After trying to convince everybody I've met for the last few years that they should write fiction, somebody was bound to ask the obvious: 'Why don't you do it yourself?'... It starts like this.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or me, is entirely coincidental. I'm seriously not this loathsome a character (you've gotta beleive me! :-).
In Our Own Time
by MDG
"Damn beige boxes!". I flipped the keyboard across the desk. The clatter of the keys was tremendous; precisely the effect I'd wanted to achieve. It was all very passionate, all very tortured genius. This was certainly the tantrum of a man about to crack. This was an unanswerable cry for help. Unanswerable because I was crying the for the loneliness of being without peers. Crying for the absence of challenge and endeavours worthy of my intellect.
"What's wrong?". Well, nothing specifically. I didn't even have any idea of what I'd been working on. Actually, I think I was simply reading some emails. There was a report to be done but I hadn't really started yet; how could I? I'd emailed a few questions about which template to use the night before and hadn't received a response � once again I was waiting around for everybody else.
"I've just lost my file". How long should I say I'd been working on this imaginary file? 2 hours? 2 days? How much work could I claim to have lost without somebody suggesting I call tech. support and let them snoop through my hard drive? I didn't know what was in this damn beige box and I didn't want anybody else knowing. I'd received an email the other day claiming that it was possible to see every web site I'd looked at for months. Did this include when I clicked on a pictured in an unsolicited email? Was I not supposed to click on those images?
"Did you save it? Did you make a backup?". Of course I made a backup! I'm not stupid. I know how to use these contraptions � I just find them infernal. Or at least I would have saved it. But there is no file � I wasn't working on a file! I just wanted everybody to know I was upset. Don't they understand � this isn't about the file. "Yes; I have a backup from this morning".
"That's not too bad then". Yes. But I'm still frustrated. Remember; I just threw my keyboard. Surely, that's something you have to talk to me about? Maybe we should call Workplace Health and Safely or something � this is a serious incident. There must be a report that we're supposed to fill out.
I wish I hadn't moved the glass of water on my desk before I tossed the keyboard. It would have been knocked over for sure. Those papers on the left would have definitely been ruined. The ink from those flyers would have certainly stained the desk. There was quite a bit of water in the glass � some of it would have leaked off into my lap. I'd have had to stand up cursing and brushing water off my pants. "Yeah. Shouldn't hold me back too much. I'll just use the backup."
For the rest of the day I kept to myself. I climbed up on a swivel chair to remove an old Christmas decoration; I moved a computer monitor from one desk to another without using a trolley; I emptied all the coffee pots and didn't refill them; I loudly performed all the nasty bits from all two gangster rap songs I could recall; and I replied to the CEO's weekly email with an equally banal account of my week, and how I thought it might be beneficial if he saw things from my perspective, how I valued his opinion, and how I welcomed any feedback he might have on my strategy.
Nobody complained. I wasn't sacked. I didn't think about Leisa once. I left work early to visit the local library and my friend Minuet.
Minuet was an unrequited childhood sweetheart turned dear old friend. Friendship hadn't been my idea � I guess she simply got sick I me following her around and making her papier-m�ch� roses. Not that I ever sent her the roses. In fact, a papier-m�ch� rose needs to be rather large and awkward if you ever hope to get the level of detail right.
She was shy and unconfident growing up. Unfortunately, she was also stunningly beautiful and therefore much of the population took the lack of confidence as laziness, and the shyness as snobbishness. My experience with Minuet has made me reluctant to make such denouncements of the beautiful; even though I've learnt the generalisations to be largely reliable.
As Minuet dusted shelves and made faces at what I judged were hideous misfilings and unforgivable abuses of the dewy-decimal system, I explained to her each and every variation of how little I'd thought of Leisa all day.
Minuet never tired of these conversations. She would respectfully comment that I felt things more deeply than most people and that it moved her. There was something about the way she said it, however, that implied I could move her til the cows come home but it still wasn't normal and she was pretty pleased it was me and not her.
I'd met Leisa nine months before and instantly fallen in love with her. For me there was no other way of falling in love with anybody. So much so, that I would sometimes have to retrospectively play the mental trick of having always loved somebody, when at first I hadn't really noticed them.
It actually helped to badger and abuse every mildly attractive woman that you met just in case you later took a fancy to them and had to sight examples of telltale signs that you really liked them all along. Perhaps this process was a little counter-productive; now I think about it.
Anyway, Leisa had been different. In fact, I don't think I'd even gone to the bother of meeting her before I'd started to fall in love. There is a precedent to this, I believe, in an Oscar Wilde play � and not surprisingly, I read quite a bit of Oscar Wilde leading up to Leisa's arrival. So the whole process just seemed to be such a quaint thing to try.
As a new start at the company I worked for, Leisa was to undergo 2 weeks of training. The training would be conducted by about 6 different employees rotating as teachers. This was based on the premise that while two continuous weeks of teaching in a corporate environment would be utterly unbearable, two continuous weeks of corporate education couldn't be avoided.
It was 6 days into Leisa's (and three other three non-descript new starts�) training before I even saw her. But she was spoken about. She was not held above the others in any way but her name stood out. I latter wondered if it was just because it was spelt wrong. I'd seen it written in emails and on training materials and perhaps I was just a sucker for slightly exotic spelling?
The truth is it didn't make any sense. That I loved this woman before I met her must have been pure magic. Had we spent the rest of our lives together it would have been something that I repeated too often to grand-children and aged-care nurses but now it seemed 'I loved her before I met her' was the ramblings of a very pathetic man indeed � determined not to get over things and move on.
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Hmmm... And there's already more of the same... Continue?
