No words spoken save for perfunctory hello from one person. My absence seems to have been unnoticed. My presence, as well, seems to be equally off anyone’s radar. I am not really here.
I keep thinking there is something more I should be doing. There is nothing. I am not a valued or significant presesnce here. I just am. I just did a fist and twist. I lose money every single day that I work here. I am officially poor. Underwater. In debt. I have not had debt in over 20 years and I do not like this. Even carrying a bar tab made me uncomfortable. I only ever did that once.
What did I do with 10 days off? I applied for a couple of jobs, later finding that one job is only open to current employees of the company. The other seems available to anyone, meaning 12,000 people probably applied.
I shouldn’t be looking for a job. I should be leveraging my own assets, my own content and interests. I should write. I can do that. I’ve been writing my whole life, rarely for publication.
I am writing this from the desk of a dead-end, futureless job that costs me money. It is making me twitchy and nervous. I should toke up on the meds but I don’t want to. I need to motivate myself again. Anxiety can fuel that, albeit irrationally.
Maybe I didn’t sleep as well as I thought last night. Shower felt good, though.
…
It is the next day. I am earlier than ever to the workplace. A homeless woman calls out to me every day when I exit Fulton Center onto John Street. She once called me “Candy.” I am not the only person who gets these catcalls. I mean, I don’t know that for fact but it should be assumed that as she sits on the warm sidewalk grate, twiddling her fists, she has little else to occupy her time but to solicit attentions of passers-by. Today she was especially animated, but I was unable to distinguish what she was saying. I was already across the street before she started at me, her voice sounding both callous and sweet. I vanishingly thought of myself as the honorable one between us, going to work a meaningful and impactful job while she whiles away her oblivion. But I am nothing. If she has nothing she has more than I.
There has been another woman of interest, so to speak. She has been living in a car for 4 or 5 months. The car has not moved and may not be able to drive. Out of state plates, long expired. I’ve never gotten a good look at her but when I pass her vehicle she is usually moving around in ways that do not align with how someonw would normally behave while simply sitting in a car. She lurches over to the passenger seat, lies sideways, screams into her cell phone. Is she really talking to anybody?
I’d been reflecting again on the experience last year with the woman from 30 years ago. She cut me off and I took that as an opportunity to get the hell out of a very unhealthy and neurotic relationship. I never responded to her email saying we should end this engagement. I did not answer her calls or respond to the texts that came through for days and weeks. I started to feel like the meanie but in one message she admitted she had fucked this up, but she still used verbiage like “When I cut you off…” to assert her control of the dialogue. I’m guessing she did not expect me to go so completely silent. She wanted some groveling and submission, which she claims I exhibited 30 years ago. I have no memory of this incident and it makes no sense to me on any level, but after she said it was over she claimed I showed up at her place of work, waited for her outside, and asked to confirm if it was really over.
The scenario makes zero sense to me, in terms of timing and logic. But she stood by the anecdote, as did I stand by the incident that partially defined our entire time together back then. She was older than me and the age gap was a big enough deal to her that she refused to tell me how old she was. After I don’t know how many months she finally announced that she was 31. I was 23. The 8 year gap seemed enormous, and it was a central part of our story as I sometimes told it to others over the years.
It was a lie. She is only 4 years older than I, and she has no accounting for why she made herself out to be older than she was. Normally when people lie about their age it’s the other way around. She would not outright deny lying about her age but she did not believe or remember it. This feels like something I am whispering to a stranger.