Chapter 3

My experiment with taking on John and Raymond at the same time was most enjoyable but after some self-introspection, I came to the conclusion that one on one sex was far better because I wasn’t outnumbered and constantly trying to please both partners without favoring one over the other.

It did reveal to me that taking it all the way up in both front and back at the same time was sort of trying walk a high-wire and not really certain if you have a net beneath your feet.

Early in the morning, I trekked over to the office to discover I had a file marked “Urgent” in my in-box and I immediately opened it to discover I had been reassigned to Belgrade in the new Serbian Republic and was to collect my plane ticket from the finance office before close of business today.

It was not entirely unexpected looking back at it in retrospect.

In more clarity, I mean that it was a foregone conclusion I would be heading out for a new assignment sooner rather than later because I wasn’t getting anything written sitting behind a desk in London just reading the reports from the field all over the globe.

I had never been to Belgrade before and I wondered how the city had fared after the disgusting bombing of innocent civilian areas and essential infrastructure by a pompous female Secretary of State that regarded advice from professional analysts as some sort of an assault on her ability to make her own decisions.

Our flight was supposed to make a stop in Zagreb before continuing on to Belgrade and she wished they could have stayed there a bit longer as it was only a two hour stop over to change passengers and refuel. She was a bit mystified that the cabin was only about fifty percent filled with passengers when they took off at the airport because it was one of the smaller jets with only about a hundred passenger capacity. They were the ones that concentrated on filling every seat with a warm body and no interest at all in carrying cargo down below. Besides most of the European cargo traffic was by lorry or ship where possible and air transport was primarily aimed at moving passengers from point A to point B.

I had spent an inordinate length of time in packing because I was only allowed one bag on my chit from the company. I could take a second bag but the cost was astronomical because added weight for the extra baggage would cut into their passenger carry limits. It was all so confusing for me because I was not the sharpest pencil in the stack when it came to math or numbers and I much preferred to concentrate on the human element and find out about the story behind the story to make my content more interesting.

That was something that most editors found distasteful because they tended to think in set patterns that required so many words for description and so many words for hard cold facts presented in a logical format. That never was my style of writing and I had the opinion that most readers would agree with me because there is nothing so dissatisfying as reading something that was drearily filled with statistics and so predictable that the reader could finish the chapter already knowing what the next chapter would be all about.

I took plenty of spare undies and nylons in case I had to be “social” to do the story. One never knew until the assignment unfolded exactly what the requirements would be out in the field.

The recent unpleasantness in the region was enough that they would pay me an additional fund for hazardous assignment compensation and I had only drawn that once before but that is another story and one that I would prefer to forget and not go into when my mood was all light and vibrant with good vibes.

I had my little recording device that I simply spoke into and used for my flow of thoughts on the surrounding circumstances. I also used it to make certain that when I spoke to a “source” I had absolute proof that I was only repeating exactly what they told me word for word and did not try to twist it to meet my own bias or personal agenda flavor like so many journalists these days. My device had a failsafe system to show that the recording was not tampered with in any way because those American spooks and even the Chinese had found ways to make things seem to be one way and in actuality they were just the opposite. It was suddenly a George Orwell world and “doublespeak” was the language of the times. I was doing my best to remain neutral at all costs and let my readers make up their own minds based on the recording of the facts with my own stamp of opinion between the lines.

As we dived down under the clouds into the Zagreb Airport complex zone, a light dusting of snow was falling onto a bleakly drab and grey landscape. I was stretched out, almost horizontal across the three seats getting a little nap under one of the soft, blue blankets that were so comfortable that I had an urge to steal one. I knew that was not an option because they wouldn’t fit into my economy-sized backpack designed for carry-on luggage.

The passengers were a geriatric blend of Baltic upper-class mostly returning from a shopper’s tour of the decadent west.

All of the crew spoke grammatically correct English and they seemed on their best behavior in remaining aloof from personal contact with the “sheep” in the grazing pen, me included. I had met the same sort of attitude in the Asian and Middle-Eastern airline crews and I had the distinct impression it was to maintain a certain level of unquestioned authority in the event of a sudden catastrophe whilst still in the air. My main concern was that I didn’t get on a flight with a borderline suicidal pilot with a desire to take a bunch of other humans with him on the final journey. These days, one could not be too careful in taking proper precautions.

I noticed that our aircraft was being directed to the end of the runway and that they had buses lined up to move us from the tarmac to the terminal. It was close to two kilometers from the landing site to the gate and I considered it a practical move all things considered.

It had been a long, long time since I had been in Zagreb.

My first trip to Zagreb was in a train from Belgrade with my uncle Harry taking me on a tour off the beaten track and out of the hair of my divorcing parents. The acrimony of those times was a situation I tried to push out of my memory, but the travels were a highlight of my earlier formative years. I remember standing outside a dingy café waiting for Harry to finish his business with the dodgy looking trio of male counterparts and wondering if any young people my age actually existed in this quaint old-fashioned place that looked more like a film-set than an actual city.