I pulled up at the restaurant where Frank worked at five to one and got out of the car. I wandered in and looked around for Frank. A waiter came up to me, recognised me, and began chatting about the morning shift (like I cared?).

'We've been flat out this morning, man', he said. I nodded and cocked my head to one side, trying to spot Frank.

'Are you here to have lunch with Frank?' the waiter decided to ask me.

'Nah, I came to pick him up', I answered.

'Ah, yeah, he said that he and Judy had had a fight. He better get out of here soon then. I'll get him for you' he said and ran off into the kitchen.

I walked out the front of the restaurant and lit a cigarette. Frank came running out a few minutes later.

'Derek, I am so sorry...' he said and looked apologetically at me.

'Cool, let's go', I answered.

'No, I mean... I don't need to go home anymore...' he said. This had happened before too. The fight must have been called off. Begging must have led to forgiveness. I tried to decide whether to be angry about the fact that I had been dragged out on a Sunday or whether to be grateful of the fact that I would not have to use the excuses I had planned to ensure that Frank did not turn my apartment into a den of grime in the ensuing weeks. I thought for a few minutes. Meanwhile Frank stood and looked at me.

'Do you want to go and get something to eat anyway?' I asked him, opting for the less offensive course of action.

'Sure' he replied and began to walk to my car.

The next morning I was sitting in my office at the university. I had the dejected essays before me and tried, for the tenth time in two weeks, to get a start on the marking before my class the following day. There was a knock on the door.

'Come in', I yelled out. One of my students walked in. I tried desperately to remember the girl's name. She usually sat at the back of one of my tutorials and chewed gum. The only remark I had heard come out of her mouth the entire semester was a commentary on a film she had seen over a weekend- one of those PG rated, Hollywood films that, to my knowledge, no intelligent person would admit to having paid $7.50 to go and see.

'Hi Derek. I was wondering if I could speak to you?', she asked and began to sit down on a spare chair I had in the office.

'Sure,' I replied.

'Um, you see...it's about my essay', she said. I looked at the pile of essays before me. Good God...

'I, uh, well... I haven't handed it in yet', she confessed. This placed me in a quandary. I did not care. Hadn't even started marking the damn things.

'Oh', I replied. 'Have you finished it?'.

'Yeah, I've got it here', she answered. She handed me the essay.

'Ok, don't worry about it this time', I said and took the essay. She got up, thanked me and walked out of the room. The cinema studies department always had had a reputation for leniency. Probably accounted for its high enrolment. But now all I had was an extra essay to mark and I wondered about whether any of the other kids hadn't handed theirs in either. Man, maybe this pile would keep growing for weeks!

I looked outside the window. It was my seventh year here. The place had not changed apart from the faces of the people walking through the halls. When I had come here, straight out of school, the university carried a sense of mystery about it. There was this undefined freedom that comes with the territory of being a university student. You feel invincible and ready to espouse to others the grandeur of your freedom. It fades quickly enough. After a few nights sprawled on a floor after too much beer. After the first essay that one receives from their tutor. University is a place where even the most exceptional begin to feel minute and ordinary. I was never that exceptional even before I came here.

I had fallen in love in my first year of university. I was sitting in a class when in she walked. My teenage heart had been aching for love and I was determined to make her mine. Her intelligence amazed me. I pledged undying love to her and we made all sorts of elaborate plans to marry as soon as we were out of university. This was it. I was convinced. I had never felt this way. It was all too much. I felt like the luckiest person on the face of the earth. You can guess how the rest of that story goes. We've all had it happen to us.

The memory that is foremost in my mind of her- will stay with me until the end of my existence, is of a night we spent together in our first months. It was a cold winter night and we headed out to a party. The usual mingling and drinking took place. Dizzy with alcohol, I looked in amazement at the beauty next to me. The way she smoked a cigarette, the way she held herself, the way her hair fell around her face. It was a moment of pure bliss. She was a goddess. When one has glimpsed that feeling, it is difficult to envisage life without it. To think that one can attend movies, parties and gatherings alone; without her. To think that she will not be there tomorrow or the day after. The realisation that she is really gone. Forever. That there will never be another opportunity to hold her or kiss her. Thinking of the last time that you touched her. Of the last time that she said 'I love you'. Of all the promises that were made. But that first time you do not envisage an end. You are invincible and unconquerable. The world is yours. Just that once.

So that Summer I decided that I was heading off and not returning until university started the following year. It was a brash decision, but it needed to be done. I woke up a week into the break up, looked at my ceiling and leapt out of bed. I couldn't handle it. Everything reminded me of her. The only solution was to pack and drive far, far away. I was sharing a flat with a couple of friends at the time. That afternoon I went down to the bank, withdrew all my life savings and left enough for the guys to cover the rent for the Summer. I left a note (it said -' Have left. Will be back before school starts.'). And then I drove away.

I don't recall if I had any plans for a destination, yet knowing myself as I do, I am sure that there were no plans to speak of. I drove first to town about 3 hours away where a friend from high school was then living. I stayed with her for a few weeks. When she was at work I sat around the backyard, read and took drives around the town. I met a guy down at the supermarket who ran the local pub. He offered me some work as a bartender, so I did that for a few nights but got bored quickly. My main problem in life has always been the fact that I get bored. I may have got far further in life if I could have found and stuck to a goal or a plan. As it is, I could and still cannot ever decide. The only reason I went on to do my Masters thesis was for that very reason, a complete lack of vision of what was to come next. It seemed appropriate to simply extend the process of decision.

And so today I still sit in the university room and write, answer the phone and occasionally take a tutorial of bored first year students who thought that a cinema studies major would allow them to avoid the task of research of any kind. Students (mainly males) who harbour aspirations of becoming filmmakers and who believe that they have the talent to succeed in an industry where only a few can become successful. I have only met one female, in all my time at the university, who had the same level of dilussion about her chances of success. And its funny, that females are usually the more perceptive and the ones who have better ideas- its just the cockiness that they lack.

Back home.