You know how when you are trying to scrub away something in the shower and it ends up being a freckle but you look down at your penis swaying back and fourth almost saying "No." Well I do. What I am labeled in the scientific community is a constant observer. You know how when you're done with a long shower and you look in the mirror at yourself and you see what appears to be a ghost as the cracks steam began to clear you see your dull life looking back at you. You remember you are taking this shower early to work late at a job that puts a frown on your face after three years, seven months, and eighteen days of getting up to this job. You wish the moldy scum on the soap, the soap that washes your body which was cleaner before the grime and dirt of showers before this one built up, would slip out of your hand ever so gently under your feet as you flex and fall and all of your weight falls upon your head and give you a nice painful death. And everyone in the surrounding community feels sorry and wonders why, and says he seemed so happy even though its Satan whispering in their ears to lie to my immediate family to make them feel better. But all it really does it make them think about my gruesome death. That, my friend is a constant observer.
My job is to network other companies to network with us so that other networked companies may work with potential network companies. Your probably as bored as I am but I go to this eight hours a day minus the insigficant fifty-nine minutes I get quote break, end quote. I belong in this office about as much as an air conditioner in hell. In fact this unnecessary job and building is about as much help as an air conditioner customer service in hell. That's just a simple peek in my life. I'm about as significant in this insignicant company as a period in a dictionary. Well I'll promote myself to a comma or a semicolon. My boss every time I see her its like when you eat something that gags you but you hold down the vomit but you still burb up the stomach acid that once was a delicious meal that was made unpleasant by this sad excuse for a woman. The throw up is being swallowed along with your pride because of the two words that society makes you have in order to hold a job, those words being manners and politeness. I see her and I think what decline has my life taken a drastic turn for the worst, when and where did this occur. A gunshot that hits me and doesn't kill me but just helps me bleed to death would be better that this hell hole of a job. Once again a peek into my life. I wish I could be in a one sided game of hide and seek but myself doesn't attempt to find me. No base, no tag, just me crawling in a hole and no one misses me or makes an attempt to find me.
My cubical seems to be a house party at my house, yet I'm not invited. Party cakes, seasonal cookies, and the ever most enjoyed assorted nuts. I hate them all. Not the food, no the food I try my best to ignore. But the people constantly telling me to try this and that. Why can't people be devoured by something greater than them. And be digested and turned into what their pity small talk really means to me.
It feels like I'm a gnat on the wall so tiny and yet a massive bother because I'm there. Being swatted at by human hands or maybe they have a fly swatter hanging next to their kids they see every last weekend of the month because of lovers point. If I'm comparing myself to a fly I will compare myself to the hundred eyes they have. I see people making friends and cliches in a failing company. The reason a bee hive works so well is there are millions of different cells, or in our case cubicals, where a bee with a specific job goes and does his job and just his job. He collects nectar, goes back to his cell, and either produces more the next day, or dies stinging a invader. No talking, no interacting, no bothering people, bothering me or being bothersome. Why do I feel this way because everyone in this office is just that to me, a bother. It makes it awkward and everyone as important as the CEO. and as insignificant as the janitor that forces friendliness as if its implied and not a commodity. If I waste the tiniest snippet of time with someone I hate them. I instantly want that person to find out their grandfather, who used to tell them old stories about how he delivered canisters of ammo and basically served no purpose but a target for the enemy. When you try to befriend me I wish that he dies in a freak car accident where his '78 Ford had its wired crossed and it blew his car into as many pieces as it takes people exchanging his body back and fourth. First the police to the CSI Agent to the burial grounds to the half a dozen nobodies that show up to his open casket funeral. I think the nail has firmly been hit.
School was where my observations came at an early age. I observed how everything on the playground was either a dream or nightmare. There are the kids being bullied who are obviously the nightmares. Then there's the basketball wannabees who dream of playing for an NBA team but end up coaching a recreation team on the weekends and get stuck with the ADD kids and go win less. Then there are the Star Wars pretendtobees that grow up becoming a game tester and never move out of his mothers house. Then there are even the wanna be wanna bees that are so far out on the outer rim of friends that they end up blaming the world for there insecurities when it all started in grade school when he was to busy coloring farm animals. I wish I could go back to the days where I respected someone like my second grade teacher. At the slightest excuse to get me in trouble she would crack her power hungry whip. She somehow bred me to respect her which is interesting to me because I believe she gave me the most undesirable part of a rotting rat's ass about me. She, who never said my name. In her world I wore a nametag that was written on it "hey kid" in freshly drawn green Sharpie as if I was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. Hey Mrs. Leber, my name is....
"Derek"
"Yea those are mine"
One time my boss said she had an addiction to coffee. She made a joke that coffee is the cocaine of our generation. Even though it has been proven that coffee or caffeine has the addicting qualities of rolling up a leaf and attempting to smoke it. Mostly it was her way of saying she addicted to something unaddictable. Like claiming that leaf is a blunt or breathing out in frigid air and claiming to be "weeded." I never drank coffee because, well to be brutally honest never really liked it. It tasted like something a relative would lay out and a parent would explain the mannerly thing to do. When really you felt bolimic from all the vomit going up and down your mouth to the pits of your stomach. As if your esophagus was a direct link to hell and heaven and the food was a constant elevator making its was down to stay, so you think, until you gag in your lower stomach. Now you have been introduced to my opinions on coffee. I didn't need a brown drink to give me the incentive to wake up, but I did have a incentive. To not only wake up but to go to work, to brush my teeth, to straighten my collar, to be presentable, to breathe. Her name was Mia and she had the sort of smile and personality that you didn't think of her in a sexual way. If that's not how Webster defines love then its mine. What is Love? You can love a train that goes around a six foot track and is powered by batteries have the life power of a mayfly. But the key is you loved that gift at seven years old; you loved it like I love her. I've talked to her, well there's that awkward time in the elevator or the time by the water cooler where the only noise to be heard was the bubbles of the refilling water chamber and my palms squeezing out hundreds of drops of perspiration. Our relationship was like the sun and moon, pass each other everyday and one is a radiant independent individual and one pales in comparison. Her blue eyes could be talked about in a cliche` way like they were blue pools that even the sky was jealous of. But really they were the type of blue eyes that you didn't want to blink because you might miss a glimpse of them. Her eyelids were like unfair eclipses. Maybe her eyelids shades perfection, that spared the people that didn't stop and observe her wonderful pupils. The type of blue that if it was a shade of crayon it would go dull first. I want to be that document, paper, rodent, dirt, crumb, carpet, anything that distracts her and diverts her attention and stairs down with those wonderful eyes. As her pupils darted back and fourth, adjusting to the changing light fixtures that dominated the ceiling. I wished her eyes would meet mine. That my shining armor would compliment her smile. But that's more impossible than sticking a camel through the eye of a needle in a hay stack. She works maintaining personnel finance direction. Sounds even more boring then my job. I wonder if she wants to put a bullet through her head even more than I do. Would she hang herself with two nooses to ensure her death. Would she jump off a bridge twice as high.
I had the taken on the responsibility of a paper that was more important than any other paper. I knew going into this I was either diving into the shallow end or tip toeing into the deep end. So as I sit here in the darkness, seeing how the computer screen pierces the pitch blackness until it is consumes by the shadows and the only sad light I can see all the way down the hallway was the red glowing exit sign.
Whenever I see Martin its like someone has ripped off my band aid and then my scab. He's one of those guys when you see him your immediate thought is to leave the current location you're in and turn around, turn up, turn down, turn left, turn right, turn anywhere away from the pair of steps you are taking up right now. See I have this deal with society. I go about my life having to coincide with people. In exchange. In exchange everyone that annoys the living hell out of me leaves me out of their wretched meaning of subsistence. I hate when people try to enter your life for a short fragment of your life on order to make acquaintance with you. What defines a friendship? Is it small talk that you know your kid is good at soccer even though he is chasing a bee and your husband who doesn't even love you is forcing him to play in order for him to feel good. Or maybe you discuss the weather which is the greatest indication that the conversation has gone the farthest downhill possible. What part of rain, sleet, snow, or tornadoes screams "small talk" and "casual conversation." In most cases I choose to ignore the people that approach me in this office. They will repeat my name as I stair with a blank response until they crawl back to their cubical like I have to everyday.
There could be hundreds of wrecks a day but since people take their orders from lights this prevents this. Chaos is a beautiful thing because chaos, even though it happens without thought or reason, there is an order in which things occur. First people see that for whatever reason stopped them last time from doing this, that there is no longer a threat of being caught, they decide to do that particular action. This is the first person. The second and everybody else that follows take the roll as lemmings. They see the first guy doing something and step one rolls right through they're head. They quickly and decisively choose should I break the rules or is the risk greater than the item I might gain, all this in a matter of seconds. Just a quick look at human nature. What stops people from stepping over the edge? Rules are not real nor will they ever be. They are simply examples of how people in society are just hamsters following the plastic jungle that is placed in front of them. The wheel represents the endless, and monotonous, events in our lifes. From inside the cage it seems like our lifes our eventful but from the point of view of the twelve year old boy on the outside who probably shouldn't have the life of a hamster in his responsiblity. What stops someone from coming into this office with a loaded shotgun leaving smoldering bullet casings lying about. And I, I mean this particular person kill anyone that gave him a dirty look, or didn't hold the elevator, or has an annoying laugh. Is this third person thing working because maybe my therapist deserves 120$ less this week. Maybe I'm being too harsh. Maybe I'm not being rational. But what I'm not doing is this whole shotgun scenerio. It would never work. With little exception, I know that everyone in this office is as miserable if not more so than me. The difference between them and me is they decide they will disguise their true feelings by smiling, waving to someone they know is banging their wife, or creating small talk by the water cooler. Just know that everything evolves from someone insisting my socks don't match on my first day to whatever insignificant event that pisses me but once again my balls shrivel from plums to prunes.
Let me describe vividly each member of this office. You've all ready met Martin but now there's Jason. Some how in his mind he thinks his life must be kept at the beat of his finger drums banging on different objects in his office. His cubical is filled with toys and trinkets including: a fire truck, hot wheels, baseball cards, and hundreds of worthless junk. He insisted it will be worth more in the near future. I would like to stride into his cubical with a baseball bat and destroy the plastic heap of garbage until the thread and fringe his life is holding on by, is broken by this act of vandalism. Through the smashing and crashing of glass displays into a pile of glass and paper. I want to hide in the utility closet across the hallway, snickering to myself, as he cleans the rubbish that always was. I want to hide shards of glass around the items he likes the most so it is a booby trap for his fingers to get cut on. He slowly runs down the list of who could of done this horrendous crime. And I will just laugh as my masterpiece turns into his disaster.
Betty Waller, her name bleeds on this paper until the next six papers underneath this paper is ruined. Betty Waller is like a rabbit running from safe spot to safe spot. She is frenzied to a point of panic, but this is her everyday demeaner. Her high heels stab the marble floor and her laugh bellows off the wall like orchestra walls. She pulls that fake finger to the side of your eye like you're laughing so hard you cry. Each of her outfits have different bright colors that cause your eyes to scream.
Dillon is the office fatass, well that's my name for him. He makes it his very possible mission to devour every morsel of food that even the office mice are showing rib. The fridge is constantly drained of its contents and the constant smacking of the top of his mouth. The crumbs on his potbelly, which actually surprise me he missed, and the mustard stain makes him the most undesireable living creature on this planet. Bits of food dwell inside of his beard and I'm damn well sure he didn't mean to miss his mouth. His clip on fan that rotates is his biggest annoyance. He perspires every step on our two story staircase that he desperately needs to master. The fan doesn't cool him just spreads the bleeding fat that secretes itself from his greesy pours. He secretes more at 2:15 everyday. Sometimes I think about pledging fifteen cents a day to that toilet because I feel more sorry for it then most third world countries. All the rest of the hamsters in this office wears suits, all except him. The constant swishing of his wind pants sound like street gutters.
Every sale I make is like a wig with split ends, does it really matter I'm already bald. Not really I'm talking as the bald...I've lost you haven't I? I've lost my mind.
I couldn't sleep for years. Everynight I would close my eyelids, as if I was decieving only the peeling wallpaper in my shabby appartment. There is no weekdays when you can't sleep, only fragments of time in between blinks in which you feel weak and are in a daze. After about 72 hours of constant awareness you begin to count your blinks. You live in between the period of 11:59 pm and 12:00 am, I call this period of time the 25th hour. Clever I know, I have a feeling a frat boy would high five me if he heard that. Your pupils begin to shrink to the seemingly increasing light, cowering from it like a small boy from his alcoholic dad. Your lips are cracked like a desert begging for rain. Your throat shrivels up until one side touches another. You feel the hairs growing on the side of your face, punching their way through the skin. The shell shock makes it seem like everything is slow around you, those are the good days. The bad days your brain heightens every sense so that it seems everyone is screaming at you, lights seem brighter, the brownies Betty layed out taste even worse, every feeling, whether it be cold or hot, feels even more excruciating then before, and the existence of Dillon, and his stench, attack your nose. Even the comfort of your own twin size bed feels like your sleeping on nails, every night I pick a side to bleed on. The question I ask is how many days, weeks, years, decades am I shaving off my 70 year calendar. Medications don't help just hinder my mind which is slowly slipping into a falling abyss. An abyss that's deeper than the deepest well, the deepest pit, deeper than the deepest hole. So deep that even Satan looks down upon me in shame.
I have had a vision four years of a man in a orange jumpsuit. Most men in orange jumpsuits know they're sentence they are about to receive and take it, like any man, with a frown. But this man, for whatever reason, is smiling. But not just any smile but the same smile in which your parents are covering your eyes on your sixteenth birthday and you know you are about to receive a car. But he's not smiling at me but past me and behind me is a crowd pumping their fists as if they want me to fight him. This man has a grey beard but is in his mid-twenties. His jumpsuit is buttoned up all the way but is on backwards. The rest of his hair is clean shaven but his beard is uneven and at different lengths. His entire body is covered in two inch cuts two inches away from each other. His ears are peirced with an earing but have another earing attached to another and yet attached to another as if they were a barrel of monkey earings, this was the same on both sides. His eyes change from blue to green to red and the part of his eyes that were bloodshot turn white. Tears stream down his face yet he remains smiling. The insane look in his eyes strangely has a calmness to it but is decieving like the eye of the storm. His face is ghostly whit but the rest is red from the quickly spreading blood. All his fingers are gone except the ring fingers and what appears to be his wedding ring is on his right hand. I see the man began to fall to his knees and I see a bloodstain leak through the brightness of the orange jumpsuit. He waves to the crowd quickly, so fast that his ring flies off into the midst of the crowd. His shoes dissappear and his socks become visible. Grey clouds form around him and it is pouring rain, yet he does not get wet. His tears blend with the rain and he stops smiling to tell me something and then I snap out of this vision at the same time.