I suppose this is one of the few things that I feel I have in common with everyone else in the world. I really don’t like my job most of the time. I guess it’s not really fair to call it boring, but it is certainly tedious and tiresome to a large degree. Like anyone else, I long for a bit of variety and a chance to do something different.
I live in one of the smallest countries in the world and it is quiet, comfortable, safe and, if we are being completely honest, a bit boring. It’s the sort of place where a missing cat makes the news. Violent crime is a rarity and most people don’t lock their front doors when they go out.
God, I’m nearly forty and I really do feel like I’m stuck in a rut. I’ve been working in the computer shop for more than five years now and it’s not as much fun as it used to be. At the end of the 1990s, it really had been mostly fun. Everybody wanted a new computer and the internet was properly starting to take off. The technology was simpler, but it was fast-moving and exciting.
I’d been messing around with computers since I was a teenager, learning to code and making a little cash by writing database support software and upgrading systems for friends and acquaintances. I’d stumbled from one day job to another, with no goal in sight and had really had enough when this job opportunity came along.
I had started to work for myself, doing whatever I could find to keep out of the clutches of the tax man and the unemployment office. I was keeping my head above water and had just built a new PC for a friend. I wandered in to the local stationers because I knew that they did various printing and print transfer stuff.
All I wanted was to give the friend a nice personalised mouse pad to go with the new system. A bit of free advertising for me and a useful gift for them. Cutting the tale short, the owner, Mark, asked me about building computers and I told him that I knew my way around them well enough, but couldn’t find that many customers.
“Well,” Mark said. “I get asked all the time, probably because we sell word processors and computer accessories. I don’t have a clue about building one though. Maybe we could do something together. How do you even decide what parts to get. I look at a magazine advert and just see too many choices.”
“Sure, why not?” I replied. “I’ve got a component pricing spreadsheet and can knock together a couple of example system specifications at different price points and we’ll see what happens.”
So, now, several years later, I’m in the shop almost every day and, for the most part, business has been pretty good. Mark and I worked out a decent deal where I built and installed the system and he bought the parts and found the customers. I carried on working for myself and got a commission on every computer I installed. I handle all the support and pick up a few customers for lessons and help along the way.
For the first few years, this was the part I liked. I’d get to go out to deliver a new system to a family who were genuinely excited to get on to the internet for the first time and explore the world wide web. And, people really were very excited about it. I could remember the first home computer revolution, in the 1980s; Commodore 64s, Spectrums and BBC micros. This new PC revolution was on a totally different level and everyone was desperate to get connected.
This was, perhaps, for me, the first breaking of the many shells that I surrounded myself with. This was me being forced, or rather forcing myself, out of my comfort zone and having to go out and meet people, strangers who I knew nothing about, but had to get on with and help.
I’ve always been aware of my shyness and anxiety about new situations. Not that ordinary, quite common, lack of confidence around strangers, but more a form of debilitating absolute terror at the thought of meeting anyone new. I’m fine around family and I can and do make friends, but it takes a long time for me to get to the point where I’m not in a state of panic with someone new.
This level of anxiety is frightening, draining and debilitating, but having to get on with my job had helped greatly in getting me to slowly overcome these fears and just deal with it.
Somewhat surprisingly, it was actually working. As the months and years rolled by, I became a lot more confident and possibly even a little more outgoing. Talking to strangers in the shop became easier and I was able to let my guard down just a touch.
Rather than sitting in the car in a blind panic, worried that I would knock on the wrong door or drive down the wrong driveway, I made sure I knew exactly where I was going and tried to be confident about it.
In my early twenties, I had gone out with some friends on a few occasions, but again, it would always end with me sitting quietly in a corner, watching the world pass by.
I’ve never thought of myself as attractive. I guess mostly average is a pretty good description. I’m a touch over six feet tall, solidly built, but not muscular or athletic and not really overweight either. I’ve plain features with deep brown eyes and dark brown hair that I always wear short. My Manx heritage makes my brows almost meet.
Only my height might make me stand out from the crowd, but not to any real degree in the modern world where everyone seems to be tall. I wear glasses and have done since I was a small child, but I’ve never felt the need to try contact lenses.
Deep down, subconsciously, I knew what my general faults and failings were and was well aware of my own limitations. I was probably never going to find a partner because I was never going to be able to get out there and meet someone. Work didn’t count, as so few of our customers were likely to be single, interested and in my own age range. Actually, though, this didn’t really bother me most of the time.
Sure, I had a perfectly normal sex drive, but I didn’t feel much, if any, attraction to others and had become very capable at managing my own sexual health. And, yes, we’re talking about masturbation here. I’d had probably 25 years of practice and, even if I do say so myself, I was something of an expert in the field.
That’s not to say that I was entirely disinterested in the possibility of sex with someone else, just that any desire wasn’t strong enough to overcome my anxieties about meeting strangers. The idea of romantic attraction seemed pretty alien to me really. Yeah, I had vague thoughts and feelings of attraction towards people, but never to the point where I felt I had a crush on someone and longed to be with them.
Like most people, I was prone to fantasise about enjoying a sexual encounter with a willing partner. It would almost certainly not be someone who I knew, more likely a movie star, athlete or musician.
You know how this works as well as I do. I’d manage to get some quiet time alone where I wouldn’t be disturbed. I’d get naked and start to think about the person of my dreams. My dominant hand would slowly start to stroke my hard cock as I closed my eyes and imagined that the hand, sexily stroking me towards an orgasm was not my own.
Almost always, the object of my sexual fantasy was male and I had a better orgasm if it was. I definitely saw this as a problem. Finding someone to be close too is difficult. Finding someone when you have my levels of anxiety is orders of magnitude more difficult. Finding anyone when you are almost certain that you are gay is going to be virtually impossible.
When you add in the fact that I have absolutely no ‘gay radar’, I just had to content myself with the fact that I could manage quite okay without someone in my life.
Isn’t this the biggest problem for anyone on the LGBTQ+ spectrum? We are, by definition, in a minority, a few percent at best. Society has changed and, at least in much of the western world, being queer no longer carries any government-sponsored or societal stigma or discrimination, but it can still be difficult.
As someone who was a teenager in the 1980s, I had seen the fear and revulsion created by the AIDS pandemic. I’d seen my favourite musicians and iconic actors killed by a disease that was called the ‘gay plague’. I had no idea that I was gay at the time, but homophobia was rampant and I wouldn’t ever have admitted to being gay even if I wanted to. Some of the most famous people in the world had hidden their sexuality to the bitter end.
Secondary school had, for me, been a pretty awful time of my life. I was the tall, thin, plain, silent, geeky guy with the glasses and a total lack of interest in social interaction with my classmates. I just kept my head down and got on with it, passing a few A-levels with raw talent and a good memory rather than hard work. I spent far too much time in the computer room, teaching myself to program and playing games.
I made a few friends, but then simply never spoke to any of them again after the last day of school. Most of them went off to university across Britain and that was that. Actually, with the state of the Isle of Man’s economy in the middle to late eighties, very few of them ever came back.
School had been filled with the usual teasing about sex and sexuality. It seems that some things never change. Even today, in our enlightened society, the word ‘gay’ is used in a derogatory fashion and back in the 1980s this was just the same. If you weren’t openly and obviously dating a girl, then you must, by definition be gay, or a wanker and people wouldn’t hesitate to tell you so. Well, we were all wankers, so that one just flew by without comment. Being singled out as being gay, whether you were or not, was a bit more hurtful.
The Isle of Man, where my tale is set, hadn’t exactly been at the forefront of reform and equality. Our politicians were old, bigoted and homophobic – at least in public. We had been slow to move with the times and even at the start of the 21st century, some of our laws were, to say the least, unfair.
By the year 2000, it was no longer illegal to be gay, or to have sex with someone of the same gender, but the legislation was slipping behind the will and mood of the population. Things did seem to be changing for the better, but it was still a big thing, fraught with difficulties, to be out.
It didn’t affect me, as I was about as far from having a relationship with someone, male or female, as it was possible to get and I couldn’t see that situation changing. I didn’t need to be out, even if I ever wanted to be.
Anyway, back to 2004. I’m bored. The computer business is slow, most of the rush to get online has been satisfied and now it’s mostly retired people who want to check on their children and grandchildren on this new-fangled social media. The Isle of Man has a large retired population – the demographics are skewed by people choosing to retire to a place that’s seen as quieter and safer than the rest of the British Isles. I don’t mind helping them, actually I quite enjoy it, but it really is boring.
I’ve broadened my horizons and built a few websites for people. I’m never going to be great at it, but it does pass the time in the evenings when I’m not out making house calls. It stretches my programming skills a little and keeps my mind occupied. I enjoy the process and do all the work myself when I can, design, code, graphics and a lot of the basic content.
It always amazes, just how little a small-business owner, who is clearly successful, can manage to say about their own business. I guess that’s why there are advertising agencies and being a copy-writer is a real job.
It also makes a little extra income that I can spend on computer hardware far beyond what I really need. If there is a major benefit to the lack of a social life, and living with my parents, then this is probably it. It leaves me with a larger disposable income and I can surround myself with nice things and indulge my hobbies.
Life goes on, one day blends in to another and they soon start to all feel the same. You fall into a routine and, even if that routine is comfortable, it can still be without reward. You can only watch a movie so many times before it stops being exciting. You can only take the camera to the same beauty spot so many times before it starts to lose its appeal.
The thought of travel to exotic places, to take exotic photographs, has a certain appeal, but crippling anxiety pushes back hard. I do long to see these places that are only glimpsed in documentaries, long to photograph lions, leopards and elephants but my fears hold me back.
Work is a routine, unexciting and unchanging. Life, in general is, similarly, a routine.
Home is a routine. Spend an hour in front of the computer, doing a little work for myself. Spend an hour in front of the television with Mum, Dad and my brother. Get some food and then try and relax. Fall asleep watching a movie on the big screen in my room or after wanking to some pretty tame, straight porn. Rinse and repeat.
I’m existing in a vacuum, not really living at all. Life could be so much better if only I could get out of the rut. Inertia, however, is a very powerful force and it’s going to take an equally powerful outside influence to make change happen for me. I do feel that I might embrace the change when it arrives, but my fears might still overpower my desires.
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