Saturday Story #5

He had enjoyed over 10 years of being completely irresponsible once he’d left university with a first class degree in economics.
He had no mortgage, no children, nobody waiting at home for him, a nondescript job in a bar (which he wasn’t totally reliable with) – he pretty much came and went as he pleased and did exactly what he wanted, when he wanted. He could easily pick up any girl he wanted in a bar or nightclub – he’d even had luck with a stunning girl in the local supermarket. They’d abandoned their baskets laden with food and hadn’t even made it back to her flat. Once he’d been out with the girls a handful of times, he ditched them – they wanted to get serious too quickly and he didn’t have time for that.
He had travelled the world, spending time in America, partying wildly in Vegas and surfing in California. When he got fed up of the USA, he went to Australia and backpacked around the entire country, loosing friends as quickly as he made them on overnight stops in youth hostels. He’d stopped in Thailand for a couple of months and if his mother knew what he got up to whilst he was there, she’d never speak to him again.
As he sat in his sad little flat he rented drinking a cold beer, he wondered if this “playboy lifestyle” was enough – was there more to life than this? His parents were horrified that the degree he’d found so easy at oxford was wasted and that he was what they considered a “dropout”. He was extremely clever and most things bored him however if he was completely honest with himself he was lonely.
He was fast approaching the age where all his friends were getting engaged, buying a house, getting married and having children and they were all completely happy. Nobody wanted to go on a 2 day drinking binge with him anymore – they wanted to be dragged round go to Ikea to buy the same furniture everyone else had. In a strange way he was jealous of their new lives and wondered if he’d ever find anyone. Surely most of the girls that were single themselves by this age had their own problems and he wasn’t sure if he could handle someone else’s kid, jealous ex-boyfriends and mothers who were desperate to see their daughters marry.
He reached forward for the macbook on the coffee table and decided it was high time he made some changes in his life before it was too late.