need to switch off a few buttons. You let instinct take over. Or training. Or both. But you will still want your brain to control the moves, based on the moves of your opponent, and then the body delivers the blows. On places that can take a lot. Not the spots that can kill the guy. You do not grab his throat or break his neck. No. All quite rational, still. Take the strongest guy first. The others will usually back off. I got bothered two times here in the past few years. Not a lot. But by a small crowd alright. One was easy: a dozen junkies or so, who were waiting for me to come out of the pub. First one went down with the nose punch. Second one grabbed a chair so I went in (if someone takes a chair, just go in so he cannot swing it: the chair then becomes a handicap to him), grabbed his throat, squeezed it real hard, and delivered a very hard blow on his nose. He went down and probably had to be brought to the hospital (when the police arrived onto the scene, I was gone already so I do not know what damage I did). I asked: who’s third? They all hesitated, so I walked off. One guy – a big one, not so stoned and drunk as the others, apparently – followed me but as soon as I noticed, I turned around and told him calmly: “Really? You want to do this? OK. Come on.” He backed off. Then I had a situation with another small crowd – a bunch of young immigrants who wanted to play the threatening game. It did not come to a fight because I won the threatening game. They could see I was sizing up the two biggest guys and the small moves (the head and shoulder moves, me cracking my knuckles and taking a more solid standing position) betrayed that I was ready for some real fun. Bring it on. They backed off and let me go. If they would have taken me on, then I had my game plan ready: take one or two out, and then run. Because you took one or two out, the chance they will run after you will be quite small. Much smaller than when you just run. And if they do run after you, then you stop from time to time and take the first guy who came after you. Take that one out too, and run again. Simple. Space out the group while running away, stop, fight, run again. But I did not need it.

In any case, the point is: these are no real fights. You do not get angry. You calculate and execute. That’s it. It helps if you have been beaten up a couple of times yourself – which is the case: I have taken a lot of hits. I am not scared anymore to get hurt. Best attitude to be able to hurt someone else is to be ready to get hurt yourself. No fear.

However, when it is a real fight – kill or be killed – you switch all brain buttons off. You go for the kill. You do not watch the moves of the other guy. You feel them. You feel what he is going to do, and you act faster. Before he actually makes his move. Every blow must kill. It has to. You go for the kill spots. Hit the back of the neck with a karate chop. Put your knee in his balls. Break his knee caps with a well-directed foot kick. Grab his throat and squeeze it to destroy the windpipe. Squeeze it shut or karate chop it. Take all of the air out of the guy and cause tremendous pain by hitting the celiac plexus hard and precise. Deliver a straight blow not on the nose but straight on the temple. Etcetera. There are so many ways to cause real damage. Use all of them. Do not think about what to choose. Just hit whatever kill spot is easier. Use whatever you can. Whatever is left as a choice. If you still have a hand left and he is on top of you, put your finger and nails in his eyes. Bite him. Wherever you can. And bite to tear flesh out. Knock him out. Now. Immediately. If there is a knife around, take it and stab. Straight. If he takes his knife, take a chair and destroy him with it. Get close when you can and when you must, like when someone grabs a chair. Do not let him swing it. Go in. Go out. Get out of the circle when you have to: do not allow the guy to grab an arm or a leg because that will restrict your freedom. If he does, use your full body weight to twist his arm or leg so it breaks. If he has a hold on you, do not just try to get out of his muscular strength. No. He is likely to have more muscle than you. Otherwise he would not dare to take you on. So you have to get out of his grip with your full body weight and make sure either his tendons snap or his bones break. Do not fight too much against muscle. Speed and direction and motion is far more important than muscular strength. Try to hurt. Or, no: try to kill. And trying is not good enough. Trying is a cerebral thing. No brain. Hurt. Hurt badly. Let the anger flow. Causing damage is not good enough. Destroy. Eliminate. Kill. Full stop. That is the only way to ensure that it is you who comes out alive. Train mentally by imagining how you could kill someone and tell yourself not worry about it: people do not die all that easily so you will probably not succeed in killing the guy. But if you do not want to kill him, you will not be able to put him down. Your opponent smells fear. Or they see it in your eyes. So do not have fear. If they do not see any fear (no fear to get hurt, no fear to be beaten up because you have been beaten up countless times already), but cold anger instead, they will probably back off even before starting. People who start a fight usually have no real purpose. If they feel you respond to their provocation with some real purpose – that you are ready to cause some very serious damage and that you will actually enjoy the destruction – they will back off.

[Needless to say, everything I write above is only when the ‘flight’ option in the usual ‘fight or flight’ choice in a bad situation is not available. Do not fight when you do not have too. Never. That is the first rule of street-fighting. Any fighting, really – unless you are a professional boxer or something. When you fight for the money. Or when you are a soldier in a war. Otherwise: do not fight. Never. You might get hurt, and you do not want that. Do not get into bar fights in the first place. Let the bar tender call the police and wait for them to come. Stay calm. Avoid the trouble-maker. Do not provoke him. Then walk out. Or walk out earlier if that avoids the fight. Do not use stupid people who want to pick a fight with you as target practice, because you do not want trouble with the police. No. Fight only when you have to. But if you have to fight, fight. Do not fight half-heartedly. If you have to fight, you might as well fight by enjoying it. But only if you have to.]

Any case. These stories about how to fight a fight are totally irrelevant. Revealing trauma, and what I learnt from it. I hope I never ever have to switch those survival switches again. It is not nice. So I did not write what I wrote above to boast. No. I probably wrote it more to reveal what I do not want to be anymore. A fighter. A survivor. I just want to be happy now. I never ever want to go back to Afghanistan. It was good. It made me strong. But I feel like I have had to reconstruct myself too many times now. I do not want to do that anymore.

[End of warning: Stop skipping. Please read on.]

So where were we in this love story? I got sidetracked. Ah, yes ! I remember. I was talking switches in our brain. Switches in my brain. Self-control. And how and when one loses it. Yes. So I felt that happening in my brain. The switching off. Whatever had not been knocked out already, got knocked out very quickly. My brain switched off its own buttons. Control to the reptile brain. The spinal cord. The central nerve system. Not the cerebral one. Raw emotion. Not anger or survival instinct, of course. Not here. But raw sexual energy. The body takes over as a body. The human becomes an animal. A beautiful animal.

It was even worse, I think: I suddenly realized that me fighting or resisting was just a figment of my mind. That thinking I was still on my feet – that I had seriously tried to resist her beauty, her conquest – was just an illusion. I had not. I had been drunk from the start: she had already delivered the knock-down punch and I was on the ground. I just had not realized that yet. Drunk as I was. Drunk of love. Mesmerized. I was lost already. She had invaded the terrain by stealth. And I had let it happen. I should not have kissed and hugged her as much as I did, because it showed I had no defense. None whatsoever. I had just been pretending. She got me at first contact. I was down. Box checked. I just had not realized it. Not yet. I knew now. I felt it. I was gone. Total knock-out. What the hell was I thinking? Any case, I had stopped thinking so I did not worry about that anymore.

I saw her also sneakily studying the rather large paining above my bed: a delicate Vietnamese painting on silk, depicting a man and a woman in some imaginary romantic spot in an equally imaginary Universe. I had forgotten about it, but I remembered it was a nice painting. I had only eyes for her, as she showed off her body. Her soul. The Universal Woman. All of her. All of it. God and the Devil all in one. The One.

I may have started breathing heavily. I do not remember, but I probably did. I realized that my brain had switched off completely: all lights out. And so it all just happened effortlessly. I asked her to take her shirt off. It was not a question, actually. I told her to take her shirt off. No please. No question mark. She stopped her dance briefly, and laughed. She hesitated a few seconds, but then did just that. Started danced again. With only black tight stretch pants and a black bra. She showed it all off. She was breathing sex in and then out again now. Sex with herself. It all suddenly actually did take on some pornographic aspect. And then not. I am not sure. Whatever was pornographic about it, was good. I actually only know she was driving me totally nuts. All categorization of intimacy, sensuality and sexuality disappeared. She could see that. My eyes and facial expression told her so. One does not to speak to talk convincingly. I could not speak anymore. She saw that. She saw I felt like raping her and that she should not come back to the bed but get out of the room if she did not want that to happen.

I had warned her clear enough. While talking in bed, she asked me about sex. About what I like when I make or made love to the women in my life. I told her I do not like it when women talk too much about what they like and do not like it. I told her I like if when a woman delicate moves her body if she is in a position she does not like. Or moves her body to make sure I touch the parts where she needs stimulation. I told her talking too much while having sex kills it for me. That one has to accept one becomes an animal when having sex. That the rational brain is gone and it is only the reptile brain now. That is all about pleasure, and not about conversation. So she knew that. And so she must have known very clearly what would happen if she would dare come back to bed.

We had talked about sex in the kitchen too. About what men like in prostitutes. She asked me what I thought about anal sex. I told her it is just a much tighter hole – one with a strong ring muscle – and so it makes a man come almost immediately. I also told her some women like it too. Most do not. You carefully find out, and then you respect the woman’s choice. It does not matter much. Things like that. She asked a lot. I gave short answers. When she wanted to hear more, I said: no, you have the answer. There. What more do you want me to say about it? She wondered if I had not questions for her on that front. I answered: No. If we’re going to have sex, I’ll find out what you like and what not. But so we cannot have sex. Not really. My department down there does not work. I cannot penetrate. No penis. She probably questions like this annoyed me. So she just asked me about the cancer again: is it gone now? Yes. Gone. 100%. Blood test shows no cancer tracer. At that point, she asked if she could ask me one more question on sex. I said yes, but maybe I won’t answer it. She looked at me and asked me – point-blank again – if I liked licking pussy. That question she showed me on Google Translate: mangiare la figa, or something like that. I do not remember the Italian, but the French translation was clear. The Internet translates such things always flawlessly, no mater how poor the input might be. And I had been clear about that: yes, I love it. I do know of a man who does not love to do that. Go on the Internet and find out what men like. It is all over. It is everything that you think they like. Why do you want me to confirm what you already know? So that is it. You have teased me enough now. No more questions on that. Can we please go back to your stories about parties and your holiday pictures and all that? Yes. Of course. She had gone back to those.

In short, she could not pretend she did not know what would happen if she came back to bed. I had told her I love sex but that I do not like to talk about it. Not before, not while having it, and not after. She had said she understood and would ask no more about these things. So the situation was clear. Transparent. If she came back to bed, it would be her mistake. Not mine. She was a 45 kg sex bomb (she had told me her weight by then). I was a 200-pound gorilla. No chance. I said nothing but she must have known what would happen if she would dare to come back to bed.

She came back to bed. My side of the bed. She went body on body. I put my arm on her waist and pushed her body under mine. There. Control. What are you going to do now? She did nothing. She did not resist. I knew what to do. My whole body told me what to do. I went down on her, trying not to behave like an animal, but I was. I took her bra off and kissed her all over. It is funny but she opened her eyes wide-open and actually said I had eaten too much garlic the previous evening and that she, therefore, did not like my kisses on her face. So I went south with my kisses and my tongue. She liked that better. Obviously. Her nipples firmed up in seconds. It gave me confidence because, at least, I had some physical evidence of the hormones flowing and wreaking havoc in her body too.

I could see she had breastfed her children, even if her breasts were very petite (when I took off the bra, I noticed the push-up foam paddings). But they were wonderful. She made a remark about her small breasts. That she had not had any boob jobs. That they were small but natural. I loved it, and told her so: “Your breasts are perfect.” And then I showed her – do not talk, right? – they were perfect by working on them even more passionately. She liked that. She let things happen. I felt her body relax totally, and then tension up again with excitement. I did not take too long to go all the way south, although I did spend quite a while working her beautiful dancing belly too. I touched and worked everything on her upper body. Anything that responded to my touch. Most of her body did.

Then I took her pants off. Energetically. Forcefully. If she resisted a bit, I did not notice. I think she did not. I felt like I was raping her. Yes. But she let it happen. Probably because she knew I could not have an erection and that, therefore, I could and would not penetrate her. I had told her as much. I can do anything except penetration. I went straight for her sex organ with my tongue. She tried to push my head away but I could feel the push was a rather symbolic gesture of resistance too. I knew that because her hands on my head relaxed almost immediately and moved back up. She stretched out her arms, and she started breathing heavily. Her pelvis followed the rhythm of her breathing now. Her body and even her hands now encouraged me to go on.

I had kept my Afghan pajamas on. She was totally naked under me. I had pulled her socks off too. I was happy to see her all naked on the red sheets. I did not feel like undressing myself. She came screaming but put a hand on her mouth to suppress the scream (she had put the dancing music quite loud at first, but I had pointed to the ceiling telling her I had neighbors so she turned it down a bit – I also suddenly remember my neighbor upstairs had said he would be on the roof of my bedroom to fix something that morning – I did not care – he must have heard weird funny sounds coming out of my bedroom before – at various occasions and times of the day).

And that was it. It was perfect. The Universe imploded and exploded on me. No physical orgasm (to get an orgasm with ED, you must do through a rather tedious and long hand job) but Nirvana right there and now. Zen. Call it a brain orgasm. Oh. Yes. My brain. Suddenly I felt it coming back. It said this: I have it all. And I have nothing. Nothing in the past. All in the future. Or not. I do not care. Right now and there, it was all right there and then. I am grateful to the Universe for having me given my moment right there and then. I got my Present, and I am happy with it. Thank you, Universe ! The Future may bring more but let’s see about that. I have learnt that it is better to expect nothing. And my life has shown I tend to get a lot then. But one always has to be skeptical. You may get nothing more this time around.

[…]

I made a major discovery. I discovered that my tongue is not only good for talking. It is also good for sex. That I knew already. But I did not know it actually works better than my penis – even if I would not be suffering from ED. For the woman, at least. And, perhaps, for me too. I shivered all over my body as she came, and I cried a few tears. No orgasm for me, but this felt at least as good. I moved back up and took her beautiful face in my hands. I went over her hair. Kissed her eyes. She saw my eyes all moist. I saw she saw that. I stopped and sat up. I put the blanket on her. Collected her clothes and gave them back to her. She put her pants and her bra back on. Then the shirt. She then moved in a comfortable position using the cushions. I did the same. She asked why I had cried. I told her: I cried from happiness. That I had been so happy to give her an orgasm. That it had been a long time since I had been with a woman (which was not so true), and that I had never been with a woman like her (which was very true).

We cuddled some more. We then went down. She had told me she had time till 2 pm only, and the clock was ticking. I asked her if she wanted to shower. She did, so I showed her down. I started filling the bath tub with hot water, lit some candles there, and said she should relax in the tub and that I would not disturb her. It is a nice space to relax. I told her I did that sometimes. I gave her fresh towels and told her I would only come down to bring some food. That she should just relax. No worries.

That was the intention, but she kept her bathroom time short. I had just finished preparing the food when she came up in the kitchen again. I put the food on the table, but she said she would not eat. That her mom was expecting her for lunch. She asked me to roll another cigarette, which I did. And we chatted some more. Among other things, she told me she had all of the right bases to live a wonderful life, but that she had been unlucky. I told her my life had been the other way around: all of the wrong ingredients but that I had been extremely lucky so far. I told her I could bring her luck. She laughed at that. It was around 1 pm, then. We continued smoking and talking.

She had told me she should really leave at 2 pm. Hence, at 2 pm sharp, I pointed that out to her. She said: 15 minutes more.

She then told me she is probably going to get rid of her current partner – a rather abusive Romanian man, at least that is what I understood from what she had told me about him (and he did look like a young handsome but bullyish man on the pics) – and that she may want to live with me for a while. But first she just wants to see me weekly. One morning in the week. Morning time. To make sure no one is suspicious. To make sure no one knows she is with me now. She is honest about it all: maybe things will not work out with me. Maybe I am just a transitional guy in her life. That is what I had told her the previous day about the prospects if we would have a relation. She told me she agreed to that. That maybe she does not love me. But that she likes me. And that she knows that I love her. I do. I love her to the Moon and back, and she reminds me of that song.

To be honest, I prefer to think of myself as just another conquest for her, but that is fine. I am perfectly happy in that role. Again, I have nothing to lose, so I can only win.

I like her honesty too. In her simple conversation. In her body language. I love her beauty. Every second I can spend with her is going to be Heaven, even if it will end in Hell. Anyway, I cannot see the difference between Hell and Heaven very clearly right now. When she left, I pushed her again the door and hugged and kissed her warmly. She felt good about that. Her body felt good about it. Then I let her go. She said she would come back Wednesday morning. Every Wednesday morning. 9 to 2 pm. She told me not to cry inbetween. I hope she does. I will not cry inbetween. I will cry if she does not show up. But I think she will show up. She said her current partner just penetrated her and that she would usually not even react. I think she likes my love. That is why I think she will be back. Because I am the best in battles like these. Even unarmed. Especially unarmed. And because I have nothing to lose. That is when a warrior comes out the best: when he has got nothing to lose. When he is with his back against the wall. I am, so I feel rather good – or OK, at least – on that spot.

[…]

I am going to change the topic of my blog. I will write about my Highway to Hell with her now. Or to Heaven. I am not sure yet. I will find out. I have no idea what she wants from me. Sex without sex? Company with intimacy? Just like me? A way out of her current relationship? A temporary new emotional home? Another conquest or victory on her list (man down – she won – again!)? A new relationship? I do not know. I do not care too much right now. Right now, I only know I want her. Badly. Very badly. She is going to be the Gypsy Woman in my Life. Let us see how bad it gets. So far, so good. I want her. All I can do is to give her everything I have to make her want me. That is all I can. God or the Devil will decide and take care of the rest. That is fine. I am used to that.

[…]

Post scriptum: She made me forget about Fatima. I had vaguely thought I should try to reconquer her. I wrote in previous post that she is The Real One. She is. Or she was. I am not so sure anymore now. She is a dentist so I had made a dentist appointment. I am going to cancel it. She had postponed it anyway. From prime time (at the end of her working day) to an appointment inbetween other clients. I have my Gypsy Girl now. I know I probably have her only because she likes my place and sees me as a comfortable way out of her current relationship. I know all that. I know I should probably work on my real love: Fatima. But I cannot battle two devils at the same time. Or, perhaps, I can but I do not want to do that. Love sucks an awful lot of time and energy, right? So I am going to focus on my Gypsy Woman only now. Fatima is plan B now. Her mistake. I have nothing to lose anymore. She lost me. She might regret that one day. If not, also fine. Better even.

I am totally fine with love now. It is more than friendship and sex. I do not know what it is. Or I do. It is my love for the Gypsy Woman (I will not reveal her name as for now – because she does not want that – she wants to stay secret – secret as an alibi even). And I know I should not be afraid to lose her. Because I know I will lose her. And I do not care. I am just going to make her stay with me as long as I can. And then she can go when she wants. And I will cry and hug her, like I did when she reached her climax yesterday. The hug will probably be shorter, and the crying will last much longer, but that is how such things go. And it is OK. I know how to deal with such things now. Finally. I have become a true Zen warrior. Not a monk. I’ll go down fighting. Not today. Not tomorrow. Thirty of forty years from now. And I will not die in bed. When I die, I am going to make a statement. A Big Statement. But now is not the time to think about that. I will think about that when the moment comes. And, as mentioned, I have another 30 or 40 years for that. That is the new lease of life I have got as a cancer survivor. It is an eternity.

Sunday, 12:37 h: She is on. She called, very brief: “It is me. I come Wednesday 9 am. Just to confirm.” She sounded like she wanted to talk more, but I just told her: “Yes. Wednesday 9 am. We were not going to have a WhatsApp relation. No messages, you said. We should not have a phone relation either, right? I’ll see you. Ti amo.” I did not want to make a long phone conversation. She did not hang up, so I did. I did so because she called from another number. Not hers. Perhaps a friend. Or the thing with her current partner. If he checks her WhatsApp messages, he probably checks the phone call register as well. But she is on. She will be there Wednesday. I give it a very good chance.

Short and longer-term social interaction

I took my blog offline for a while. A friend said that my writing was inappropriate. That I was transgressing his social norms. That it did not fit with his value system. That it hurt him to read what I write.

I think he was also worried about the impact it might have if my current or a potential employer might read what I write – although the blog itself is anonymous, and I only share it with selected friends.

What I learnt is that I should not share it with friends. I should keep it anonymous. Being read by someone you do not know, is like getting a smile from a beautiful woman who asks you if she can use your lighter to light up her cigarette, and then walks on. In the condition that I am, that is probably all I can reasonably expect from a woman: a free but short social interaction resulting from the random situation we both happen to find ourselves in. Such social interaction may be repeated. If so, that is good. But I now know to expect that, sooner or later, the woman will walk away.

I probably also took it offline because I sort of stumbled into a WhatsApp conversation with a much younger woman, and it became what these conversations usually become: a bit of a feverish exchange about the meaning of love, past relationships, what we are looking for, and what have you. Such chats gets addictive (social media are addictive) and, before you know it, you talk about yourself in such exchanges, and then all goes well for a couple of days. You play the game: it is like talking to a chatbot, and you try to behave like a chatbot too. With all the options checked: a bit of romance, seduction, talking about what you like about yourself and what you like about her.

But, at some point, you tell them something they do not like, and then the conversation goes south. She suddenly likes you a lot less. Because she is looking for something else than you want to be. Something else than you can be. Someone else than you. In my case, she was disappointed about my rather cynical views on the value of emotions in life. About me defending the point of view that one should live one’s life more rationally and avoid getting hurt. Hence, I probably – unconsciously, perhaps – wanted to avoid giving her the site address for this blog, because she would be shocked and it probably would have ended the conversation even sooner. Taking the blog offline avoids you sharing it with a new friend or acquaintance. But I told myself: I will just be careful to share it with friends and acquaintances now, but I still want to be read by people whom I do not know. Because I like it when a beautiful woman asks me if she can use my lighter. Something like that.

Of course, you may wonder: why did I not want the conversation to end sooner, then? If I do not like too much emotion in my life, then why do I even engage in chatting? In fact, why do I write at all? Because it is obvious that – despite her saying we should be friends only and that we should meet regularly to do fun stuff together, like going to social events together – she is actually looking for a longer-term relationship. And, while I do not believe in long-term relationships with women anymore, something inside of me says I should try. Because being alone together, or being together while being alone, is somewhat nicer than just being alone. A happy single woman and a happy single man getting together from time to time makes for a happier single woman, and for a happier single man, right?

Maybe. I will find out over the coming weeks.

Post scriptum: You may think the point of view is a rather mechanistic view of the value of relationships, and of the value of interacting physically or online with others. You are right. But I guess it is just how I have become as a result of past social interactions (as I am 50+, that is sizable experience you cannot erase), and then I guess the physical isolation from the C19 lockdowns and the fact that sex is no longer part of my life equation has led to this situation. I do not see how I can change it. I also do not see why I should change it – even if friends tell me I should not think of it as being a good situation, because it does not fit with their value system or social norms. I have to come accept how I am, now, in this situation, and I do not want to waste energy on trying to change how I am. Because I have come to love myself like I am.

[OK. Because I do not like undefined concepts (and surely do not know what love is), I should phrase this differently: I may not love myself the way I am, but I have accepted who I am. And I use the term Acceptance in the way you would think about that term when you have read something about Buddhism. Acceptance of the suffering in life, or the desire (the Buddhist concept of dukkha has the two meanings for me). Something like that.]

About Friends and the Art of Love

A couple of weeks I thought of a book project, but I had no idea what I would write about. I kept the idea alive with a WhatsApp friend or, at least, someone who bothers to reply to my nonsense on that channel from time to time. It is a friend with a beautiful mind. Not a corrupted one, like mine. Of course, you will immediately ask: how do you know his mind is not corrupted? There is no such thing as a pure mind. Everyone’s mind is corrupted, right?

Wrong. The answer is this: he has been with the same partner all of his life, and it still looks like they are in love. Every day. I am plain jealous of that. His mind must be very pure. Also, he knows enough about my emotional troubles and musings now to know I am a total disaster (not only on the love front but all fronts: I win a few battles, but I always lose the war), but he phrases that always rather carefully. In an encouraging way. Not in a way that makes me feel like shit when I tell him I screwed up again. He tells me something like: “Yes. You screwed again. But it was a rather nice fight that you put up there. And you are getting better.” Something like that. It may be just an emoticon but, because I know him, I know the emoticon means something like that. [Sometimes I think I should just install an advanced chatbot on my phone (they pass the Turing test since quite a while already so I would not know the difference – except for the fact that I installed them). But, no, I still prefer real people.]

I have another friend like that. One that does not condemn me in any way. But that is because his mind is as corrupted as mine, and his ironic or cynical WhatsApp responses (when he bothers to react at all) are, therefore, slightly less valuable. [He will read this and nod in agreement. I know. He may actually write me on WhatsApp (in response to me alerting him on this post that he will probably not read but acknowledge as yet another futile thing to waste my time on) that it makes him feel good every time he learns I am a worse loser in life than he is.]

There is another reason too why I say the mind of that pure-mind-friend of mine is not corrupted. He has been very successful in life. He does big projects. Like another pure-mind-friend of mine in Liège, who also does big things with real risk and huge investment of time, energy and money. My Liège-based pure-mind-friend says he does big things – work is all that matters for him – because he has no time for friends or lovers. [That makes me feel flattered, of course, because he does reserve time for me whenever I can make it to Liège, and he is then the most wonderful and witty host you can imagine: we do not meet often (two times a year, perhaps) but, when we do, it feels like we are just picking up from where left off – yes, like what happens in a fling but, unlike a fling, we have a relation for life with each other – no doubt about that. In short, his mind is pure and works much better and faster than mine. Always. That is what I like about him (he knows I do not care about his wealth and so, by default, our conversations are always focused on the immaterial intellectual and esthetic pleasures of life).]

So… Well… No. No big material or financial projects in my life. I was just a mercenary. I just went to Afghanistan and other dysfunctional places like that to sell whatever personal services I could sell. Frankly, I think the organizations I worked for there hired me because of my eternal smile. Because they needed to see somebody smile even in the worst of situations – ironically or cynically or even genuinely laughing about it all. Someone who smiles like that does not quit, right? Never. And so then you want that guy because, if no one can do it, that guy just might.

Besides earning reasonably good money, I also went there because of the adventure and travel that comes with it. I guess. Something like that. But I should not try to make myself look better than I am: I am a nobody, and I know that (knowing yourself is a big part of being happy). I never did anything that matters and I will, therefore, leave nothing behind. No real estate or money. No wealth. At my funeral, my friends and family will just shed a tear or two (I hope they will laugh a lot, actually), and so I am just like that other friend: totally corrupted after 25+ years working. 25+ years of living in some illusion that we might make a difference in the big world out there, while neglecting our kids, our partner(s), our friends and whomever else mattered to us. They made the right choice: stay at home. Do not waste time on some ideal. Do not try to be a hero or something we cannot understand.

We made the wrong choice: now we both wonder what we were trying to do there, and we look at the images of Afghanistan and we try to cry, but we do not have many tears left (we should have saved some for later, like now) and so the few tears we shed do not soothe our soul. We try to get some people out – people we know (it is not an anonymous war for us there) – and that is it. Nothing grand. Reminiscing on the twists and turns in our life. It is not miserable. It is just not grand. Our minds are corrupted. Totally.

In short, my two pure-mind-friends – one in Brussels and one in Liège – are totally different from my mercenary-time friends. They are grand. They are like my two grown-up children, who also have a beautiful mind. They listen to me, and they say something like this: “Dad, you are a total disaster. You always have been. We know that better than anyone else. But you are funny and entertaining. Therefore, and despite you being such disaster, we still love you. And we will love you forever. We have to anyway, because you happen to be our dad. We have no choice. We can choose our friends, but we cannot choose our dad. You happened to be here first and decide you wanted us to be here as well. We survived till now and we do not need you anymore but we like your stories and all the nonsense that comes with them.”

That feels good. I want to stay friends with my son and daughter for the rest of my life too. Now that they are young promising adults, I have to re-define my fathership anew anyway, and friends might work. I could call it a life coaching relation, perhaps, but that sounds preposterous and not very credible, because it is obvious to them that I have made a mess of my life and that they, therefore, should not look at me as a teacher about the good life. But the stories are funny – OK, let me more modest: with the benefit of hindsight, it is always possible to make them funny – and, at the very least, they can learn from my failures: it helps to do the right thing if you already know what you should surely not do, right?

[To be fair, my experience with them on the coaching front over the past few years has not brought too much success, however. The more I tell them they are beautiful and young and clever and everything that they do better than me and that they, therefore, are on the right track to become rich and famous by 40 (I will write a few things about age and ambition and achievement in a moment), the more they tell me: “Dad, there must be more life than that, right?” That is very worrying, and I tell them that: “No. That is an illusion. I do not know why that illusion is so strong and omnipresent with youth. I felt the same when I was your age, and I went for it. I looked and tried almost everything, and I did not find it. You should not waste time on looking for something else. Rich, famous, beautiful. That is all that matters. If you can have it, have it.” They then smile and tell me they love me, but they do not seem to take my advice very seriously, even if I tell them it is the only serious advice I can possibly give them. My son once replied: “What about beauty, dad? Or adventure? Risk? A real rush? Impossible love, perhaps?” I told him: you already have that. You are beautiful and adventurous (he climbs mountains too and all that) and everyone who gets to know you, loves you. What more love and beauty and adventure do you want? If you have money, you can go and see it, buy it or enjoy it in every way you want. Most things I like are for free but that is only because I cannot afford the expensive stuff. You can, or you could. But you must go for rich and/or famous then. You must.” He just laughed at it. No one takes me seriously. Not even my own kids. It is a rather sad state of affairs but I find it amusing.]

Let me try to get back to the point I wanted to make in this blog post (you must have switched off reading already). The writing idea. Because of what happened on my love front lately, and also because I had time on my hands, I feel some of the ideas for that future book of mine (which I will probably never write because I do not have the discipline that is required for a book – a blog post will do) are maturing. Let me jot down a few and let me write using numbered sections so as to make sure I stick to the point. To the storyboard for this post.

1. Its working title was The Stairs in Sidi Bou Said. Because of personal associations. A beautiful black-haired Tunisian woman. The longest-lasting on-off reasonably working relationship I ever had. Blue skies. Soft skin. The sea. White-chalked houses. Cobble-stone alleys. Small quiet corners. Those dark brown eyes again that peer straight into your soul. The taste of an excellent local red wine. Fire. The moon. Possible and impossible Love. Beautifully weathered faces. Excellent food. Memories of great books and writers who have been there and produced brilliant pieces. Subtle music. Equally subtle silence Etcetera. Stuff that triggers the imagination.

However, that is the title you would give to a roman de gare (in English, you would call it a dime-store novel or a pulp novel). You would buy it because you would want to read a thrilling story with a lot of sex. I will leave such works for other writers because I prefer to have sex rather than write about it. It is only because I cannot have sex now that I am writing. [I could use my Afghanistan diaries, though. They include short notes on wonderful sex or thoughts about sex that I could easily expand in red-hot lyrics that would blow your mind but, again, I would rather relive those experiences than write about them.]

2. My new working title, which I thought of last week only, is far more ambitious: The Art of Love. Yes. A title that reminds one of that other bestseller: Sun Tzu’s Art of War. Its structure is very useful because the Art of War and the Art of Love have a lot in common. The five heads of war are:

• The Moral Law: the guiding values and moral principles. You need to be on the right side of them.
• Heaven: night and day, cold and heat, times and seasons (I am just copying from Sun Tzu here – only some small adaptation would be needed to define Heaven in Love).
• Earth: distances, danger and security, open ground or narrow passes, the chances of life and death (again, I am copying Sun Tzu’s description on what Earth might be about)
• The Commander in us and his/her virtues: wisdom, sincerity and good faith, benevolence and humanity, courage, and strictness (self-respect, self-control or ‘proper feeling’). Those who have read Sun Tzu may wonder what translation I am using. The answer is: the classic Lionel Giles translation). You will also wonder what commanders have to do with love. War, yes, but love? I will let you think for yourself about roles and associations here. Some are obvious. Some are not-obvious. But it should be easy for you to start thinking about the rather obvious ones. If that does not work, just think about the mentioned virtues. Some good stories there too.
• Method and Discipline: that needs no further explanation. It is related to practice. Wisdom and knowledge are good (otherwise you do not know where you are or where you want to be next), but only practice gets you what you want. As for the discipline of writing, I have not much experience with that, but since I stopped drinking, I write a lot more, which is good practice. I also smoke a lot of hand rolled tobacco nowadays, so that looks like the practice of some other great writers too.

As for my practice of love, I had four long-term relations (two marriages and two non-marriages) and 30+ significant short-term relations inbetween. Many were just Platonic (no sex) or what is commonly referred to as short-lived passion. But they were significant: I am not counting prostitutes or the like. […] OK – perhaps I will include one lingerie model, Liz, with whom I have had a similar experience as with Sylvia (I mean some kind of crazy experience with a beautiful woman that lasts a week or so only – and then I need a month or so to digest what happened).

And then another one. An older wonderful Thai whore I would go to bed with in Bangkok. Literally. Go to bed with. Usually no sex. She did not charge me: we would just crash together in bed – at her place – after both of us had had an exhausting day. We hardly talked (her English was very poor) and we did not have sex in the sense that you would associate it with it: excitement and coming quickly. No. We would often just hug and then fall asleep. A few hours of rest before being swallowed up by our day job again (hers and mine had only one thing in common: we had to please people – all of the time – very exhausting). It was a very significant relationship. I think of it as one of the best I ever had now, although I did not think of it as a relationship at the time. But my thoughts are wondering away now – the Monkey Mind in me – and I forgot her name. Hence, I have to think about how significant it was and whether or not I should include it in the book as an example of a relationship that worked, somehow.

You may think that is not enough material for a book about love. One woman for every letter of the alphabet and then some more. That is not enough, right? Maybe you are right. But all these women talked to me about previous or parallel relations they had or were having. So that makes for a multiplication factor of four, at least. And I only started keeping track of relations when I went to Afghanistan. I was 38, then, and I did have a rather wonderful life before too. So we are talking hundreds of experiences here. Not a few dozen. I think that is enough material. Let me turn back to the discipline one needs for a book.

3. Structure. The book would need a structure. The structure of the book depends on what you want the readers to do with it. Beginners in love would probably want a do-it-yourself structure. They would expect me to start writing on the techniques of seduction so they can start practicing from the start. And then a chapter summarizing the Kama Sutra for heavenly sex. So that is when my dating tips work (they do – trust me) and you go to the next stage (go fast – endless dating is a waste of time and energy). And then a chapter on how to negotiate in love, and get the best deal of the deal (if you want a long-term relationship, you need to define the give-and-take in it, so that is negotiation). And then a chapter on loss and grief as well, of course. Because that is, inevitably, the next stage and if you do not manage that stage of love very well, you lose a lot of time and energy. Time and energy you should use to go for the next disappointment.

But I will not use that structure, although I realize beginners in love would probably be like 2/3 of my potential readership and so my book may not become a bestseller. In any case, there are plenty of books on that already (except on the loss and grief stage of love, but then there are dedicated books on that and I have nothing to add to those).

The latter remark – on the book and how to make it a marketing success – makes me think of the critical success factors for it to become a bestseller. Bestsellers usually have happy endings. Improbable happy endings but happy endings nevertheless. I cannot see a happy ending, so I will have to invent one, I guess. I will think about that later.

4. I cannot use a chronological structure either. Then I would have to pick and choose a limited number of experiences and write about them. Then it would become very interesting (especially the sex experiences – especially the pornography vignettes which would inevitably be there) and that would boost the potential audience for this book again (despite the lack of do-it-yourself instructions and coaching tips for dating). But I have difficulty picking and choosing and I can see myself ending up with hundreds of pages of writing that I would then have to pack again in a volume that is about the same size as The Art of War, or the essentials of it. [The Art of War is a book of 250-300 pages, but the essence of it can be packed in 60. You will not want to read more than 60 pages. Short novels are better than long ones.]

Hence, the five heads of War may dictate the logical structure of my Art of Love. An introduction explaining the basics and how these factors relate to each other, and then five chapters. One on each. It should be easy, right? In my Afghanistan diary, I have a few quotes that directly relate to love experiences I have had and I could use these to develop some short love stories around them and the 60 pages would be there in no time. Let me give you a few:

• Do not repeat the same tactics which have gained you one victory, but let your methods be regulated by the infinite variety of circumstances. […] There are no constant conditions. […] Military tactics are like water; water in its natural course runs away from high places and hastens downwards. So in war, the way is to avoid what is strong and to strike at what is weak. Water shapes its course according to the nature of the ground over which it is flowing.
• Do not press a desperate foe too hard. Birds and beasts, when brought to bay, will use their claws and teeth. If your adversary has burned his boats and destroyed his cooking pots, he is ready to stake all on the issue of the battle, and he must not be pushed to extremities. […] You should then not try to crush him by making a direct attack. Your enemy may have few soldiers left, but they will defeat yours. [OK. I admit. I added the last sentence, but then I am sure Sun Tzu wrote that elsewhere.]
• If you know the enemy and yourself, your victory will not stand in doubt. If you know Heaven and Earth, you make your victory complete.
• By persistently hanging on the enemy’s flank, you will succeed, in the long run, in killing the commander-in-chief.
• He who exercises no forethought but makes light of his opponents is sure to be captured by them.

I have five already. Five quotes around which I could write at least ten pages, so that makes 50 pages already. I think I should ask for some input again from my WhatsApp friend. I asked him to think of the music if this book would become a movie. He is an artist: a musician and designer and many other things. I think that must make him think better than me. More Zen. Themes, notes, instruments, and all that. He agreed that any music to my future non-book should be minimalist. Focused. Just like the experiences I will be writing about. They must be more like images than short-movies. Less is more. Do you think this is workable, my friend?

[For those who read my blog and know me and my friends, I should say that my friend does not exist. That is better in terms of respecting our friendship and not writing about people you should not be writing about.]

Post scriptum: These rather random thoughts about a book project make me think about what I should do with my life. Now that I have survived cancer too and starting my 14th life, something inside of me says: You are 50+ and you are not rich. You are happy with your place in Brussels and a modest salary as a civil servant, so that means you will never get rich. You are just content. Lazy. Leading the easy life. Enjoying. Writing. Chatting up people. Trying to find love. That sounds like pre-retirement. Get out. It is too late for you to get rich and you are not interested in it anyway. But you can still go for Glory. Be like Tom Shelby in Peaky Blinders. The man Nick Cave describes in his Red Right Hand song (I actually think the series is built around that song: one song inspiring a whole series. Amazing, isn’t it?)

Yes. I can still go for Glory. But I am lazy. For the very first time of my life, I feel lazy and rather content in a place that I can call mine. And the few pure-mind-friends I have are telling me there is nothing wrong about that. They are probably lying through their teeth but my mind is so corrupted that I start liking to believe them. Perhaps they are seeing what is good for me. Perhaps they may be speaking the truth.

There is also a more mundane, physical reason why I should probably just be happy here in my place, and not search for Glory. I am 50+ and I have to admit I do feel somewhat older now. One of those short wisdoms that is attributed to Confucius is this:

“At fifteen I set my heart upon learning.

At thirty, I had planted my feet firm upon the ground.

At forty, I no longer suffered from perplexities.

At fifty, I knew what were the biddings of Heaven.

At sixty, I heard them with docile ear.

At seventy, I could follow the dictates of my own heart; for what I desired no longer overstepped the boundaries of right.”

I sure know what are the biddings of Heaven now, although I am not sure if I have planted my feet firm on the ground, and I sure still suffer from perplexities. My heart is still set on learning too. I do not listen with docile ear, but then I am not sixty yet. In short, I think I am doing rather well on the life agenda that the Great Confucius set for himself. Of course, I can never aspire to be like Him. He had a rather glorious ancestry, wealth, and a brilliant political career. I have none of that. Even when he spoke or wrote about philosophy, he himself said it was of little value. He said he was just a “transmitter who invented nothing.” Very Zen. However, I know I am a nobody and, hence, I feel I now know where to stand and that my aspirations should be commensurate. I want to go for that Zen part of Confucius. The glorious stuff is out of reach, and I am too old for that anyway now.

There is a Flemish wisdom which resembles the quote above. There are some variations on it but it goes like this: “If, at 20, you are not beautiful; if, at 30, you are not married; if, at 40, you are not rich or famous; if at 50, you are not wise; then you will never be.”

I got married twice (before 30 and after), so these two ladies must have thought I was beautiful (in some other way than the Tunisian woman with the black hair and the dark brown eyes, but then she is a woman and I am not). And I attracted other women too. So, yes, I must have been pretty, right? Or beautiful enough, at least. Hence, I can tick that off (please do not tell me I should uncheck those two boxes now because I am no longer married and, therefore, obviously, no longer beautiful).

So then we are left with the rich and/or famous box. What about that? Can we agree that one cannot have everything in life, especially not if you know that your mind is not pure and will never be? So that gives me a score of two out of three, then. What about the fourth box? Wise? If I would consider myself not to be wise (which is probably the harsh reality), then the score would be two on four only. Because I feel a bit battered after the love battle I lost last week, I prefer to lie to myself for a moment and think I might be wise. So as to give myself a score of three on four. Three on four is a pass. I am happy with that. I have to think positive and genuinely believe that, despite all my losses and failed gambles in life, I am not a loser. I will, therefore, just do that. I am telling myself: you are 50 now, and you are wise. Nothing else matters. You lost your way in life, several times, but you are where you wanted to be at your age, and you should feel good about that. Full stop.

That will also be good for the book. Love should include self-love. I think I have something to say about that. There may not be much of an audience for it, but then the book does not need to be a bestseller. I have enough wealth (just a house and no debt, but it is enough) and money (nothing much but it pays the bills – why I should want more?). No. I want the book to be good. That is all. I will not be catering to some real or imaginary audience. The music that my friend will write for it will probably be very special. Minimalistic. Some harsh sounds tearing up the melody or the theme of the sound track (if it will have a melody or theme – maybe not – that is up to him). It will not have a happy ending. Worse, the whole thing might not read and sound very happy. I could not care less. The only criterion is truth: it must reflect and capture what is life, what is worthwhile to live and die for. […] OK. You are right. I forgot the criterion of funny. It must make one smile or laugh. Otherwise it is no use to add anything to this world. But, with me, that criterion is always there, so I should not have to repeat that all of the time.

[…]

That will be all for the day, folks. If you have read this, I thank you for having read it. It boosts the WordPress stats, which is nice to see because it makes me feel a bit less like I am wasting my time writing nonsense like this. A comment or a like would be appreciated as well. Even if you have not read it, you may want to give a chatbot-like like-reaction because you know that makes the writer feel a little bit better about wasting his time on his writing. But do not feel obliged. When everything is said and done, I like to write because I like to write. Because it helps me. Me. Because I have to get things out. I will now go to the gym for my daily spinning hour. That helps to get things out too. In a very different way. More physically. That combination of writing and doing some sports over the past few weeks feels good. Happiness may be a word like God or Love – in other words, it does not really exist – but this might come close to it.

[…]

So, yes. I write because of me. Only because of me. On the other hand, I do like to think some other people might actually like to read me. If so, the book project might become more serious. Or non-serious. Whatever. So if you do like this post, let me know. If you really like it, share it. 🙂

Final note: I am sure that, if you are a woman, and you read about what I considered to be some kind of real relationship with an older prostitute, you will feel disgusted. If you are a man, you will want to know more about it. Let me, therefore, tell you the background of it. As a younger diplomat, one of my more enjoyable tasks was to guide visiting VIPs around in Patpong and Nana Street. That was something the Ambassador would not do, especially not because she was a woman. So, after their long daytime programmes and hopping around and doing important things, they all wanted to see that scene. To relax and watch. Some of them would take a woman home and then they needed guidance so as not to be ripped off. So I took care of that and, of course, I did develop relations with them after organizing such things a couple of times. So one of these relationships I considered to be real. Something more than just sexual, but that sounds so odd in this context.

She was a bit older. Less attractive. Read: she was getting less and less clients. But she was genuinely nice. I liked her more than the younger girls because of that. And so she offered me to stay at her place – for free – if I did not feel like staying at the hotel with the VIPs. And I took her up on that offer, because we would both be exhausted after trying to please everyone after these long grueling days with VIPs trying to pack a programme of a month into one week. Likewise, she would often be sick and tired of her clients of the day too. So, yes, it was a phone number I could always text to. To get something organized for my VIPs or, as I preferred to do, when the VIPs had had their meal of women. That was usually around 1 or 2 pm. Or even later. She would then text me tell me if she was at home or not. Her home was a miserably small space. Not a hotel room. But I was always welcome to fall asleep there. And I slept easily next to her. Without feeling that I should have sex her, and with her feeling the same.

She cried her heart out when we met for the last time. When we left Bangkok for New Delhi. I had not expected that. She had never really talked much to me about herself. We just had a tired-after-a-long-day-do-not-talk-let-me-fall-asleep-please relation. I did leave some money from time to time. She took that in the beginning, but soon refused and let the money just be there on her table. When I saw that, I did not add to it anymore. So then we had a truly non-paying sleeping-together relation. Nothing intelligent. Nothing what would be referred to as friendship or love or whatever label you would have in mind. Just two exhausted bodies sleeping together. That is all. Nothing more. Nothing less. I did not think too much about it. I had no time then. I was a young workaholic and this just fit in, somehow. In a weird and totally screwed-up way, but it fit in. And today I am sad I forgot her name. That I can hardly recall her face. That I only sort of feel her body when I think of her. So, yes, I do count that relationship as a significant relationship with a woman.

If you are disgusted by me writing this – thinking it proves just how fucked up I am – then you are right about the latter: I am fucked up. A man who has slept with prostitutes cannot be relationship material. Never. He is doomed. He has committed the Ultimate Sin, with the Devil in person – with the most evil of women. He chose, or accidentally, got onto the Highway to Hell and, once you are on that highway, you cannot leave it anymore. It will bring you straight to your final destiny: Hell. You are right. Fully, completely, perfectly right. I will not argue about that. I told you my mind is totally corrupted. Not pure. And, yes, that is it, then: I fucked up. I am not, and will never be, relationship material.

Good to know. There. The sticker. It is just like the ‘veteran’ sticker. That one also never fades away: “Oh… Well… He’s OK, but he’s been in Afghanistan and other crazy places for like half his life. Hard to adapt for him now. Poor social reflexes. You know. Bit of a beast. The trauma.” You’re right. Again. And you can add more prejudice when you would dig into my past. I come out of a bad neighborhood, for example, so I was not raised to be romantic and fit in. Yes. Correct. You should add drinking. Yes. I had an alcohol problem. It is gone now, but it will always stay with me, right? I am sure you can think of some more ready-made stickers that would fit me and explain why I am ruined as proper relationship material for a decent woman. Just pick and choose. I’ll take it.

So I would say: go for other reading if the theme of my posts – love – is of any interest to you. Go for the pure stuff. Romantic writings of your soul mates, preferably: other women. Not men. And surely not men who slept with prostitutes. Such men can only tell you something about the Art of Sex. They can teach you nothing about Love. Prostitutes are transactional. Men who have slept with prostitutes are transactional as one. Give and take in the crudest form possible. Not love, in other words.

Can you even call it a relationship? It depends on your definition: if you buy something – one shot – is that a contract? A contract implies some longer-term relation between the seller and the buyer, right? If longer-term is your criterion, then my relation with that prostitute was a relation. But then you will have to admit that a man who returns to the same prostitute, or hires the same escort girl time and again, also has some real relationship. You see your easy definitions are not so easy, right? Hence, I will let you decide on such definitional niceties. It is an interesting exercise when thinking about the complexities of social relations but you need not spend time on it.

Again, I do not want to argue. You are right. I fully agree that men who slept with prostitutes cannot be relationship material (although I must admit I suddenly find it a bit tough to think of me like that – but the logic is clear now to me – so it is good that I am writing about this so I can be more clear with myself). A man should not cross that border. No matter how easy it is to do that, and no matter how beautiful it looks over there. How beautiful it actually is over there. Indeed, I can assure you that it feels like Heaven rather than Hell. But that must be an illusion, right? And it is an illusion which leads to divorce or a breakup with your partner (if you happen to have one) in this life, and to hell in the next (if you believe in next lives, that is). So you should avoid it: it fucks you up, and you do not want to be fucked up.

[…]

Anyway, enough about that. Let me now say something about the former element in that phrase I started this digression about a relation with a prostitute with. About you feeling disgusted when you read this.

I cannot say much about that, except that I do not care. I do not know you. But, if I did and you would condemn this – morally or otherwise – I would probably say that you do not really know what life is about. Or that you have not tried to live it to the fullest extent possible. Worse, I would probably tell you this: now that I cannot have sex anymore because of my ED problem after prostate cancer surgery (maybe permanently – it looks like it – recovery has not been great on that front), I am thinking that – if I would want one of the women who knew me to come back into my life today – it would probably be her. She was warm, friendly, and sex was just like an accessory to deep, refreshing sleep. What more could a man wish for?

Shocked? Good. Maybe I do have an audience for my book project then. To make it on the Internet nowadays, one must shock. Not please. So do like the post if you are shocked, even if you do not like to be shocked. And share with like- or not-like-minded people. 🙂

PS to the note: After reading all of the above, you may think that I should have therapy or something. I did that. I went to see a psi. A psychiatrist: full medical doctor on top of being psychologist. He came highly recommended. To be precise, Fatima recommended him, and she is/was very important to me, so that is why I consider it be a high recommendation rather just a recommendation. She recommended him because, besides all the usual stuff you would associate with a good psi, he also does hypnosis. So I followed up and went to see him. We had a few highly enjoyable sessions. Enjoyable for me as well as for him (at least that is what he told me – maybe he just pretended).

After the first session, he said hypnosis could not work with me. He said I was too intelligent for that, and that it was close to impossible to get people like me into a state of hypnosis. Then we talked about addictions (I was drinking a bit then) but immediately stated I was more than smart enough to get that under control, which I did. Then we talked about psychoanalysis and philosophy. He liked the writings of Gilles Deleuze, but recognized that I had maybe understood more of those writings than himself. Why? Because I was clear about the personality of Gilles Deleuze himself: I think of Gilles Deleuze as a professor in philosophy who tried to justify his drinking problem by portraying it as something out of this world, and alcoholism is very much in this world. He also committed suicide (he jumped or fell out of the window of his apartment, in some kind of delirium apparently) without using the opportunity of killing yourself to make a grand statement. In short, I told my psi I think of Gilles Deleuze as a coward: someone who talks nicely about risk and life without taking any risk himself, without living the kind of adventurous edgy life he always talked about.

Think of it: Gilles Deleuze was an outspoken hardline left-winger, or so he said. If you want to kill yourself anyway, why not pick up a Kalashnikov and get killed by joining the Revolution in some far-flung war?

I have a similar problem with taking Karl Marx seriously: Karl Marx always wrote about the revolution, and preached and fueled it by his writings, but he never joined any real revolution, despite having had plenty of opportunities to do so. Instead, when things got hot in the city where he happened to be (he wrote the Communist Manifesto in Brussels), he always fled to some other city to escape violence or impending arrest and threats of incarceration to write some more elsewhere. That is not very consistent, right? How can you take a guy who keeps writing about a revolution but but never does anything real in his life – nothing matching his words – seriously?

On top of that, Karl Marx was married to a rich woman, Johanna Bertha Julie Jenny Edle von Westphalen, who was part of the bourgeois society which he hated, and she paid most of the rent wherever they were. This is not a joke: check it. How inconsistent can you be? If you want to make a statement, make a statement with your life, not with a book. There are enough books on socialism and communism already. Even Marx copied a lot of what socialist writers before him had written. For some reason (a bit of historical accident and style, I guess), he just became to be equated with all communist writing. Marx is just a label. Just like Mao and Maoism is a label. He is not an original thinker. Not for me. Mao, at least, actually fought the war he believed to be just. He killed for it. He himself. Marx never did. That is why so many people went on the Long March with Mao: because they saw a man who would lead from the front. Not from the back. No matter if the war is right or wrong: belief is what counts and what makes you fight and risk your life.

[…]

I have a few degrees, including one in philosophy. Evening courses. I like(d) philosophy. And I like exams. One of my professors was an excellent guy. Several exams with him. My last on John Locke. I like Locke’s writings, so he asked one very specific question to check if I had actually read all the material (I do not always read all the exam material but, on John Locke, and with this professor, yes). I gave the correct answer and he then said he was confident I knew all about John Locke and that he would, therefore, not ask any more questions. Except one question that had nothing much to do with him. He asked me to compare Jesus and Marx. He gave me 10 minutes to reflect about it, and I came back with a nicely structured monologue on differences and similarities. I ended by saying: “The biggest difference is that Jesus died because of his beliefs. Marx died in bed. That makes a hell of a difference.” He gave me a 19/20. An unusually high score. He was known for not giving high marks. I am thinking he may not have liked the answer (he was an armchair philosopher himself) but that he had to acknowledge its logic was sound.

Also – I am just noting it for the record – it is a rather well-known fact that Gilles Deleuze had announced he would write a grand new special book on Karl Marx, but so that was just before the Berlin Wall came crashing down and all Eastern European countries went for a right-wing revolution. I think these real-world events in 1989 and the years after contrasted starkly with his beliefs and may have led to the final depression that made him jump out of the window of his apartment. Like a war veteran who looks back at all the wars he fought, wonders what he had been fighting for all his life, and then shoots himself through the head. Except that veterans have actually risked their lives for what they believed in (or not – but they fought nevertheless). Gilles Deleuze never risked his life, and left some ambiguity as to his suicide: he may just have fallen out of the window in an alcoholic delirium, rather than consciously killing himself. [I admit this is just a personal theory about Deleuze’s suicide or accident. You may have another one.]

In any case, I told the psi: Che Guevara or some other real revolutionary, yes. Someone on the left or the right, or plain anarchist or terrorist. Whatever. But real warriors, not philosophers. I would gladly talk about that. But Gilles Deleuze, or Karl Marx, no. That is theory. Not practice. I also told the psi that I liked Che’s Motorcycle Diaries more than Che’s theoretical writings, and I asked him if he had read those. He had not. He then duly noted my point of view and agreed it was no use to continue talking about Gilles Deleuze, or even about philosphy in general, with me.

For the last session, he invited me over to his own place, rather than the formal setting of the cabinet. He told me I should not think of myself as a problem, because I was not. He said that I am probably bipolar – going very deep both into happiness as well as sadness – but that me making fun of the sad things seemed to be pretty genuine fun. He told me I should consider myself as a happy person, because I basically am. So that was it. I jokingly wrote above that no one takes me seriously. Not even my own kids. Not even myself. And even a paid psi does not seem to be able to take me seriously: when I start talking about any problem I might perceive with myself, I start making jokes about it, and then even a trained psychiatrist – someone whom I pay to talk seriously to me – starts laughing along with me in the end.

There is not much more I can do, can I? Hence, I would suggest you just smile along and not come with any serious recommendation aimed at cleaning up my messy thoughts and feelings. I have tried everything. The mess does not go away and feels good now. Hence, my strategy is now to convince other people of what that psychiatrist told me: I am not a problem. Please laugh along. It is genuine fun.

[…]

Thinking back on that exchange with that smart and nice psychiatrist, it is obvious that it could not work. I did not accept his authority. That is the basis for such things. You get a diagnosis – bipolarity is the popular one for adults (plus a PTSD label for guys like me, of course – an easy-to-add-sticker on your forehead), and problem kids are almost always diagnosed with ADHD – and that’s it then. The patient feels happy he got a diagnosis – a label for his disease – and accepts that the person who sits in front and whom he pays to entertain him knows more about it than him. And he trusts that will solve the problem. Of course, it does and it does not. Conversations with a psi go on and on and the treatment seldom stops. The patients get addicted to the psi, like they can get addicted to medicine. But they feel OK about it because, at the very least, they feel they understand the problem now – although not so well as the psi, of course (that is why they need him) – and that they are doing something about the problem. That’s already half of the solution, isn’t it?

It is not for me. I refuse to accept such easy diagnosis. Bipolarity? Everyone is bipolar to some extent: we feel good some day, and very bad another. And smart people will probably feel happier and more sad because they dig into their emotions much deeper than people who just enjoy and do not think too much about how they feel. So smarter people tend to be more bipolar, then. I can go along with that, but I think that, with that psychiatrist, I instinctively refused to let him qualify myself as a patient. Maybe it was some kind of rivalry: it is hard for me to accept someone is better at this or that, because I first want to see him prove that. I left no chance to that psychiatrist to prove that, and so we were off on a bad footing. Or on a good one.

I consider it good, because it led me to give up on the idea of trying to heal myself. Perhaps the psychiatrist is right: I have no problem, no disease, no mental problem or illness. I am complicated, but not a problem. Or, more likely, he just got rid of me because he felt I did not accept his authority. Or because he considered me to be a problem he could not solve, never. Perhaps he was just trying to be as genuine as he possibly could, in light of the fact that I was doing the same and clearly expecting him to be as true. Or perhaps he just felt I would not pay that much longer for what appeared to be mere chatter to me. It does not matter. Perhaps it was a mix of conclusions from his side. I like to think that his invitation to have the last session at his place was a sign of genuineness, but that is just personal flattering.

In any case, regardless of his conclusions or sentiments, my conclusion is that my problem (everyone acknowledging that I am a disaster, that my mind is totally corrupted, and what have you – but that it is the funniest mess they have ever seen) may actually not be “a rather sad state of affairs.” It is a state which I should also qualify as amusing (if everyone else does, why not me?) and then that’s it.

Perhaps I should think of myself not as bipolar but as tripolar: Thanatos and Eros, and then the Mind that controls all and preserves healthy balance between white and black, happiness and sadness, heaven and hell, good and bad, day and night, fear and courage, sky and earth, water and fire, cold and hot, mind and body, heart and soul, life and death instinct, etcetera. Whatever bipolar features my personality might have: my minds sees them, and understands them, and balances them in a weird but beautiful dance. The Dance of Life.

Perhaps I should not take of my mind as corrupted. No. I should think of it as being fully engaged in life. As working with my body and soul. Fighting and making peace again. Spiraling upward. Not downward. All of the time. A weird but beautiful Trinity. All engines burning. Not always in sync. But with formidable thrust.

That makes a lot of sense in terms of my personal philosophy and beliefs, which revolve around Buddhism and the no-soul doctrine: there is no me. All is motion. There is only an evolving state of being. I am fairly happy with my state of being, and it evolves in the right direction. It always does. I am a lucky man. For some reason that I do not quite understand, things always work out for me, even if it does not always feel that way. Bad things turn out to be good things later. And good things are just what they are: good things. In short, I am good. And I am getting better every day. I will prove that by writing a better piece next time, but then you have to tell me what you liked and what not. Because good and better are judgments that must be made by others than myself. 🙂

[15 August 2021: I shared this post with a few friends, so my blog is no longer anonymous. I got a very critical remark from a male (!) friend, saying my writing was inappropriate and hurt his feelings because – in his value system – writing things like that is not quite acceptable (he phrased it a bit differently but that is the gist of his reaction). One of two others were more positive, saying it was/is courageous to write things out if that makes me feel better (it does). Others do not react at all, which I interpret as not being interested and, hence, I wonder if they should continue to call them friends. In short, I think I lost a friend because of my writing (probably more than one), but I may find others. I know friendship can only function within a shared set of values and social norms. It looks like my set of values and social norms is moving. That should be OK, as long as I am aware of it, and I can find friends despite the unsettling fluctuations of my own set of values and norms. I am 50+ now. I want to be my own self. Not someone else’s ‘me’. The time has come to be me. If it hurts a friend or two, so be it.]

To conclude this post (did me really good to write), the usual song suggestion. This time I will suggest a very simple feel-happy song: So Done, by The Kid Laroi (from the Australia track of my Spotify likes It is a beautiful day again. Sunday. I think I will make a nice long tour on my road bike today. Enjoy your Sunday as well ! 🙂