I wandered around in a daze for the next week. I went over it and over it. I even played out the sex in my mind again and again. Her touch. It seemed as if she was hungry for someone to kiss, to connect with. I thought about how I could meet up with her again, but I wanted it to seem casual. That’s when I started to hunt out the gallery openings. My main source was Event Guide so I’d call up Austin and get him to come along with me. Sometimes Austin would bring me in under his wing – he had a few connections but I didn’t want to crowd him.

I tried to put Jenny out of my mind while I began to hunt down interesting work. I’d done a business course after my stint in art college. This combined with my eye for the aesthetic seemed to be in my favour as I went from interview to interview. I quickly came to face the cold truth, that if I wanted to take on an interesting job then I was going to have to settle for a low salary. For the most part I didn’t let this sad fact deter me. I kept at it. The day I turned down an entry-level job at Microsoft with decent enough pay for a rather vague administrative position in an arts centre brought it home to me. I started working for a magazine. It was meant to be a literary affair but I soon realized that they were a shower of cowboys. All they were interested in was selling advertising space in the magazine to subsidize our wages. It was more like a community newspaper than a publication of genuine merit. I soon got fed up chasing sponsorship, it felt personal, like I was somehow a charity case. To make matters worse, no decent writers were submitting to the magazine, so we had to write some of the work ourselves to fill the pages. I had to take on extra shifts at the Crown. The place was permanently jammed with suits stuffing toasted-cheese sandwiches down their throats mid-pints, and tourists looking for a taste of real Dublin. The music was always that bit louder than necessary but I had learnt quickly how to take orders from stricken and confused Spaniards asking for half-pints of Guinness. I had no bother working out what the suits wanted. They all drank Heineken.

I missed her.