Chapter 10 OFFICE ROMANCE I don’t know why I have left this chapter for last it certainly was not written last. However it does bring it full circle, where did this all start and where does it end. As an “A” species male, our primary purpose on earth is to procreate. I can say with some certainty that I only have one child. That could easily have been different, but that is the subject of a different story. I suppose no story would be complete without some commentary on The Office. I was a career banker, held a senior position at a major Financial Institution and was a 20-year career veteran. I had travelled extensively overseas and lived and worked in the USA, before returning to an executive position in South Africa. I hold three postgraduate diplomas and a degree in Finance and Law. I was never a top achiever at school, was a complete rebel, but post matric and building a very successful career, and a pretty tidy bank balance where a different matter. During a large portion of my career I had the pleasure of providing professional advice, entertaining, socializing, within and outside the work place to some of the most interesting people I know and many who have become friends for life. Living a life of climbing the corporate ladder, becoming a man, I also met and was married for all of my early corporate life. We winded and dined, studied and played hard, in reaching many of our goals. As a couple we were very much in love and were inseparable for nearly twenty years. We experienced, so many fantastic times in a troubled but very successful marriage and family and we are successful business people. Double income, the big house, and cars, Family, entertaining and pretty wild. We were “ the last couple” anyone would have said would divorce. Shocked, well everyone including myself was in shock when the news broke. What the hell we had fun, and for twenty years we were together. Now we are divorced, and we still care for each other. She is happy in a new life, which has been filled with its own trials and loss. I have made a new life for myself too, but back to office romance Moving in a young corporate environment internationally and locally gave me the pleasure of meeting many beautiful and different women from all walks of life. There was always the potential for office romance and I will not bore anyone with a story of sex behind the desk, but rather let me tell you of a long distance office romance. As a career international banker I travelled extensively, to Europe, North America and the United Kingdom. I built up countless air miles. During one such trip I met a beautiful European woman, also a career banker, extremely intelligent, beautiful blue eyes and just the most gorgeous face. We became long-term friends, and remain so today. She was hugely entertaining a woman of the nineties and our friendship grew from there. Later after my divorce, we renewed our friendship all over the world, meeting at some fantastic venues, from New York to London to Munich. The relationship only cooled, years later when we had both left our respective employers to pursue life, outside the main stream. What wonderful memories I have of her, the softness of her skin, her taste, all are the subject of some vivid fantasies and long emails. She without doubt was my intellectual superior, but had grown up under a historically repressive government in Eastern Europe. She was naive sexually and yet very satisfying, innocent is the way I saw and treated her. We made love many times and I gave to her what she never had at home. Her husband was her best friend, I was her lover. This chapter would not be complete though without mention of at least one truly erotic relationship developed in the office. Having worked with some truly amazing, intelligent and beautiful woman. As a young banker, we flirted and played hard and I had my fair share of fumbling around in the car park or on my office desk with some sexy, very horny co-workers. Most of these brief flings ended very quickly, as it was not in ones best interest to maintain a relationship, especially if it’s sexual with ones staff. Bull shit, there were dozens of relationships going on at anyone time. Shit we were young, flying graduates, with a shit hot future available, because you were fucking white. There was a dark side to those heady early days. I grew up in the eighties and nineties; I matriculated and was part of the 1976 march through Johannesburg from the war in Angola, to the release of Nelson Mandela and ten years of democracy. I am a proud South African and have contributed to the wealth of this nation. On the lighter side, I returned to South Africa from the USA in 1994.I was not in exile. My work colleagues at the time told me I must be crazy taking my family back to SA because there was so much crime and killing going on. I am still in SA and have lived all ten years of this democracy, what great times we live in, what fantastic opportunity for all the rainbow children, for it is becoming there time. I often wonder, as we get older, did the girls in my day look like the ones today. Somehow I don’t think so, beautiful people surround us and it just keeps getting better. I met Rossane, following a major merger and change in our business. She was a stunning 30 year old, recently divorced as was I and although we had known each other for years, it was only when I joined there team, and she became my right hand in running a very complicated business. International financial relationships, dealing with world wide issues, IMF and World Bank and international multi national Banks was a full time job, which involved many late nights, client entertainment and socializing at cocktail, dinners. Throughout my career all functions were attended with my wife and life partner at the time. However in the last couple of years I was separated or divorced and I formed a very strong relationship, with my right hand, so to speak. She was a fantastic and wild lover, who drove me nuts. After formal functions, we would go off to clubs and pubs and party through the night. The sex was fantastic and I suppose the only damper was, she worked for me. You couldn’t go to work to escape, so it was doomed for failure. Fortunately we both saw that and maybe that’s why I retain the friendship of all my past loves. Or maybe its because I keep the fantasy alive. I have one other office romance, which if you have got this far in reading this then you will have read it already, but she was a truly beautiful women. Had we not both been married at the time we may well have been together. It’s not often one meets there soul mate more than once. I have been fortunate to meet two. It remains only to talk about the past few years, which make up the bulk of these ramblings. I left full time corporate employment with a fantastic golden handshake in 2000. I enjoyed every minute of my career in Banking, but at the age of forty , I was divorced, my child was a young adult with his whole future ahead of him. An astrologist later told me, if I had come to him in 1990/00 he would have told me that my world was about to explode. I have the means and the knowledge to be a very successful entrepreneur. I was starting a new career and a new life my journey has just begun. Don’t kid yourself I went through hell. I don’t think I have ever been so lonely and totally fucked up, after my divorce and I spent too long chasing a dream which was not mine in the first place. Despite this I prospered, my business ventures have paid of handsomely and despite some shit investments in long-term pensions I have lived and experienced some of the most happy times of my life. Watching my son grow into a fine young man. Coming to peace with who and what I am. Accepting and learning to care and love the small things in life, having fantastic sex, with beautiful woman, falling in love again and learning that heart break can be healing old wounds and forgiving others. Experimenting and learning about my own sexuality finding I do like myself and life is worth living. Now I have a life out there to go live, so I am going to stop writing and start living the Journey of life THE END