So you don't have to figure it out yourselves I'll admit straight out that I, Tom Collins (my parents had a sense of humor), am a strange dude. Perhaps the strangest aspect of my life is that I'm a jack of all trades, master of almost none. For example:
--I really got into Houdini-like magic such as getting out of handcuffs, straitjackets, underwater breath holding, etc. I was pretty good and as a teen actually gave some performances -- until I almost drown, which killed it for me.
--I trained to be an MMA fighter and won three matches against low level competition by perfecting a few select holds, kicks, and punches. Then I was matched against a mid-level fighter; that didn't come out so well, so I gave up MMA.
--I practiced Rogaining (an orienteering sport of long distance cross-country navigation, involving both route planning and navigation) and entered a few competitions. I did well in basic contests, but when I fell off a cliff (fortunately with no permanent damage) during a higher level event I quit that too.
--I developed a fascination for handguns. When I was 18 I acquired three using less than legal means and went to a shooting range and actually got quite proficient with all three as well as several more from other shooters at the range. My father (who's a prosecutor) found out about the three guns, confiscated them, and turned them into the police in a no questions asked surrender program.
My academic life was -- fortunately -- a little different than with the activities described above. While I gave up on French after two years in High School, and avoided social studies courses as best that I could, I was actually a star in math and science and diligently pursued those courses without interruption and ended up graduating cum laude from a good engineering school.
I never did have any trouble getting dates with good to great looking women; however, my love life took a bad turn not because I quit but because I was dumped. I had been unceremoniously dumped by my university long-term girlfriend Brittany a month before graduation. I don't even know if it was for another guy because she never explained it to me; she essentially told me "life isn't fair -- deal with it!" (At least she did it in person and not by text). It was really painful because I was convinced that she was the love of my life and I -- apparently naively -- thought that she felt the same way.
My eventual wife Melissa, and I, were both on the rebound when we met shortly after we graduated from college the same year. While Melissa was not entirely forthcoming about her situation from what she has related to me her scenario was similar to mine. She thought that Peter was the love of her life only to be told a few days before graduation (although apparently he was nicer about it than Brittany had been) that he was moving to Europe for a job and he was not inviting her along because there was no hope for a long term relationship.
The two damaged puppies that Melissa and I were when we met were apparently desperately trying to salvage our egos and dreams. We thought that our instant connection was true love and not something transitory that ultimately would lead us both to ask if we had "settled" instead of fulfilled our romantic yearnings. During our courtship there were a number of things about her that didn't strike me all that great (and I'm sure just as many about me to her), but I was able to excuse or rationalize them in my mind because I was so desperate for this relationship to work out. The sex with Melissa was good, though not on the same level as with Brittany even though I tried hard. It was not until four years after our wedding, when I went to psychologist Susan Fields that she put things in proper perspective giving me (too late) the advice that I should have had after Brittany but before Melissa:
"Tom, being able to compromise is the hallmark of a good relationship. However, if you are justifying or rationalizing many things about the person that you're in a relationship with," which was exactly my situation, "especially less than optimum sex, then you're settling for something that won't last. Or even if it does last past expectations, you'll never be happy. Many fear they will end up alone and so they stay with someone who doesn't ring their chimes. Don't make excuses. Make your exit and find someone who doesn't require you to rationalize."
It wasn't that Melissa and I were in any way nasty to each other, or treated each other badly. Except for the few months after we met but before we wed there just wasn't any spark. Even after five years of marriage we had had only three significant arguments, all about the same thing.
The arguments that Melissa and I had were over the attention being paid to, or by, other people, Harmon Major in Melissa's case, Colleen Fleming in mine.
Our first argument was when I thought that not only was Harmon paying too much attention to Melissa, but that she seemed to be eating it up. After an acrimonious confrontation we calmed down, and after a couple of subsequent encounters between Melissa and Harmon that were not as objectionable to me we seemed to be on an even keel.
The second argument was when Melissa though the same thing about me and Colleen that I thought about her and Harmon. Again, we calmed down after a few days and after a couple of subsequent encounters between Colleen and me were not as objectionable to Melissa things were OK.
The third argument was a repeat of the first two where we both expressed concerns at the same time, me about Harmon and her about Colleen. We resolved that more quickly and enthusiastically than the first two.
There was one major difference between how I looked at Harmon and how Melissa looked at Colleen. I thought that Harmon was a complete asshole and couldn't for the life of me figure out how any woman could be attracted to him because he was big, bellicose, and homely (from a male perspective, but it seemed that several women I know liked his looks), whereas Melissa liked Colleen; she was just challenged by her good looks (did I mention that Colleen was a babe?).
The third argument had been more than six months ago before the meat of my story.
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Melissa worked as the head computer librarian at the small private college in our city of residence. She almost never travelled on business.
I worked as an energy resources engineer; I had expertise with respect to all of oil, natural gas, coal, peat, wind, solar, tidal, hydro, and geothermal, although I wasn't an expert in any one of them. I made initial assessments for my employer, a large multi-national corporation called Enerzeet. Inc. I did preliminary evaluations in geographic areas (after studying all relevant physical data about them) and based upon my assessments Enerzeet sent in experts in the energy areas I had flagged. I was very successful in my job, at the time of this story never having been wrong in my initial assessments. I travelled on business more than I cared to but never for more than a week at a time.
I enjoyed the actual work I did for Enerzeet; much less enjoyable was the need to deal with the problematic and ultra-competitive personalities of some of my co-workers. Harmon Major also worked for Enerzeet but in accounting so at least I didn't normally have to interface with that asshole at work. There were plenty of other assholes, however. Perhaps the biggest asshole was Eric Magnum who likely would have run over his grandmother to advance his career, and unfortunately I did sometimes have to interface with Eric.
I was sent to do an assessment in Mindanao, the second largest island in the Philippines, defining a land area of about 94,630 square kilometers. Unfortunately, the asshole Magnum was running operations in the Far East at that time. I researched not only the normal physical aspects of the area, such as topography, satellite photos, wind speeds, ocean currents, river flow, average temperatures, and average solar insolation, but also the political climate. I was very concerned by the fact that there were Islamic terrorists (known as Abu Sayyaf) in the area who had been known to kidnap Westerners. Eric assured me that they would be no problem since they hadn't been active for a while in the area that I was travelling to and that he would hire private security to escort me. Even though I was apprehensive, I went along (primarily because I had to).
I found the private security that Eric had hired to be a little sketchy. The commander of the six man team did speak decent English, however, and seemed professional even if his men were rag-tag. The commander had the unusual name of Alab Albalorio, and he told me that he lived in Davao, the largest city on Mindanao.
I had only been doing my evaluations for about 48 hours when disaster struck. As I was taking solar insolation measurements we were approached by a group of half a dozen rough looking dudes with AK-47s, two of whom were a rare breed of Filipino men -- they had beards. The bearded leader and Alab talked; I didn't understand the language but I did understand the word "Magnum," which was used more than a few times. The two leaders exchanged handshakes, and my bodyguards simply left (with my equipment). In bad English the interlopers identified themselves as Abu Sayyaf and as if I hadn't already figured it out said that I was their hostage.
I walked with my captors through rain forest about six hours, with a few breaks, before we came to a compound with a ramshackle house and a couple of out-buildings. I was put in one of the out buildings and shackled. Fortunately my captors weren't the brightest people in the world and their search of me was half-assed. They had confiscated my wallet and cellphone but hadn't located the mini tool pouch that I kept in my left sock that had small tools that I needed to adjust and repair the finicky solar insolation measurement equipment that I used.
I realized that I could be killed at any time, and that I likely wouldn't be eating well and would gradually lose my strength, so I planned on gathering information for a couple of days, test remove my shackles using the tools in my mini pouch taking advantage of my teenage magician skills, and then make a break for it.
My plan got accelerated when around midnight my first night in captivity three of the terrorists opened up the hut door, pushed a woman in, and shackled her a few feet away from me. Once they left I started a conversation with the woman; I hadn't got a real good look at her in the modest light that the terrorists had used to see into the hut, but she was tall, blond, and obviously a Westerner.
