Procrastinet

I Write Because If I Don't... Part III

filed under: Procrastinet Guests

A series of Notes from the Third Shift - purgatorial musings from late night desk worker Agilda Peas. Previously: Part I, Part II.

[Editor's Note: Yeah, so I'm a bit behind in posting these - this one is from the wee small hours of the morning on election night. Election night morning. Whatever. Anyway - the election night angle is a red herring and the real story is pretty darn universal, in a girl-meets-boy kinda way. Unlike prior episodes, this one's a long one, and has a point. Enjoy.]

Time Knows a Thing or Two About Lice

Wednesday November 3rd, 3:30AM

I have to write because if I don’t people will start asking me for things. I’m going to try not to look at the clock. Like when I’m in the ring and I try not to look at the clock counting down from 3 minutes. The best part about that though is that the 30 second bell rings and you know, without having to look, that you have 30 seconds left. Tonight is not so bad though. Maybe it’s because of the elections that the evening has gone by so quickly. I’m not sure. Everyone has been buzzing around wondering aloud about the fate of the states. I know what’s going to happen. Don’t tell anyone.

Now I’m chewing on a lollipop stick. it’s getting kind of gross. I am already bored of this stream of consciousness bullshit. I am tired. I want to go home. My body hurts. I almost had a panic attack this weekend because I was alone in the Lexington staff house and it was kind of horrible. Maybe the night is going by so fast because I still haven’t adjusted to daylight savings.

Questions questions. Fuck me, there’s a story coming through my pores. It’s a sad one. It ends badly.

It was such a bore, the sitting. Staring into the computer screen like one of Romero’s Un-dead. Hour after hour after painful, nearly intolerable hour. “My whole life,” she thought, “My whole life leading up to this moment.” Tick tock tick. Second hands moving like toxic sludge over jagged rocks.

She began to imagine her body lying, half dead and limp on the razor sharp bottom of a dark ravine somewhere. She didn’t know how she had gotten there or what she was wearing or any of the specific types of things you know when recounting a bona fide memory. This wasn’t memory at all it was fantasy. At this particular moment, fantasizing about her half-dead, half-naked body, lying bloody and mangled, alone, at the bottom of a dark chasm somewhere “out there” was more enjoyable than contemplating the reality of her situation trapped inside this taupe labyrinth of fiberboard work stations.

Tick. The reality. Tock. Her situation. Tick tock. HER LIFE. The glare off the computer screen cut through her pupils like an X-acto blade. She barely noticed it any more. She’d been staring at this screen for four hours without blinking once, she thought, although she knew it wasn’t possible. She had blinked once, maybe twice, but so what? That only meant her eyes were getting dried out from all the staring. It didn’t mean she was cognizant. It didn’t mean she had she taken any of it in. It didn’t mean that the material staring back at her was any more than just McDonalds for the mind, cyber junk for a brain so inactive it confused boredom with hunger.

“Lose 18 Pounds In 12 Days!” This registered but she didn’t actually believe a person should lose that much weight in such a short period of time. It was unhealthy and probably involved taking some sort of Ephedra-type herbal supplement that might give her palpitations or worse, lead her to an early grave. “Customized Mascara For YOUR Lashes!” There was a questionnaire and she took it, only to discover that the mascara, which had been “specially” designed for her lashes by this website, was almost identical to the one she bought at her neighborhood drug store. Yes, hers had been massed produced to fit the needs of every Plain Jane consumer whore living on this or probably any other continent, but could lashes really differ that much from person to person? She figured some people had more of them, some people had shorter ones but a lash is a lash is a lash. Right?

The Internet mascara also happened to be $15 plus shipping and, while she did get to customize even the case to suit her fancy (there were three choices, she chose the least offensive: something that resembled Zebra hide), it just didn’t seem worth it. At her drug store down the block, she was charged $3.50 and, on the off chance that she was forced to purchase her item under duress, happened to be mildly intoxicated at the time of purchase, or had simply executed bad color judgment due to poorly positioned fluorescent lighting fixtures, they also allowed for cosmetic returns. “Nope,” she thought. “I’ll pass.”

Bullshit. All of it. The Internet was a time waster, she decided. Even the so-called legitimate online news resources gave her nothing but overly dramatic tag lines and content so lame it seemed to limp across the screen, weeping and sniveling like some sort of manipulative invalid Disney character intent upon making her feel. “Saddam’s Sons On The Run: Their Final Hours!” Apparently, some Special Ops bad-ass had discovered a briefcase lying next to Uday’s (or was it Qusay’s) corpse in the bathroom where they had finally fallen. She couldn’t remember everything that was on the laundry list of items they had found inside that briefcase, so she went back to the website where she had read the article and tried to find it again. No dice. All she remembered was that there was some Viagra and two women’s purses inside. “Women’s purses?” she contemplated, wondering what they looked like. Were they designer? Were they knockoffs? The kind of cheap imitation Kate Spade or Luis Vuitton she and her friends had been known to purchase from illegal Bahamanian aliens with shiny black heads, who lurked, shifty and suspicious, behind wobbly folding tables all along 6th avenue; casting furtive glances over boney shoulders, constantly checking to make sure the fuzz wasn’t in hot pursuit. It would be sort of funny, she thought if even with all those billions and billions of dollars between them, Saddam’s evil offspring were still buying the cheap shit for their lady friends. Funny, but not all too surprising in a country that holds women responsible for getting themselves raped, further punishing such “criminal” acts by raping them some more.

On the web page there had been a picture of Qusay (or was it Uday?) dancing with an unknown woman. They barely held hands and stood about four feet away from each other. She was looking down and away from him; his body was contorted to the point that his torso looked severely shrunken and unmanly. He stared at the floor. The woman was not attractive, as far as could be deduced from the picture and he looked less than enthused about having to be there dancing, in front of cameras with this slut he’d much rather be raping and mutilating in semi-private. The article said something about the briefcase items seeming more useful in preparing for “a night of disco dancing” than “a flight from justice.”

Disco dancing, justice, bathroom homicide and bodies riddled with bullets shot from guns fired by US Army Special Operatives. So many things to think about on this otherwise boring night! She settled on “rape,” “justice” and “disco dancing” because any time she thought about “Special Ops,” she thought about him.

She thought about him and the poster he had tacked to the bulletin board directly across from her showing two perfectly adoptable kitties that she could not, would not take. Four months ago she had made him promise that before he sent them off somewhere awful (such as “to death”) he would come to her first. And he had promised that he would. Enough had happened in those four months that he no longer felt comfortable, she figured, coming directly to her for anything. So instead he put up a poster, trying to reach as many people as possible though she knew he wouldn’t be happy dropping those cats in the lap of a perfect stranger.

He seemed so sweet and sensitive on that bus. She should have known better. The bus was filled with about 50 drunken Dominican men who’d have made Mike Tyson seem evolved. Sweet was hardly this boy’s reputation. This boy’s reputation sucked and she had been warned. She had been warned that he was an asshole, a pig even, who had been heard calling his girlfriend a “fat bitch” over the phone while sitting in his cube at work. Saying it so loud that his co-worker in the adjoining cube heard him and felt the need to tell her co-worker who sat out on the floor. Saying it with so much meaning that his co-worker’s co-worker, who felt so passionately about men using the “f” word to modify the “b” word when directly addressing their significant women, decided to pass the info on to her co-worker who sat in the last row by the window and who also happened to be moderately infatuated with him.

“I’m not all bad ass. I’m really sweet and sensitive.” Poke, poke. He gave her a little jab-tickle. Tick tock. That night, time moved too fast. She wanted to get stuck in traffic or maybe a torrential rainstorm and be forced to shack up somewhere for the evening. Didn’t happen. But they did talk a ton, flirt like mad and eventually pass out next to each other. By the time they got off the bus somewhere in the north Bronx, it was 2AM and freezing. It had been one of those beautiful early April days: warm and sunny with a slight breeze coming from the East. At 2PM her outfit was super cute. By 2AM she was terribly under-dressed and shivering, hiding behind a mail-box, attempting to shield herself from the wind. The two other guys who’d gone to Philly with them were pacing, with hands jammed in pockets while they waited for a cab. One of the other ones liked her, she thought, but she didn’t like him. He was loud, a little offensive and had a stupid laugh. “Clueless” is the word most informed women would use. At the time, he also walked with a limp and she had to be honest, the limp was not sexy. Months later, after hip replacement surgery corrected his imperfection, she would start to wonder if he hated her for choosing Mr.Sweet-and-Sensitive over him.

His surgery had kept him out of the office for about eight weeks. When he finally returned to work, he was a good 20 pounds lighter and, of course, missing the characteristic limp that had pretty much defined who he was to her for the two years they had shared an office together. In his absence she and Mr. Sweet-and-Sensitive had gone through all requisite phases of a doomed work romance. By the time he returned, all phases were complete.

She somehow got the notion that, in his thinner, non-gimp state, the Other One was gaining confidence, bravado. He seemed to think himself more a catch. The first day he walked through the office door she waved at him, smiling, and greeted him with a “Welcome back! You look fantastic!” She did mean it. He did look fantastic. He didn’t look so fantastic that she would ever consider fucking him but he looked better than he had that Spring day in Philly. And he was a good guy. Truth be told, he was a Mensch. He had offered her his coat in the arena. He had switched seats with her on the bus ride back because the guy she was stuck sitting next to was snoring so loud she could barely hear herself think. This was the switch that put her right next to Sweet and Sensitive for the remaining 2 hour trip.

She had made fun of the laugh once or twice, yes, but she’d never made fun of the limp. She liked him she just wasn’t attracted to him. She really was happy that his surgery went well and that he had returned relatively unscathed. But she sounded too chipper when she said “Hello,” because she wasn’t really saying hello. And when he returned her Hello, he said it in such a way as to make her wonder, “Does he think I’m regretting it? Is he thinking ‘See, she wants me now cuz I’m thin and I walk like a man. But she can’t have me cuz she already fucked my boy. Stupid bitch’?”

Over the next few weeks she would say hi too him on six or seven different occasions, each time attempting to gauge his subtext. “OK, that time he was totally making a statement about how he can’t be nice to me because I fucked his friend. That’s such bullshit,” or “Is he coming on to me? I think he thinks that’s OK” etcetera. She was incorrect on each occasion. He didn’t give a shit about her. He gave even less of a shit about what had happened between her and his friend. He probably wasn’t even very good friends with his friend. In fact, Sweet-and-Sensitive had told her several times that he thought this guy was a simp. Cool enough but “Jesus, he’s fucking loud!”

And then it hit her: co-workers are just strangers with whom you work. You never know these people and they never know you. Sure, they know the Work You, the you who strolls in on time wearing corporate casual clothing and comfortable, appropriate work shoes. They know the you who makes funny, appropriate work jokes at the coffee pot in the morning and eats lunch in the cafeteria like a friendless high school junior. They know the you who would never curse too loud or send out emails with links to partisan political websites. They know and they see the you that you make available to them. The you that can keep you employed.

And then it all blows up in your face one night at some party where a few of your co-workers converge to drink beer and talk about, what else, work? And when the topic of work becomes all too staid and some ignorant shit with beer in hand says something ignorant like, “My God if we talk about work for more second I’m going to scream! Can somebody PLEASE change the subject?” And someone, most likely the person you happen to be standing next to in a dark corner or over by the window, does. This person might want to talk about the partisan political party they can’t bring up at work or they might want to make an inappropriate joke or, and this is the worst, they might want to talk about the non-work you. The you who drinks excessively and smokes marijuana every night so that her racing thoughts don’t keep her awake. The you who works out five days a week because the thought of getting fat again is a nightmare. The you who hasn’t had sex in nine months, made out with anyone in six. The you who is an actor or a painter or a singer on the side. The you who HATES having to censor herself every time she walks into that building in the morning. The you who boxes.

“That’s right you box too.” He said.

“That’s right, you box. Too. I heard.” She nodded. She was already drunk.

“So come on, give me a little jab cross hook. Come on, tough girl, throw something at me.” He was in fighting stance, ready to spar. She thought she was blushing. She didn’t want to be blushing.

“No no no.” she said, “I don’t want to hurt you.” She faked all seriousness. He laughed. She had never really spoken to him much before that night. They had never had anything to say to each other. That night he said this, “You’re a lot different outside of work.” And that’s pretty much the point of all this. You’re always a lot different outside of work. What do people expect? He turned out to be A LOT different outside of work, outside of his apartment, outside of his clothing. Every time they hung out after that evening he became a slightly different person. At first, putting his best foot forward. Slowly getting sloppier and sloppier, until the whole situation was such a fucking pig-sty she couldn’t see the floor beneath her feet.

There were some high points to that story but for the most part it’s really too boring to retell. It’s been told a hundred times over by countless women all around the world. Girl meets boy, boy seems perfect when he is actually a louse. No girl wants to believe that her perfect boy is a louse so this one deludes herself into believing that he’s simply misunderstood. Boy finally proves to girl (only after bedding her down, of course) that he is, in fact, a louse and girl must suck it up and start from scratch. See? Boring. More boring even than reading about mascara or weight loss or the after-effects of a war fought so that yuppies can continue driving Hummers through the all too treacherous, mountain terrain of Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

She loved those cats but she hoped the Army might kill him.

Posted by rjt at December 9, 2004 04:56 PM