She was there. I was there. Her smile radiated from across the room. She seemed to be by herself. I could have said something, but I did not. I wanted to look consistent in my comings and goings. And honestly, I didn’t feel very good, or articulate.

I feel like a bad person. Bad. Someone not needed, not wanted. Why am I here, at this job? I questioned it from day 1. I needed proof that I am employable. Evidence. I show up, never late. I wanted to talk to New York, to hear its sadnesses and idiosyncrasies. I think I’ve heard enough. One more complaint about a tree stump and I shall become a tree myself, a newly planted shrub.

I am going to keep distracting myself with the woman of the moment.

Cut myself shaving twice today. Didn’t think I was being aggressive. Was appreciating the erotica of a certain broadcast, grinding but not fucking. They whisper quietly in a language I don’t understand. Their love seems real, and her spread legs are like a slow-moving volcano.

I communicated some with another woman I’ve watched for a long time. She seems real. She talks to some men. Romances and encounters of some sort seem genuinely to have happened. I think of pornographers strictly as performers, not consumers of the product they peddle or seemingly solicit. They perform. We watch. But now and again I encounter evidence that they treat their platform as one would a traditional dating site, or app.

I should stay away from that sort of thing, though. I need happy and adjusted. I need happy.

Wish I had something to say. Anything. I made an artsy video last night, “The Texter”. I doubt anyone will see it.

The woman I like to look at, or who I least think I like to look at, has returned my glances a couple of times today. I can see the thoughts. The impossibility. The cultural differences and challenges they present. Her family would not like or welcome a white guy. I get a sense she is very strict, too. Hard to know without asking.

It is Thursday. Said to be the busiest day here but with most people working at once it seems not so relentless. I should take a deep breath and try to make this fun again. But I am gaining weight, losing money, and playing games with blood pressure and anxiety meds that probably cause more troubles than they could ever fake fix.

I used to release anxiety by masturbating in the bathroom but the stairs to get to that bathroom have become a chore. I’d like a job where I get my hands on things. Maybe a professional masturbator of other men? I could orchestrate the masturbating of America.

The Masturbating of America. Isn’t that what quarantine amounted to for many people?

There was another woman here I thought I had a thing for. Skinny, rangy, twitchy. She would wave at me, enthusiastically. But that gesture, which I interpreted as a certain indication of lustful hunger, was just a thing they do around here, and at other offices I’m sure. Strangers to the end but not below sharing a friendly hello to foster a false sense of team building.

I am yawning and feeling impatient. I don’t know if oversight here understands what I do that is so bad, and wrong. I follow up on the cammers. I get to know them, as well as one can from the discrete distance of public information and social media.

I may have made a connection with one irritable and angry caller. I think he follows me on Twitter. We had a gruff, ugly encounter on the phone, when he asked me to look up something like a Directory of Hospitals. I suggested 411 and he went ballistic, saying he could not deal with the bastards at 411. Clearly a troubled dude, but from his Twitter postings he has a thing for payphones. I forgot to check if he follows me.

I don’t know how many of these connections have been made, among myself and people who know of me, or I know of them. That might have been one such connection.

I don’t try to make friends here anymore.