Diary of an Ugly, Recently Divorced Man

by Amador Gálvez, Félix; Finch, L. ;

  Published by Felix at 11:46 p.m. * Post a comment

  Monday, August 20

  Happiness

  My new friend in the Accounts Department, Inma (I don't remember her last name), is a genius. She's genial. Is that a word? Ha ha ha. I apologize, dear damn diary, I'm laughing because I'm happy. Inma, like I said, recommended a place to me that not only will wash your clothes, but will also iron them and bring them back to your house. Isn't that genial? Well, she also gave me the number of a place that delivers Spanish omelets. Pre-made! Now I'm really starting to like living alone.

  I just wanted to say that. Have I said that I'm happy?

  Published by Felix at 12:20 a.m. * Post a comment

  Tuesday, August 21

  I'm leaving

  I still have a week of vacation and I've been thinking of doing a solo trip to forget about everything, about work, about Laura, about my parents, to get away from all human contact, someplace where they slap a wristband on me and leave me poolside, and if possible with ugly waitresses so I'm not distracted from my lethargy, or I'll sign up for some bus outings so I can sleep the whole time while they drive me from here to there between jungle and ruins, dreaming that I wake up and we've been kidnapped by some drug cartel—I wish—and that we'll never be returned to civilization.

  I don't think it'll be easy, but there has to be some trip out there made for me. I'll stop by the travel agency tomorrow and ask Diana. She found all of the vacation packages (that's the term they use) that Laura and I went on. She'll know what I like, sign me up and send me to the other side of the world to forget about Laura, about the apartment and even about vacation (especially the vacation I spent in my hometown).

  Published by Felix at 12:11 a.m. * Post a comment

  Friday, August 24

  The Mexican Caribbean or the Riviera Maya

  I'm leaving tomorrow morning. To Punta Cana. Yes, dear damn diary, I'm going on the same trip (I must be an idiot, right?), the very same trip that I went on with Laura the first time we traveled together.

  It's not my fault. I went like usual to the travel agency, except with that cold, familiar feeling of doing something alone that you used to do with someone else, and it turned out that the charming girl who had always helped us wasn't there. She failed me. Being very inconsiderate, she had had a baby and was on maternity leave. And I didn't know what to pick on my own... and even less when it comes to a trip for a single man.

  Diana is on maternity leave, another agent told me, smiling.

  I walked up to her trying to hide my annoyance. She was a tan and attractive agent, with deep, shining eyes, just the kind of human person who is easiest for me to start up a conversation with, but as I sat down she flashed a wide smile my way and I could see her braces in stunning detail. I sincerely believe that at a certain age, these devices should be banned, especially for women, but she not only had them but showed them off with the full breadth of her smile.

  The surprise was disarming.

  I stammered something about Cancun and a hotel at the end of the world, all-inclusive, where I could lose myself. She showed me the braces on her teeth once again when she asked me, The Mexican Caribbean or the Riviera Maya? I hesitated. Caribbean. No, no, Riviera Maya. Aren't they the same thing? She looked at me astonished, but closed her mouth, and snapped, Noooooo, it's not the same. Well, I said or thought, it's all the same to me, and she insisted, They have nothing to do with each other. The Mexican Caribbean is not the same as the Riviera Maya, and she said it smiling or laughing with her braces on display, trying to make me feel stupid for not knowing the difference between the Mexican Caribbean (where I've never been) and the Riviera Maya (which I have no fucking clue what it is), and she kept going on about my ignorance, about my poor understanding of (all-inclusive) touristic geography, laughing at me in a paragon of obvious and malicious rudeness.

  In the end, sick of her useless explanations, I asked her about the Dominican Republic and ended up signing up for a vacation in Punta Cana, for one, for as soon as possible, nine days/eight nights, at the very same hotel where I stayed with Laura that first time we checked our hopes together and got on a plane (what a sentence...in the end I not only feel idiotic, but cheesy too).

  I leave tomorrow morning.

  Published by Felix at 1:00 a.m. * Post a comment

  Sunday, September 2

  All-inclusive

  I'm back (again). I'm exhausted and not very happy. The hotel, Luna Park, where I spent some incredible nights with Laura, isn't what it used to be.

  To start, I will say that in those hotels, when you've been drinking for a bit and you fall into the pool fully dressed in the middle of a group of Norwegian sculptors, not only do the staff not show you the courtesy of taking you back to your room, but they also call the police to deal with what's been deemed "the altercation," and they end up taking the word of some girls who barely speak Spanish and not a single one of them has any interest in bringing in a translator.

  If we add to this that they are so generous with their all-and-we-mean-all-inclusive-wristbands that there isn't any room for the Coke after they've put in the ice and poured the rum, then you'll begin to understand why some of us will have problems. It goes without saying that other types of services must be added here. For example, letting your guests sleep. It's not fair that you throw yourself face first into bed to sleep it off, and by the third day they're coming into your room to clean without asking permission or helping you get out of bed.

  In the end, you spend five days sleeping with brief interludes of lucidity that fall into two categories: In some, your consciousness begins to function for just the time it takes to order a bottle of rum from room service. In others, you wake up and the bottle is there. Then, you knock back a couple of tall drinks and the days pass by without warning.

  Fortunately, the agencies have guides whose obligation it is to take you to the airport when it's time to go back to wherever you came from. The hotels, for their part, have concierges with syrupy accents who kindly tell you that if you don't leave your room before twelve noon they will charge you for an additional hotel day. The worst part? That's the moment when you have to start paying for the drinks you order.

  Published by Felix at 5:42 p.m.* Post a comment

  Wednesday, September 5

  Hangover

  I think I still have a bit of a hangover from the trip. Luckily, in the end I didn't take advantage of all the alcohol that my all-and-we-mean-all-inclusive-wristband gave me access to. If I had, I would have been in an alcoholic coma by now, no joke.

  Little by little, my colleagues are returning from vacation, and with all of them I stop and head to the coffeemaker to spend some time catching up. That's what I'm pretending to do, but I'm actually stocking up on caffeine to see if I can shake the hangover that I've had since I left Punta Cana. At least I've learned to hide it. The rude woman on the plane laughed at me when on the way to the bathroom, I asked her if there was turbulence and it was nothing more than my own sense of balance that made me stumble and trip over my own feet. Damn Venezuelan rum has killed off my psychomotor coordination.

  There's a convention in Germany in a few weeks. I'll have to go for sure, and I still won't be able to control my body. I don't know how I'm going to get out of this one.

  Published by Felix at 12:08 a.m. * Post a comment

  Thursday, September 6

  The other side of the bed

  Laura called me. And my hangover suddenly disappeared.

  Actually, I think she took too long to do it. She doesn't want to see me. (I could see that from a mile away: First, she sent me a text message, and when I didn't respond, she sent me six more, and then she finally called me on my cell phone.) But she does want something from me. It seems that I have to sign some papers to make our separation "legal"—like I cared if we did it on the black market.

  She said it's due in three weeks, so I have time to think it over and consult with my lawyer. Ha! She said s
he's thought about it a lot, as if she feels guilty about something or knows that she changed my life for the worse, much worse, when she left me six months ago, turned me into a marionette controlled by my friends (the brutes that are my friends) and my feelings (the untamed, unpredictable tidal wave that are my feelings). Dammit.

  She called me now, just as I'm getting on my feet, now that I've gotten over my loneliness and my fleeting relationships with or without benefits, the meet-ups and the let-downs, the millions of hours of boredom during which I ended up searching for belly button fuzz, now that I've finally abandoned my canned food diet, more or less learned to cook food that isn't completely burned, found a place that washes and irons my clothes, now that I'm no longer afraid of mirrors, afraid of looking at my reflection and seeing loneliness in my face, my pale and vacant image framed by ridicule, now. She called me now that I had forgotten her voice.

  She called me and these six months hit me like a punch in the gut. It was like a kick, cruel and hard, like pro wrestling without the choreography, like Bruce Lee at his wildest (Be water, my friend) and I still haven't caught my breath. Every single night that I've spent without her came rushing to my mind, that chill of waking up in the middle of the night or at sunrise during the work week, opening your eyes and remembering all of a sudden that there's no one sleeping beside you on the other side of the bed, which at first feels like an abyss and some nights you try to fill it with a pillow, with a folded blanket or with those hundreds of stuffed animals that she abandoned when she escaped with her handsome-oh-so-handsome prince charming, as if she had abruptly reached adulthood and left all of her childhood memories (including me) at home. It's possible that being with the other man made her grow up. Who knows? I've grown a hundred years older and the hollow on the other side of the bed remains empty. After all is said and done, I'll probably end up buying myself a single bed that's thirty-five inches wide. And now Laura goes and calls me again.

  Published by Felix at 12:26 a.m. * Post a comment

  Friday, September 7

  Of endings and stories without an end

  I think the summons for the divorce (if it's not that exactly, then it's something similar) has upset me. I can't control myself. I spend all day thinking, and I'm not on the ball. It's like I'm paranoid. When I'm with everyone else, I only pay attention to the negative comments, I look at myself and I only see defects, and everything I do feels pointless, as if my life were going to end the day of the summons and it's no use no matter what I do. It's like everything around me is crumbling. Nobody says anything positive. Joaquin has a brother with hepatitis, Ricardo had his vacation dates changed out from under him, and in what they describe as the worst thing of all, Juan Carlos didn't catch any fish during his last competition.

  This morning, as I savored my bitter black coffee in a plastic cup, a snippet of conversation made my ears perk up. That's nothing, protested Manolo from Seville. I've been divorced for five years (I had forgotten: Manolo from Seville is divorced!) and my ex-wife calls me to hang a shelf. (Laughs) Man, it must be because she needs it. (Laughs) I know what your ex-wife needs. (Oooh in unison) If she let me. (Silence) What does that have to do with anything?

  That's the terrible part: It's not that my love life dies when I sign the damn papers. The terrible part is that the story doesn't end there.

  Published by Felix at 12:56 a.m. * Post a comment

  Tuesday, September 11

  New girl at work

  Apart from my fear of seeing Laura again, my return from vacation hasn't brought about anything new. The rebound effect of summer break always means my stress increases at an unstoppable rate.

  This morning, however, something happened that distracted my thoughts, broke my routine and raised the spirits of all of us shameless guys who were drinking coffee.

  Mario, the head of General Services, showed up, accompanied by a girl who is st-un-ni-ng, pronounced like I've written it because you have to break it down to understand. About five foot five, black hair, bright eyes, incalculable measurements... He introduced her to us. She's been given one of those positions they've invented: at-work security or occupational risks or technician of something like that.

  Joaquin was less than subtle. First, he asked her if she goes to the same gym as he does, only to tell her that with those legs she must work out, and she blushed, but explained that she does spinning, kickboxing and who knows how many other sports, and seeing the effect she has on men, whatever she pays for it all is justified.

  In spite of everything, none of us learned her name. We were hypnotized by her eyes, and we said things to her like Charmed, It's a pleasure, and We hope to see you around here again. And it really was a pleasure, we were charmed and we do hope to see her around here again.

  But then we said see you later, she turned around, and our eyes fell on her hips. Never had we seen a pair of jeans that was better stuffed (it took me a while to settle on it, but that is the word: stuffed). Juan Carlos pretended to faint, and Lolo, becoming serious, laid out beauty norms for feminine behinds, buttocks and rear ends. There's a definitive test to see if it's a perfect ass, he said, and it's very simple: You have to take three photos of the girl's ass. The first photo in jeans; the second, in a thong; the third, on all fours. Manolo from Seville, always so biting, quipped that surely when the girl without a name takes off her jeans at night, gravity pulls her butt cheeks down to her knees. Joaquin, who is an art and beauty connoisseur, awarded her nothing more and nothing less than an eleven on a scale from one to ten.

  Afterward, some vowed to leave their wives, other asked for a Valium in a strained voice, and I, for the first time since I've been reevaluating my life, began to consider in all seriousness if this woman was actually the one I've been dreaming of, despite the fact that now I can't remember her face.

  Published by Felix at 12:02 a.m. * Post a comment

  Thursday, September 13

  Among friends

  All right, maybe I'm not the most loyal to you, my dear blogged diary, but sometimes I also feel the need to unburden myself with my friends. And now that we've all become addicted to the new girl in Occupational Security (we quietly applaud when she walks into the cafeteria), we share another kind of connection, one that's more fun, one that makes me forget my troubles. This morning, for example, I repeated the spiel about climate change and how the global warming of my loneliness is consuming me (okay, I'm also a little repetitive and annoying).

  Sure, it's possible that my climate change/global warming comparison isn't the most accurate, especially after saying it in front of my coworkers because Lolo, with his rapid-fire mind when it comes to finding the double meaning of everything, said before my pipes burst from all that accumulated heat, I should check to see if women firefighters exist. Picture a woman firefighter, she arrives, she grabs hold of your hose and, hey, she cools you down from all that accumulated heat... (Now in falsetto) Let's put out that fire, honeyyyyyy... Such was his comment. Someone else who I prefer not to name made the stupidest metaphor that I've ever heard in my life. Lolo, you're more tiresome than killing a pig with kisses. He said that.

  You're never more aware of how far your friends take jokes until you realize there are two or three women watching. In this morning's case, it was the director of planning with her secretary and the girl from the mailroom with her cart. We stopped laughing and there the three of them were, at the end of the hallway, looking at us with the same veterinary curiosity with which people watch documentaries on public television.

  We spun around in unison, turning our backs to them rudely, biting our tongues, some in regret and others to hold back the laughter, until someone looked over their shoulder and let us know that they were no longer there. Then, Joaquin said something about how there's no better time spent than with friends, and I, being brave, invited them all over to dinner tomorrow at my apartment. A formal dinner: four tapas and some bottles of wine. I missed them too much while on vacation.

  Published
by Felix at 12:25 a.m. * Post a comment

  Friday, September 14

  Maid of the right stuff

  My friends just left. It was my first party with friends in my bachelor pad and I already regret everything because of what I have to clean up and throw out. Yes, what's broken I'll just throw out.

  In spite of everything, it wasn't all bad. We destroyed an entire leg of cured ham, a crate of wine and everyone from the office (it's well known that meet-ups outside of work are nothing more than an opportunity to bad mouth your colleagues), and it successfully forced me to forget that I'm living here. Yes, it wasn't all bad, even though it wasn't all polite remarks such as This is a nice place, man or Oh, leave all that in the box, what do you need it for? No, Manolo from Seville was a worrywart and recommended that I look for a domestic service to survive the spider webs (I didn't know I had them, nor do I know how to get rid of them) and hunger (why do I have to eat a varied diet if I eat what I like?). Lolo went further.

  What you need is a young maid, Brazilian, who knows how to do everything. A maid who's made of the right stuff, ha ha ha...

  Damn, at first I didn't understand, but then they started to talk about the disaster that is my existence (beyond being single) and recounted the anecdotes of catastrophe I had told them about my attempts at living the life of a bachelor at home (I refuse to use the term "homemaker").

  Yes, it's true that I had unloaded my frustrations on my friends when I had told them about how one morning I woke up to take a leak and found myself with a cloud of foam that stretched from the kitchen to my bedroom door. Before that, I hadn't imagined that putting concentrated dish soap in the dishwasher could be so catastrophic, but I had run out of the five-in-one powder with rinse aid and glass protector and I didn't see any other solution. I was too tired to go to the 24-hour store. But I don't understand how the time I had asked them if sunny side up eggs are flipped and fried on both sides or if it’s better to cook them just on one remains etched in their minds. They even remembered the laughing fit it gave them for a week.