A 2020 diary about loneliness, desire and starting over.
This is not a novel.
This book is my diary from 2020. After my marriage collapsed I was lonely in a way I could not talk myself out of. I did not want a quick affair. On a sponsoring site I looked for a woman I could talk to, sleep with, travel with—a relationship as close as possible to an ordinary one.
I found Kate. She was twenty-six, quick, and she spoke about films and books as if we had already lived a life together.
We flew in my plane to Budapest, Neuschwanstein, Rothenburg. We drove vintage cars to Venice and Gdańsk. There were hotel rooms, dinners that ran long, and sex I have written down as it was, without softening. We booked the opera in Prague. At the beginning we both tried. I wanted that year to hold.
Photographs of us are on pages 3 and 4. The names are ours: Gregor and Kate. Only three details have been changed—my place of residence, the company she worked for, her date of birth. The rest happened on the days I give.
In the Covid year I could not sit with a friend and say what this had done to me. So I wrote it down. I am the man on these pages. I have left every fault in—the vanity, the fear, the things I am not proud of—and I have not drawn myself handsomer than I was.
