New Projects

So the lack of new stories up lately can be attributed to a multitude of distractions in my domesticated existence. Fortunatley some of those distractions are of a fun nature.  First off, I've started home brewing and have bottled and sampled a few batches of beer.  It's a thrilling thing for a guy who likes beer as much as me.  I'm attaching a photo of the first two beers I've made.  You'll notice if you're a fan of this blog that the beer names are references to some of the stories up here.  What fun.

Also, along with some friends I've launched a new photo-fiction project called Euclid's Negatives.  It's really a neat project and I can't wait to get some more stuff posted there.  We're also looking for some submissions so if you're into photography or short fiction drop me a line and let me know if you're interested in posting some work and expanding our project.  You can view it here.  http://euclidsnegatives.wordpress.com/

For now that is all, I'm working on a new short for this site, hopefully it'll be up soon.

Peace.

The Girl Chasing the Dragon

The Girl Chasing the Dragon

Incarcerated by circumstance and deflated by the daggers of lung puncturing realizations I sat at the desk in my hotel room.  I scribbled on a piece of hotel stationary; I then stared at the TV completely bereft of even the slightest modicum of interest.

I looked down at what I’d written;

When I hear the waves break, I can’t help but remember

about the way your eyes used to make me wonder.

If the hands of god would show themselves to me one day,

I was never prepared for the realization that I wouldn’t care.

I crumbled up the piece of paper and threw it in the trash.  I thought about how much I hated poetry for a second and then set my scope of hatred on my writing abilities.  “What a fuck…” I whispered listlessly.

As that sentiment floated around my skull someone knocked at my door.  I got up and opened it, Grape and Arnie were standing in the hallway.  Grape was wearing a yellow t-shirt and standing in front of Arnie.  Arnie was wearing a robe over his jeans and t-shirt and twirling the edge of his rapidly growing moustache.  I flipped open the deadbolt so the door would prop up and walked back toward the desk, Sitting down I could see that Grape had propped the door with his foot.

“So what are you guys up for tonight? We gonna do something”  Grape was smiling, you couldn’t beat the good nature out of that kid with a tire iron.

I wanted to be in a bad mood but I couldn’t, I wanted to say something mean so that they’d both  go away and leave me alone but I looked at Grape and his blind optimism and Arnie with his bathrobe on, fulfilling his quest to do something weird at least once a day and I knew that I would be better off hanging out with them then I would be by myself.

I said the only thing that came to mind, “All I know is that I’d better start drinking or things are going to get real depressing in here.”  Arnie and Grape busted out laughing and came in the room. They sat on my bed and we fucked around and made fun of each other for a while before deciding on going to the Mexican restaurant across the street from the hotel.

When we got there we were the only people in the joint and we sat our asses on the stools in the middle of the bar.  Grape ordered us some Mexican bulldogs and explained to the bartender how to make them.  Within a few minutes we were guzzling booze and texting our bets for the Thursday night NFL game to our bookie.  I haggled with the Mexican bartender and got him to change the tv from soccer to the NFL game.  Things were about as good as they could be for a night on the road in southern Indiana.

For a while we sat there in peace, the only patrons of the establishment.  I read about the rebel Libyans capturing and killing Khadafi on my phone while sipping from my bulldog and wondered if it were better to be a dictator for 40 years having everything you want only to eventually be brutally killed or to just be a shlub in the free world and die peacefully in a nursing home, delusional with pants full of poop.

My pondering was interrupted by a new patron who sat down two stools to my left.  He nodded at me and ordered a bud light.  I looked over at Grape and Arnie who were in deep debate about which entrée was better, the gigante burrito or the two chimichanga platter.  I stared down at my phone and looked at the lines for the NHL games tomorrow and eaves dropped on the weird guy sitting to the left of me, he was giving someone directions to the restaurant, when he was finished he made a kissy noise and I rolled my eyes. 

In a few minutes the mystery woman showed up at the restaurant and sat down in between me and the weird guy.  They kissed in an overt and somewhat gross fashion for a few minutes while I looked over at Grape and Arnie.  I tried to make Grape switch seats with me but he refused.  Their love affair went on for a few minutes, the woman looked as though she had been very attractive once.  She was still pretty but she looked like a banana that was turning brown, she might still be edible but you’d have to cut off a few of the brown spots to get her down.  She kept turning and looking at us and then back to her guy. 

Eventually I saw the guy pass her something and she went off to the bathroom.  The guy tried to make conversation with me about the game and I obliged offering cliché responses that would hopefully end the conversation quickly but without any hurt feelings.  Soon enough the girl came back and sat between us.  I looked over at Grape and Arnie and made a funny face and motioned back to the couple sitting next to me.  They laughed and we talked about how shitty it was the Hartford Whalers weren’t an NHL team anymore.

After a moment, I looked back at the couple and noticed that captain weirdo was standing up holding the bruised banana girl up.  She was completely passed out.  I nudged grape and motioned towards them and again made a weird face.  Arnie and Grape both looked at them in awe and quickly turned away.  I couldn’t help but look again, hoping she had come to.

The guy caught me looking and offered up, “It’s her medication, she must have had a reaction to the beer.”  I looked at her glass that had barely been touched.

“Should we call a doctor or something?”  I tried to sound calm but having been an avid fan of the movie Trainspotting I was pretty sure this chick had just shot up in the bathroom and was totally fucked off her brain due to the injection of an unhealthy dose of heroin.

“No, No, It’s just a reaction she’ll be fine.”  With that he started talking to her and tapping her chin with an open slap.  Occasionally she would groan and let out a garbled word.

This went on for a few minutes that felt like fucking hours.  I was in anxiety crisis mode with nary a clue as what to do.  I looked at Grape and Arnie but they just kept their eyes trained on the TV knowing that they didn't want to get involved.  While all of this was going on, the citizens of this shithole town had decided that El Chihuahua was the fucking place to eat.  The god-damned place was full.

I felt the need to help these two idiots, “Do you need to get her somewhere?”

The man answered quickly, “Yeah if you could help me get her to her car…” 

I stood up without words and we began to make preparations to walk her to the car.  She was still completely incoherent.  He threw money at the bar and explained to the Mexican bartender that she had had a reaction to the medicine.  The bartender looked at him dumbfounded and nodded.  I elbowed Grape and gave him a look that said, “You’re going to fucking help me here, dear god I need your help.”  He obliged and the three of us held her by the arms and walked her through the now full restaurant as people stared at us, I can only imagine what thoughts were running through their heads. 

We got to the front door, Grape let go of her and held the door as me and her boyfriend helped her outside.  Grape started back inside and I motioned to him like a crazy man to continue on with me, I wanted no part of doing this alone.  He put his head down and obliged.  We got her to her late model  SUV and Grape and I held her as he clumsily opened the door.  He muttered something again about her medication and we completely ignored him, simply ready to be rid of this strange situation.  We put her into the front seat like a bag of groceries and she began to come to.

She looked at us with the strangest eyes I’ve ever seen and muttered, Thank you, Thank you.”  A milky combination of pukey water poured out of her mouth as she uttered the words.  Grape and I tried to be polite but quickly walked away from the madness and back inside.  We shielded ourselves from the glares of the patrons in the restaurant and found our seats at the bar.

I sat and stared at the TV and felt a complete numbness that was foreign to even me.  Feelings of confliction came over me, had I helped them or hurt them?  Would it have been better to call an ambulance?  I couldn’t help but wonder if I had saved them from jail or sentenced her to death.  It was a quick judgement, I didn’t know what else to do.  Grape and I looked at each other and started laughing, there was nothing else to do or say.

The guy came back and thanked us, he then threw some more money at the Mexican bar tender and ordered us a round of beers before he drove her off.  When the bartender sat them down I stared at mine.  Was he buying me off?  This beer was tainted by that strange guy and the overdosed woman.  Could I even drink it?  I finally took a sip and looked at Grape, “That’s good blood beer.”

He laughed and took a sip of his, he let it spill down his mouth and said, “Thank you, thank you.”  We all laughed and watched the rest of the game. 

We all lost our bets but the gigante burritos were delicious.

50% Sometimes we simply are who we are...

50%

I'm not much of a passenger; no matter if the driver is driving slowly or fast, cautiously or recklessly, I can't help but condemn his or her abilities in my mind.  I'm sure it's got more to do with control than anything else.  In any case, his driving was making me nervous  and I wanted out of the car bad.  Arnie was oblivious to my plight and kept zipping through the 'S' curves on a rural Kentucky highway.   I tapped my finger on my knee cap and stared out over the Ohio River.  Arnie started talking about something off color and I feigned interest, I even managed to coax out a nervous laugh. 

Lately, I just wanted out.  It wasn't just my job, or my wife, or the new responsibilities that came with fatherhood.  It was everything, and it was nothing, it was me.  The one thing I constantly yearned for that always seemed to be in diminishing supply was sleep.  If I could just find a place to sleep for a month or so, unbothered by another living soul I might be able to recuperate enough to continue on.  Alas, that would be nothing more than a sweeping fantasy.  Meaningful rest was my white whale, constantly submerged in a deluge of futile endeavors meant to keep me sustained.

We pulled into a small town and Arnie stopped for gas.  He left the door open while he pumped.  The console of the car continuously beeped in my ear.  Pulsating bursts of anger flowed through my brain until I felt like the only thing that could make my headache subside was stabbing something living until it died.

Arnie jumped back in the car and off we sped through town.  We passed by a funeral home and I saw an elderly man walking slowly to the entrance.  He looked beaten, as if age and missed expectations and extracted all the good from him and left him with the rot.  Internally my brain without notice prompted me to roll down my window and yell at him, "Haha! Someone you know just died!"

I rolled the window back up and calmly lit a cigarette.  I was a few drags in when I remembered I was in the car with someone else. 

Arnie looked at me with disgust, "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

"I'm not really sure."  I pondered that for a minute and Arnie managed a chuckle.

I looked down at my phone and saw some text messages from my wife.  I closed them without responding and started playing solitaire.  I won 3 out of 6 games as we made our way back to the hotel.

Searching Beneath One's Nose

Another entry in the Middling series.  This time only the main character is involved, and his name is exposed.  What fun! Props if you can discern the two lead singers his name is derived from...

Searching Beneath One’s Nose

342 minutes, 14.7 gallons of gas, 7 cigarettes, two bottles of water, two chili cheese burritos from Taco Bell, one emergency stop to take a dump at one of the dirtiest rest stops in the Midwest, and one vile case of swamp ass was all it took for me to get from Central Illinois to Columbus Ohio.  At times the drive felt like an odyssey and at times it felt as though it only lasted a second.  In either case, I was grateful to pull in to the hotel parking lot.  I had been to Columbus a lot, it was at least a quarterly trip for me and sometimes it was twice a quarter but I was somewhat excited because I was trying out a new hotel.  The beauty of trying the new hotel was that it was both brand new and in a similar geographic location to the last hotel I typically frequented.  This meant that all of the regular drinking and dining establishments would still be in play.

I walked into the hotel and immediately noticed two things, the wall with a waterfall on it and the hotel bar.  Traveling could be a real pain in the ass but there were a few perks, they ranged from not having to clean up after yourself and eating and drinking whatever the hell I wanted without the nagging vocal concerns of my wife Claudia.  Above all those, in my experience were hotel bars.  No other place welcomed such varied and weary souls.  Everyone inside a transient, longing to make their way home or to distance themselves from home; whether coming or going the feeling inside the bar was the same, a handful of folks in a communal miserable imbibe.  What horrific glory!

I checked in quickly, and I was pleasantly surprised by the gift bag of a water bottle, cheese crackers, and a snack size package of Twizzlers that I received due to my Honored Privilege Priority Member status.  Ah, the little things...

I made my way to the elevator with my bags of shit and hit the circular four with authority.  I had a feeling it was going to be a good night.

Once in the room I unpacked two days worth of clothing and life distracting paraphernalia; upon completion I set out to the bathroom and completed another dump to rid myself of the last of the chili cheese burritos.  I changed my sweaty t-shirt and headed down to the bar, hopeful that I would encounter some strange and miserable characters to both intrigue my fascination with the human condition and to hopefully make me feel slightly better about being a relative failure. 

The first thing I noticed was that the bar was small, it was a little disappointing but acceptable.  Luckily, it was mostly empty.  There was a well groomed asshole in a suit at one end chomping at a giant bloody steak and at the other end was what looked to be an over worked engineer drawing up schematics on napkins.  I sat in the middle, equally far away from the both of them. 

The bar maiden greeted me with an overture that was both phony and loud.  I was put off immediately.  “Hi! I’m Lymene, what’s your name?” 

Now it’s well known that a bartender should be friendly but they should be more than just that, with the amount of varied drunken bastards they had to deal with on any given night, being simply happy would not suffice.  The best bartenders I had experienced were able to fill three character types,  they should be one part chipper, one part pensive psychologist(for the real nuts like myself) and one part comedian.  Lymene, bless her heart was all chipper, and I wanted nothing to do with her.

I cleared my throat and spoke sheepishly, “Todd Armstrong, how are you?” 

She smiled big, “I’m fantastic! What can I get you?”

She was some kind of Asian and I stared at her for a moment trying to decide whether it was Philippino or Korean.  I stood silent staring at her before I snapped out of it.  “I’ll take a dirty martini up with Beefeaters and as many olives as you can fit on a stick.”  She skipped back to the bottles of hard liquor and my stomach rumbled.  Why did she have to be so fucking chipper? Blah.

I sat down and eyed the asshole eating the steak.  He was chomping away like he hadn’t eaten in weeks.  I dismissed him at once and looked to the other end of the bar and watched as the overworked engineer sketched furiously.  Lymene asked him twice if he wanted another beer while she was making my martini.  He replied in the negative both times. 

While Lymene had been shut down at that end of the bar, the starving suit at the other end had been happy to oblige her idiotic conversation starters.  They discussed the finest methods of making martini together; according to them the vermouth should be barely apparent, only swished around the glass in a finite amount just to give a hint of its flavor.  I felt as though my martini had been tainted before it even had a chance to slide down my gullet.  When Lymene had found a breaking point in her conversation with Dickface she brought me my martini.  “Can I get you something else; a menu?”

“No, thanks, my stomach is queasy; maybe in a bit.”

I did my best to ignore Lymene and the gluttonous steak guy, I fired up twitter on my iphone and read about a bunch of things that were so far beyond arms length that I began to wonder why I followed anything.  News was only news if you gave a shit, and I only did in widespread intervals. 

After a few sips of the martini an anxiety attack set in and I couldn’t get out of the hotel bar quick enough.  I wanted no part of these derelict interlopers, I longed for the solemnity of my backyard or basement.  My room would have to suffice.

I started chugging the martini, the best I could.  Despite my hatred for Lymene, it was one of the better martinis I had ever had, and when that notion hit me it made me feel even more out of place.  Why couldn’t I just enjoy this and see how the night progressed?  There was bound to be some fun to be had, but the thought was listless and floated for only a second before being shot down like a scud in the gulf war by the patriot missile of my anxiety.

Lymene could see me gulping quickly, “Todd, you want another one?”

All I could mutter was “Check please.”

She looked sad for a second but quickly smiled, “OK Todd, Thanks for coming!”

While waiting for her to run my visa; a crew of construction workers huddled behind me, trapping me at the stool.  Lymene dropped off the receipt and started asking the gang behind me for their drink orders.  I quickly signed for a heavy tip and finished the last of the martini.  I ate the last olive in frenzy and quickly turned around.  I bumped into one of the construction workers chest and clumsily made my way through them.  As I was heading through the lobby I could hear one of them call me an asshole.

The elevator doors opened and as they closed I breathed a huge sigh of relief.  I was an asshole, the construction worker was right but it felt good to be an asshole on his way to his own room.

Once in the room I sat for a while and had a few light beers that were in my fridge.  I tried to write but it all came out hackish and trite (see previous and current fabulous confessor blog entry) so I gave up and lay down on the bed.

After lying for a while, my phone alerted me to a text from my wife Claudia.  I assumed she was pissed that I hadn't called and looked at the message with a sense of impending doom. 

Fortunately, it was a link to a video file with the title Margaret Dances.  The message she wrote was a smiley face using a colon and parenthesis (J).

Pressing the button I was full of anticipation, I couldn’t wait to see my ever evolving 16 month old daughter.  Watching the forty eight second video of my daughter dancing like a fool to a children’s song made my torso feel warm.

 

I watched the video 16 times in a row until I drifted into a deep and peaceful sleep.

Down and Up and Down Again

Another entry in the series of work related stories I've been working on.  I've decided to name this non linear series "Middling".  So from now on it will be referred to as such, here's hoping my legion of followers(all of two of you) enjoy.  

Down and Up and Down Again

I tripped as I was walking up the stairs into the office.  My knee banged into one of the steps and an intense pain shot through me.  I turned around and sat down in a huddled mass in the middle of the outdoor stairway.  When the pain subsided to what felt like a butter knife being jabbed and twisted into my kneecap in five second intervals rather than one, I gathered myself enough to light a smoke.  It tasted terrible, but I didn’t want to go inside.  I was late and hung-over, which was not so a-typical for a Tuesday but somehow today it filled me with a genuine regret and sorrow. 

Usually the booze had been the medicine of choice for washing away the pain of today, but lately it was leaving me feeling wanton and vapid the next morning.  What kind of man can’t simply enjoy the claim he staked?  Why was I always peering from the blinds, to look at my neighbor’s lot?  Like a tom peeping into the neighbor's windows for scantily clad contentment but only finding the fat vacuous teenager stuffing his face with Doritos and looking at his dad’s pornography, I was beginning to feel as though it wasn’t just the world around me that was a fucked up mess.  I had begun to recognize that I played a part, and that no matter how small, I was just as guilty as those who I thought were responsible for piloting this bird straight into the shit pile.  For a moment I imagined a plane flying into a turd the size and shape of an office building and I imagined it just getting stuck, all but the tail immersed in shit.

I walked inside the office and scooted past Beck’s office and into mine.  I flipped on the light turned on the computer, and grabbed my coffee cup.  On my way out to the water cooler I could hear Beck laying into Grape(Jack) about something.  Mike Warner looked up and caught my eye; he then rolled his eyes and motioned to Beck.  Whatever the fuck was going on wasn't going to be pretty and I was desperate to avoid it.

I slipped past the commotion and made my way to the water cooler, safe for the moment.  Arnie came out of the bathroom and nodded.  He walked past me toward his cubicle and sat down.  In the distance you could hear Beck still berating Grape(Jack) for his dereliction of duty.  From what I could gather, it sounded as though Grape had made an error on a compliance report that had gotten out to the customer.  Now that was potentially a big deal, and normally I wouldn’t sympathize with Grape(Jack) but in this instance you had to wonder how the project was managed.  Our company as a whole was inconsistent at best when it came to communication and organization, there were instances where you had to read minds to get shit done correctly and if you didn't there was often hell to pay.  That being said, it’s well within reason that Grape just fucked up and Beck was justified in raking his hairy ass over the coals.  From my perspective, I didn’t really care anymore, I just wanted to get back to my office and start hacking through the emails that had accumulated overnight and pray that I would be left the fuck alone.

I was making my way back to my office, head down staring at the filthy office carpet attempting to sneak past the four letter word diatribe that Grape was enduring when I stumbled into Anna.  She let loose a shriek as her hot coffee poured all over her blouse.  She looked up at me with the eyes of a women scorned and walked hurriedly past me towards the bathroom.

I muttered a muted, “Sorry” that she ignored.

I watched her head back to the bathroom and Arnie stuck his head out of the cubicle and he gave me a thumbs up.  “Ha! Nice job boss!”

The entire office was quiet, and all eyes were on me, Including Grape’s(Jack’s) and Beck’s.  Beck started walking towards me much to Grape’s content, “Good morning Brian.”  His tone was measured and slow, a sure sign that he was pissed.  Beck had a tendency to get pretty animated, in certain places in the office there were oddly placed signs that acted not only as tacky adornments but as a cover for fist sized holes in the drywall.  Prior to these outbursts, Beck displayed a gritted calm, just as he was doing now.

“Morning Sir, how are we fairing today?”  I was stuck; all I could do was try to make the best of it.

“Well, I think you may have just sent Anna to the hospital with 3^rd degree burns and Jack over there couldn’t find his dick in a whore house but what the hell it’s only my money we’re losing.”  Spittle was forming around Beck’s mouth.

Intellectually I knew that I needed to diffuse the situation quickly but before I could come up with a strategy I spoke.  “I’m not sure Jack’s had as much experience as some of us at the whore house.”

Beck looked at me coldly, it was a long silence.  I got the feeling he was thinking up a retort but nothing good came to him.  “My office.”

I looked at Grape(Jack) as I started to walk towards Beck’s office, if I could have I would have walked over and punched him in the sternum.  He looked up apologetically and broke eye contact.

I stepped over Beck’s “No Spin Zone” floor mat as I walked into his office and as I did so it dawned on me that intimating that he frequented whore houses might have been a fool’s errand.

He sat in his office chair and twirled toward his desk, he acted as though I wasn't even in the room.  He clicked a few buttons on his keyboard and the volume spewing from some right wing extremist sharply turned into muted gibberish that I wasn't able to make out.  Every thirty seconds or so I could hear the name Obama through the gibberish but that was all I could make out.  I stood and waited.

Beck finally looked at me, “Look, you do a good job; and I know it’s not easy around here, you’re in a tough spot.  Having said that, you have to get these clowns in line.  Jack doesn’t have a clue and he’s pissing all over my clients face.  This isn’t McDonalds; these guys have to be professional, we can’t fuck up, not even once.  Do you hear me?”

In a way, I appreciated Beck’s honesty.  I thought it was reactionary and misguided but at least he was giving me a bar to fall short of.  “I understand the concern, but Jack’s been working his ass off for us and I’ll personally work with him to resolve the issue.” 

Beck got demonstrative; his arms flailed around like a prophet with an audience of one.  His presupposed sermon was equally self-relevant and doomed to be ineffectual.  “I’ve got an issue with his performance!  You can’t bail him out of every grave he digs for himself.  I’ll fire his ass today and I don’t care if you tell him what I said!”

I couldn't help but think about what a coward he was, hinting that I should relay the scare tactics to Grape(Jack) for him.  The fact was that Grape(Jack) was valuable, he was young and talented and he did mostly good work.  Firing him would be an act of idiocy, threatening him was a tactic of fear mongering and I wouldn't take part.  I nodded my head and looked at the floor.  “I’ll make it right, I’ll get back with you when the issue is resolved.”

With that I left his office and headed back towards my own, as I made my way down the hall I heard the vitriol of an angry baby boomer spew from the speakers of his office computer.  “This President is a Socialist Dictator driving us directly toward our ruin…” The anger seeped out from the office and onto the floor, following me as I made my way to my office.  I waded through it, despondent and in a state of anxious disbelief.

I sat at my desk and watched my hands shake, it was a combination of hangover and anxiety.  I turned to my computer and tried to ignore it, I got some music streaming and opened the bad sandwich chronicles blog.  I was two paragraphs into blissfully ignoring the shit storm around me when my phone rang.

“Hello,” I muttered with my best attempt to cover up my hatred for whoever the fuck was calling.

Anna’s voice was innocent as it made its way from the receiver to my rattled brain, “Hi Brian, you’re wife is on line 1.”

“Thanks Anna, hey I’m sorry about burning you.  You all right?”

“I’ll be ok, you’re going to have to buy me lunch or something though…”

“Done.”

I pushed line one and Claudia was her usual chipper self, “Hiiiiiii Hoooney!”

I tried with less success to mask my annoyance, “Hi C, what’s up?”

“Nothing, I just wanted to say hi!”

I rolled my eyes and groaned, “That’s great but I’m at work, I’m busy.  Did you need something?”

The phone was silent; I had killed her sincere attempt at cheering me up and made this just another awkward conversation.  “No, I was just…”

“OK well I have to go.”

All she could say was “Fine” before the line went dead. 

I tried to continue ignoring the task at hand but I felt like too much of an ass after being mean to Claudia to fuck around.  I walked out on the office to find Grape and see if we couldn’t figure out what he had fucked up and how we could fix it.

When things like this happened the floor went from jovial dissidence to solemn and angered productivity.  I tried making nice with Mike Warner but he was clearly in a shit tank due to the awkwardness of earlier events.  He pointed me in the general direction of Grape who was doing an equipment inventory in the warehouse.

When I found him he was working diligently with the look of a kid who had just been grounded by his father.  He had the stink of fear on him and I felt bad for him.  I wanted to take a box cutter and slit his throat for dragging me into this nonsense but I also felt empathy for a 21 year old kid who was doing the best he could.  I motioned to him to come back to my office and he followed.

Once there we went over the particulars of his reporting error, he had a made a simple but understandable error.  I called and talked to the client, it wasn't hard to smooth the situation over once I relayed to him the nature of the error.  I emailed beck and told him that there had been a positive resolution and that all was well.  I sent Grape back to work and he was in better spirits.  By the end of the day, the jovial dissidence had returned to the floor and my hangover was long gone.  Considering how the day had started, i was feeling pretty good.

At 5:00 Beck popped his head into my office and told me he was leaving.  I was the last one left.  Feeling halfway content, I opened up the Bad Sandwich Chronicles blog and finished reading where I had left off earlier.  I felt my shoulders lighten and I laughed a few times as I read the blog.

When I was done, I walked through the office and shut off all of the lights.  I locked the front door and picked up my phone and keys as I flicked off the lights in my office.  I locked up the backdoor of the office and proceeded quickly down the stairs.  I tripped as I was halfway down, careening into a huddled heap at the bottom.

Looking up at the cloudless blue sky I waited for the pain to subside and stayed motionless for a few minutes.  Staggering to my feet I brushed the dust from my khakis.  I looked around and noticed that no one was around to notice; at least I had become a chump in relative anonymity.  

The Road Taken

More from the characters of the previous story, and yes Arnie farts again.  It's kind of his thing.  This was written about a year ago, but i havent shared it with many.  I'm working on a new non work related short but it needs more fine tuning before the friday deadline so thank god for forgotten work.  Here's hoping you enjoy...

The Road Taken

Stepping outside of the gas station onto the cracked pavement, I looked at the front end of a 1982 Ford F-150 pickup truck.  The head lights looked like big sad optimistic eyes, the grill looked like a man trying to smile through his fear and as I walked back I compared the headlights to that of our rented late model SUV and thought about how slanted and mean they looked in comparison.  I looked at a man on a tractor, then gazed upon some teenagers walking into the station as they spit out swears and racial slurs.  At that moment, I realized that the apocalypse had already come.  It had crept in while we were sleeping, dreaming of trinkets lined with foil, it had snuck in and made camp while we dozed at the tit of our glorious progress.

I got in the car and told the kid to get a move on, I opened a tall can of Heineken in a paper bag and watched the trash flutter about on the side of the road as he zipped in and out of the parade of stone faced shit birds on their way home from work.  I thought about the word petrol for a few minutes until Arnie broke the silence with a fart and a laugh from the back seat.  Jack started to laugh and we all rolled down our windows for a few minutes.

Traveling for work was never fun, or nearly as glamorous I thought it would be when I was younger.   Sometimes it could be tolerable enough that you might find a few laughs hidden in the cracks of the general misery and loneliness of it all. This happened to be one of those moments and I had been at the job just long enough to realize it, I celebrated with a rather large gulp of luke cold Heineken and a deep drag of my cigarette.

We got back to the hotel and stepped into the heat of the parking garage.  The three of us staggered in the barely lit sea of lonely parked automobiles towards the elevator, all silent and sore, with nothing to say.  A middle aged woman joined us in the elevator and exchanged a small smile with us.  I looked back at Arnie, he stood behind the woman and pretended to masturbate.  Again, Jack and I burst into stifled laughter, and the woman was quite pleased to be let off on the 4^th floor.  The doors closed and we embarked on our way to our rooms on the 10^th floor.

The elevator door clumsily opened and we nodded at one another with the understanding that we would meet in a few hours for beers and dinner.  Arnie again feigned masturbation as we parted but this time only Jack could manage a laugh.  I was ready to shit and shower, working a shift in a chemical plant made you feel dirty in a way that was almost incomparable.  A silky film and odor seemed to penetrate your pores like sperm penetrating an egg.  There was a conception of filth and disgust that could never properly be scrubbed away.

I stepped into the air conditioned room and flopped my ass on the bed, I let out a heavy sigh as I took off my steel toed work boots.  This was the favorite part of my day when I travelled on the job.  I had 15 hours of freedom in front of me.  I usually used the time to drink beer, read, and eat; letting the slothful part of my nature flow over me before I had to hit the snooze button again and slide out into the heat and general misery of spider-webbed piping and flanges that were used to mule chemicals back and forth in the process of concocting chemical compounds for the use of making household products.  Most people have no idea what it takes to make their soap or their mosquito spray.  The intrinsic nature of it is a dirty process, in a dirty place, carried out by dirty people.

It was our job to make sure these companies didn’t leak chemicals into the atmosphere, to make sure they complied with EPA regulations that most of them had little use for.  We were often in the unfortunate position of being hired by the company so that they could live up to the obligations of the federal government, a job they found too cumbersome to handle internally.  This made us the enemies of everyone in the plant save for the person who hired us to take the burden off himself and who often just wanted the job to be completed without any headaches.  It was my job to make everyone happy, the government, the company we were hired by, the bosses back at the office, and the technicians out in the field.

I thought about all of that for a second and looked into the painting hanging over the wall behind my bed.  There was a woman holding her child in a park looking out over a pond.  They seemed oblivious and happy, smiling at ducks that were waiting for strewn pieces of bread.  I thought about Claudia, my wife, and I missed her deeply.  I missed her smell and the way her hips curved into her torso.  I longed to lay my head on her belly and let the warmth of her loving nature sweep into my brain and expel the anxiety and misery of dealing with the world.  Thinking about things as comforting as that could make life damned near unbearable though so I lifted myself up and flipped on the television.  I turned on ESPN and watched the talking heads blather on about nothing important for a minute.  I undid my belt and unbuttoned my pants, and enjoyed the freedom of letting myself sag in the glorious nature of gravity.

I awoke an hour later to the ringing of my hotel phone.  I reached blindly for the phone and heard Jack’s voice on the other end.

“What the fuck are you doing in there looking at gay midget porn?  It’s almost 5:30!  Time to go out!”  Jack’s enthusiasm revealed that he had already started drinking.

“Give me twenty minutes.”

With that I hung up the phone and stumbled to the shower.  The hot water on my face felt good and I perked up for a moment.  The night was young and debauchery would soon be afoot.



Treading the Water Cooler

Something I wrote this afternoon.  These characters are in some other work that I started a while back.  I may post some of that as well.  I'm not overly thrilled with this but its the first swing of the axe in a while, so fuck it im gonna put it out there and move on.  Enjoy.

Treading the Water Cooler

I’d become convinced that my cubicle had the ability to eat souls.  Her appetite wasn’t ravenous, she was a nibbler.  No matter how small her bites, it was becoming increasingly more evident that I had lost my purpose in life.  Dashed dreams of my youth had been eroded away by the tranquil and shallow sea of square pegged conformity.  Here I stood in the footsteps of those I swore I wouldn’t follow, with a million strangers standing next to me on the same path, all of us stepping on each other’s toes looking for the same imaginary thing, our lives.

 I sat looking up at the squared ceiling tiles and wondered for a moment what would happen if I walked out of my cubicle through the office doors, down the stairs, and out on the city street never to return again.  It was this kind of daydreaming that kept me sane, to simply know that it was an option was of great comfort to me and eased the tension.

Arnie poked his head into my cubicle, “Hey boss I’ve got a question.”

I rolled my eyes internally and wondered if he was going to relay a joke or if he had some kind of legitimate problem that would eat up the afternoon.  I did my best to appear pleasant, “What’s going on?”

Arnie walked into my cubicle and let a long steady stream of flatulence leave his body as he started laughing uncontrollably.  He proceeded to leave my cubicle with a trail of his sinister laughter and wretched stench trailing behind him.  I heard a few more laughs from some other coworkers as he returned to his cubicle.

I picked up my coffee cup and headed to the water cooler.   I filled up and sat my cup on an empty desk and headed into the bathroom.  Someone had left the toilet half flushed, their remnants floating in the bowl in a hundred despicable pieces.  They were staring up at me like scattered body parts, I felt like god looking down on the battlefield of Somme after the blood had spilled.  I decided against relieving myself and stepped out onto the main office floor. 

I walked by Arnie’s cubicle and as he looked up at me we shared a laugh, I stopped to chat.  “Hey who was in the bathroom last?  They didn’t flush the fucking toilet.”

“Ahh, yeah that was Warner Von Poops Alot.  He’s a notoriously bad flusher.”

I could sense my anger rising. “You mean Beck?  Jesus, he’s hard enough to get along with as is.  You’d think he’d have the courtesy to flush the fucking toilet properly when he’s done.”  I could sense my anger rising.

Arnie chuckled, “Yeah, personally I think he gets off on it.  I think he likes pissing people off.  You shouldn’t let it get to you.”

I thought about how to not let it piss me off for a few seconds and determined that wasn’t an option.  I was thinking up a retort when Jack the intern walked by Arnie’s cubicle, he was looking down hoping we didn’t notice him. 

Jack was a good kid, he was jovial and kind but his youth did not serve him well in the office.  He was the subject of constant ridicule and scorn for no other reason than it was easy to fuck with him and he didn’t gripe much about it.  Early on he had been nicknamed Grape after the Hanna-Barbera character Grape Ape due to his monkey like facial features.

Arnie called out to him as he passed by, “Grape, get in here!”

Grape rolled his eyes and walked into the cubicle.  “What do you assholes want?”

I pulled Grape by the ear and slapped him lightly on the head, “Aww Grape why ya gotta be such a jerk?”

I let him go and he stood laughing in the cubicle alleyway.  “No seriously, what do you guys want?  I’ve got to get that report finished for Beck by 4.”

Arnie swiveled back and forth in his chair and spoke “Hey I’m having a bbq this weekend.  Sunday, both you guys are invited, bring the families.”

Grape nodded in appreciation, “Sounds good, I’ll be there.  I gotta go though, Beck’s all over my ass for that report.”

As he walked away I tried to think of an excuse not to make it to the BBQ but couldn’t.  I backed of Arnie’s cubicle and muttered “OK man, see you later.”

Arnie was still swiveling, “OK man, stay clear of Beck he’s on the warpath today.”

I walked up the alley of cubicles back to mine and sat down at my desk.  There was less than an hour left before I could go home.  The death camp groan of fingers tapping at keyboards brought about a throbbing in my temples.  I got up from my chair and grabbed my keys.  I walked quickly through the doors, down the stairs and out onto the street.  I lit a cigarette as I entered and started my car.  As I drove away from the office parking lot I felt the throbbing in my temple subside.

As I drove home I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket no less than four times. I ignored t and drove on, steadily making my way through the asshole parade towards home with nothing but the sounds of a washed up singer emanating from my radio.  I could relate to him ten years ago when his songs were poignant and strong, now he was singing just to sing probably because it was all he knew how to do.  Somehow, I didn’t mind listening.

When I got home I let my dog Butler out in the backyard and watched her sprint to the fence and back to me repeatedly.  I walked back inside and grabbed a beer from the fridge.  Returning to the back deck I cracked my beer and sat down with the hopes of lightning the load.

I felt my my phone vibrate against my thigh again.

“Fuck,” I sighed and pulled it out.  There were 5 emails from work.

I sighed again and Butler looked at me with sad eyes. 

I started reading the first email.