misAdventures of Workmonkey 3.0

(workmonkey's entry)

Each morning for the past month, I've walked through the thin glass doors that serve as the back entrance to my office and sat down at my desk. I've kept a fairly consistent arrival time of between 10:30 A.M. and 10:37 A.M. And each morning, without fail, I've exchanged the identical pleasantries with the freelancer who is seated to the left of my open-air desk. The exchange, to a letter, is as follows:

Me: "Good Morning."

Him: "How are you?"

Me: "Good. good."

And that concludes the extent of our interchange. During the day, no other words are spoken, no other attempts at peeling beneath the layer of superficial exchanges are made. It serves him fine, and serves me fine. I've gotten over that sentiment I had when I was an idealist pimple-face, that no conversation is worth having unless it is genuine. I've grown to accept, and even cherish, the monotonous conversations that bring us through an average day. I have no desire to bring my relationship with this freelancer past our morning greeting, and I'm quite sure he doesn't either. So we have a fine arrangement. I can prove I am a friendly person with my very sincere rendition of "Good Morning." He can prove he isn't a self-absorbed dickmunch by asking "How are You?" However, this is where things take an unexpected turn. At what point did I start answering questions with a double answer? Every single time, unconsciously, I answer "Good" then pause a second, and repeat, "good". So there are two "goods" in there. And I don't change it. It has almost become an essential part of my morning. Almost as if I change the double answer, something horrific will happen that day. But I simply cannot recall any other time in my life I used the double-answer technique. None of my friends use it, so I know I didn't pick it up there. I didn't get it from a movie. I remember about five years ago there was a McDonald's commercial with some guy who always said things twice (which made him a natural when he ordered the double-double cheeseburger for 99 cents). But they made fun of that guy, and it was five years ago, so why would I use that as a source? It is sufficient to say that my double-good ends the conversation on queue, each morning. I imagine there is no real response to a double-good, as it usually leaves him wondering if he asked two questions, which is why I provided two answers. Maybe he questions whether or not, unknowingly, he has asked me both "How are You" and "Did you see Saw III? How was it?", which might be the only reason for me replying "Good. good". One of these days, I might have to throw him for a loop and try a triple-good. That just might throw him into a total chaotic spiral into madness. madness. madness.

On the way to the bathroom a few minutes ago, I encountered a large group of people gathered around something, ooohing and aaaahing like a bunch of pansies at Cirque de Soliel. I had my suspicions of what they were so seemingly entranced at, but wanted to confirm, so crept up for a closer look. And there it was. The baby. The fucking baby at the office. Just like every job i've ever had, co-workers have babies at a rate of seven a day, and yet every single one brings in their babies for show and tell, like this is kindergarten.

Here, how cute! Ashley brought a baby! And here, look! Mark brought his trumpet. And Jenny brought a box of macaroni. Great job, everyone! Time for your napy nap!

First off, I question why you are bringing the baby into work. I've got shit to do, and bad ads to make. I've got no time to see a baby. Work isn't the place for a baby. Let me suggest some places for babies: Wombs, Incubators, Homes, Strollers, Cribs, Grandma's house. Work? No. Work is for: Timesheets, Cubes, Emails, Conference Rooms, Fridges. Are you able to locate the disconnect?

Secondly, don't stroll your baby around as if it is something unique. As I write this, the co-worker is strolling around with her baby like people here have never seen one. Let me be clear on this point, as a thirty-one year old, i've seen a good share of babies. In fact, if I had to make a rough estimate of the number of babies i've seen in my life, I'd guess about 4,000 babies. That is about the same amount of stapler removers i've seen in my life too. Yet, people do not gather around stapler removers with awe. If this co-worker had brought in something I haven't seen, such as, say, the Kremlin, then I would be interested. I might even break from my daily routine to take a peek. But a baby? Please.

Thirdly, it quickly becomes clear that the baby doesn't want to be at work anymore than than I want him/it there. The baby has a lifetime of work ahead of it, why does it want to be in an office at age 3 weeks? Can't this kid get a break? In forty years, at some bar, this now-grown baby is going to be on his fifth Makers Mark and Coke, babbling to the bartender, "Man, i've feel like i've been working all my life." And, in fact, the baby has. All the baby wants is to sleep and suck some milk out of his mom. It doesn't want to hang out with the receptionist and account executives at my office, I can assure you. So why, then, is it here? For the damn mom. This isn't about the baby. It is about the mom. The mom can sit there and carry around the baby like it is her new Kate Spade purse. It is something to get her attention. Like she painted something and brings it in to everyone and announces "Look what a good painter I am". Well, what if the baby is ugly? Then, do i have the right to say, "I like the basic form you made .. but i think you could have done a better job on the forehead .. and the shoulders are a little messy ... I give you a C+ for your work." From here on out, when someone brings the baby into work, I will simoply walk up, look at it briefly, then address the mother, "Congrats, you can give birth. Now get on that assignment I gave you. We've got work to do."

Before you start forming some romantic, Oprah's Book of the Month notion of my life here, let me tell you now that living in the southeast corner of Wales isn't all that fucking great. I didn't come out here to follow dreams, write a novel, or escape some boring, unfullfilling life back in the States. The few idiots who come out here for that always end up leaving in about a month or two. It fucking gets me every time. They buy some property for thousands of dollars more than its worth, get all this antique wood furniture, and proceed try to live some life they read about in a Charles Dicken's book when they were in college. They show up every morning at the cafes and bars, trying to talk up the locals, then act all upset when they realize the locals don't particularly like being the lead characters in someone else's fantasy. They imagined all people did here was smoke pipes, decorate for Christmas, and bake meat pies. These idiots refuse to accept a fundamental truth: Life here is like it is anywhere. Hard. People work, shit, and fuck, when they're not busy telling everyone how important their working, shitting and fucking is. So these people eventually pack up and leave, all pissed off they couldn't escape reality. To keep their dream alive, they blame everything on Tenby, not their fucked-up expectations. Let's just say we don't have a going-away party for them when they truck out.

Maybe six months ago, I decided to stop being a bitter asshole and actually try something an even more bitter asshole, John Tettles, here recommended, "Fishing the Cled," as he called it. The Cled is a dark, shallow river about a thirty-minute drive north of my bar. Tourists try to find it in their overpriced gas station maps, but are too fucking stupid to realize what the map calls the "Eastern Cleddau" everyone else calls the Cled. The river is cold and depressing, which makes it fit perfectly with about everything else around here. That way-too-perky old chick setting up that souvenir shop next door tried to chat me up one morning, and in an attempt to show me how amazingly smart she was, babbled on about how the river was formed by the tears of some ancient Welsh goddess of water or something. I guess this goddess cried for like a hundred years over the death of her newborn son or daughter or some shit. Granted, if I were you reading this, I'd think that was a lot of sappy bullshit, and I told that woman that myself, but I'll admit now, once I saw that river, it kinda made a whole lot of sense. Whatever. This guy, John Tettles, tells me it is something worth doing, and since that old drunk asshole is one of the few guys in the town I've found not to be totally useless, I decided to listen.

So about six months ago I started driving up there every so often with a couple of beers and sit on the bank for a few hours to catch nothing. If I had any fishing skill whatsoever, I should've been able to catch some trout. But I didn't really give a shit about catching fish anyway. I mostly went because fish made good company. They stayed invisible, and, unlike the tourists, never tried to engage me in a conversation about area rugs, Range Rovers, or the best way to pepper eggs.

After a couple of months at the Cled, I got bold and started fishing a more remote piece of it. It's a part that runs right through through what some resourceful locals have conveniently labeled the "Official Birthplace of King Arthur". There are about a hundred towns around here that pick a plot of land and advertise the same thing, mostly because there's nobody who can definitively prove he wasn't, in fact, born there. It also helps that to be the official anything of anything around here, you simply need to "contribute" about 100 quid to some local official, and he'll stamp a piece of paper making you official. If I paid enough, I could get my bar to be the "Official Bar of Guinevere's Tits". To anyone with some fucking common sense, it's clearly a load of bullshit. But these Brits don't care. They simply love a good fantasy about knights and dragons and battles. It is born into them, along with DNA for bad teeth and pale skin. Perfectly professional men and women come down in new North Face gear to poke around the bogs looking for crowns, swords and pieces of the round table. Some of locals have tried to fill me in on the real King Arthur, who apparently was neither a King, named Arthur, or that particularly interesting. But fuck it. I still drum it up to my customers at the bar. When it gets good and dark, I turn down the TV, lean in real close with a glass of brandy (which I don't even drink), and weave a tale about what I found in those woods one time. Something unlike anything i'd ever seen before. I always switch it up. Sometimes, it is a cloak with some indecipherable writing on it. Or the tip of a sword that had a luminescent glow. Or an old, jewel-studded piece of metal wrapped within a scroll. Their drunken, glazed eyes get all big, and they demand to see what I found. Of course, I tell them that it is impossible. I left it exactly where I found it. I'm a superstitious guy, I claim, and would never fuck with a legend as potent as King Arthur. I've gone so far as to draw up fake maps. They want to believe, and I want them to look like fools. And thanks to all that bullshit in The Da Vinci Code, I don't have to work all that hard to accomplish that.

So I'm fishing this remote part of the river. Trout like dark, covered places, or so I read in some nature magazine while in the waiting room of the community health center, so I'd usually stick in this area that has a bunch of tree branches that drop into the water. About four months ago. I'm out there in this usual spot, late morning, weather not so bad for once, basically meaning i can see more than five feat ahead of me. I'm just kinda lost in my own shit. I start to hear the water pushing over something somewhere up the river. It's all foggy and shit, but I can kind of see something catching on one of the willow branches hanging in the water. Something that came from upstream. I quickly lose interest. These branches aren't all that strong, so I figure whatever is caught will either lose itself on its own, or break the branch. And I don't plan on doing any investigating, knowing all I'll find is some fat fucking tourist's shit he dumped into the river because he didn't want to dirty his car.

I crack open another beer and get back to my head. A couple minutes later when I look up, I see this thing still hasn't gone away. Fuck it, I figure. Might as well pull the tourist's crap out of the water and do my part to save the planet. With luck, it'll be something worth keeping.

The river has a short, but steep, bank that drops into the water, so it was hard to get right up on this thing, to mention nothing of the fact the ground has the texture of hot oatmeal. I ain't all that balanced either, after a couple of beers, so I kinda slide down the bank on my ass till I get close enough to catch a better look.

A picture of the Cled I shot with my phone last time I was there

In an attempt to combat three-plus years of excessive beer lunches, dorito dinners, and oreo breakfasts, I recently dug deep into my shallow pockets to enroll at Equinox, an upper-tier gym where you are as likely to find bamboo plants as treadmills. The gym has taken the approach that health is a holistic experience, beyond physical exercise. I've bought in to this theory 100%. When you are about twelve minutes into swinging your legs back and forth on the elliptical machine, the fact that you are watching a flat-screen TV with dimmed area lighting makes all the difference (as a side-note, I am thoroughly enjoying the advanced names of exercise machines you'll find at these gyms. Elliptical machines, wide-lateral presses, reverse iso-metric lifts ... I feel more like I am studying advanced mathematics then working out. I figure if I don't understand it, it must be great for my body). Another feature I have fallen for are the soft cotton towels with a thread-count fit for a pharoah. At both 24-Hour Fitness and New York Sports Club, the towels are essentially strips of cotton sandpaper. Rub them on your testicles after a shower, and lose them forever.

Make no mistake, I've belonged to gyms since Kenta and I joined Gold's Gym freshman year of college. The problem is, I've done the same workout since then. Five minutes on a stairmaster, ten minutes lifting weights, fifty minutes in the parking lot on the phone or talking to Kenta about how we should get to the gym more. Then, a trip to TGIF for buffalo chicken tenders, two liters of hefewizen, and an oreo madness. It goes without saying I haven't gotten much into shape since I was 17. I've finally decided to put that to an end. To accomplish that goal, I decided I would no longer put my fitness into my own hands. I was unreliable, and constantly reminded myself of the need for cheetoes.

Enter Hakim. My personal trainer. A lifelong dream of mine, I've finally hired myself a personal trainer. When you hear the name Hakim, I am guessing a mental image is formed in your mind. That image is correct. Hakim is muscular, black, and has a radiant smile (is it ok for a man to have a radiant smile?). Hakim has everything I want in a trainer, and reminds me of why one is needed. When I am faltering on ten reps of a shoulder press exercise, Hakim calmly informs me I only have twenty more reps to go. I do not go against Hakim's wishes. When, at the end of my thirtieth rep, and my arms are shaking like two kittens trying to run against a tornado, Hakim informs me I have to do two more sets. Hakim introduces me to exercises I have never even imagined. I hang down from bars upside down with legs on walls and pull, which is some sort of inverse pull-up.

After the workout session is complete, Hakim brings me to the mat to stretch me out. Hakim has something in common with torture devices from the 16th century, in that both can contort bodies into highly unnatural positions. By the time my leg reaches the back of my head, the crack of my bones informs Hakim I've met my pysiological limits. Then he keeps going. Now here's the rub. Literally. The final two minutes of the session is spent with Hakim massaging my shoulders and back. After 60 minutes of torture, this massage is utopian. As a natural byproduct of the pleasure, I get goosebumps. My mind goes blank, and I revel in the release of tension and warmth generated by the rubs. After about a minute of pleasure, however, a sickening thought creeps into my brain. I am enjoying a massage from a muscular black man way too much. Does he see the goosebumps? Does he think, "Shit, I am massaging a fucking fag." I suddenly become uncomfortable for enjoying the massage way too much. Is it okay to really enjoy a massage from a muscular black man with a radiant smile? It is way too awkward. I thank Hakim for his time, make some joke about football and beer, and walk off to the locker room, to shower naked .. with other men.

I now know my limits. I have exactly one minute to enjoy gay sensuality before my mind enters the picture. Does this mean I could actually be gay, each day, for exactly one minute? I Could I be naked with another man, touching, thinking, wow, this feels pretty nice, before the switch was flipped? I won't be testing that theory anytime soon.

Unless, of course, Adrian was involved.

A few months ago, Jill and I received a "Save The Date" card from a friend of hers. The date we were supposed to save was July 5, 2007.

I immediately began to grow anxious. What is wrong with July 5, 2007? Why does it need to be saved? Is July 5th, 2007 under threat of endangerment? By whom? The terrorists? Congress? Seagulls? Is God or the moon thinking of eradicating this day? Do I need to donate money to save it? Because I'd feel simply awful if somehow July 5th, 2007 was on its way to extinction and I didn't do my part to save it.

I was in a full terror. Soon, however, Jill was able to calm me down by suggesting that the "Save the Date" card was simply a gentle reminder not to make plans on July 5, 2007, because her friend's wedding was that day. Jill gracefully pointed out the "mark you calendars" call-to-action on the card. This was instantly problematic for me, primarily because I don't have a calendar, so was unsure what exactly I should mark. It occured to me, however, that even if I did have a calendar, what else could I possibly have saved that day for, considering it is eight months away? The gym? Buying new sneakers? Would I look at that day and think, "Shit, that's unfortunate. I've already saved that day for trying that new pizza restaurant down on Smith Street." And if I had something already planned on a day eight months away, it would probably be exceedingly important. Like, say, brain surgery. Or becoming the third-ever civilian to enter space. Something I certainly wouldn't cancel for some wedding. I mean, hell, even if I already had a vacation planned for that day, I wouldn't postpone that for a wedding, either. So, essentially, I am saving the date from some boring plans I might make the day before the wedding. Like if Age and Amanda asked me to go to a movie, I'd have to say, "Sorry, can't. Got a wedding. I've saved the day."

An even more immediate problem with any "Save the Date" card is that not only am I usually unable to save any date beyond a two-day timeframe, I am also usually unable to save a card. If you send me a small 2 x 2 inch card eleven months before the event described on that card, the chances I will still have that card eleven months later is quite slim. Pretty much the only chance you have is to send me a "Save the Card" card eleven months before, so that when I get a card a bit later, I'll know I have to save it, assuming I haven't lost the "Save the Card" card by then.

In any event, for any of you reading this, don't even think of trying to get me to agree to dinner plans eight months from now, because I've got a wedding to go to.