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FOUNDATIONS

2 of 4

Living on my own and supporting myself economically felt good for about two minutes. The truth is, it got really lonely really fast. And, as it's widely known, there's nothing like loneliness to convince you that you’re in love with someone you barely know.

 

​There was a local girl I had met at a costume party a couple of years before. I had made her laugh by making a remark about how I knew she was a local because nobody packs a costume to a resort city, so she gave me her email. Such was the world this story took place in. So, with very little hope but very little to lose, I wrote her an email saying something along the lines of “I gave luck a chance for a reencounter, but it seems like we’re gonna have to help it.” It wasn’t a work of genius, but men have put the bar so low that if you have a functioning brain, you can basically walk over it.

She stayed over on the first night. By the second date, she brought her toothbrush. By the third one, she brought her suitcase. I guess that in a way, all relationships are born out of need, but in some cases, it’s so evident that it’s almost embarrassing: I was lonely and she was looking for an excuse to leave her house, even though there was nothing terribly wrong with it. It doesn’t take much to make a teenage girl fantasize about escaping the grip of her mother; a good movie or even a good song will do it. In my defense, as far as ‘older boyfriends who take away your teenage daughters from your houses’ go, I was about the best you could ask for. I am a really nice guy.

Our experiment worked perfectly despite slim odds. A combination of shared taste in TV shows and sex can get you cruising through the first year of any relationship. If there was any negative aspect to it, I don’t remember it. We created our little private world with silly rituals and routines, and didn’t interact with the real world unless strictly necessary. Our bubble wasn’t meant to interact with the real world. In retrospect, maybe that’s what ended up killing it. 

It didn’t take long for all the workers to form a special bond, regardless of the different ranks and roles. There’s something about people working together towards a common goal that is bigger than themselves. The fact that many of us were from all over the country helped. Tuesday soccer also helped (although this was an unmissable opportunity for the workers to kick the shit out of us supervisors with impunity). For me, this time of my life was a window into an alien world. A simpler world. Better in some ways, worse in others. And before committing the crime of romanticizing the minimum wage, I must emphasize and remind myself that I was only looking through a window.

Imbued in this new sense of solidarity with my fellow laymen is that I agreed to one of the most stupid things I have ever agreed to.

 

There was this boy, this joker boy. Joker because no one understood clearly what his role was, he was always running around doing anything and everything you’d ask of him. Joker too, because he always had a joke under his sleeve. Not a good joke, not a new joke, but a joke nonetheless. He stood out to me because he had perfect teeth. No one there had perfect teeth except for him. I didn’t want to ask too much about his personal life, so I didn’t ask him about his teeth. But I wondered. Maybe there was nothing to it. He just had them and that was it.

​We had developed a special bond right from the start mostly due to the fact that we were some of the youngest people there. He, however, was well seasoned by then, as opposed to me, who was about the least knowledgeable person in the building. His help was crucial, especially during the first weeks, which undeniably played a part in my accepting of his proposal. 

It turns out that these people often faced money problems. Problems such as not being able to make rent for a couple of months in a row. Problems such as the risk of ending up on the street. So, when Joker-boy asked me if he could stay at my place for a couple of days while he got some shit sorted out, how could I refuse?

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