Diary of an Ugly, Recently Divorced Man Read online

  The mighty reason that led me to return to my roots this weekend was my cousin Eduarda's wedding. There wasn't a single excuse in the world that could have convinced my mother that I couldn't attend, so I jumped in my car and showed up five minutes before the ceremony ended.

  Despite that, my mom pounced on me as soon as she saw me, interrupting the service at a moment that I think was important. She kissed me, squeezed me and gave me a rosary of advice on how I should never trust women again, advice that I ignored, of course, and she encouraged me to forget about Laura, about the city and come stay with her in my parents' enormous house in town, come on now, to help her recover her motherhood, long lost with age.

  My cousin left the church, smiling goofily like she had achieved a lifelong dream, walking quickly, trying to hide her budding and damning baby bump and dragging her new husband, who was stumbling behind her.

  After a shower of rice, a superstition that I had thought had gone out of fashion, the guests began to give the couple their kisses and congratulations. I hung back, comparing my cousins' appearances with the images I had of them stored in my memory. The Groom (capitalized on this Special Occasion) was an ordinary man, only comparable to the economic power my mother said he had in the town. Thinking about the fact that my wife had left me for a "handsome" guy... What was in store for this poor storekeeper when my cousin came down from her wedding preparations high? I glanced at his gut and smiled to myself. I had spent the last thirteen-hundred afternoons and evenings lifting weights at the gym. It's true that I hadn't experienced any spectacular results and with the membership fee they charged I very well could have swapped my car for a private jet by now, but the comparison allowed me to easily calculate that in less than three years he would be paying my cousin Eduarda in alimony what I was going to spend at the gym in the next twenty.

  On the way to the reception, I realized that it was one thing to call my parents and let them know about my separation, but it would be quite another to face my family in person. In any case, my mother's distressed expression, her furrowed eyebrows, her Oh, honey, my poor, poor boy were nothing compared to the welcome that the rest of my family had ready for me.

  Dear reader, if you know what it's like for your pants to fall down while on stage in front of an audience of ten thousand people, you'll have an idea of what I felt when I walked into the Happy Little Couple's banquet hall. My cousin and her husband, who owns all the stores in town, had in all their tackiness invited the entire population to their wedding reception. In a small town like this, where everyone is practically family, you don't need a TV to hear the news. When I entered, the room fell into the most impressive silence ever heard since speech was invented.

  A few glasses of wine later, my father had no qualms in congratulating me on my recently recovered freedom. If I didn't get such shit retirement payments, he told me, without caring if my mother heard, I would also get a divorce. It's not that I don't love your mother, but think about it, son: At my age, I'm capable of doing it once a year, and your mother wants me to do it to her! "Do it," whatever "do it" meant, I didn't know what to do or where to run because judging by the chorus of laughter, the entire reception had heard his comment.

  In short, this weekend was the most depressing of my "life." Not only because I let myself be photographed by some hicks who had never seen a recently divorced (ugly) executive, but also because I came out looking bad by comparison, and as I headed back home by myself, hearing but not really listening to the score of the game on the radio, the only thing I could think about was that the ugly sausage seller was going to have my cousin in bed to love her and annoy her in equal parts (what more could you want?) for at least the next three years.

  Published by Felix at 12:30 a.m. * Post a comment

  Tuesday, May 8

  Close encounters of the third kind

  The company psychologist told me that we experience separation in three stages.

  First stage) Trying to win them back. In this first stage, we're in denial that everything has fallen apart, and we try to reconquer what we can't accept has been lost. As a consequence, we become better, we try to highlight the aspects of ourselves that our lost partner appreciated, we start taking care of our appearance again (the gym, shaving, etc.) in order to hear those words that everyone says in the presence of the divorce lawyer: You're looking good. But I haven't become better. I don't feel like going back to the gym. I've gone to shit and I don't have the energy to reconquer anything. Anyway, what good would it do if she's already been conquered by a strange and "handsome" army?

  Second stage) Open warfare. In this difficult second stage, we recognize that a peaceful reconquest is impossible and we move on to destroying (like Attila the Hun) what we couldn't even cry over (unlike the last Sultan of Granada). Making threats, throwing up hurdles to the agreement or demanding things that we don't even care about are some of the weapons of mass destruction within our reach. But I can't leverage the children to hurt Laura because we don't have any and never planned on having them, and I refuse to hurt her because: First, I love her (and anyway, it would ruin my chances of winning her back if I were to ever regain my strength to fight), and second, it would be useless because I never see her anymore. Let someone else (the someone else) enjoy her.

  This leads me to the third stage.

  Third stage) Surrender. In this dramatic last stage, we come to terms with the fact that we've lost, that the person who left us won't be coming back, and we admit that we have nothing left to give, that we don't care about anything anymore and that we spent too much money on their Christmas present.

  It was in this state of mind when I received a call from Laura. Before, I would have liked this, but now I was afraid as I answered the phone.

  She wants to see me.

  After being gone for a few weeks, living who knows where with that handsome son of a bitch, she wants to see me. She wants to stop by the loft to talk and establish some ground rules for our new "relationship." In this state of mind, I'm ready for that—for a close encounter of the third kind.

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

  Wednesday, May 9

  The strategy of the snail

  It's my first day by myself. Officially. I've finally moved into an apartment. It's a four-hundred-square-foot cubbyhole, one of the places up for sale by the minister of housing. Yes, the same woman who has an office of two thousand square feet. It's not that I have anything against her, it's just that it took a lot for me to move out of our matrimonial loft with views of downtown. It took a lot, but I made the decision to escape following the strategy of the snail: I grabbed all my things, the things I considered personal, and I took them to my home on the other side of the city. It's a small unit on the second floor of a new building in the shopping district, good restaurants are a stone's throw away and there are bars everywhere you turn—the perfect stomping grounds for a single man.

  Or so I thought.

  I knew that I had already moved out everything of mine when Laura asked me for the keys to the loft. In that precise moment, I knew it was all over. With my house on my back, I let myself be hypnotized by a young real estate agent, who rented me the new apartment. For the price I pay in rent, I could have gone to a hotel in seaside Almeria for the entire month of August, but I decided to look at it as a new stage in my life, to be positive. So after a while, still surrounded by boxes, I made myself a sandwich and opened a bottle of 1999 vintage Ribera del Duero from the Duron winery. Then, I put on a Miles Davis album and sat down to enjoy all of this on the marvelous sofa that came included in the rent for my new lonely bachelor paradise.

  I can't overstate how much I like jazz, and there's this one album by Dizzy Gillespie that I revere like it's the Bible, but I must say that I'm not enjoying this. The sofa in the end is harder than it seemed, and having time to think has made me realize that my life sounds like one of those experimental jazz albums that Miles Davis recorded in the seventies. To take the
metaphor to the extreme, the life that I had hoped would sound like So What is now tormenting my ears with the "chords" of Agartha. My life sounds like Miles Davis in the seventies, broken jazz, Miles Runs the Voodoo Down and other disasters of the genre.

  I can't feel at ease in silence either (sometimes, I can't even feel at all). I've discovered that the builders are a bunch of bastards, that when they sell you an apartment with top-rated energy efficiency with insulated walls and other such selling points, what they're actually selling you is an eggshell in which you can hear your neighbor scratching his balls, and what the real estate agencies sell you as a shopping-district-with-restaurants-and-many-services is actually a Babylon full of hectic nightlife. Not only is it impossible to sleep with the racket coming from the bars, it's also the place where all the city's cheap, unmuffled motorcycles flock to every night, a hell where if you’re the least bit trashy you have to come park your club-in-a-car so that none of the neighbors get any sleep.

  Those who know me will say that it's strange that this exact nocturnal atmosphere bothers me, but lately all I'm looking for is a nook where I can keep my head low (drink some good wine, listen to a little jazz, doze on a sofa...forget).

  And I'm unable to sleep a wink. I've been awake the whole time, monitoring the movements up and down the street of some immature idiot in his car who’s blasting a rap song that rails against society and money over and over again. What makes no sense is the asshole drives a classic red Mercedes 300. What's unfortunate is that during his last drive-by, I wasn't able to hit him with my empty bottle of Ribera del Duero.

  Published by Felix at 1:22 a.m. * Post a comment

  Thursday, May 10

  Day two

  Day two. I'm not adjusting to the new apartment. It might seem like the perfect pad for an ugly, recently divorced man, but for that I would have to bring home some girl who's worth it every night, and I'm not ready for that. Not yet.

  Actually, I'm not ready for anything. I come home from the office and sit on the sofa, staring off into the distance, hibernating. Sometimes, the alarm on my phone sounds and wakes me up at seven in the morning to go to work, and I'm still stretched out on the sofa in a suit with my briefcase at my side, without having even eaten dinner.

  Maybe I should search for some meaning in all this. Things happen for a reason.

  Maybe I should find myself a hobby, regardless of how absurd it is, to keep my mind off her, or at least to keep me from losing it. Collect coins, build models, join a corrupt political party, go hiking, sign up for an Esperanto class, buy a video game console, or give in to wild masturbation... Who knows!

  Maybe I should simply recap my life up until the moment I met Laura, but I can't remember what I did before then, what friends I had or what I did with my time.

  Maybe I should call and have them take away the home ADSL connection, stop mourning her on the Internet, but it's better than hibernating from nine to midnight on the sofa staring into space, and I'm not ready to shut up. At work, between meetings and reports, I go online and leave a few paragraphs here, in what is looking more and more like a diary, to try not to think. For me, it's a way of escape. Or I could go back to the gym. Since Laura gave me the news, I haven't gone. Before she would scold me. If you didn't waste an hour every day at the gym, you would have more time to spend with me.

  Now that I have time to be alone, I don't waste it at the gym or anywhere worthwhile. It's interesting how the value of the things we do changes. Before, spending some time away from Laura, torturing myself with weights or on the bicycle, wasn't that big of a deal. Now, I would give everything I have to spend a minute with her. Before... But that was before.

  Published by Felix at 12:21 a.m. * Post a comment

  Friday, May 11

  Day three

  What do divorced and single women do? What do other men do? I've spent three days trying to sleep in this damn apartment and I don't know how to make time pass any faster. There’s nothing but junk on TV. Well, I already knew that. The truth is that I don't know what to do with my time, and what's worse: I've forgotten what I did before coming to live in the loft that I shared with Laura.

  I remembered that I had some books, so I opened several boxes looking for them. I found an old, tattered copy of Tarzan of the Apes that I bought when I was still in high school. I started leafing through it excitedly, and I reread a few chapters. Little by little, my excitement faded away. I didn't remember the whole story, I didn't remember how quickly that savage forgets his apes, learns French, puts on a tie and becomes a gentleman as sophisticated as he is pretentious. He was a snob! I threw the book in the garbage. The pillars that cemented my heterosexual education in adolescence are wobbly.

  Not long after, I put the book back on the shelf. Women like men who read (in the end, I did read this book back in the day), and it's possible that one day a woman will come visit me...

  Later, I remembered that in American movies women stuff themselves with ice cream when they feel sad or alone. I went down to the 24-hour convenience store and bought some tubs of ice cream—vanilla, tutti-frutti and chocolate, which seems to be the cure-all—and some earplugs (let's see if I'm able to sleep tonight despite the boor with the Mercedes). I also bought a towel because the one in the bathroom is already dirty.

  And then I sat down to watch TV.

  Yes...TV is shit! Fortunately, I have some movies. I put on The Exorcist. I can't recall why I bought it. Because of Mike Oldfield's music, I suppose, but the damn girl came on the screen and then I had one of worst experiences I can remember having in a long time: I started vomiting ice cream.

  Afterward, I channel surfed for a while. There wasn't anything better than a soccer game, so I started watching it. After the bad time I had with snooty Tarzan, I thought by watching the game I wouldn't lose sight of the divide between my masculine and feminine sides, but I wolfed down the three tubs of ice cream and woke up on the sofa at five in the morning with the indigestion of a horse. I tried to vomit, but no luck. I'm sure that the indigestion will last through tomorrow.

  Published by Felix at 1:52 a.m. * Post a comment

  Tuesday, May 15

  Little shop of horrors

  I bought myself a plant. I did it to do something, I guess, but it turns out it's the most boring entertainment that I've ever experienced. How can anyone like gardening? The plant sits there and does nothing, it doesn't grow, it doesn't eat (or at least I don't see it eating), it doesn't make a sound.

  It's a cryptogram plant from the fern family, with lanceolate, petiolate leaves...or something like that. I didn't know what distraction I could get out of it, so I began searching things about the plant online. Like in almost all species of animal, vegetable and wrestling, the female is usually larger than the male, which translates here into bigger fronds. It wouldn't even be amusing if I tried to play matchmaker for my plant. The reproduction of plants isn't entertaining. I really missed the mark on this decision...

  If it only grew like the plant from Little Shop of Horrors and I could feed it human meat or at least salami... Of course, that would be a different beast entirely.

  Let's say I find a carnivorous plant (they exist, according to all-knowing Google) and I feed it enough salami that it grows like the plant in the movie. Not only would it be much more entertaining, but I can also think of a fairly long list of people who could be food for my plant, starting with a certain someone who left me, followed by several guys from the office.

  I didn't know I had left the computer on. I'll take advantage of that fact to note that it's two in the morning and I've wasted almost three hours writing out a list of who could be fed to my large carnivorous plant—if I'm ever able to buy one online. I didn't know I had paper in the house.

  Published by Felix at 2:06 a.m. * Post a comment

  Wednesday, May 16

  The Rosetta Stone of the twenty-first century

  It's 9:42 at night and I'm bored.

  Actually, I think I'm the most
boring guy in the world. I don't have anyone to go get a beer with, no one to call, not even television or the Internet interests me. I'm alone. The few friends that I have are married, far away or out for drinks in this precise moment with some gorgeous girl, the kind who I will never be with again.

  (Note to self: Get a hobby!)

  I'm bored. It's almost eleven o'clock.

  At eight minutes to midnight on the night of May 16, 2007, I made a surprising discovery: The boxes of muesli from Carrefour supermarket are the Rosetta Stone of the twenty-first century. It's not my imagination or speculation. For more than an hour, I've been studying the list of ingredients that appears on the back of the medium-sized box in eight languages (if I close my eyes, I still can see the tiny black lettering), and using logic, just like the distinguished Jean-François Champollion did sometime around 1799 with the stone in question, I've figured out a pattern not only to decipher and translate the ingredients that it contains—there are a lot—but also to explain in eight languages how to prepare a nice bowl of muesli with fruit and yogurt.

  I'm a genius. This will be useful (or would be useful, because I'm not sure it would ever come up) to ask for palm oil or baking soda in any restaurant or grocery store in Greece or the Netherlands, for example.

  Yes, I'm not only bored. I'm the most boring guy in the world. By far.

  Published by Felix at 12:23 a.m. * Post a comment

  Friday, May 18

  One hundred years of solitude

  This morning, Guillermo Cifuentes was in the financial policy meeting. He was a bit dull, as if his bonus didn't depend on his performance or his PowerPoint presentations. When he left, Joaquin told me that his wife had left him. Apparently, she complained that he no longer paid attention to her, that it was like they weren't even living together, and the poor woman decided that she couldn't take it anymore.