Carla set about making arrangements as soon as she got back to her home country. Two weeks after she got back, she told her then husband that she wanted to separate. I was on the other side of the globe throughout, so it was hard to tell how much of what she told me was truth, how much was elaborated, and how much was complete fantasy that she formulated to keep the energy in our relationship going. Cynical as it may seem, I see now that she needed an both anchor to hold on to, to keep her steady throughout the divorce, and a driving force- a source of motivation, to help her leverage herself out of her unhappy marriage. I was to be both...
We spoke on the phone every day. By the beginning of February 2009, I was just in the middle of completing my 1 month intensive teaching course. 2 weeks before the end of the course, she announced she was coming back into the country. Her husband had basically kicked her out ever since she told him her divorce plans 3 months before, and she had been back living with her Dad ever since. She'd managed to convince her boss to let her have a second 2 week holiday in 3 months; quite possibly, she had greased the wheels with the traumatic story of her impending divorce. She had left in November, and was now returning to me in February the following year. Upon hearing the news, I told her how excited I was to see her again- plain and simple joy at having her back for a bit. However, mentally, I was going through the logistics of covering up my antics for the last 3 months of her absence...
Here's the thing: when you have an addiction to something, it means that you place that thing first, above everything else. Other things may be important to you - family, relationships, work, loyalty etc...- but none of those things comes above satisfying your cravings. That's why addiction to anything is so destructive- it wreaks havoc, destruction and chaos over the rest of your life. Before you read on, remember that to overcome such cravings requires an enormous amount of willpower. In my case, it required the love of Jesus Christ.
But at that time, I didn't know Jesus, and my own willpower to resist temptation was pathetically fragile. As you read in the last chapter- I didn't have the means OR motivation to stand up to my lust. Her will dictated my actions, and she didn't care what trouble I had to go through to avoid getting caught... She CERTAINLY didn't care if I felt guilty about it afterwards.
As soon as Carla had left the country 3 months previously, I had felt no guilt in pursuing other women. From barmaids to locals in the clubs, to tour guides to workmates- the city was full of women, eager and free to spend their free time with me. There had been half a dozen of them who had come and gone in those 3 months...
It really was just as casual as it sounds. The story was usually the same, or thereabouts- firstly, there was the meeting stage. I'll admit, it was usually in the club... obviously, I was normally pretty drunk. The meeting part was always the most exciting, because it had the most room for variation... One time, I met a friend, who literally just passed a girl about my age into my arms. Within about 15 minutes, we went back to my hostel room, had sex for a couple of hours... and then she got up, got dressed, and headed back to the club, supposedly to continue dancing. Another time, I woke up one morning, put my hand in my jacket pocket, and found a slip of paper with a girl's name on it, and her phone number. I had no recollection of ever meeting her, and when I called the number and we met up, I didn't recognise her at all. I can only assume, to this day, that she went out with these amateur calling cards, and slipped them into the pockets of men she saw and liked.
Second was the "hang out" stage. This ranged from casual sex, to just hooking up with the more conservative girls. Either way, it was rarely longer than a couple of weeks...
Finally, there was stage 3: the farewell. She would make excuses, or I would make excuses, as to why we couldn't meet up. We would stop texting each other as often. Someone would say they saw her in a club with some guy... she would see me leaving a club with another girl... and the next time we bumped into each other and made eye-contact, we would exchange a civilised smile, walk past each other, and force ourselves to look forwards... never back...
I realise that this is a cursory overview of the situation, so let me highlight some important points. Firstly, fun as it may sound, there was still plenty of room for heartbreak, and ample opportunity for the depletion of my self-confidence. The women in the town were NOT shared out equally amongst the men. There were those who got very little attention, and others who received more attention than it seemed possible for a person to handle... and they got that attention all the time. Where abouts you ranked in terms of how successful you were was a key factor in defining your overall level of confidence, and by default, happiness. At least, it was for me.
With this in mind, Friday and Saturday nights were often extremely hard work. The goal was simple- to hook up. And you never knew if it would be easy, or difficult on any particular night. But either way, my self-esteem began to rely more and more on how often I achieved it. The longer I went without being with a woman, the longer I spent in the clubs, the more money I spent getting drunk... and the louder the self-depricating voice inside my head became.
"You should have been able to get HER..."
"I can't believe you can't even get HER!"
"Ryan got her. Ryan gets all the women..."
"Why can't you be more like Ryan?"
I felt that the only way to silence him was to prove him wrong... So, the stakes were high.
Finally, I know that this kind of lifestyle is often glamorised on T.V.; I guess it's a largely male fantasy that they can have fling after affair, and appear to be "living life to the fullest". I'm not even going to criticize those people who live like this- this story is not about them (and remember- NOT A PREACHER!). All I can tell you with absolute confidence is what I experienced in myself. And from my perspective, it was a rat-race. It was something I was caught up in, and didn't really know how to escape from. The race restarted every Friday evening, and I felt obliged to run along. I ran along, and I played the game. Sometimes I won, other times I didn't. But either way, it was irrelevant. The game would restart all over again the next Friday. There were no real winners, because all relationships were so short-lived and vaccuous. Everything was done for a moment, or a few hours, of satisfaction... and then you had to start running again. Eventually she would go off you, or you would get bored of her, or someone "better" would grab her or your attention... and the race continued.
The race repeated itself week in week out because its participants were crazy for it. I was crazy for it. It was a game, a novelty excitment, a challenge. I think most people would never admit to enjoying the risks. But there was a huge amount of satisfaction when you succeeded. I think that's what brought most of us back each time- the tempting idea that THIS could be our night again...
The three months between Carla leaving and Carla coming back had been a constant repetition of this cycle. Why am I about to tell you the following information? Because I want you to know how fickle the human heart can be- how it can be manipulated, coersed... and, contrary to popular belief, it is certainly an untrustworthy friend.
There was another girl who was special to me at the moment that Carla told me she was coming back. Jump back 3 weeks previously, to the middle of January that year, and I was in the club. It was rammed, it was 1a.m., and it was pumping. The crowd at the bar was 3-4 people deep, but it was still too early for people to be dancing on the bar. As I squeezed my way through the crowd of sweating, drunked up clubbers, I finally reached the bar, and was met with a smile by Karen.
Karen was from another city, but had come here to make more money. I was 21, and she was 25. Our conversations over the last week had largely been based in the club, and so were stinted, short, and continually interrupted by drink requests from other punters.
But as we spoke, I could tell that she liked me. She smiled at me more often than she normally did, her beautifully made-up eyes looking into mine for a second, a fraction of a second longer than they should have... before she was called away to the other end of the bar. I would watch her as she left- watch her ponytail bounce as she worked on a drink, watch her give a brief smile with her rouge red feminine lips, her beauty highlighted whenever she gave a flash of that smile, which disappeared as she began focusing on a new task. Over the thumping music, being pushed slightly from behind by drinking revellers, as I sipped my beer straight from the bottle, I thought not about Carla, but about Karen. I thought about how I felt about her, how attracted I really was to her, and how unfair it seemed that I couldn't have her.
Another week passed- a week of study, a week of repeated daily routine, a week of waiting for the weekend. I didn't think about Karen, or even much about Carla- I was too busy trying to learn and remember as many teaching techniques as my brain would allow. But when Friday evening did finally sneak up on me, I knew who I wanted to go and see...
I don't remember much of that night. But I remember how excited I was when my friend Lauren, an Irish girl a bit older than me, with curly frizzy black hair, came up to me and casually mentioned that Karen had been talking about me...
"What did she say?", I enquired loudly into her ear, trying to be heard over the pumppumppump of the music...
"She said, she kept saying "He's so handsome! He's so handsome!"", she giggled, and waited for a response...
I knew, in my heart, that this was going to be too much of a temptation to resist. Carla was far, far away. Karen was here, tonight, now. First of all, as mentioned before, she was really quite beautiful. But there was more than that. I also really liked her- she was sweet and kind, and I felt close to her, in spite of the relatively little quality time we'd spent together. At the time, that was all the reasoning I needed to collapse to temptation. As I got older, I did start at least trying to think of more reasons as to why it was OK to cheat. The more reasons I had, the less guilty I felt about doing it. But inevitably, the result was still the same...
And so it happened. Karen and I got together that night, and I spent the night in her bed. I remember Carla actually calling my phone when we were together, and me rejecting the call, and then turning the phone off. I wasn't in the mood for a reality check, for a call from my morals. I wanted to be with Karen- I wanted to focus on her, and for us to make each other happy... And so, we did, for a couple of weeks. I often wonder if it might have been longer than that, if the circumstances had been different. After all, she really was special to me, Karen, and I thought about her often for years after these events.
And so, when Carla announced she was coming back, I realised I had just a few days to figure out a plan. I was crazy for Karen, but Carla was my girlfriend, and I wanted her to stay that way! Somehow, I had to figure out a way to have my cake and eat it, too...
But like I told you before, Lust was only energetic when it came to getting what ShHE wanted. After that, it was my mess to clean up- I could guarantee that the same energy would NOT be put into helping me stay out of trouble...
I realised that I was alone, in a web of my own making... and it was down to MY own whit, know-how and street smarts to make sure all three of us ended up alive on the other side, with our hearts and minds intact. "God help us...!", I remember thinking upon awakening on that realisation...
In the end, I seem to remember I did nothing. Carla arrived, and I simply stopped texting Karen. Remember stage 3? I stage 3'd her. Within the rat race, it was difficult, or at least uncomfortable, to see how unfair it was to treat her like that... but I decided to stick to it, to ignore the pressing negative feelings about basically blanking Karen for a couple of weeks, and pretend like it wasn't happening, and like we hadn't happened.
"She's strong", I'd reason to myself. "We were just messing about... she's probably found someone else already..."...
This was Lust trying to appease me, trying to give me some reason to give her permission for her disgraceful actions. I didn't believe these words, not even back then, not really. They didn't sound clean, they didn't sound like truth, and they certainly weren't comforting. But then, nothing about the race was clean, or truthful, or comforting.
Furthermore, the whole 2 weeks that Carla was back in town, I spent paranoid that we would bump into Karen. I had to be careful to try and divert Carla from the likely areas where Karen would be. This took a lot of work, as Carla almost always wanted to go to the club, or to hang out in the centre. I had to be sly; I would have to get us into dark corners of the city, far from eyes that would betray my actions to Karen. Even then, I was always aware of the constant possibility that I would feel that taptaptap on my shoulder when I was with Carla, turn round and see Karen's hurt and betrayed face staring up at me...It never happened, but the fear of it, along with that of having to admit in public to Carla what I'd been doing, was almost too much to handle. It was safer in the shadows, where nobody could find us...
And as Carla went back to New Zealand on the first day of March that year, and the race started up again the following Friday, I realised that even if I won the rat race... I was still a rat.
---
"Who's this, then?". Tom sneered down at the man, sitting with his knees hunched up to his chest. I felt a desperate urge to leave this whole situation behind. At the time, I had cursed myself for giving Tom the opportunity to approach the man.
Why hadn't I stopped him? Why hadn't I put my hand on his chest when he tried to move me aside, and pushed him in the opposite direction? I knew the answer. I knew the answer years later, in my cell. I know the answer still. Simply put: I wasn't brave enough. Standing in my moonlit cell, chained to the wall, I frowned in order to try and uncover another alternative answer. But there was none other to uncover. That was the bear truth.
The truth was actually very easy to access. In that freezing cell that night, I had no distractions, no illusions, nothing to put me off discovering the truth. And so it rumbled up from my heart like a train, and arrived promptly into the station at the forefront of my mind.
"You were too weak, then", it began unloading it's cargo. "You couldn't have stopped him, not on your own. Besides, Tom was your hero. You believed in everything he said and did. You weren't powerful or brave enough to stop him. You didn't stop him, because you didn't want to stop him, you couldn't have... and you were scared to".
I sighed at the bluntness of it all. The truth was painful, yet soothing, somehow. It's hard to describe something like that- something so honest and true that, although it cuts you to admit it, the same swish of the blade that hurt you also sets you free from something confining, something restrictive and oppressive. I guess the truth really does set you free.
The homeless man looked up at Tom, squinting because of the increasingly heavy raindrops...
The rest happened quickly. Furthermore, I've repeated it in my mind so many times since it happened, that I often wonder how much of it actually happened, and how many of the details my mind added with each repetition, in order to give the story more character... maybe, in order to torture me a little more, to add a little more salt every time to the open wound on my soul... But the salient facts are these:
Tom grabbed the man's scruffy hair in a fist, and before he could even get his hands up to try to prize his fingers free, his face set in shock and clear discomfort, Tom had bent down to a crouching position on the balls of his feet. Still with the man's messy mane in his balled fist, he looked directly into the man's wide open eyes, white with terror, and said "I. ASKED. YOU. A. QUESTION". With every word, he used his grip on the man's hair to move his head either left or right. After the last word, he stopped and waited for an answer. Precious giggled behind me.
"I don't think he even speaks English, Tom!", she laughed, and I looked away, trying to pretend like it wasn't happening...
But it WAS happening. In broad daylight, on a busy street in the middle of the day. There were plenty of people about- both on the other side of the road, and on our side. In fact, a few pedestrians had to STEP ROUND Tom in order to continue on their way, occasionally looking over their shoulder down at the low stances of both men, but ultimately looking away and, like me, pretending it wasn't happening.
Tom didn't move. He continued to stare fiercely, unmercifully at the homeless man, who by now was trying to get a solid grip on Tom's hand in order to force his strong fingers apart... his face set in pain, and slightly flushed red from the humiliation he was suffering...
"Why did nobody intervene?", I asked myself aloud- I shouted it, really- in that cold, lonely and desperately dark cell. My voice echoed, and then silence continued. The moon was now shrouded in cloud, and only broke through less than once an hour, for a few seconds of light... before it was blocked out again. I knew the answers already. Probably, YOU know the answers, too. Unfortunately, they were answers to the wrong question. The RIGHT question, I realised, as I remembered catching that homeless man's terrified wide eyes, pleading with me, screaming to me... was "Why didn't I intervene?"
After less than 10 seconds, Tom lost his patience. Standing up, he dragged the man's hair up with him, forcing him to stand. The homeless man's hands were clinging to Tom's firm grip above his head as he got to his feet, trying to at least relieve the pain his tensed hair roots were causing him. He was saying something, but I couldn't make it out- suddenly, he was directly facing the floor as Tom pushed his head down in front of him. I assumed at the time that it was something like "Let go of me!", which is what I would have said in his situation. Whatever it was, he was saying it too quietly to hear, and Tom was ignoring him. People continued to step hurriedly round the two figures.
It was fully raining by now, I remember realising as I watched from a few feet away as a bully humiliated a helpless and innocent man in that public street, where witnesses either didn't care or kept their heads down.
Precious had her phone out, and I noticed to my horror that she was filming. I remembered the surge of bravery that accompanied my outrage at this. I stepped towards her quickly:
"No, DON'T...!" I pleaded, not all too convincingly, and made a vague effort to block the camera with my hand, hoping that the gesture alone would make her reconsider he actions, and desist...
But she moved away from me, and turned the camera on me.
"Get lost! It's MY camera!", she said, laughing and still filming me. I could picture my humiliated face on the camera screen, dripping wet in the rain, and I thought of all the people who would laugh at me when they watched the video, laugh at my vain attempt to control the situation...
Precious pointed the camera back at Tom, who had moved the homeless man, like a puppet, a few feet to his left, forcing him to step out of his red sleeping bag. As Tom bent down to pick it up with his right hand, his left hand, still holding the man's hair, accompanied him, forcing the homeless man to join him in the humiliating journey to retrieve his sleeping bag. As Tom stood back up straight, still holding on to the man's hair, but now with the sleeping bag in his other hand, he laughed into Precious's camera. He was delighted at how much power he had over this man, who had still barely uttered a word in protest.
"Check this out, lads!", Tom called over my head. My stomach dropped, and I didn't have time to turn around before I was being bumped on both sides by giants, pushing past me. As if they hadn't seen me, so focused they were on getting in on the action of torturing the homeless man.
"I've got to get out of here..."... I remember thinking. But I didn't move. Within seconds, I was on the outside of a human semi-circle that had enclosed Tom and the homeless man against the brick-wall of the pub. Between the giant bodies of Tom's massive friends, I occasionally caught a glimpse of the homeless man, struggling on his feet, with his face pushed downwards to the ground...
Tom's friends were all giants- a forest of dark jeans, baggy sweat-pants, bomber jackets, with the occasional hood to cover their faces. They formed a tight circle around Tom and the homeless man, intentionally blocking the view of any passers by, especially law-enforcers. They carefully and freqeuntly checked over their shoulders to make sure that they weren't being approached from behind by police-officers. Every time they looked back and saw it was clear, they turned back to the centre of the circle, grinning, and jeering eachother on. Trainers. gold chains and watches. Angry, bitter and derogatory language directed at the homeless man:
"Come over here, you tw*t"...
The homeless man turned around...
A swift action from one of Tom's friends, which resulted in a muffled and desperate yelp. The men created a wall around the scene, and this gave passers-by the relief that they at least didn't have to witness with their own eyes the torture that was going on behind that blockade... although few of them could deny that they knew what was happening.
I stood on the outside, trying to look in, constantly kidding myself that, given the chance, I would be brave enough to barge my way through and stop what was happening. But it had been over a minute since Tom had first grabbed the man's hair, and I'd done nothing.
"Get him, Jack! Go on- smack him..."
A body lurched into the circle, and a great cheer came from it before the culprit rejoined the circle, looking high on adrenaline and pride, his young face flushed red and his eyes wide. He couldn't stop grinning, as those around him congratulated him on the pain he'd inflicted. I couldn't see the homeless man.
As I tried to squeeze my way between the bodies blocking my view of what I knew was happening, I could feel my opportunity slipping away from me...
Another few punches and kicks from all sides, followed by deep, hollow laughter from several of the men. I heard the homeless man spit, and saw a tiny spatter of blood hit the section of the pavement that I could see, between the tree-trunks of legs and giant bricks of feet that made up that part of the circle. A couple of the men shouted insults at the homeless man,
"Watch it, you f***ing PR*CK!"
as they were forced to move their white trainers from their stationary position, in order to avoid them being splattered with the man's blood...
I remember asking myself; "How is this being allowed to happen? In the middle of the day? In a civilised country? On a busy street, with hundreds of people around?" I was genuinely astonished.
But from my cell, with the benefit of experience to guide me, the answer was clear. The world did not love this man. The world only had a certain amount of love it could spare... and that amount did not extend to this homeless man. The reason for that was because the world saw things like Tom saw them- there were people who benefited him, and those who didn't. If it had been someone rich, a celebrity, or someone who was considered "important" to society who Tom and his mates were torturing, then would the passers by of the world have reacted differently?
But intervening and saving this man was not considered an important enough task for this world to partake in. And suddenly, I realised that, to my immediate shame and horror, my failure to act to defend him had exposed my own priorities. And as I watched from behind, as the arms of those giant men raised and struck and raised again, and their legs swung back to be violently thrust forwards until they landed somewhere on the homeless man, repeated again and again... those cheers... those yelps of pain... I realised that this innocent man wasn't important enough to me, either...
