At Least We Have Good Weather: A Life of Love and Loss

Chapter 24

After spending the last 2 years moving from job to job, I managed to fulfill many of my ambitions of working for some of the brightest and best. I forged out careers as a writer for magazines, I worked for TV, hosted shows, acted in a few movies (more on that later), I gave The Burg life...I had made friends (and enemies), but by August 2006 I was working for my hero at a record label that he helped build. I had made it to where I wanted to be...I felt I could finally take a breath.

I did, however, have a few ends I needed to tie up in order to fully focus on this next chapter of my life. Ironically, the first would be deciding between this job and another offer that was on the table.

I had literally been at Sony BMG a week before I was approached by a few key figures from my magazine days. As I had continued to write for them on a freelance basis over the last year, and also worked on a secretive new magazine that was about to launch, I was officially offered the job of Entertainment Editor for Zoo magazine, the South African version of a popular UK men's magazine.

The timing was awkward, and while I gave the offer some serious thought, I ultimately turned it down, going with my gut that it would be a mistake. It turned out to be the right decision, as the magazine would cease production a year later.

One of the funnier stories that came out of all of this was the day I went to speak to the editors about the position. They were based in exactly the same office I had spent my year with the Heat and FHM crew, so I got to see some old faces, including a tall Amazonian-like Zimbabwean lady named Glenda. We had actually been friends since my infamous Project Fame press conference days.

On that day I went in, I happened to be wearing my favourite cap. It was a military style cap that I had picked up on sale just a few weeks earlier, but had quickly become one of my favourite items, especially since I had had more than a few compliments on it.

When I saw Glenda, she playfully took it off my head and said I'm never getting it back. Haha...girls can be so silly sometimes. I said she could wear it until I'm done with my meeting. That was probably my first mistake.

Throughout the entire meeting I couldn't stop thinking about my cap. I was actually growing anxious for this job offer to come to an end so I could go get it back.

When it did end I made a bee-line to Glenda's desk. She continued to tease me about never getting it back. Almost like a school bully, she hid it behind her back, held it too high for me to reach, which wasn't hard to do since I'm short, and eventually she stuck it in a place guys are not allowed to touch.

It became so awkward, and I was running out of time, as I was actually on my lunch break from my new job at Sony, and didn't want to arouse suspicion about my whereabouts.

Defeated, I left without my cap. I kept emailing Glenda, saying we must hook up soon and catch up properly. She agreed, and invited me to dinner at her place.

For the next few days, all I could think about was getting that damn cap back.

Eventually the night of the dinner came, and I went to her house, with retrieval being my primary goal. The evening was nice enough, but she kept avoiding the question about my cap. And yet again, I left defeated.

We messaged each other back and forth, and eventually the topic of her work visa came up. She was stressing that she might have to go back to Zim, jokingly saying unless she got married "or something like that".

So in a final attempt to get my cap back, I proposed (if you'll excuse the pun) that if it was just for legal purposes, I would be happy to marry her as I had nothing else going on in my life.

Yup. I had just offered marriage in an attempt to get back my own property. She actually toyed around with the idea for a few days, before eventually declining.

I never saw Glenda again after that, and we would actually have a disagreement over something I did about a year later. But boy, do I miss that damn military cap. I was never able to find another one remotely close to it either.

Two months into my time at Sony Music, it was once again birthday time. However, with a somewhat new lease on life, I decided to try at least one more time in acknowledging my birthday.

What better way to celebrate it, than with my first official Birthday dinner!

From brand new colleagues who knew nothing about my past, to old online friends I had known for what seemed like forever and even to clichéd old work associates who promised they would love to stay in touch, I was going to go big on this dinner.

It really was the perfect invite list for a meaningful dinner...

Through the help of one of my new work mates, we organized a good restaurant and booked about 20 seats.

Nervous that I didn't even have enough money in the bank to pay for myself I knew this would be a disaster...but hey it was my birthday, surely people would pitch in for a dinner right?

I arrived at the restaurant about two hours before the dinner was meant to start and ordered a Coke Light, which took exactly those two hours to drink.

In constant fear of a repeat of my birthday barbecue disaster six years ago, I was on the edge of paranoia.

Out of the 20 people I invited, 15 showed up. That was a HUGE success!

Out of the 15 people who showed up, five I had known for less than six months, four of them I was meeting for the first time, and four of them I am still in touch with today.

My most awkward moment: texting a friend at the table asking him if I could borrow money to pay for my meal. Yeah, real classy of me right? As I wasn't back on my feet yet, it probably wasn't the best time to host a birthday dinner, but by my own standards, it was a pretty ok level of success. I was always disappointed that my old Heat colleagues, (including Glenda) who said they would come, didn't show up. Especially considering that I was at a restaurant around the corner from their offices.

My role at Sony was that of an online social media guru...and I was brought on board in preparation for all the exciting prospects the future of online media presented to us.

For the first few months however, nobody had a clue what I actually did, other than I was "Dave's guy".

It certainly was an awkward start, and soon, a little thing known as Facebook was about to explode and change everyone's lives.

But before Facebook, we met people on a social media platform known as MySpace. And because of MySpace, I met Naj...

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