Diary of an Ugly, Recently Divorced Man
Félix Amador Gálvez
Translated by L. Finch
“Diary of an Ugly, Recently Divorced Man”
Written By Félix Amador Gálvez
Copyright © 2017 Félix Amador
All rights reserved
Distributed by Babelcube, Inc.
www.babelcube.com
Translated by L. Finch
“Babelcube Books” and “Babelcube” are trademarks of Babelcube Inc.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Diary of an Ugly, Recently Divorced Man
Dear blog
With a little help from my friends
Women can smell it
Out of sight, out of mind
Back to my roots
Close encounters of the third kind
The strategy of the snail
Day two
Day three
Little shop of horrors
The Rosetta Stone of the twenty-first century
One hundred years of solitude
Paco
P day (P for party)
Hitting rock bottom
Women can smell it part 2: I've lost my charm
Trial and error
The man from Chinatown
Like that chef on TV
After digestion
Blog for sale
Climate change
Episode IV: A new hope
Prelude to a kiss
M, the curtain of smoke
A time of love and hope
In Lolo's shadow
In Lolo's shadow (part two)
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice...
In Lolo's shadow III: The return of the king
Spiritual exercises
Psychologists and Argentinian psychologists
Living la vida loca
Black Monday
The bald man
The dark side
The other
Starting line
The Internet café at the end of the world
A small-town Robinson Crusoe
A month-long prison sentence
An old love
A hotel in Almeria
Back to childhood
Back to maturity
The return
A bit-city Robinson Crusoe
Flied lice
Girl stuff
Long hot summer
Happiness
I'm leaving
The Mexican Caribbean or the Riviera Maya
All-inclusive
Hangover
The other side of the bed
Of endings and stories without an end
New girl at work
Among friends
Maid of the right stuff
Another kind of spider web
The most magnificent maid
Miss Colombia
Conspirators among us
The age of experience
The man of the year
Of insecurities and uncertainties
Hellish wait
The day has come
The lost weekend
In ruins
Felix reloaded
Felix revolutions
In the arms of Bacchus
Hangover Monday
The second chance
That thing called love
Warning for sailors
Nine weeks or only a half
Jealousy and elephant seals
Squeaky clean
The memory of elephants
Emergency bonbons
Jealousy
I need a vacation
Two tickets to paradise
Smooth as silk
The Caribbean, again
Vacation in paradise
Modern jazz
Luck
But seriously
Twice over the same stone
Between drinks
Among friends
Bitter forgiveness
Passenger to Frankfurt
Why can’t we live together
Frankfurter
Murphy's Law
Third day in Frankfurt
Suspicious minds
Letting loose...in Frankfurt
Of spies, surprises and betrayals
Plans for revenge
Dinner of fools
Inconsolable
Drinking to forget
Two is better than one
Tempted by the fruit of another
On leave
I'm bored.
Yes, I'm bored.
I'm really bored
I need a drink
Djellabah and hookah
A Renault 12 and five stars
In the desert
Tea in the Sahara
Djellabah
And hookah
Goodnight, Spain
Sign, period
Life comes and goes
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Diary of an Ugly, Recently Divorced Man
Félix Amador Gálvez
Translated by L. Finch
“Diary of an Ugly, Recently Divorced Man”
Written By Félix Amador Gálvez
Copyright © 2016 Félix Amador
All rights reserved
Distributed by Babelcube, Inc.
www.babelcube.com
Translated by L. Finch
“Babelcube Books” and “Babelcube” are trademarks of Babelcube Inc.
Félix Amador Gálvez
Diary of an Ugly, Recently Divorced Man
To my friends,
they know who they are
Friday, April 27
Dear diary,
My wife just left me. Say it like that, and it sounds like I'm just one more among millions. I don't know how to introduce myself. I'm a normal guy. I'm a thirty-something... Well, let's say that I'll soon be leaving my thirties behind. I'm an executive at a multinational hardware and software company. Maybe I'm not like the rest of you mortals in that I don't have to worry about a mortgage. With everything else, though, I'm the most normal guy.
I didn't want to separate. Actually, I don't know if I wanted to stay married. I'd never thought about it. If anyone asks, I'll say that I love I loved I love her. Some people treat love and marriage frivolously. Everyone jokes about marriage. (Actually, it seems no one jokes around with their friends anymore; when my friends gather around the coffeemaker, at most what they do is talk about the emails they've received). Jokes about the downsides of marriage. I've never done it. Once, while we were trying to waste time knocking back coffee after coffee, Juan Carlos referred to all of us married people as The Fellowship of the Ring, and he, of course, wasn't talking about the hobbits and elves of Tolkien's book. It was a kind of misogynist metaphor based on a fairly basic philosophy:
a) Lots of rings exist, but only one was created (the Wedding Ring) to rule them all.
b) If you put the Ring on, you become invisible to the rest of womankind, except your wife.
c) As long as you wear the Ring, She will see you no matter where you are.
Well, it seems I'm free of all that now because my wife—I meant to say my ex—decided that at thirty-something years old, she needed to see the world. Midlife crisis? It took me a few weeks to find out, but now I know that the world she was referring to works with her from eight to three, is a few years older than me and is handsome. Or so she said. Handsome! But she had never told me I was ugly!
I could have killed myself, could have tried to hurt myself (that unfortun
ately is also all the rage), I could have given her an ultimatum or declared war (pretend that I wanted to keep everything or ask for impossible settlements) or I could have tried to make the guy's life miserable, but I gave up, straightaway, just like that.
And to deal with it, I've taken up writing. Me, who hasn't read anything for ages. But I need to get rid of the loneliness that's eating me up inside and exercise my fingers a little bit, so I've taken it up and created this blog to serve as a diary. This might do nothing more than banish a few personal demons, but even then it's better than sitting down to cry.
The fact that I've decided to try keeping a diary isn't surprising. I began writing poetry at twelve years old (like every other hormonal pre-teen brimming with sensitivity, though this earned me more than a few knocks from my classmates), but writing is one of those things that people give up on because it leads nowhere.
Today, however, I found myself messing around on the Internet, trying not to think about the disastrous meeting I had just suffered through with the director of marketing or about my ex (something I can't help), looking up photos of Jennifer Connelly or Elsa Pataky online, and I came across hundreds of personal blogs, an invention anyone can use to air their grievances. Starting today, I'm going to do just that. I'm going to publish my grievances as an ugly, recently divorced man on the Web of Webs, scatter them to the wind like you would with a loved one's ashes.
Take from it what you will.
Published by Felix at 12:25 a.m. * Post a comment
Wednesday, May 2
With a little help from my friends
With good friends, you never know if they're helping you out or jerking you around.
Today, I finally told everyone at work that what's been driving me crazy, what's made me invisible in meetings and what's shrunk my client list by half are all the same thing. You're having an affair, Joaquin, the bastard, shouted, trying to guess. I cut straight to the point, losing my cool. My wife left me. It was like an Incantation of Friendship Eternal because everyone circled around me and began saying what a good guy I was and how I didn't deserve this. Why the past tense? Then, they put a coffee in my hand and (let's say) tried to lift my spirits.
Phrases like you'll find someone else or she wasn't your type, as Juan Carlos told me: Really attractive and a babe, but she wasn't your type. Phrases that I suppose were meant to be encouraging. Others simply wanted to strip me of the urge to think about her again: She's no good. Always arguing with you, and what's more, her tits are really small, and didn't you say that she never separated out the recycling from the trash? Lolo, with his usual sensitivity, was much more explicit: You got your rocks off with her for how long? Four years? Well, now you'll find someone else and have a good time, it'll take you two days.
I tried to ignore them, but they kept "boosting my morale" for a while: There's more women than stupid people in this world. What a relief. Forget about her...um...Would you mind if I called her?
When we left, Joaquin stayed behind and gave me a hug (he's a good guy, the kind who worries) and told me that he has a friend who has a friend who would be a done deal, in case at some point I was feeling desperate, and that he knows another woman who is married but who's crazy about letting loose and if I ever wanted to... But I'm in such a state that if I see a woman, I begin to shake. It'll pass, I hope.
And, I don't know how it happened, but when we went back to our desks, I began to notice these sidelong glances, that kind of look that says, I know your secret, or a wink that conveys, You don't know how sorry I feel for you.
The funny thing is that coming from some female coworkers in research and development, including their secretaries, those ocular messages suggested something more than just a simple attempt at visual consolation.
Published by Felix at 12:37 a.m. * Post a comment
Thursday, May 3
Women can smell it
You can play dumb, try to act like nothing's happened, but word gets out and then everyone in the office, from the director, with his easy, demagogic way of speaking, to the very last secretary knows that your wife has left you. My boss, in his paternal role, came up to me this morning as soon as he saw me and stretched out his hand. As if wanting to downplay the situation, he told me something along the lines of I was a victim of a passing fad. It's a trend. Everyone's getting divorced. Twenty years ago, everyone smoked. It was a trend. Now everyone’s getting divorced. Really? Several of Laura's friends were divorced. Had she left me to fit in with her friends? Despite everything, you keep pretending like nothing's happened.
Then the worst hits.
There's always someone who knows more than you, who can tell that you're down in the dumps even before your own defeatist self admits it. Women especially. It seems that like sharks on the hunt, they can smell defenseless men from far away.
It happens without warning, in the middle of a conversation that you thought was flowing normally. You're talking about numbers and ratios, but your coworker, boss or secretary isn't listening. You keep talking (working) and she isn't listening (she's working you). Suddenly, she lets it fly. Stop, she says, I know how hard it must be for you. You jump back, startled. It's not hard, the numbers are what they are. We'll sell more next year... But she pretends not to hear you. She has other "projects." You can count on me for anything. And she begins to fawn over you in a way that you never would have imagined a woman ever would. You've always struck me as a really sensitive guy, but I had no idea you were suffering like this. This runs counter to what she intends and makes you picture her playing the role of mother, hugging you and... No, God, no!
Then there's the one who has gone through it already. I know what you're feeling because I've been there. Sure, they say experience is the best teacher, but did the consolation you received help at all? And she says, You and I have so much in common. Or the one who worries about you. How are you? Good, but it's the first time in five years that we've talked. It must be so tough for you. How are you passing the time? Well, last night I was watching the game, but I was exhausted and ended up falling asleep on the sofa, and I didn't wake up until the early hours of the morning. Oh, and nobody was there to complain? And then I'm out of answers. Morbid curiosity or is this about to get interesting?
Only two women abstained from trying to bait me with their comments: one was the director's secretary, who was probably thinking more about her approaching retirement than anything else, and the other was the girl from the mailroom, who you can rely on for a good morning and a smile, but isn’t one for conversation.
Theoretically, the girl from the mailroom could be a possibility. She's in her early twenties and is the type of woman who doesn't draw people's attention. She's not blonde, not anything special and she's always hidden behind a modest sweater and thick-rimmed glasses; she always comes to work wearing jeans, her hair piled carelessly on top of her head; it doesn't look like she wears makeup, or at least she uses less of it than that discreet, but flirty amount women wear when they want to please; all in all, she's not my ideal girl, not even close, and now she's on my blacklist for not trying like the rest!
The worst is that all these episodes happened at once, over the course of one morning, and it's now two in the morning and I haven't been able to sleep a wink because I'm worried I'll have nightmares.
Published by Felix at 2:22 a.m. * Post a comment
Friday, May 4
Out of sight, out of mind
Joaquin is wrong. He says that everyone who's "left behind" spends all day talking about their exes. Everyone, except me.
He's wrong because I don't need to talk about Laura. It barely just happened and I'm already getting over it. She's far away, and I almost almost almost don't even miss her. I don't even feel lonely because I have too many things to things to think about.
How am I going to miss that bad mood she woke up in every morning, with that inability of hers to talk until she had her first cup of coffee? Sure, it's true that her grumbling was in its own wa
y like a sweet, seductive purr, that her footsteps as she padded to the kitchen were soft and rhythmic, as if she didn't want to wake up her still-sleeping body. No, I don't even miss that way of walking, which was so sexy to me.
I could long for how her voice screeched like a broken bell when she gave me a hard time about something she didn't like because I had left something in the wrong place or simply because she was itching to fight. Or the amount of time I lost in my life waiting for her because she was always late or took too long to get ready, as if she needed all that primping. She was delightfully lazy on Sundays, she was demanding in bed, she was lousy at trying to convince me of anything.
I could miss those days when I felt like going out and she insisted on staying home and watching movies that we'd already seen, she was so bent on doing it, and then she would fall asleep on me or curl up on my arm, and I would lower the volume on the TV and for a while listen to the rhythm of her breathing without wanting to move my arm, and it would invariably fall asleep because I wouldn't wake her up.
How was I supposed to know that's what it's about, about choosing a person who is perfect, tenacious, automatically loyal and emotionally stable who would never think about changing their plans for the future? How could I have suspected that it's about choosing well, only about the choice, and that's where I went wrong? I messed up, I chose a fun, sexy, intelligent woman, I chose with my heart, staring into her dark eyes, without thinking about the future. How stupid I was.
I think Joaquin is wrong. I talk too much, but not about her. I talk about me, and how stupid I was.
Published by Felix at 12:25 a.m. * Post a comment
Monday, May 7
Back to my roots
When you've spent years working in the city, when you studied hundreds of miles away and you earned your degree abroad, visiting the town of your birth becomes quite the event.
I'm not talking deep down, of course. The event is the crowd that gathers around me when they see me arrive. My hometown is no longer that village stuck in the past where a coffee cost less than a package of sunflower seeds in the rest of the world, but even today you'll still see whitewashed facades and old people sitting in the sun outside their front door. It's not that the country folk haven't modernized (we are in the twenty-first century, and they've swapped their mules for tows and turned their potato fields into residential areas), but even still, you turn onto Main Street and someone will stare at your BMW 7 Series like it's a UFO.