Her
Meet the new boss. Same as the… nah. The new number two- flips her hair about and smiles. Says hi to everyone and looks at her phone. So fake but what can you do? Someone has to speak up. Go to the boss? He hired her. Whispering among the rank and file. Cliques form. I hate kissing ass. It has always been my downfall. I have a high sense for BS. A friend and colleague sees it too but he is smarter than I am. He says nothing. A stoic who does his job and goes home. I begin to speak. I confront her in a meeting. Next thing I know she makes a cut in my department which pits me against my stoic friend. We know it but it is obvious what she is up too. I talk to her but get nowhere. She talks a lot but says nothing. Blames the move on upper management. Twenty plus years and this lady comes in and in eight months is shaking up my job like never before. I vow to become a monk. I will say nothing. Put my head down, seal my lips, do my job the best can and go home. But it is not my nature. However, I will try. I need guidance. I Google how to become monk-like. Meditate, become quiet, clear the mind… be peaceful. I try and am more or less successful. I rant about her at home to the wife but at work I am quiet. Another colleague asks if something is wrong. Nope. It’s all good- just trying to do my job well, I answer. Three months of this and then… I go to the staff room for a cup of coffee and she has her back to me and is murmuring into her phone. I freeze, not wanting to interrupt but am intrigued by her coquettish tones.
“Of course I will. When? “she breathes.
She realizes I am behind her hangs up and snaps about.
Flustered she says, “Oh hi, what’s up? Just getting some coffee,” and storms past me.
Put it in the bank. Say nothing to nobody. I keep a little notebook stashed in my desk locked. Note the time and date- just in case. My evaluation is due next week. We meet. She says all the nice things but says my communication is lacking and it is marked down on my form. I explain that I have committed to doing my job as well as possible and in doing so I haven’t reached out as much. I have data that shows my growth. She says that that part of my job is to communicate clearly and that I have been lacking and the evaluation will reflect that. I say nothing. I am ready to explode but go into monk-mode and sign and accept my less than stellar yearly evaluation. There are rumors. Someone says they saw her and the boss walking to their cars and lingering a little longer than they should. Then… I stay a little late and as I head to the parking lot there are only three vehicles there. Mine, hers and his. There she is. She doesn’t see me but she veers off a little and tucks something under the windshield wiper of the boss’s truck. I continue, dropping my head so she doesn’t suspect that I saw it.
She is startled and says, “Oh, hey, working late? Oh, OK, uh, see ya tomorrow.”
I nod and get in my car. I pick up my phone and pretend to make a call. She is sitting in her car glancing at me. I continue my fake animated conversation and wait her out. Eventually she pulls away. I get out and taking my phone take a picture of the envelope under the wiper. I quickly take a look. A heart is drawn on the outside, inside is a gift card to a travel site. “Can’t wait” it says with XOXO and another heart on a note. I take pictures of it all and slip it back under the wiper. Something must have happened because a month later he has been reassigned. She is applying for his old position. There is talk among some about how great she would be. I say nothing. I do however check the HR website about when the position will close for applications. A monk does not seek to harm others. I am a temporary monk. I print a picture from my phone from their windshield wiper incident and drop it on her desk when she is away the day before the position closes.
Sentenced...
I trudged towards what would be my fate. Sentenced for mocking the gods, I had flung a red Solo cup full of wine across the chest of a statue of Dionysus on a night of revelry. Some lightweight, sensitive weasel had seen me and reported me to a member of the Boule. My defense was drunkenness. The verdict was to face Dionysus himself, known to be a grumpy fellow, and to make him laugh. It was said that he never laughed…
I entered the temple, escorted by two hoplites in full battle dress. There was a high chair and smoke curled about making it difficult to see. The great god of wine, fertility and madness sat still on his throne. Four naked youths were standing nearby holding grapes, platters of cheeses and nuts and a richly adorned kylix of wine. The bearded god’s face did not move, he simply stared seemingly through me.
One of the youths, in a slight voice asked, “What brings him here?”
One of the hoplites said with a bellow, “This man has defaced the image of the great Dionysus, and has been sentenced to face him himself.”
Dionysus didn’t move.
The youth said, “What is his task?”
“To make him laugh,” the hoplite replied.
The youths began to giggle. I was in trouble.
The hoplites stepped back.
I stood alone in front of Dionysus.
I couldn’t help it.
I farted.
The youths froze with looks of horror on their faces.
Dionysus’s mouth began to twitch and he smiled and began to howl and guffaw with abandon. His head leaned back and he clutched his ample belly, jiggling about as he laughed uncontrollably.
The youths laughed nervously at first and then joined in with fits of hysteria.
Dionysus grabbed the kylix and tried to chug some wine but he laughed again, spewing it all about.
He looked at the hoplites and waved them to take me away.
I left the temple hearing the roaring laughter behind me.
Free to go, wine splattered across my tunic.
Writing...
The instructions say it cannot be more than three pages. They give 4 prompts… What the hell? How about a page a prompt? Nah that would make too much sense. This is worth money, as in real cash. Nearly $6,000 a year. Not like make- or-break money but, damn- I’d-like-to-have-it money. It has been ten years since I passed these board exams. When I first did it, I needed that money. Now, not so much. But who wants to give money back? A friend and colleague said, screw it, I am not going to do it. He said he’d rather go skiing and drink beer than spend time writing these damn papers for another 6K a year. Of course he has no kids who are going to go to college and suck him dry. Ski away big fella- I have to get this done. I have written 11 pages of near BS and yet here I am. The last piece. I have four pages of really good stuff yet they say I can only submit three…
Get out the scissors. William Zinsser, in On Writing Well, which I have read multiple times, talks about stripping it down and building it back up. HA! I have to strip like a dancer and leave it lying near the pole. Ain’t no building it back up there Billy Z!
I start by chopping extraneous words. This just chops up my prose and makes me sound like robot. “I write well.” Whatever… After an hour of chopping and fixing, I still have 7 extra lines to get rid of. Something must go. It is like chopping off an arm! Everything is laid bare yet you still have to amputate something. I start with a little toe. A two-sentence line about my family. Of course in order for it to work I have to add a sentence to make it not sound stupid. Yee Haw! I am down to six lines! Sonofa… 45 minutes and half a bottle of wine later I am down to a single dang line of writing. I delete an entire sentence about how I impact the community in such positive ways. That is the point of the whole paper! How can I chop that? I don’t care. I am down to three pages. Spell check, save and forget about it!
Writing is cool. Rewriting sucks…
Delivery
The job was pretty straightforward. Deliver a Hans Christian 43 from Galveston to Brownsville. The ship was in pretty good shape. She had the typical signs of a rich man’s vessel. The interior was nearly perfect for comfort and ostentation but the working parts were a little neglected. The rigging was a bit frayed and the engine coughed and belched black exhaust for several minutes before settling into raspy rhythm. The passage was largely uneventful. It is 250-some nautical miles between ports and as typical on these coast-hugging deliveries, getting from point A to B as quickly as possible means running the damn motor. The captain, Arlo, is a sailor to the core and he would rather take a circuitous route and hoist canvas but he also lives along the fine line of poverty and knows that the quicker the job done the quicker he gets paid. I join him on occasion to “help.” Really I am there to provide company and allow him to sleep. I know my way around a sailboat well enough to get it about however Arlo is a true salty dog and the lines of command are clearly established. We thudded along for five days and nights making a largely uneventful passage. While on board, Arlo and I pretty much ride a dry ship. We occasionally toss back a sip but mostly we are in get-the-job-done mode with the knowledge that once that voyage has been made, anything goes. Upon arrival at the Southpoint Marina in Brownsville, Arlo made the necessary arrangements at the marina office while I went in search of refreshment. I procured a half-case of Modelo, a bottle of Cruzan rum and 3 limes. We had a night to kill onboard before meeting a friend of the boat’s owner in the morning and then hitching a Greyhound back to Houston in the afternoon. We hunkered down in the cockpit and saluted each other for another passage made with a generous slash of rum and a cold beer. After an hour of relaxed sippage, a fella strolled by with a grocery bag in hand and Arlo recognized him from some wayward past. Arlo seems to know someone in every port in the western hemisphere. Tucker, or Tuck as we ended up soon calling him, was departing Brownsville on his way to the Caribbean on his Tartan 34 as soon as he got a new battery installed. In his bag he had three bottles of good red wine. He joined us as the rum, beer and wine were being worked over. Tuck then had an idea. It was spring break for the college kids who had congregated on nearby South Padre Island. The three of us were at an age where we were still young enough to think we were cool but just beginning to realize that we had passed the time where college kids, girls in particular, thought we might be interesting. Nonetheless, the sights and sounds of a raging college spring break bash intrigued. We righted ourselves and set out to check it out. The blue line city bus got us close and we hiked towards the sounds of the music and general chaos. We walked about the crowds and saw mostly drunk, shirtless guys yelling profanities and witnessed two fights. The scene was not as remarkable as we thought although we were treated to a brief Mardi Gras-style show from four coeds upon a balcony condo. We finally settled in, as sailors tend to do, at a dive bar with a name that I cannot recall. We ended up knocking back rum and Cokes with some guys on a power boat cruise apparently from Corpus Christi. As the night wore on my memory began to fade but I do recall looking about for Tuck and realizing he has slipped away. Arlo was practicing his Spanish with a lady in a yellow short skirt out on the patio while I was in a relatively good-natured debate about fishing. I was winning the debate by arguing the superiority of fly fishing over the Neanderthal-ian techniques of bass fishermen and their crankbaits and pork rinds. The power cruising duo finally hopped up and said they had to return to their boat and asked if I wanted to see it. I stood up in a haze and agreed. The walk down the docks took some effort but I have made those types of walks before. I vaguely recall being shown a very nice cruising trawler but I admit that the most appealing feature was the starboard berth that I fell into. I recall nothing of the voyage. I awoke with the hammer of the gods in my head in a dilapidated wooden beach chair with sun beating down upon me. The normally tranquil sounds of seagulls sounded like the screech of a maniacal witch. It took me way too long to realize I was on dry land. On my chest was a forked-tail pork rind from the bass fisherman’s tackle box. My wallet and phone were nowhere to be found. I had no idea where I was and the only thing I could think of was a gallon of water and equal measures of coffee. I eradicated myself from the chair and stumbled up the beach shielding the sun from my barely open eyes. I felt like I had been run over by a semi-truck hauling hogs. Each step brought on new twinges of pain in places that I didn’t know existed. My head thuded like a bass drum. Upon reaching a cracked sidewalk I saw a young kid on a bike and asked him where I was. He laughed and in Spanish called me a gringo borracho. I began to suspect something was amiss and confirmed it when I saw a road sign that read, Puerto de Matamoros. I had no money, no passport and no plan. I did survive with the thanks of a couple of expatriates I ran into along the docks of a nearby marina who helped smuggled me back into my own country from El Mezquital . I have learned to never trust a power boater and to not deride Texas bass fishermen, despite their ignorance.