I had started back in 2008 with Radna and continued with an echo from DoR. Radna was not the only one and when, at a recent party, I met the brother of another such checkbox, the memories came rushing into my head. I shall call her Anaughtia.

It all happened in my first few years of living in Canada. Maybe I was in the summer holiday just before my first year of university, maybe it was before the second – yeah, most likely the second. In the building I lived in, quite a few Romanian families. Obviously, this was 1-2 years before we bought our house and I was around 20.

Our closest friends in our rental building – mostly because of a previous working relationship – were on a different floor: Lala, Darius and their daughter, Lena. Lala and Darius were not getting along and though they still seemed to be living together, their upcoming divorce was an open secret. Complicating the situation, a third person often visiting was a “millionaire”, Thomas, whom Lala was going to remarry in a couple of years – this too seemed much like an open secret. They were all (except Thomas) of Transylvanian ancestry and as I recall, seemed to be more open with issues I’ve never been too comfortable with. Things that I would’ve taken days to explain (after taking years to get comfortable sharing), were discussed at the dinner table calmly and directly, without perfunctory introductions.

The year before Lala kept bugging me about her niece Ophelia, who had been visiting from Cluj or Arad and was a supposedly hot 17 or 18 y.o. I had never placed a great deal of trust on relatives’ descriptions and I didn’t like such family arrangements either, so I had made a phone call, prodded by the Lala the aunt and was happy when I could not reach her (or I reached her but the conversation wasn’t that great). However, just before Ophelia was leaving, I met them accidentally as they were departing for a party or something, while I was just coming back from one, and I remember Ophelia hugging the rear window of their car with a look of regret in her eyes.

So the next year, when Anaughtia visited, I decided I was going to try harder. I really was. And we managed to meet and talk, but she had to babysit Lena throughout most of the day and when, at one point, I was going to visit, Lena threw a tantrum seeing that Anaughtia was quite focused on my visit. No more visits from that point on, and evenings were pretty much off limits as well. Darius was also often at home during the day, and sometimes it seemed as if Anaughtia was had to babysit him as well. I knew better than to be too persistent, so when the time came for Anaughtia to leave, we had not really managed to go out much.

Meanwhile, Lala had been “overselling” Anaughtia so much that it had become difficult for me not to use a p-word. Lala had even mentioned that they wanted to get her o.b.’s, but she could not use those – “she was sooo sweet and innocent” (I’ve never been into that)! Anaughtia was like a “teddy bear” – you should just hug her and take care of her and keep her like you keep a piece of China from the Ming dynasty (meanwhile, I was a little too hung up on equality).

After all this, I decided I was going to offer her something nice. Her favourite band was Jon Bon Jovi. I wasn’t really interested in her and her aunt’s effort had only managed to shift my attraction from sexual to paternal. When I learned that the band was going to have a concert in Toronto, I bought the tickets in the first day and then hinted I had a big surprise for her.

Arad visit + Depeche

*(*This article is unfinished – it was scheduled to appear in the hope that it will be finished before, but since this message is here and until it is removed, the article is to be considered work in progress*)*.

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