How we met

She had just joined the firm about a week ago, and I had been invited to her welcoming drinks, at a bar not far from the office, certainly within walking distance.

If it sucks, I go back to work, or home –

I have no idea who she is, but I can see on the invite that there’s an internal client going, and I never miss an opportunity for face time.

I already checked to see if her photo was in the HR system, which I’m not supposed to do, but there was nothing there yet in any case.

It turns out that she is quite attractive, and seems to notice me, perhaps in part simply because I’m much louder than everyone else.

It’s a professional event, so she has to at least talk to me, and so I take the opportunity to get to know her –

If she’s interested, great;

If not, who cares.

I reach out to shake her hand, and she responds with a good grip, which I like.

I’m taken back enough to check out her hands, suspecting some monstrous, club-shaped sausages to explain the power of this grip, but I instead see what looks like a normal hand, with long, elegant fingers, a bit bony, veiny, perhaps from squeezing so hard.

She has an extremely youthful face, but I can see a bit of age in her hands, and her forearm muscles, which I find relieving, because I’m old enough now that younger women have gotten a bit old.

I’m already impressed, and she catches me looking at her hand, and can sense that I’m starting to like her –

We hold hands for a bit too long, making eye contact, she smiles a bit, which is broken by the food guy, with his tray of mediocre fried nonsense, and related mystery sauces.

I’m hungry, so I select the least repulsive looking item from his greige buffet, and grab a napkin, thanking him for his service.

She passes, perhaps because she’s new, and eating in front of people is always weird, especially so in a context like this, where you’re in essence being evaluated, subject to significant personal financial risk.

She tells me about her group, within private equity, and I’m familiar with a few of the people that she works with, saying the usual polite things –

This one’s bright, that one’s a worker, blah blah blah …

She leaves at some professionally reasonable point during our conversation, leaving me extremely attracted to her –

And I realize that it’s been years since I’ve felt something like this.

The professional risk is non-zero, but Europeans have a more open attitude towards office relationships, so I decide that I will pull the trigger, if she seems interested.

And it seems that she is, as she sticks around, as do I, noticing that she’s looking at me periodically, fairly openly suggesting that she would like to continue talking after everyone else leaves.

This is precisely what happens –

We get into a fairly heavy conversation about our lives, at times making me a bit uncomfortable, because I try to keep my personal life and professional life walled off.

I need another drink, so I offer to get her one as well, and she says sure, asking for whatever white wine I think is best –

I like the fact that she already trusts my judgement, and I get the sense of an almost instant mutual familiarity.

The line for the bar is quite long, and the place is itself somewhere between a bar and a club, and of course, some guy steps in, about a minute or so after I leave, and I can see him chatting her up.

I already noticed this loser eyeing her up while I was talking to her, which annoyed me, because it subtracted from my enjoyment of her.

But, I’m an adult, and this is not the first time that something like this has happened, so in addition to our drinks, I buy a shot of this revolting Norwegian liquor that my ex-girlfriend had pointed out one evening at a bar in the East Village.

I return, hand her the glass of wine, and introduce myself to, “Johann”, handing him the shot that I had so generously purchased for him.

He says, “Takk, vad er det?”

I say, in English, “it’s a Norwegian Seamen’s shot”, which when said out loud, sounds about right.

She starts laughing, trying to contain herself.

I was hoping that this would send the message, but apparently not.

I had a look down at Johann’s shoes, as part of my primal exercise of sizing this idiot up, and spotted what are the most ridiculous looking loafers I have ever seen:

Dark suede, with some kind of family crest sewn into the top, as if Ralph Lauren’s family had an official shoe.

Johann doesn’t seem to get the message, and minutes pass with both of us trying our best to ignore him, with varying degrees of civility.

Then he suddenly leans in, and puts his hand on her naked shoulder, and I feel a rush of total hatred fill my blood, as his little fingers squeeze and compress the skin around her bones, I can feel the person that I thought I’d left behind me come alive again, and I imagine that it showed –

I push him off her, put my left hand on his shoulder, squeezing hard enough to hurt him, and pour my beer all over his stupid shoes, staring into his eyes the whole time, looking down only to correct my aim, as he awkwardly dances backwards, while I shake what remains of my beer at whatever foot is closest to me.

She cannot believe that I’ve done this, and her attraction towards me drops to nothing, briefly even hating me for it, walking away, without saying goodbye.

This extends to work, where my attitude is totally out of place, horrible even for an American, but I’m so productive, no one does anything about it.

She later remembers that I was so angry, that I didn’t even notice that she walked away, and this ultimately fascinates her –

So consumed by such petty hatred, directed at a shoe, that I would abandon someone that I was clearly interested in, taking non-trivial professional risk as well.

It also shows my total disregard for her, at least in my anger, though she realizes that it was ultimately triggered by a stranger touching her.

Redux

We meet again accidentally, during lunch, outside, a few months later, and I had a shitty day at work, so I’m a bit out of it, and she can see that, so she’s almost opportunistic about it –

Though I don’t compete with her at work, she is occasionally on calls with me, and less frequently, in meetings, and at this point, she thinks that I’m brilliant, but she really dislikes me as a person.

I don’t say much at lunch, just listening, and nodding, staring off into the Sun light, not even apologizing for what happened when we first met.

As she’s getting up, I ask if she’d like to get dinner tonight, and she almost feels bad for me, and says, “yes” –

She walks away realizing that my hostility might have an origin quite different from its expression, and her mental portrait of me becomes instantly more complex, forced to concede that I’m actually quite weird, and not the typical corporate jock she’d anticipated –

Then the night at the bar replays in her head as she walks away, and she realizes how strange it is that I poured beer on another man’s shoes, rather than simply punch him in the face –

It borders on psychotic, since I’m clearly not afraid of confrontation, but I want it to be complete, destroying something that he clearly associated with his self image –

The douche loafers.

What I do

I replace people that make a lot of money, with machines, and I enjoy it, because I am a dick –

If they can’t justify their jobs when compared to some trading platform, then it’s my job to figure out how to seamlessly get rid of them, comprehensively, from blocking communications, to cleaning out the stupid nonsense they keep in and around their desks, without introducing risk to the firm.

This includes anticipating shitty behavior on the part of people that I’m trying to get rid of, which I also enjoy, because it requires me to outthink people, and not just consider how to replace them with technology, creating a job that is both psychologically, and intellectually challenging.

I interact with executives often because I’m saving the entire firm money, so they know who I am, and though I’m far from that level in terms of my career path, it’s obvious to everyone, even the current executives, that I’m a contender for a C-Suite position, eventually.

Other people my age simply don’t have that kind of exposure at the firm, or pressure, and this creates a mix of admiration, and profound, professional jealousy.

Most people know that they cannot do my job, which involves a preposterous mix of managing software development, trading operations, telecommunications, ID badges, and people crying.

My internal clients absolutely love me, whereas most people around me really dislike me, except my immediate colleagues, both out of pragmatism, but also because I stick up for them, aggressively, ultimately making sure that we all make money as a team.

People talk about what an asshole I am, and they’re annoyed that nothing changes –

My manager is the CFO, who mentions these things in my reviews, because he has to, but everyone knows that it doesn’t matter, because the bottom line is the bottom line itself, which I move, because I don’t care.

The only metric that I’m ultimately concerned with is my compensation, which consistently moves in the correct direction, up –

Technology has fundamentally changed, and I see an opportunity to use it, and take money the firm is spending on other people, and put it in my own pocket.

I am being rewarded on every metric according to my preferences –

Cash, location, girlfriends –

For being what borders on a monster, but I justify it by knowing that, typically, these people are already rich, and because I grew up with nothing, I couldn’t care less:

I know they have kids –

I don’t care.

I know their lives get disrupted –

It’s my job to fuck them, maximally, don’t care.

This one has a disease –

Whatever, don’t care.

What she does

She makes private equity investments in the energy sector, which she really enjoys –

She takes money, and puts it to work, creating something that didn’t exist beforehand, creating jobs, ultimately improving people’s lives.

She travels, to the project sites, which she also enjoys, as she feels a sense of real accomplishment seeing a plant, or a wind turbine, incrementally get built because of work she’s contributed to.

It requires her to think about engineering and finance, and practical administrative matters as well.

She has the usual professional anxieties:

She’s constantly managing her relationships with others, trying to compete, balancing competition with friendships;

The workload is occasionally unreasonable, and the travel too frequent, or too long, and this creates a type of psychological isolation that can exist even in the presence of others;

But she’s actually quite happy with her work life, and it is instead her ambitions to raise a family that trouble her the most.

These thoughts come to her when she’s feeling alone, imagining that her work would change in color if she were doing it for someone else, that required it to happen, so that she could provide for someone else –

In these moments, she can imagine what her home would look like, what it would sound like, and even feel and smell like to carry a small baby of her own –

The tiny outfits she’d have to buy, holding them close to her skin before purchase –

And how her weekends would have a longer view, slower moving parts, until some broken pencil brings her back to her more temporary concerns.

But she still thinks like a college student in some respects, and has yet to connect the type of strategic thinking she applies at work to her personal life, mostly because she’s afraid of what that will require of her –

She has a fun life, and it’s full of good stories, pleasant experiences, over which she has a significant degree of control.

So while she deeply wants a family, in particular a child, which haunts her, often, there’s no trigger to break what is a generally pleasant cycle of interesting work, and fun weekends.

Our first proper date

I book a table at a modern, almost corporate restaurant, near Tjuvholmen, and the atmosphere is very stiff –

She’s familiar with the place, and judges it a wise choice, given the fact that we’re colleagues, and she suspects that I sensed that she was almost doing me a favor, providing both of us with a professional gloss for the next day at work, when people ask where we ate.

Everyone at the office noticed that she stayed late at the bar to talk to me the night of the shoe incident, so there is awareness of the possibility of romance, but given the absence of any visible follow up, everyone assumed that whatever was there had quickly faded.

There were rumors about what had happened that night, with some colleagues aware of the correct facts of the shoe incident, since as it turns out, Johann (shoe guy) went to university with one of our colleagues, which facilitated an in for a roughly accurate recounting of the events, including Johann’s devastation due to the seemingly impenetrable stains left on the surface of his suede loafers.

I explicitly tell her that I’m arranging a car for both of us, and that I’m going to pick her up, at her apartment, at exactly 20:30, to make sure that we’re both on time, and don’t risk losing our reservation –

Scandinavians take reservations rather seriously, and it is in fact impolite to show up more than just a minute or two late.

She thinks this is a bit much, and that I’m behaving like I’m her boss, which is not the case, though my delivery deliberately conveys this impression, but it’s not an inconvenience for her, so she says “alright”, but she’s still a little annoyed, and gets a bit nervous, recalling the shoe incident in the abstract, as a bad association.

When I call her on my mobile phone to tell her to come downstairs from her apartment, she can hear regularly spaced clobbering, or clicking sounds, and for a brief moment, she’s worried that I’m wearing heels, but she dismisses it as background noise.

However, I show up on a horse, i.e., an actual horse, that I paid a ludicrous sum of money to borrow for the evening, and she is simply astonished, and starts laughing hysterically.

“My God, you are a total ass –

What is wrong with you?”

She refuses to get on the horse, so I walk it to the restaurant with her, as she episodically looks beyond my shoulder, to see this monstrous, inelegant farm horse, clobbering about the streets of her home city, Oslo.

I insisted on the horse being cleaned, which cost me extra, because the farmer had to do it himself, and the results were acceptable for a date, so her refusal appears to be based upon principle, rather than hygiene.

I tie the horse to a bike stand outside the restaurant, with no regard for public safety, or the horse, prompting her to laugh at me, yet again.

“You’re such a child”, she says.

There’s a huge pile of piss and shit under the horse after dinner, which I simply leave, taking off with her, this time on the horse.

Though it’s summer, it’s a bit cold, so I “buy” a blanket from the restaurant, i.e., I pay the Pakistani table busser 1000 NOK to steal one for me, and throw it on the horse, while I chat up the maître d’, disingenuously apologizing for the giant pile of horse shit outside.

I deliberately buy an extra bottle of wine from the restaurant for the trip back to return the horse, which I make her hide in her purse during dinner, to her partially feigned embarrassment.

I’ve already cleared spending some time at the farm to have drinks with her afterward, which is about an hour and a half by horse from the restaurant.

Though I don’t tell her, I’ve also already paid the farmer to let us sleep in one of his bedrooms.

On the ride to the farm, she realizes that I must have somehow planned all of this while at work.

Connecting this astonishing practical reality to how little I seem to care about most people, she feels a bit broken by it all –

She’s not sure anyone has ever done this much for her before, and I did all of this in one day, while at work, unsure if she would even like me.

The ridiculousness of the evening fades into a quiet warm, as she realizes that she must be important to me, already –

She leans in, the familiarity returning, resting her head on my back, wrapping her arms around my waist, as the wind picks up a bit across her skin, prompting her to take the stolen blanket from her lap, and wrap it around her back, trying her best to include me in its coverage.

Neither of us say much of anything, clobbering on, cars passing, as at this point she realizes that I’ve likely already made convenient arrangements for us to stay together.

We both miss work the next day, and that’s it.