That is a common greeting here on Friday’s, even though many people who say those words or else respond affirmatively to it work the weekend.
I wish the people in this room would cease their conversation, their petty, paltry chitchat that should have exhausted fueling itself with its own fumes minutes ago. This is the pettiest of conversation, needless, forgotten in the gleeful moments of silence that envelope its cessation. They continue their prattle, dissecting attitudes about their greatest fears involving hair color and highlights, comparing their experiences with those of someone else who is not present but evidecently all the way into this discussion that has touched many people at this company and beyond. It has faded but the one woman is not turning around to visually end the conversation. They are on opposite sides of the room. Now the one woman is talking to herself, which is what I suspect she wished she was doing all along for these past torturous, terrible, avalanche of jackass conversation that none will recall in the moments that now swallow it all.
…
OK, I can relax a little. Breathe. It is quiet again, only ths essential sounds of footsteps, doors closing, toilets flushing, asses being wiped. Essential sounds, unlike the needless, viscous aural blender of recalcitrant but relentless words. OK, I’ll stop with the rant, since the rantable activity has ended.
…
Excitement started early today, when through uncorrected vision I saw something dark and small in the corner of the bathtub. I had already turned on the showerhead and this abruptly startled into action a type of creature I’ve not seen in my domicile for years. A cockroach. Yugh. I acted swiftly, groggily, and perhaps regrettably. So long has it been since I dealt with pests that I could not even remember where the bug spray was located. Time was scarce so I just dealt with it stream-of-conscious like, grabbing the scampering beast, unable to escape the sheer walls of the bathtub but not going near the drain for fear of the raging water of the showerhead, grabbing it with a paper towel or two and crushing it, but probably not to death, since roaches survive almost all assaults except those on their central nervous system (bug spray). I took the wad of paper towels to the kitchen and stuffed it in a so-called “single use disposable bag” the likes from which I regularly get multiple uses. But this bagging didn’t seem secure enough to trap the hapless beast for sure so I found a ziploc bag in the cabinet, the kind where you don’t physically press the bag shut but pull the notch across and feels way more securely shut than the other way. I stuffed this bag into the trash and left it there, contemplating jazz, contemplating this encounter that just occurred between two earthly creatures, one of which may at this moment be suffering a slow, suffocating death in a Queens County trash can.
I am certain this bug has responsibilities and challenges to face down in that drain from which I assume it dared to rise up. It had a comfortable life down there, with thousands of offspring and countless husbands. What are its dreams, its hopes, what is it thinking about now as it slowly creeps toward oblivion, trapped in a bag at the bottom of a dark, dark garbage can.
Best not to think about. I had to shower and did not intend to share that special time with a fucking cockroach. Not finding the bug spray ended up being a positive, as I would have had to spend a precious minute or more dismissing the smell and impact of the spray on the tub’s surface and in the air.
