Need another release besides the bulky leather notebook I occasionally jot not notes into. This might be it. I don’t know. Return to my early days in NYC, corporate, working but taking time to document my amazing life by depositing its trifles into a Word document I unintentionally destroyed by opening it at a DOS prompt. This was 1992, I think. That document could have told the story of a transitional period of time for me. Or it might have reeked of selfish distortions and lies. I’ll never know because it is gone. Over 100 pages, as I recall. Today it is 2025 and it seems I am back where I started in the early 1990s. I was even boning the same woman from those nascent days for much of last year. She is 60 now. Oops, I think she just turned 61 since we parted ways.
…
It is a few days later. I’m thinking about the pear stems. To ignite my OCD I’ve placed pear stems at strategically dark and hard-to-spot locations throughout this workspace. It is now 2025 but I started doing this very early in my time here in 2022. Today, on account of workspace dynamics, it would look weird for me to go back to those locations to poke around by the floor to see if my pear stems are still there. I stashed them at the bottom of desk frames, mostly, as I recall. Even if would not look strange for me to wander around that part of the workspace I don’t think I’d be able to remember where I had placed the stems. I took photos but that was nearly 3 years ago and it’s not worth the potential satisfaction to dig them up for evidence.
I’ve been amazed that some of them were found and removed. I dropped one stem into a space so narrow and obscure I thought certain it would be there for a generation. Somehow it was found and removed. I was so much in disbelief that for days I would stand and stare down into that space, between a staircase handrail and the wall next to it. I almost gave away my game when someone saw me doing this and asked “What the heck is he looking for down there?”
Indeed, this space was a strange area to be staring into. I still give it a sidelong glance with the hope of a miracle that the stem will be restored to its rightful (to me) place in this conundrum of time and space.
An incident of that vintage occured when I owned a car. It was a Lincoln Town Car, the kind that had caps on the wheels. One day one of the caps disappeared. This led me to discover that virtually all Lincoln Town cars of that era were missing one or all of their 4 caps. I concluded mine had popped loose somehow and, upon being informed that the caps are purely decorative, I let it go. I did not seek replacement or think anything further about the matter.
Until…
Six or seven months later the cap was back, right where it had been on the rear right wheel. Imagining I had misremembered which cap was missing I inspected all four wheels and, yes, all caps were accounted for. Someone, for whatever reason, had simply borrowed the cap and returned it in the same condition as before several months later. Why? Who the hell knows. As far as trinkets and chunks of metal go the cap was not the most unattractive bauble so maybe someone decided to adorn their living space with a wall-mounted Town Car cap and show it off to their visitors as a masterpiece of home decor. Maybe it was used as a puck in shuffleball. Maybe it was used to murder small animals. I don’t know, and I honestly did not go down the path of nefarious intentions or usage of the cap. I could have inspected to see if a tracking device or bomb was embedded in the wheel but that inspection never happened.
I eventually sold the car to someone with full knowledge of this matter. No evidence of evil intentions ever emerged, as far as I know, with respect to the cap mysteriously reappearing.
What if such a scenario plays out with the pear stems? I can’t see it happening but if someone in maintenance at this workplace thinks someone is fucking with them maybe they’ll play the game as well and monitor the locations for reactions when the pear stems reappear. Maybe there would be monitoring of security camera footage, and disciplinary action taken on this worker who planted innocuous pear stems throughout the facility as a harmless way to keep his mind engaged in the progress of the mind-erasingly unfulfilling day.
Mostly I place them in little spaces between large tiles that define the décor of the walls here. They are mostly placed in darker areas, defying observation by any but the most determined. I can barely see some of them myself, but I’m careful not to look too much like I’m trying to find some of them, lest I draw the scrutiny of someone like the person who asked why the hell I was looking down into the space between the stairwell handrail and the wall.
I look for them on each of my daily constitutionals, when I walk about the areas of the office where it seems appropriate for me to do so. Some have taken note of my thrice-daily strolls, commenting with admiration on the commitment I put into them. They don’t know I abuse myself in so many other ways but if they take some shred of inspiration from my walking the walk then I will consider that an unintended mission accomplished.
If anyone suspected me a few months ago they would have found their smoking gun right in front of where I presently sit. A non-descript piece of metal functioned as an ash tray of sorts for my collection of stems ripped from Bartlett pears at the nearby supermarket. You could say I stole the stems but I doubt the store imposes a specific price on the stem of the pear. There is no stem tax or fee, at least none that appear on the store receipts when I actually purchase full pears.
I had 7 or 8 stems in this little tray at my desk, a sure clue to any investigator that I was the one, I am the pear person stuffing stems into nooks and crannies, and crooks and nannies throughout the place.
But no one ever connected that tray of stems to the chicanery being wrought. I emptied the tray and keep stems in my shirt pocket. Sometimes they drop out when I take my shirt off at night, leaving a curious assortment of pear stems in my bedroom.
