TGIF

I walked into my boss’ office earlier today to grab some hand sanitizer, being something of a germaphobe.  One of the IT guys was sitting at her desk, working on her computer.  She was on the opposite side, shuffling some papers.
       “We’re all doing Curves, starting next week.  You want to do it with us?” Bosslady asked, giving me that look.  I get it, lady; I’m fat.  This fact does not escape me every time I look in the mirror.  No need to keep reminding.
        With some effort, I managed to quell the urge to roll my eyes.  There’s always some new diet the office girls are trying out, and it changes from week to week.  They always ask me if I want join in.  Weight Watchers, Atkins, South Beach, we’re going to the gym on Tuesdays and Thursdays, do you want to come?  All said with innocence brimming in their eyes, all guileless good intentions.  One day I pranced into Bosslady’s office in a new outfit I’d spent $100 dollars on, makeup carefully applied, hair done.  She’d been critical of my clothes the week before, so, ever eager to please, I attempted to find something more appropriate.  I thought I looked pretty good, but she just looked me up and down, lips pursed, and told me I needed some lipstick.  I quit trying to look nice after that.
        I eyed the piles of copied paper she was organizing on her desk.  Charts and graphs and detailed lists of what miniscule, bland bits of food one is allowed to eat.  Boiled eggs, no yolk, and a single slice of broiled Canadian bacon, or something similar, probably.  I wrinkled my nose at the thought.
        “No thanks.  Too much work for me.”  The IT guy seconded my opinion.  Bosslady kept giving me the look that said, Really?  Have you had a look at yourself lately?  Might want to reconsider.
         I tried to justify myself.  “I’ve been cutting back on my own.  Already lost a little.”  I demonstrated this by pulling at the waistband of my jeans, showing them the gap in between them and the skin of my gut.  I was quite proud of it, that half inch of empty space that signified all my hard work over the past few weeks.  Sure, it wasn’t a big change, but it was a start.
         Bosslady continued to look me up and down as if I’d crawled out of a gutter somewhere and she wasn’t sure how to get rid of the disgusting creature that had appeared in her office.  My smile withered and died under her gaze.  Bosslady is twice my age and has pushed out four kids, yet remains a size four.  My girth, and my accompanying lackadaisical attitude about it, puzzles her.
         She said something about not seeing any gap between jeans and skin, and I made a joke to change the subject and distract her from the topic of my physique.  She started giggling at me, as did the IT guy.
         “Jeez, way to kick a dog when it’s down,” I continued, making a kicking motion with my leg.  She was laughing too hard to talk at this point, which was the opportune moment to exit, stage right.
         “Okay, I’m just gonna go and throw up now,” I called back to them.
         “Yeah, right!”  She said, laughing.  “I’d like to see that!”
          I try not to let it get to me, all the office nonsense.  It’s standard procedure for anyone who works in this kind of environment, surrounded by women.  Size, weight, diet; these things dominate the conversations wherever herds of women go.  Most of the time, they don’t mean anything by it.  It’s helping, in their minds, so I don’t take offense to it.  Just make a joke, usually at my own expense, and change the subject.  Go down the hall to the bathroom when you’re certain no one else is around, stick your finger down your throat.  Never eat anything in front of them, especially from the vending machine-  Bosslady tends to keep track of how many visits I make to it.  Go home, look at yourself in the mirror in your underwear, hate yourself a little more.  Smoke another Marlboro, never let the tears fall down your face.
 

Cigarettes & Diet Coke

  

I’ve trashed all my dieting books
one fell swoop, arm swept across the shelf
pages plummeting down into the garbage.
I’m somewhat satisfied by this
ritualistic declaration of change.
Of course it won’t last.
My bulk is explosive
tick-ticking away, the detonator hidden
within the recesses of flesh,
organs tinged rose-pink.
Take a drag and contemplate the exhale,
know it’s all just futile theatrics
that manana, or the next,
one spoonful will be resisted.
Then on, exponentially, to the Nth degree,
a cartoon snowball rolled down a mountainside;
the inevitable splat at the end.

Fun With Language

Fuck:  to have sexual intercourse with.  Generally used as a verb, but the beauty of fuck is it’s flexibility.  It can be used as an interjection (i.e., Fuck!!!! I just slammed my finger in the door!), or as a noun, such as when referring to a particular person.  From the pseudo-Latin fuccant, meaning (they) fuck.

Here’s my shortlist:

1.  Fuck:  to have sex, release some hormones and stress, as in one step above rutting animals.  Not the guy you bring home to mother, rather, the guy that sends you to the clinic the next week for a pap smear.

2.  Fucked:  to be caught in a hopeless situation where no solution is easily manufactured.  Adding the word ‘up’ to that means you’re being belligerent and have a pressing appointment with the porcelain god very, very soon.

3.  Fucking-A:  I don’t have the slightest idea.  It’s just fun to say.

4.  Fuck Around:  What my best friend’s slut of a roommate does on a nightly basis.  The result of which is Chlamydia, Crabs, and Gonorrhea, thus far (that we know of). 

5.  Give a fuck:  to care about something/someone.  As in, I don’t.

Four years of intensive study on the English language has obviously turned me into a nutter.  Well, fuck it.

Waiting Outside On A Ride After A Final

Clouds hang low and heavy-gray
against dusky smoldered skies
humidity so thick it weighs you down,
a childhood security blanket clasped
too tight against the throat.
Summer’s so near you can almost touch it,
gray skies bringing it in from the gulf
everyone all dewy with that southern belle glow
and those Bermuda shorts that just won’t die,
a moist promise in the air.
Lulling drum of air energizes and makes sluggish
drawing sweet heavy-thick sighs from mouths,
’til time itself is drugged
spinning long days, and closed-in nights,
stirred up emotions, and harboring no peace.
The Wind carries a strong edge tongit,
a simmering unhappiness lurks beneath the lull
which smacks of an inherent, subversive malice;
and I wait, uneasy; unable to grasp this response
something so internal and dark and vaguely primitive.
The evening drives boys to bottles and fights,
girls to lights and a temporary balm for the vulnerabilities,
and lovers spring up with the first sweet-corn shoots
while I wait, listening for the first hard gulf breeze
that contains the realization underlying the air.

Lazy Chicken and Evaporated Milk

S* continues to text me once or twice a week, despite my lack of response.  He never calls, only corresponds in that stilted, abbreviated language of cell phones dominant today. 
 Movin bck 2 BR.  Want 2 meet 4 drink?
     At twenty-three years old I am a dinosaur, unwilling to use my mobile for anything other than making calls.  Plenty of tecno-savvy, mind you, I just can’t find the appeal.  Typing out cryptic messages on a tiny keypad that results, inevitably, in something devoid of meaning and resembling the vernacular of a grunting Neanderthal.  In years past, I would have seen this as an opportunity to rebel, raise my lily-white fist up in protest against the man.  Anti-texting would have been my cause to take up, my soap box to shout from, blathering on about the evils of abusing the English language to any poor soul dumb enough to listen.  The unfortunate by product of two parents formed from the tumult of the ‘60s who accidentally conceived a child too late in their lives.  I swear, my mother must have leaned over her ballooning belly to talk to me, whispering stories of bra-burnings and anti-war protests.  By the time I came of age it was the ‘90s, and there was nothing to protest against, so I gave up beating my fists against whatever scalded my temper.  My sixty-two year old mother, however, still threatens to dig her picket signs out of storage on occasion.
      I’m not ignoring S* because of any text-messaging principles, though.  I have no beef with those who walk unseeing through the office halls, eyes glued to crackberry screens and thumbs dancing nimbly over miniscule buttons.  More power to those who cannot go on vacation without their PDAs and wireless internet.  If S* could break the text addiction long enough to pick up the phone and actually call, I’d likely silence the ring and delete the voicemail without listening to it.  There’s no point to it.  The person he’s trying to reach doesn’t exist anymore.
      There should be some emotion accompanying my actions, but all I can muster is a vague impatience.  Just the slightest tinge of guilt, perhaps; then nothing.  My whole aversion to the texting phenomenon, though;  now that tickles my thoughts.  Refusing to text is only one of my technological sins committed as a child of the 21st century.  I don’t use the camera on my cell phone either, don’t subscribe to Myspace.  I don’t drink, don’t go out, don’t abuse anything illegal, don’t curse within the earshot of impressionable children.  Two years ago, this sort of behavior would have been nigh unthinkable.  Two years ago, I was coasting through college and getting stoned before work, drowning in hard liquor after, then loosing entire three day weekends to a blackened haze.
      Now my days are caught up in the mediocrity of the young professional.  Awake at 6:30 every morning, shower, dress, arrive at the office at promptly 7:45.  Spend the morning doing anything to keep my brain occupied and not running out of my ears, a liquid rush of flesh succumbed to boredom (case in point, I am typing this at work right now).  One hour, precisely, for lunch, usually spent chain smoking at the bookstore a block away, if it isn’t too hot.  Back to work for four more hours of entry level drudgery requiring an IQ a shade or two below the mental retardation level.  Out the door at five, home by five-thirty to let the dog out.  Cook then consume dinner with live-in boyfriend, watch a little TV before heading to bed and fucking said live-in boyfriend.  Sleep, repeat.
      It should be as boring as it actually sounds.  The thought of such a routine would have made a younger version of myself scratch my eyes out in horror.  I’ve become one of those stable people, those whose lives revolve around a routine of work and life, both unremarkable and interchangeable.  The younger me would view this life with a mixture of pity and contempt, ice clinking in the glass as I contemplated the misery that must surely accompany such an existence.  I know this because most of my old friends view me this way and no longer call (or text).  I know this because the girls at the office look at me with a similar look of disgust, when they invite me out drinking, teetering before me on their heels, breasts propped up on display.  I thank them, and always decline.
     Occasionally, the old restlessness does rumble around in the recesses of my brain and kicks up a fuss.  But it’s always surprisingly brief.  After clicking off the stove, I walk to the back where he’s sitting at the computer, feeling antsy and uninterested in the dinner I just finished cooking.  I tell him it’s ready;  I made his favorite.  Exhaustion from his day rolls off his shoulders in waves, hunched over the keyboard, and my feelings of discontent mysteriously evaporate.  His hair is a mess of angles from spending too long under a baseball cap, too long spent between hair cuts, and a receeding hairline.  I shouldn’t like it, but the mess of it is so familiar. 
      He leans forward and wraps his arms around my waist, hugging me close, but loose.  Always so careful with the strength held in those arms, taut along the line of his wide shoulders.  He rests his head upon my breasts, and the world turns silent for a moment.  My fingers are tangled in his hair before I realize it.
      “You okay?” I ask, soft.  It startles me, this private vulnerability he only displays for me.  Effortless, the way he lets me inside all the way into his core, the raw flesh of his emotion laid bare.  He’s unbreakable, and not just because of his physical size; and yet he lets me see all the tiny barbs of hurt.
     “Just tired,” he says.  I continue feeling his hair with my fingertips, soft and fine tendrils.  Here, there is no discontent, no restless urge to move about, go out and shake the world up a bit.  Everything else is simply gone, turned to white noise far off in the distance.  I’ll continue to ignore S* texts and decline offers to hit the bars, and I won’t miss it.  What’s the point?  When here, in the most unremarkable of moments, is everything the endless nights promised but never delivered.  Here, in the fragile melding of flesh and bone wrapped around me, my hands in his hair, the earth still beneath my feet.