Chapter 1

No one grows up to have the exact life they had imagined for themselves as a kid. In my youth, I always imagined that I would marry my high school sweetheart and make a fortune working as a fireman. I couldn’t have been more wrong. But then again, perhaps I wasn’t so far off the mark.

High school, for me, was a chore. I knew what I wanted to do with my life and it didn’t include college: I wanted to be a fireman. To me, it was the ultimate real life “superhero” job. I wanted to be the one to receive the call for help and rush in to save the damsel in distress, caught in her worst nightmare. And since I’d spend so much time at the firehouse and eating there, I’d save my paychecks and I’d be rich in a matter of a few years! Again, I was wrong about that.

Not long after I finished school, I was hired as a full time fireman. The fire chief pulled me aside on my very first day on the job to give me a piece of advice. He said, “Listen kid: you are going to get a lot of advice over the next few years from these guys. Some of it will be good; some won’t be worth a shit. But I’m going to give you the one bit of advice that you had better take.”

He just looked me dead in my eyes to let me know how serious he was. I simply responded with, ‘ok’ ... He continued, “Get you an outlet.” I didn’t understand and it must have shown on my face.

Elaborating, he said, “This job ... it can slowly eat you alive. You are going to help a lot of people, of course. But there will be some that you can’t help. The ones that are gone before you get there aren’t the ones you’ll see at night; it’s the ones that die in front of you that will haunt. And it’s not as bad when it’s some ugly fat guy like me—it’s the kids that die that will make you want to rip your eyes out at night.”

I began to understand what he was talking about and was pondering his advice. Then he said, “If you don’t find an outlet—something to do with your time off to get your mind off of this job—an outlet will find you. You don’t want that.”

Then he whispered to me in confidence, “Look at Brian over there; he didn’t find one, so alcohol found him. And Garry over there; gambling found him. That’s why we call him ‘Flush’; it’s after the poker hand and what he’s doing with his life—flushing it down the toilet. You understand?”

I nodded in complete understanding and asked, “What did you find?” He smiled slightly and said, “Me? I found fly fishing! You’re a good kid, rook—find something soon.” I knew I was going to take that advice...

For reasons I could never figure out, I was never very successful with the ladies. Not to ‘blow my own whistle’, but I am better than just average looking; I’m in perfect shape since I am a firefighter, and I was always really nice to everyone. But perhaps I was TOO nice, because it was always the same thing: “I just think of you as a good friend.” I’d had a girlfriend here and there and sometimes it would last a few months, but there was never one that I felt like she was ‘the one’.

But surely at some point I’d rush into a burning building or pull someone out of a wrecked, burning car moments before it exploded and save the hot young woman from certain death and she would fall in love with me.

Yet again, I could not have been more wrong. Indeed, most people I helped rescue were elderly, extremely obese, ugly, married, or MEN. The guys at the house were merciless with me because they knew what I wanted to happen; making fun of me after I pulled granny out of her burning car—giving her CPR to save her life—I became “Lucky Mann” (my name is David Mann).

Of course there was the occasional hot girl that would need help, but as I learned, when a person is having their worst day ever, the last thing on their mind is, ‘Hey, who’s the cute guy that pulled me of the fire?’

It took several years of being a fireman before the dream began to fade. I still loved my work, but I slowly realized that it wasn’t going to find me love.

I started going out to the clubs and bars, but that seemed like a dangerous road: I still had not found my outlet and I didn’t want alcohol to ‘find me’. Besides, I could never find what I was looking for at the club—they were full of gaggles of married women having a ‘girl’s night out’ or single mom’s looking for a father for their kid and an income. And that was something else that hadn’t worked out as planned—my bank account balance didn’t exactly have a lot of digits in front of the decimal point!

It was a Thursday night and I was not on call. I had gone to the gym as per usual and put in a quick 2 hour work out before going back to my small apartment. After getting a shower, I decided to kill some time by going on line (which meant I was going to surf some porn, rub one out, and go to bed). As with many guys in their mid 20’s, this was nothing unusual, but I was getting bored with this routine. Instead of going to my typical sites, I began looking for something new.

I realized that porn wasn’t what I really wanted; I wanted interaction with someone—someone real. Not knowing where to start, I decided to check out an online dating site. I couldn’t believe I was resorting to a personals site, but at least this way I didn’t have to get dressed and spend (waste?) what little hard-earned money I had on drinks.

The site was offering a ‘free trial’, but you still needed a credit card to prove you were of legal age. I had no problem with that and set up my account, thus beginning my life of meeting on line with strangers. I felt a little disheartened at where my life had gone in the ‘romance’ department, but there were worse things in the world.

It didn’t take long for me to figure out that a lot of people are not at all who they say they are, and I was quick to learn how to weed them out from the honest ones. Good rule of thumb: if they ‘don’t have a camera’ or ‘the camera is broken’, then it’s probably a dude.

I kept my search area to somewhere I could drive in less than 15 minutes because I didn’t want to waste gas on meeting someone that would likely be a ‘dead end’. In retrospect, I guess my optimism was not all that high. After several weeks of checking messages, making contacts and being disappointed, I started to check less and less frequently. But then one day, I had a note from someone I had not seen before.

Her user name was Cheerry4fun and she had been a member for over a year. She didn’t have a picture posted, so I figured there was probably ‘something wrong’ with her. But I opened the note anyway out of sheer morbid curiosity.

Her profile gave all of her stats: Age, Sex, Location, Likes, Dislikes, and etc ... She was 19 and located about 30-45 minutes away (which is why I never saw her before) and we seemed to have the same tastes in most things that dating sites seem to think are important—music, movies, politics, and religion.

It wasn’t hard to believe that she was 19; her note to me was full of things like ‘LOL’, ‘OMG’, ‘AWESOME’, and so on. At the same time, it wasn’t annoying the way she had written it. Rather, it was more like she had a really fun nature and I was intrigued.

I sent Cheerry4fun a note back, telling her a bit more about myself and she replied within moments. We emailed back and forth a few times and I learned her name was Cherry. After many emails and both of us feeling some kind of connection, we set up to meet in a chat room and, once there, we decided to go on camera to talk. I was bracing myself for the worst as the screen went from black to blurry and then focused on her.

When the picture came in, I was absolutely floored. Cherry was drop-dead-gorgeous! She had beautiful light red hair that flowed in lazy curls down her shoulders and she had a face like a porcelain doll. There were a few freckles across her nose, green eyes and the nicest set of lips I had ever seen! Her eyebrows matched her hair and that gave me some less-than-pure thoughts.

Cherry smiled wide as she sat back from her camera and said, “HI! It’s nice to finally see you, David!” I sat in stunned silence, unable to respond. Finally she asked, “Can you hear me?”

Her question about a possible technical problem with the computer brought me out of my trance just enough to answer her. “Oh, yeah; I can hear you,” I said. She asked if the camera was working and I told her it was working perfectly.

She started to look a little uneasy and I realized I probably looked like a chained, starving dog with a steak that was just out of reach. I snapped out of it and apologized. “I’m sorry: you are not exactly what I was expecting to see ... and I mean that in the best possible of ways!”

She laughed and returned the compliment to me. I said, “You are beautiful: why don’t you put your picture up on your profile page?” She replied, “That’s why I am on line to begin with. Most guys look at me and the only thing they see is a possible opportunity to get a piece.” I said, “Yeah, well, guys are pigs. What can you do?” She laughed and our conversation took off from there.

We chatted for what felt like 20 to 30 minutes when I realized the sun was coming up—we had been up all night! I told Cherry that, regretfully, I had to go to work. She said it was ok because she had to go, too and, before signing off, we said we would look for each other again later.

Having gone all night without sleep, I should have been a wreck at work, but surprisingly, I was rejuvenated. I went about checking the gear—making sure everything was ready to go if a call came in—with a spring in my step as they say. I didn’t even have to be entirely focused on what I was doing; I was more or less on autopilot after doing the daily routine so many times over the years.

It was around mid afternoon when the chief came up to me and asked, “So, what did you find?” I was deep in thought about Cherry when he’d asked me, so it took a second to understand what he was asking me. After a few seconds of a blank stare from me, he said, “You are different today—better. You must have found an outlet, yeah?”

Suddenly realizing what he was talking about, I said, “Oh, that; Yeah. Well, maybe—it’s too soon to tell for sure.” Chief laughed as though he’d heard that line before and said, “Well, don’t you go putting a ring on her finger too fast! Not just any woman is cut out for this life!”