Settling into a new apartment is a series of little discoveries: The walls are thin enough to hear the downstairs neighbor's baby crying in the middle of the night. The hall light is for some reason controlled by a switch in your flatmate's bedroom. The ceiling in your bedroom is just low enough that a less-than-careful stretch will result in scraped knuckles. I have started to build routines around these things. They evolve quickly from novelty to annoyance to fact of life to unconscious habit.

On Tuesday evening I am in a terrible mood. I have neither focus nor energy at the gym and I am incapable of locating the right track on my iPod to translate my anxiety into extra sets of bench presses. Carrying the weight of the last twelve waking hours has exhausted me. Nothing specific made today any more demoralizing than yesterday, but it somehow is. I suspect the effect is cumulative and that tomorrow will likely be worse. I depart for home, workout only half finished.

There are at least five people I should call back in New York. I need to look for a new job. I need to transfer money between continents to pay my already overdue bills in the States. I can not to do any of these things. I want nothing more than to lie in a xanax-and-red-wine-induced torpor in a hot bath. It is during this attempt to create a high point in my day that I become aware of yet another feature of my new home: the drain plug for the bathtub does not completely seal. The rate of drainage is almost imperceptible. Seven minutes after settling in up to my chin, the water barely covers half of the phoenix tattooed on my hip. Two minutes beyond that I'm lying naked in an empty tub.

The small room is hazy with steam. What little remains of the water I was soaking in is floating in the air above me. As the room cools it clings to my skin before rolling off and down the drain. I have no idea how long I lie there. I'm shivering by the time I stand up.

I’ve known Jake and his now-husband Carl for about 2 years. Our level of intimacy ranks slightly above acquaintance. Jake works in the London office of my former law firm, and Carl works with Jane, a friend of mine from law school. They’re perfectly friendly Americans, possessed of the nerdy sensibility and just-out-of-step social graces that make for successful career attorneys.

Jane’s housewarming last night is the first time I’ve seen them in about 8 months. We pass exaggerated statements of happiness to see each other between us like a joint, and Jake returns to recounting the previous night’s events to Jane and the Russian woman standing with her.

“So that was our big adventure in Soho. God, that’s the first time we’ve been out there in a while. We’ve just outgrown it, you know? Last night was definitely proof. And forget about it… we never go to” his right hand moves pointedly in my direction  “Vauxhall.”

“Why did you gesture at me when you said ‘Vauxhall’?”

“Well… I mean…”

“Yes?” He stammers. I tell an outright lie, because it helps my argument.  “Truth be told, I haven’t been out in Vauxhall in over a month.” 

“Well… the muscles, the beard. You’ve very Vauxhall.”

I make no attempt to veil my annoyance with the suggestion.

“Jake, I’ve been in London for 10 weeks. I have had a beard for 5 years. The muscles for longer.  Vauxhall has nothing to do with it.”

This kind of aesthetic pigeonholing pisses me off for a number of reasons, not least of all because he’s partially right; one thing I love about London is the seemingly limitless number of men that resemble myself, often found in the bars and clubs in Vauxhall. It’s the type of man I’m attracted to. Gay men are narcissists; we usually want to fuck ourselves.  I am no exception.

“Well I know you like the clubs down there. In fact someone told me you moved to Vauxhall. So that’s why I-“

“Someone was wrong. I moved South, but not to Vauxhall.”

I’m not ready to let Jake off the hook. Nor am I prepared to accept the label and completely disappear into the persona my more-successful contemporaries have been attributing to me since law school.  My idea of a memorable night out may be vastly different and involve fewer shirts and a great deal more narcotics, but I fail to see how that gives them license to ignore the fact that I went to the same law school or passed the same bar exam or, in this case, worked for the same law firm. I grew tired years ago of attempting to separate the chaff of envy from the kernel of truth in their comments and now prefer to back them into a defensive corner. For sport.

“Well I didn’t mean…”

Jake is unable to spar with me and I’m losing interest. Jane and the Russian woman are visibly uncomfortable. Carl interrupts and attempts to change the subject. I excuse myself to get a glass of wine.

                                                       ______________________________________________________

This afternoon I’m stationed in my ground level crow’s nest on Old Compton Street.  Bradley is meeting me in an hour, and I’m passing the time writing.  Despite all advice to the contrary, I find that I write better in public. The more distractions, the more focused I become. To amplify the sensory overload, I’ve plugged my headphones into my computer.  Katie White of the Ting Tings is shouting in my ears, resenting the world for not knowing her name. She’s lamenting Them calling her “Jane” when I become aware that someone is standing over me. I look up and meet the expectant faces of a gay couple in their early forties. The less attractive of the two is saying something.

I remove my headphones. “Excuse me?”

“You’re so cool. Look at you. Sitting at Café Nero, working on your Mac. You’re very cool.”

I have absolutely no idea if this man and his boyfriend are mocking me.  For a split second I wonder if I’m being paid a strangely sincere compliment.

“Thank…you?”

Then he mutters “So cool.” again and their disdain for my existence is brought into sharp focus. They turn and walk away. I imagine self-satisfied smirks on their faces. I would have never noticed them had they not approached me. But they did. Completely unprovoked. To what end? I can’t imagine what slight I perpetrated to warrant this random act of nastiness. But there it was. Ringing in my ears and walking toward Wardour Street.

For the second time in 24 hours I find myself reduced to a single word based on choices I’ve made that have nothing to do with the resulting label. I want to follow the pair as they mince away and tell them that I have a Mac because I think they’re great computers. That I’m working in front of Café Nero because I like to be around people. I want to bring up this blog and click on my post from last week and give them a dramatic reading. I want to ask: Is it my clothes? I think jeans and a hoodie are comfortable. The tight t-shirt? I don’t go to the gym for my health. I worked hard for this body and I’m allowed to show it off a little. The sunglasses and scarf are due to the fact that it’s both sunny and cold as London is wont to be in September. If the whole is greater than the sum of those parts, then, well, excuse my personal alchemy.

I’ve lost track of whether I’m aspiring to a particular stereotype or the rest of society is rising to meet me. Maybe I’ve just been misplaced these last 30 years, and Vauxhall and Café Nero have just been waiting for me to come home for the first time. I'm too old to put too much effort into affecting a persona. Thankfully the rest of the world seems perfectly willing to choose one for me.

I save what I was working on and start a new project. Let the nerdy lawyers and bitter, ageing queens of the world label me as they will.  Neither was right, but neither was completely wrong. I’m a lot of things. Stupid is not one of them; Self Aware is. I’ll own both of those titles, at least in part. I can wear either pretty well. I can’t say the same for the people making the accusations.

So, Jake and Stranger and Boyfriend on Old Compton Street: You’re right. I am a hot piece of Vauxhall ass. And I’m effortlessly fucking cool.

Jealous?

Ben has declined your meeting invitation.

I breathe deeply, hoping that he's just busy tomorrow and not, as I suspect, enacting some ridiculous power grab as early as 9:22 on a Monday morning.

Then the follow-up email arrives.

Dxx, you must circulate your project brief 24 hours prior to the meeting.

I rise from my desk and prepare myself for an exchange that will undoubtedly leave me seething. I cross the floor and intercept Ben as he waddles back to his desk from the kitchen.

"Ben, are you not available at that time, or is it just the brief issue?"

He smirks. When he speaks I am confronted with the evidence of thirty-seven years of British dental work: hardened deposits of food and bacteria solidified into coffee-colored peaks shoring up the spaces between his yellowed bottom teeth.

"It's company policy. Briefs need a 24-hour lead before a meeting. Your meeting is scheduled for 1:30 tomorrow. You said you'd distribute the brief by the end of today. That's not 24 hours." His smirk becomes a grin. My eyes dart sideways to the scissors lying on Maria's unattended desk. In one swift motion I could scoop them up and bury them to the hilt in his right ear. I picture his mouth continuing to move as brain matter begins to leak from the flume I've created in his skull. I find myself smiling back at him.

"The portion that affects you is a paragraph. Do you really need 24 hours to read a paragraph?"

"It's company policy."

"I'll read it to you if you have trouble with the larger words."

"Don't get smart with me, young man."

I consider explaining that I would be loathe to do so, lest I confuse him. I determine that the time spent arguing with him is time wasted and will only leave me angrier.

"I'll send it out immediately. It won't be finished, but your section will be. I hope that's enough for you."

I turn and walk back to my desk, calling him a twat at a level that is nowhere near under my breath and attach the unfinished document to an email. In the body of the email I thank Ben for pointing out my grievous error in failing to account for the necessary lead time for my brief and explain that I am sending out an unfinished document so that we might be able to hold the meeting, at which time I will fill in any missing details. I hit send and promise myself that this will be the last time I respond to Ben's passive aggression in kind. Next time I intend to tread the high road of open aggression.

I pick up my phone and dial the number at the bottom of the personal email open on my screen. One of the six recruiters with whom I am currently working picks up on the other end. My voice is lost among those of my colleagues. They pay no mind to what I'm saying. They assume I'm making a research call. They assume that I, like them, am pressing a claims director at some insurance company for his opinions on what topics should be included in the agenda for a conference on fraud detection.

"Hi Camille. It's Dxx. Please tell me you're closer to getting me the hell out of here."

It's just after 7 PM on Wednesday. I'm sitting outside Cafe Nero on Old Compton Street. I left work early today and worked out at the gym near my office. After my workout I caught the number 25 bus at St. Paul's to Tottenham Court Road. From there I walked to the corner of Frith and Old Compton and took up residence in one of the patio chairs chained together along the Southeastern face of the cafe. I have done this nearly every Wednesday since I moved to London. The weather is starting to turn now, and I'm no longer able to sit outside without a jacket. Soon I won't be able to sit outside at all. 

I tell myself that I have set this time aside to collect myself, to pause mid-week and breathe. I tell myself it's "Me Time", that I go to to relax and to get away from an increasingly uncomfortable living situation. I go to be among people, to read, to practice my Italian, to sit and watch people go by, or at the very least to be among others instead of sitting in the pale yellow room above Paddington listening to Pxx go from his room to the kitchen to smoke cigarettes out the window and back again before retiring by 9:30, leaving me to rattle silently around the apartment so as not to disturb his sleep. I have been presented a list of noises which will wake him and those that won't; the man is infuriatingly fussy even when unconscious.

I am telling myself half-truths. I could have all of this at any cafe in all of London. I could have this on a bench in the public garden in the council estate across the road. But I sit at the intersection of Old Compton Street and Frith Street. The nexus of gay London. 

I go to Cafe Nero and wait to be rescued.

I take inventory of the other men sitting by themselves. I am usually the youngest by at least five years. I consider briefly that we at least have each other as partners in solitude and dismiss this thought immediately. We are not partners. We are stages in the same evolutionary chain. I am a shadow of who they were years ago, younger men in their prime waiting for a stranger to sit down and change their life. They are my future, hair grayed and muscles deflated by the passage of time, bodies wasted from starvation for affection. Marooned. Waiting. 

Taking the chair on the corner gives me a view of the comings and goings on both streets and saves me having to sit between two strangers. There are three empty chairs to my right. In the fourth is seated a man in his early 40's. He is half reading tonight's Metro, half watching the passing rush of the evening with searching glances directed at no one in particular. I retrieve my book from my bag and begin reading, never making it more than a few paragraphs before allowing my eyes to drift up the page, over the top of the book and across the scene around me, watching the horizon for a rescue boat. 

Two men approach from across the street. I recognize one of them. He's Spanish, with black eyes and a beautiful suit of muscles draped on a frame which barely clears my nose and almost comically large calves for a man of his small stature. Calves is much darker than when I last saw him, but his tan has that orange tint that betrays any story he might proffer about a trip to Spain or Greece. I suspect the farthest Calves has traveled recently is to the sunbed on Greek Street. 

I see Calves here quite a bit. But Calves is always with people. Calves has a boyfriend, I think. These tables to him are a place to set his cup, not a transmitting station for a silent, desperate SOS. Calves is not waiting to be rescued; Calves is just here to have coffee. 

His companion and I lock eyes as they approach. Calves is cuter, but Friend isn't bad looking either. He's short and latin; most days I need little else to develop at least a passing interest. Friend asks if the three seats between me and my future are free. I indicate that they are. I pretend to read as I eavesdrop on their conversation, which is in Spanish, understanding about one in every ten or so words. Friend turns and asks me if he can set his cup on the table in front of me. I nod and gesture for him to do so. A few minutes later I catch him looking at me. I smile and continue reading. He returns to their conversation until a third friend, observably British, sits on the other side of Calves and engages him in English. Friend reaches for the coffee he set down in front of me. I steal a sideways glance, which he sees because he is looking directly at me. 

"Are you waiting for a friend?" 

[I'm waiting for anyone.] 
"Pardon?" 

"Are you waiting for a friend?" 

[I was waiting for you to talk to me.] 
"No. I'm just reading." I focus on my book. I don't even look at him. 

"Oh." He gives up and pulls his phone out of his pocket so he has something to do other than wait for me to respond like a normal human being. 

I can't talk to boys anymore. I don't know that I ever could. I want to talk to Friend more than anything. This moment is why I come here week on week. He's throwing me a rope and I strain to take it. I want to turn and introduce myself and take him to dinner or buy him a coffee or at the very least learn his name so that I can say hello if I ever see him again. I want him to save me from having the freedom to set aside Wednesday nights for myself. I want something to happen other than that which has so many times in the past, that I will be incapable of responding and this man who had the courage to speak to me despite my air of detachment will walk away and out of my life, likely thinking me rude. I'm not rude. I'm terrified of the very contact I so desperately seek. I have a perverse attachment to my current state. I've developed reflexive Stockholm Syndrome. 

I stare at the page and pick a sentence to read at random. To my right on Old Compton Street a real live man is trying to talk to me. In the Brooklyn that exists only in the pages I'm holding, Julian Donahue is realizing that his dead son's half birthday would be next week. I can't talk to Friend. I attempt to form a word, to make some inane statement about the weather or the book I'm reading or the crazy man that just walked past shouting about Michael Jackson, but every syllable I attempt to form is yoked with the fears and expectations I've already built up in my head about anything and everything that could come of simply conversing with an attractive man who has exhibited an interest in me. So I say nothing. 

I will him to try to speak to me again. I will myself the courage to answer if he does. Friend turns back to Calves. I am as relieved as I am disappointed. 

Eventually Calves and the third stand up and announce their departure. Friend explains that he received a text indicating that Jorge will arrive in ten minutes, and he intends to stay here and wait. I tense up knowing that Friend and I will now have ten minutes alone. I want him to try again. I want to meet a potential friend or lover. I want one less stranger in my world. 

As Friend rises to say goodbye another tanned Spaniard approaches from my left and puts his hand on Friend's shoulder. Jorge has arrived early. I watch the four of them head around the corner and toward Soho Square. Friend does not turn back for one last look. 

I finish the chapter I'm reading and stand up. I walk past my future, who has abandoned the pretense of his newspaper and is watching me pass, waiting for me to return his gaze. I consciously look straight ahead. Wednesday means coffee and reading at Cafe Nero followed by dinner at Tuk Tuk. I hope there's a seat in the window so I can watch the people go by. I hope the man I've seen there four out of the last six weeks will be there again tonight. He's tall and handsome and possibly Greek or Middle Eastern. He's there alone on Wednesday, too. You might say we're there together. We've exchanged glances multiple times, directly and in the mirrors that line the walls. Last week the waiter seated us next to each other. Neither one of us said a word.

The new coffee machine in the office kitchen looks like a prop from a mid-80's sci-fi film.

The carafe isn't even the one made for the machine. On the day "Low Rent" was redefined, I applied for a job there.

It's 3:17 PM. I can't breathe.

I know it’s 3:17 PM because I can see the little clock in the bottom left hand corner of my computer screen from the place where I’ve laid my head on my desk. The little clock says it’s 3:24. Which means its actually 3:17. The little clock has been wrong since the day I started work, and I’ve been too lazy to take the twelve seconds it would require to fix it, to make five clicks of the mouse to bring my computer back from the future and in line with the rest of the world. I’m too lazy to make the adjustment; I do the math in my head. The little clock remains 7 minutes fast. I can’t breathe.

Somewhere behind me I hear Catherine, my boss, talking to Greg. Catherine is repeatedly nodding her head in agreement with whatever it is Greg is yammering on about. I know this because I can hear her droning “yeah, yeah…” over and over in that way she does when someone talking to her has a point and she has nothing to say in response. Catherine often cannot muster enough substance to voice an educated concurrence, so she just assents in a manner that robs her of the credibility that should accompany her considerable intellect. This place does that; it relieves you of the trappings of your intelligence. It turns you into a nodding moron. It leads you to say things like “The market is always right!” or “That’s a possible conference topic!” It leads you to believe that you ought to replace your opinion with whatever the stranger whose day you’ve intruded upon tells you. It reduces your life to excitement over the fact that 3 more people have registered to sit in a hotel conference room in Cologne, Germany for 2 days in January, pretending to be interested in Run-Off Insurance or Sports Law in the Middle East or whatever when they’re likely there just for the chance to escape their own hellish offices and families for 48 hours, even if it’s to a Renaissance Inn in fucking Cologne in fucking January, because that means you earned another 72£ commission.

It hasn’t done any of this to me yet. Which is why I can’t breathe. Resistance means clinging to your mental facilities. My body is rejecting the systematic decommissioning of my brain.

Their conversation makes me want to walk over to Greg’s desk and grab him by the short-sleeved button-down shirt that I haven’t actually seen today but that he is inevitably wearing and look into his eyes and try to find what’s left of the thinking person I believe he once was. It makes me want to point out to him, to everyone in this sad bullpen, seven stories above Old Street station, with its water-spotted ceiling tiles and its mismatched cubicle walls with frayed upholstery and its barely functional air conditioning that we don’t actually make anything, that we don’t produce a damned thing. It makes me want to stand on Greg’s desk and scream until I’m hoarse that we all work for a company whose business model consists of interrupting the productivity of people smarter than ourselves (well, than the rest of these people; I was, until a year ago, one of the interrupted) with the goal of getting them to explain their jobs to us so we can have a more informed conversation with the next person whose day we bring to a grinding halt.

It makes me want to rip my phone from my desk and charge across the room and use it to administer and old school beat down to Ben, that fat son of a bitch who heads the sponsorship department, to clock him in the face with the plastic base once for every time he’s condescended to me or consciously undermined that which I’ve done which passes for “accomplishment” in this place. And when the phone has disintegrated in my hands from the sheer force of the blows I’ve rained down on his smug, doughy head, I want to kick him until he’s stopped moving or whichever of my coworkers is brave enough to intervene manages to drag me, screaming and flailing, away from his broken body.

I want to do all of these things, to scream and to rant and to stand on desks and to commit a freeing and heinously violent act. But they would require breathing. And I can’t breathe.

I haven’t taken a breath in some time now. I don’t know how long because I’ve closed my eyes and can no longer see the little clock. Each repeated “yeah” from Catherine causes the unseen force gripping my windpipe to clench tighter. Greg’s words have a sharper quality now, though they are making less sense. The syllables are clear, but their context has evaporated. He is speaking recognizable nonsense. I realize I’m passing out.

I open my eyes and look back at the little clock on the desk and quietly gasp for air. Maria, at the desk diagonal to mine, slips into her phone voice and overpronounces her vowels while speaking to some businessman in Taiwan. It sounds ridiculous. Even more so when one is familiar with her normal speech pattern, Los Angeles via New Jersey, which I am. Catherine changes it up by adding a quick “Uh huh” in between couplets of “yeah”. Greg continues to impress only himself with his knowledge of the important players in professional indemnity insurance. Ben sits across the office, inviting physical attack. It being Friday, he’s probably mulling over going to Tesco to purchase a few 3£ boxes of ice cream. He’ll set the boxes on his desk and announce their presence, verbally and via email blast, proclaiming them a gift from the sponsorship department. Ben believes these small gestures somehow mitigate that fact that he’s a complete cunt. Ben is mistaken. I might thank Ben for fostering my deep-seated hatred of him, as it is the only unifying thing on which I can hang my relationship with my colleagues. But thanking a cunt for being a cunt seems like the kind of thing that will only encourage such behavior; beating him to death with an Avaya 4600 desktop conference-ready handset (surprisingly solid considering the grade of plastic used), however, will not only clearly express my disdain for his actions, but end them permanently. Obviously the latter is the more reasonable course of action.

I close my eyes again. My life is unrecognizable. I wanted this. Well not precisely this, but I wanted to obliterate everything and start over. And I did. For a while it was great. It was exhilarating. But things have changed. Things have disintegrated. The initial excitement of moving to London has given way to any number of small, but compounding misfortunes: A wasp stinging my eye while I was sleeping on a Saturday morning. My iPhone and computer frying themselves within 24 hours of each other. 3 days’ hospitalization with pneumonia. The friend with whom I have been living asking me to move out, essentially rewriting the history of our arrangement at will and without remorse, leaving me without recourse to object because he has been letting me live here for free. My semi-fruitless hunt for an apartment, made infinitely more difficult by my lack of credit in the UK and my already stretched-to-the-limit financial resources. My potential landlord repeatedly groping me while showing me a property, which I allowed simply out of desperate hope that he’d rent to me without requiring credit history. The same 40-year-old, married potential landlord trying to force his tongue in my mouth. The very same 40-year-old, married potential landlord who is also a preacher agreeing to rent me a place, setting terms and a move-in date and then, ten days later, after I’d stopped looking, notifying me that he’d decided to rent to someone else, leaving me with 6 days to find a home. This man subsequently calling me in repeated attempts to insinuate himself as some kind of friend, insisting that this is god’s way of ensuring that we become closer - his having to show me more of his properties, and I assume, grope me within the walls of each. My apartment in New York, where most of my belongings still reside, being burglarized. My feeling trapped in a job that I can barely contemplate continuing to do until the end of a given day, much less permanently. My desperation to get a job that would pay enough to afford my student loans and rent and leave me with more than 40£ for the rest of the month.

These were the things that were running through my head when I sat down at the job interview at Axxxxxxx and Gxxxxxxx earlier this afternoon. An interview for an actual attorney role. An interview that went South when my response to the interviewer’s initial question, “Tell me what you understand this role to entail”, ended after just nine words because my brain simply stalled. I couldn’t form a single thought beyond “I know that you cover anti-money laundering and…” I just stared. At her. At the patch of wall just behind her head to the right. At her left ear. At nothing. A drop of sweat rolled off my brow and onto the legal pad in front of me. Another broke free from my shirt collar and rolled down the curve of my spine, sending a shiver backwards in its wake. I had no idea where that sentence was going. So I ended it. I did not start another.

There was no coming back. No recovery. After a silence that lasted roughly forever, I calmly explained that I was unfortunately not able to continue. I rose from the table before objection could be made and exited, stripping off my jacket and tie as I walked through the lobby doors and into the street.

When I got back to the office Catherine had left today’s call sheet on my desk. The third name down the list is one I recognize. He is the head of Compliance at Visa, a man with whom I had a two-hour interview just after moving, only to lose the job to an internal candidate. The thought of calling this man, who had treated me as an equal and tested the bounds of my mental agility, to ask mindless questions about his feelings on our possibly producing a conference about data privacy is too much.

And here I am. Head down on the desk, wondering how I can get out of this, listening to Catherine and Greg, hating Ben, trying to maintain consciousness.

The little clock says 3:26.

It’s 3:19 PM.

This, then, is where we begin.

Well, it's where you begin. Or where I begin for you; at least for those of you who haven't been reading what I've been writing elsewhere.

Let me start over (despite the fact that doing so only creates another layer of beginnings, further frustrating the purpose of this brief introduction):

This is where the official public offering of my writing begins outside the confines of those who know me personally. Though this isn't really accurate either, because I had a previous blog, back in 2005, when blogs were really just becoming popular. I kept that blog for just over year and euthanised it when I had nothing more to say and not enough time in which to say it.

This is my first post on this blog. There.

It's been three months and six days since I landed in London.

In the course of that time I've turned 31, travelled to Spain, started a job which is causing me panic attacks, learned a lot about how different far-away friends are once you live in the same city and how the same is true of close friends once you move 3,000-odd miles away, been rejected by 2 law firms at the interview stage, been rejected by countless others solely upon the strength (read: weakness) of my CV, drank my way to unconsciousness on many occasions, taken no fewer than seven different illegal drugs, many repeatedly and on a regular basis, been unceremoniously kicked out of the friend's apartment where I was living, been groped by a potential landlord, went home with a man I met in a bar and had loud, rough, unapologetically sleazy sex, moved in with a relative stranger, emptied my bank accounts, borrowed money from my parents and generally attempted to balance social irresponsibility with re-establishing myself as a successful adult in a new city.

It is not going well.

As my valid career, lawyer, slips further from my grasp with every passing day on which I do not practice, I have begun to consider other options. The most inspiring stories I've read about people following a passion to success usually involve choosing to walk away from a lucrative profession, such as the law. I was afforded no such choice. I took my current role out of desperation, having arrived in London after 14 months of unemployed bliss, my savings long-since evaporated and my checking account quickly approaching a figure which would necessitate no comma. Given the choice, I would have gone back to a big soulless law firm and an undeserved six-figure salary. Then, years down the line, student loans paid off and illusions shattered, I would lie in my king-sized bed in my million pound flat in Kensington and stare at the ceiling and decide that it just wasn't worth the frustration any more, and that I was going to take my savings and leave the law and write.

Instead, this happened: In one of an ongoing series of Facebook Notes I had written titled "The Expatriate Dispatches" I went on at great length about my current employment and living situations and laid bare my personal hell (The text of that note will appear as the next post in this blog). A friend responded "I saw this spy movie once, it may have even been James Bond and in it the super villain is playing chess with his son. His son is at risk of being checked and the father asks him what he should do because he feels surrounded and unable to escape. The son replies with super villain coolness, "find a way further in." If only you could write your way out of this."

This is my attempt to write my way out of this. Maybe it's just a daily mental escape. Maybe it's to keep my writing muscle primed as I attempt to put together something larger for publication.

Not everything you read here will be true. Most of it will be at least based in truth, but names will have been changed. Events may be embellished or wholly made up. People who never existed will likely meander in and out of frame.

Of course this may all change or I may give up or 1,000 other things may happen. I really don't know.

I'm not really good at this introductory stuff. Too much exposition spoils the fun.

So now then...