The Day Before You Came

“No change is ever easy, especially the change from a boy to a man. Back then, I didn’t have any idea how painful the change would be.”

The son of an affluent father in post-communist country, the unnamed protagonist first discovers the utter magnetism of girls at the tender age of nine. As a teen, the sheer power and pull of sex begins to shape his life, leading to sexual encounters—some magical, some empty—with girls he first knew as playmates and with new girls he meets. As he grows up and begins to puzzle the nature and behavior of girls, he finds girlfriends can’t give him what he really wants, what he comes to crave: slutty, dirty sex. No girl who catches his eye is off-limits for an encounter—not his friends’ girls, not even his brother’s. His unfettered desires coupled with all the money he needs mean clubs and brothels gladly open their doors to the heaven that is paid sex, while his kind and decent girlfriends are labeled as potential future mothers—on the other side of the big wall, as he comes to regard them. Fueled by cocaine and alcohol, his life descends into “drink, snort, and fuck.” As he loses all respect for women and most everyone around him, the love and loyalty of his family will be tested to the full. Who or what might motivate him to get off this crazy merry-go-round of indulgence and disconnection? Is there a way back? Does he have the wisdom to recognize it if there is?