177

177 kilograms. The days go by, life moves on, and fortunately my weight is starting to go down. Today was another full day. I can’t say that I did anything particularly important, but from the moment I woke up this morning until now, late in the evening, I haven’t stopped at all. One thing I notice happening more and more often is that I exercise more and more. Today I managed to walk for a total of 1.5 hours without feeling the exhaustion I used to feel. To be fair, I also slept for more than 10 hours last night.

Tonight I was lucky enough to have Laura fall asleep next to me, looking for someone beside whom she could curl up and make herself small. Normally, that someone is my wife, but tonight she was busy with a little koala bear who, as tired as he is, is equally restless, apparently with no intention whatsoever of going to sleep. As I write these lines, Laura is asleep, my wife has back pain, and Luca is looking at me with a knowing smile. Only God knows what time he plans to go to sleep.

While I was lying in bed with Laura, I was trying to think about how my weight has evolved, how much I have lost, over what period of time, how much is healthy, and what the pace will be from now on. At the same time, I was thinking about my childhood, about a time when time itself somehow seemed different. When I think about the time when I was little, somehow my memories transport me to a spring afternoon. In Craiova, in my grandparents’ apartment, sometime after lunch, after we had eaten and were lying in bed trying to fall asleep. Somehow everyone else is already asleep, but I can’t fall asleep. I lie there with my eyes open, looking out the window. Right in front of the apartment building are two large trees, two walnut trees at least 50–60 years old. In the light breeze, their branches and leaves cast shadows over my window. The sunlight coming through the branches leaves shadows on the curtain my grandparents had. The window was slightly open, and I could hear a cheerful collared dove. Guu Guu Guu Guu. All my life, I have associated this sound with afternoons spent in that bed, trying in vain to fall asleep. Even though I couldn’t sleep, somehow it was a place where I felt safe. I wasn’t hungry or thirsty, and time passed slowly. Any child can immediately confirm how slowly time passes when you are forced to do something. We were forced to sleep. Apparently our brains developed better that way.

But today, while I was putting Laura to sleep, that wasn’t what I remembered. I was imagining a world 15 years from now, sometime when Laura and Luca will leave home on their own, and wondering how safe it will be for them then. That thought made me reflect on my teenage years, on what I was doing when I was 18 and what life was like back then. Immediately, one dark memory from that time comes to mind. Something I have never told anyone. Somehow, I realized relatively quickly how stupid I had been, and I chose to block those memories and make damn sure I stayed away from anything like that in the future.

I was around 18 years old, so mathematically speaking, it must have been 2004. Maybe immediately after I finished high school. I remember it was summer, but not particularly hot. It was probably getting close to autumn because I remember people on the street wearing jackets. At that time, the internet had really started taking off. More precisely, most young people were going online and joining different chat rooms with other young people. Although today it sounds almost ordinary, connecting through a modem that made strange noises and entering a channel where you could measure your ping is something my children will never understand.

The problem was that once you entered a channel, you had absolutely no idea who you might be talking to. How would you do that today? Hi! How are you? I remember that back then you would go through the entire channel asking ASL, or Age Sex Location. That meant that basically every new conversation started with “asl pls”. How stupid... But those were the times. I’m writing this story so that Laura and Luca might learn something from it one day in the future. Not everything that is new and cool at one point will stay that way. Asl pls? God, I’m old. My little monkey Luca has just fallen asleep in my wife’s arms. I keep referring to my wife simply because I don’t want to use her name. First of all, for privacy reasons, and secondly, if I ever somehow end up having 10 wives at the same time, it’s probably better if they all just read “my wife.” I think she suspects that I’m writing nonsense about her too, because I can’t stop looking at her. I consider it an affectionate look; she probably realizes I’m writing something that involves her.

Back to the glory days of the internet. One evening, I logged onto mIRC again, as the program was called, relatively popular in Romania in the ’90s. I don’t remember which channels I joined, but certainly something local from Craiova, and I started talking to several people. After the usual “asl pls” spam, you could see who you could actually have a conversation with. And who you couldn’t. It didn’t matter that the person on the other side might have been a drug dealer, a child molester, a pedophile, or someone who had just got out of prison. Somehow, in my brain at the time, those possibilities simply didn’t exist. I was just looking for someone to talk to and nothing more.

Among the people I managed to have a conversation with were two individuals. It didn’t take me long to realize that they were together as a couple. The conversation, however, took an important turn when one of them suggested that we meet. It was 8:00 p.m., relatively warm, and there were still plenty of people on the streets. Somehow, being spontaneous wasn’t really like me, but I thought, “What’s wrong with being spontaneous?” I told them that I lived in the Rovine neighborhood in Craiova, while they suggested meeting at Mercur Mall in the city center, about a 30-minute walk away. Considering that I was young, maybe 20 minutes. The idea that I should be careful or afraid of them never even crossed my mind. I had started bodybuilding when I was 10, then continued with Aikido, Wado-Ryu Karate, and Wing Chun Kung Fu. So if anyone had a reason to be afraid, it was them, not me...

So back to typing... sorry, I had to take a short break. My little koala was awake, and I had to walk around with him in my arms for 10 minutes. Then I passed him over to my wife. The way we pass him from one to the other when he needs physical contact reminds me of the Olympics and the way they pass the Olympic torch from one person to another.

The idea of being afraid to leave home in the evening to meet strangers was completely foreign to me. So I validated this stupid idea of meeting a stranger at night as an excellent one. An hour later, we met exactly where we had agreed. We said hello and went somewhere to have a drink.

The entire memory is surreal. We sat down, and I remember ordering a beer. Exactly what an 18-year-old needs when going out with complete strangers, right? I don’t think it took very long before they offered me drugs. The conversation wasn’t long or particularly detailed. At that moment, I realized the stupidity of the situation I had gotten myself into, but it was somehow already too late. My beer was half finished, and I was sitting at a table with three people I didn’t know. After I refused them, somehow we ended up talking about this spontaneous meeting and about the martial arts I practiced. Somehow, within a few minutes, they became afraid of me. One of them actually admitted it. My idea of leaving the house and trying to be more spontaneous had led them to believe that perhaps I was a potential customer.

At the end of the meeting, one of them smiled and asked me to “throw in another 50.” If I did, I would basically be paying half of their bill; if I didn’t, who knew what would happen. I preferred to partially cover their bill and avoid any escalation. After that, we said goodbye like old friends, and each of us went our separate ways. As I walked home, I tried to process what had just happened. Even today, I still try to process what happened there and why I ended up in that situation.

A few months later, I got into the Faculty of Medicine in Craiova, actually among the top students. My wife, of course, ranked 30 places above me on the entrance exam. Even after all these years, if I brought up the subject of our medical school admission, she would remind me that she ranked ahead of me on the exam. Maybe the fact that she is smarter than me is the secret of our relationship so far, who knows. But what would have happened if I had accepted what my new friends wanted to offer me? Would I have been able to keep up with medical school? Would I have finished it? What kind of drugs exactly did they want to offer me? Would they even have been real drugs, or just some chalk powder or flour so they could take my money? They got some of my money anyway because I ended up covering part of their bill.

Look at how stupid karma can be. I would never have looked for someone to buy drugs from, and yet I ended up in that situation. And it wasn’t something simple on the street, where someone asks you as you walk past whether you want some or not. It was a chain of events, like an air crash, that ultimately led to that situation. First, I chose to go online, I chose the channel to enter, and I chose who to talk to. Then I chose to leave home and meet some strangers, and the late hour didn’t discourage me at all. Even more, my parents, who perhaps should have told me to stay home because I was 18, didn’t have any reason to question me. I was generally a quiet kid who never caused them problems, and because I regularly left home in the evenings for training, they didn’t even have anything to ask. Their only question was: What time are you coming home?

If I had ended up a junkie and explained to you now, “It just happened...” how many of you would have believed me?

That was exactly the memory I was thinking about, my little secret. And I was trying to find a way to make sure Laura or Luca never make the same mistake. I think the only solution is to tell them this story, hoping that they will never end up in the same situation.

I haven’t really said much about those 177 kilograms. And I know the story I just told you has absolutely nothing to do with the title, but I don’t think the title needs much explaining anyway. What matters is that I’m still losing weight, and that’s really all I wanted to say.