Daddy's boy

Chapter 1

Daddy’s boy

Chapter 1

May 15, 2016.

Hi!

I decided to start writing this story with a “hello". I am the outsider view of the plot. Sort of like that, the ocular and imaginary gossip on the inside of the scenes where everything happens. I imagine myself more as a snooping spirit who sees, feels and hears everything without anyone noticing. This is more or less how I can tell in detail what happened in the lives of these characters. Yes, and I am full of opinions, as are all people... and I won't keep them to myself, you know...

Well, let's get to the point. It all started when a very wise woman, living in the kingdom of Norway, in the year 2016, where princesses are independent and engaged in the fight against gender inequality, turned the f**k on, and lived happily ever after!

Well, she was in a church... The Nyppedalen church in the city of Bergen, Norway. Zaya, 15 years old, was getting confirmed in front of the church, she was getting confirmed. Confirmation was a tradition, besides being a very special and important date in Norway, when the teenager turns 15, they gather all their friends and relatives in a ceremony, either in the church, called confirmation, or in a civil ceremony called borgelig (citizenship)...

Usually the confirmands and relatives wear a special costume on this day, the bunad - which is the traditional Norwegian costume - which by the way is very expensive, costing on average 45,000 kronos for an original, new and complete bunad ordered in a*****e or private dressmaker. The costume consists of a dress for women and a vest with capri pants for men, with knee-length stockings. This special costume is very popular in the country, and can vary in its colors and embroidery depending on the region. Many families spend years preparing their bunads for their daughters or granddaughters to inherit.

It is currently used on commemorative dates - such as May 17, the day when the 1814 Constitution is celebrated; not independence like many other countries - as well as being worn at weddings and christenings.

Well, now back to the Norwegian confirmation ceremony. After the official celebration in church, a dinner is given for the guests and the child receives many valuable gifts, or an amount from each guest. Also right, after the family has spent so much on a bunad and the party.

Anya, Zaya's mother, was dressed in a glamorous green dress, long, with acrylic stones, glass and rock crystals, the famous rhinestones. The dress was so long that she had to hold on to her trousers. Her long blond hair was in perfect harmony with the color of the dress and the tone of her skin.

In the same row of the church pews were her oldest son Viliam, 16, her youngest Elias, 9, her Norwegian second ex-husband Stian, and her former in-laws, her Norwegian first husband's parents. Although she had recently ended a 5-year relationship with Stian, they decided to have their children's confirmation party together.

Stian had a son of the same age as Anya's daughter, Sebastian, who even studied in the same classroom as Zaya.

Anya was single now, relieved to finally be able to live a little for herself; she had been married from the age of 17 until she was 34.

She thanked God every day for having come to live in Norway with her children, which from her perspective was a liberal country, where rights are equal between women and men, not only in words scribbled on documents, but in practice, in everyday life.

A few days ago, in the midst of her new single life, lost in a thousand thoughts and chatter from her friends about how the new way for adults to meet, flirt, and date was going, she decided to download a casual dating app, which informed the distance and location of the members enrolled.

This is how, in the middle of waiting for the opening ceremony at the church, a notice popped up on her phone screen: Martin is less than 1 km away from you. She clicked on that message, and there were the pictures of a sailor, who she had not liked much in pictures before.

The date they would have crossed each other's path was May 5, or they would have been near each other's location on that date. Anya took no notice, because she hadn't been that interested in this boy; second, she had her ex and her family by her side; and third, she was very anxious that day, it was the day of the confirmation of her beloved daughter, her darling daughter.

Martin was sitting in the back row of the church pew, yes the same Martin from the phone, he was right behind Anya, from when she arrived with her family. He listened to her conversation with her children, with her ex-husband, Stian; with her former in-laws, Petter's parents, not Stian's. Stian's parents were sitting on the other side of the church.

Martin was smiling as her youngest son got out of the pew to try to capture the best pictures of his sister during the ceremony. The sailor thought Anya was very pretty as he watched her and her family, he hadn't connected one thing to the other yet, he hadn't realized just as he hadn't realized that she was the woman from the dating and dating app. He saw her getting up, when the confirmation was over, walking, taking pictures on the church lawn with her family. He thought, "Wow, what a body! I wanted that ass for myself. What a beautiful woman!"

Then everyone left the church and Anya didn't even notice Martin in the church.

Chapter 2

June 25, 2016, 3:30 am, Bergen, Norway.

Q

wo children were holding Stian back from pushing Anya down the stairs. There was a body fight between the two, and when she was finally safe, the man ran down stairs and saying he wasn't leaving, she also came down, with the 4 teenagers and the argument continued:

- Get out of my house! I don't want you here! Get out of here! I'm going to call the police.

Glass shards scattered all over the house, mirrors and ornaments broken on the floor! The four teenagers were Zaya, Viliam, Sebastian and a nephew of Stian, Sebastian's cousin. Then Stian surrendered, with his hands up, told everyone to calm down, that he would leave; the children were distracted, sitting at the foot of the stairs. While the man was getting dressed, he took some of her things and put them inside her jacket, she saw it, then went to the hall where all the jackets and shoes were at the exit of the house, she put her arm through the door, and told him that he couldn't leave taking the keys to the house, and her car.

He very calm, very quiet, in a low voice spoke:

"- Calm down, don't yell, I'll give it back to you, I'm just putting on my shoes".

Anya let her guard down, he finished dressing slowly, looked at the distracted boys, talking about the unbelievable, that horrible fight that had just happened, then he closed his fists and punched her violently, full force, right in the middle of her right eyebrow, which fell outside the house on the asphalt.

She hit her head and became bewildered. As he left he started on his wife and the teenagers ran to prevent further assaults. Viliam, Stian's son, was crying, trying to drag Anya into the house, desperate watching her bleed, asking her to let him clean the wound; her daughter was crying, everyone was crying but Stian.

The screaming was so loud, so shrill, that all the neighbors came out of their houses to see what was happening. Still dizzy and bleeding, Anya pleaded for someone to call the ambulance and the police, which was promptly answered by neighbors and her daughter. The weekend that was supposed to be peaceful, ended with the police car, ambulance and guardianship council around Anya's house. Everyone spent the rest of the night in the hospital....

.

In the days that followed, Anya's life was very busy: statements to the police in Fyllingsdalen, appointments with a law firm, statements to the local guardianship council in Loddefjord, and sessions at the psychologist's office run by the Bergen family and adolescent protection agencies.

In addition to her new commitments, Anya had to study to get good grades in her second year of nursing; teach zumba classes at a popular gym in the center of Bergen; and work in a nursing home so she could continue to maintain her home and her studies. All this without outbursts.

She developed a way of helping herself based on empowerment, resilience: "finding strength in yourself to keep going." She didn't want to have time to cry, she didn't want to have time to have time to grieve or think, she filled her time in a way that would always be mindful.

So she found a way to distract herself and pretend that everything was fine, she used that kind of tactic, psychological refuge so she could take the pressure and everything else that came with it.

Her head was like 'Bobby's Fantastic World', as she herself always said to her friends. Anya liked to imagine scenes, to create the famous 'what if...'. That is why she saw the people around her, the places, and imagined things happening as if they were real, as if they were a movie playing in her head. So she created her own world, her own safe bubble, where reality was different, very different, when she didn't like what she heard, what she saw, she pretended that what had happened happened, or what had been said was different.

She didn't want to carry sorrows and scars for life. And she always said that since she hadn't had the right to choose what would happen in her life, at least she could choose what to take as memories. Since it is the memories that make a person's life and conscience.

The woman was about to crumble, a single mother with three teenage children, she had to be strong and perfect in everything, she couldn't show weaknesses in this period, because her children needed the support coming from her, she was the one they were inspired and mirrored, she knew that.

So, as much as she wanted to ask for help, she couldn't: "Pull yourself together, hang in there, you'll make it, you'll make it", was the mantra she repeated thousands of times in her head, every time she felt some symptom of anguish approaching.

Sometimes, when she was alone, she would allow herself to put her face in her pillow and cry for hours until she felt some relief from all the worries she was going through at the moment. It was then that on one of these days of "crying until there are no more tears to drip" that she decided to enter this dating app, these popular sites, to distract herself, to focus her thoughts on anything other than her problems, traumas, and disappointments.

One moment she wanted to take a painting course over the Internet, another moment she wanted to go back to piano lessons, another moment she wanted to make new choreographies for the dance classes she was teaching twice a week at a popular academy in the center of Bergen.

Nothing was enough to calm a mind with restlessness syndrome: restless mind syndrome! She always said that must be her diagnosis.

- Let's see: Ugly! Fat! Bearded! Sassy!

She spent more time clicking "x" for suitors on the internet than "heart", likes. Then, among thousands of photos and texts of boys who appeared near her location, he appeared again: Martin, single, 30 years old, sailor. At first glance she didn't like his photos, just as she hadn't liked the photos of any of the others.

So when she had already decided to click "x" on his profile this time, to take him off the list of members who might cross her path, she took a closer look and liked a single photo, which he looked less 'daddy's boy', a photo of him in a small boat, at sea, a selfie.

This photo showed his face very closely, the first thing Anya saw were his stained teeth and one of them, right in front, broken. She also saw that he had a slight scar on his face, on the right side. She thought: 'Yeah, I'll give him a like! He is not so handsome, maybe he does not think he is the one, like most of these Norwegian playboys who think they own the world: "equal rights, women pay as much as men, I don't need anyone, I can be single for the rest of my life... blablablablablablablablablablablablab"'. These were some of the speeches she was used to hearing from many of them.

So between one study and another for the upcoming tests; between one shift and another in a nursing home outside Bergen, in Tysse, a small rural town in Samnanger; between a thousand bureaucratic things she had to deal with, she kept talking to Martin, and a few other kids from the internet, or school, or work.

The first time the two exchanged messages was May 5 . The two had been in church on May 15, but Anya didn't know, Martin did. And it wasn't until June 30, 2016, on a Thursday, that the two decided to meet.

She was at work, from where she had to drive for an hour from Bergen, and in the breaks they exchanged messages, that's how Martin wrote that he would have some free time that day so they could meet, if she was interested.

After that he would be out of town for a few days, for a well-known festival on the island of Tysnes, which was just over two hours away by car. The event was almost like Carnaval in Brazil, in the aspect that people from the big cities travel to the interior at this time to party for several consecutive days. Many traveled to Tysnes with their boats, others rented or owned summer houses.

Tired, and fearful, Anya accepted the offer to meet after work. She finished at 3:00 and drove to the city center, parking her car in Kloster garasje, an underground parking lot. Taking the elevator, she was in the middle of Bergen's central square, and they were still exchanging messages:

- Where are you?

- I'm already here. I've parked the car. Where are you, Martin?

- I am already in front of the Chinese restaurant here on the Strandgata. One of the main streets in central Bergen.

ϸ ϸ ϸ

She went walking, and they met. The man was wearing a cap, a black leather jacket, light jeans, and sneakers, which to her matched nothing. It was the first thing she thought of, since she had always been very interested in how people dressed, but she also didn't think she looked good on a date.

A bandage on her right eyebrow covered the six stitches she had received at the Bergen emergency hospital; she was dressed in jeans, a short black boot, and a mustard-colored sweater, one of her favorite colors. She was in a bad mood, hungry, and tired.

After greeting each other, Anya started walking up the stairs of the restaurant, talking:

- Look, as I told you in the messages, I'm tired, hungry and in a bad mood, I need to eat to get better, whether you come or not.

He smiled surprised and walked up behind her.

They sat down at a table near the entrance, facing the window where you could see the whole main square of Torgallmening and its statues in the water. The day was beautiful and the center was full of tourists and locals contemplating a sunny day. Bergen is known as the rainiest city in Norway, yet one of the most visited, beautiful and busy of all. When it was not raining, people had fun "putting their faces in the sun" on the street.

He did not want to eat, but ordered for her and a beer for him. Anya ate and talked non-stop, explaining that when she was nervous she talked nonsense, only because her nervousness was so great that she spoke without thinking.

Martin laughed and almost didn't speak, he found it all very new to him, he had never met a Latin girl, and no other foreigner. Anya talked about her friends, about her culture, a little about herself, and many other things:

- Oh, I know my friends say that you shouldn't eat like a crazy person on a first date, that you have to cross your legs, be charming, eat very little... ah, I'm hungry, if I take too long the food gets cold and the hunger goes away! - They laughed.

Besides, if you don't like me, we can become friends and I'll introduce you to one of my spinster friends! - He was perplexed by this statement.

- I'm serious, I've already married 7 friends...

He asked about the dressing and she didn't want to tell him about her ex. First, because she didn't want to talk about him, because she would start crying right then and there. Second, because you don't tell this kind of thing to just anyone, much less on a first date. And third, because she had decided to forget that it ever happened.

The restaurant was closing, Anya had finished eating, and was surprised when Martin wanted to pay the restaurant bill alone. Usually everyone paid their own bill, especially on a first date, when the two didn't know each other and didn't know if there was a chance of getting together, whether it was a popcorn at the movies or a coffee, they each paid their own.

After a while they went to Zacharias Bryggen, a well-known place with many different environments, a cluster of bars and restaurants divided into five floors. There they sat outside, where it was covered and with heaters, so they continued talking.

She asked why a guy like him, 30 years old, had never had a girlfriend before. Martin answered that he never had one because he never wanted one. He said that having a girlfriend meant giving satisfaction, having to dedicate himself, having to spend time and energy with her.

He added that he liked to be free, with no one to worry about, and that most Norwegians were like that, independent, used to living alone from the age of 17 when they usually moved out of their parents' house to live on their own.

He said that his friends who tried to have a girlfriend, or those he knew who were married, were all unhappy:

- They talk about how unhappy they are and that they wish they could have their single life back - he told in detail to her who was listening to him intently, while viewing his face on the dating app's profile, clicking a hell of a xision.

He said that the vision he had of Norwegian women was that they did not need men, that men and women had equal rights, equal jobs, earned a good salary, so they had no reason to marry and stay with a person because of financial conditions or something like that, as in many third world countries, that many women married early, had children and did not separate because they did not have a good financial, cultural and psychological structure to move on and live well.

Anya felt as if everything he was saying was directed at her. Although she hadn't mentioned her children. Even though many cases prove that what he said was indeed true, that many women in the world marry for status or financial need even nowadays, she still felt at that moment the meaning of the word: "stereotype". In that instant, Anya felt the prejudice dripping between Martin's thin lips. She felt very proud of her history, for being a single mother, Brazilian, for having suffered a lot along her journey until she was at that moment sitting there with him, so, even though she was a self-confident person, and informed of her rights and duties, she still felt demeaned when people commented on her for having had children so young, and being a single mother at the age of 34, as if she had run away from society's standards, as if she had made a mistake.

Martin said that she enjoyed traveling with her friends, detailed some trips she took, for example to Las Vegas, and emphasized how much her friends who were married regretted being at home taking care of the kids and the dog.

- How come? Norway is such a developed country, women are so liberal, and everyone is so independent?

- No, I know many who imprison their husbands and when they reach a certain age, like 30, they do not choose a man for love, nor for money, most of them have their own money, the ones who care about money just want to increase their fortune, expand their company, but most of them choose a breeder, they choose a profile. Like who chooses a date in a phone app:

- This one is single, no kids, good job, over 30, will suit the child I want to have. They even know where they are going to buy a house, how many children they are going to have, what their names will be, if they are going to have a dog. I'm out! Every time I stay with a person more than twice, I pay a lot of attention to see if they want something more, if I stay with this person for a while, and they tell me they are in love, that's the end of it. I end it as soon as possible.

Anya listened to all this attentively and started to get up to say goodbye, she said that it was getting late and that she needed to go home. He then announced that he would accompany her to the parking lot. The two of them left Zacharias Bryggen, in front of the Fisketorget, the most famous place for tourists in Bergen, where they set up tents selling seafood and all sorts of typical Norwegian delicacies.

It was already late, 1 am, and Anya was going to work very early in the morning. The fish stalls were closing, the owners were washing the floor with a hose, leaving puddles on the sidewalk. Martin then put it on her back and ran across the Fisketorget. She laughed loudly and asked him to put her back down, and she screamed! Then he put her down in front of the traffic light, in the direction of Torgallmening Square, where the two of them had been, at the Chinese restaurant, and they were both laughing a lot.

Anya was a little disconcerted that he was so spontaneous, she found it very different and interesting that a Norwegian acted that way. Mistake number 1. They then walked to the parking lot and said goodbye.