Chapter Five
In case anyone else is confused - i think it's time to assess the situation i have found myself wallowing in.
The walls here smell like they look and reflect the company with a pinpointed accuracy. I'm sitting at this long scummy bar holding a glass that i should be able to see through, but the thin film of dust (or what i hope is dust) along the bottom makes it somewhat translucent. I knock back another throatful of this cough syrup and reflect on my current life.
I'm approaching 38. I live in the suburbs in the south of England. where exactly is not important, because all of these places are exactly the same. I could go into any house on my street and cook a meal because all the draws and cupboards are the same. I could navigate my way throughout the house in the pitch dark; because these houses are exactly the same.
My life doesn't contain many surprises. I work in a big building in the big city where i am a paper-pushing slave-driven corperate accountant whore. My pay is good but i work a lot. Sometimes i think that maybe i work so much to avoid facing the future, or to avoid making an decisions as to what to do with my money or with my life... but any thoughts like these are soon driven out with more work.
I get up at 6.30 and get ready. I take the car to the train station where i catch a big metal railbus with a hundred other people all doing the same as me. You'd think that as we are all going to the same place to do the same thing, day in day out, that maybe we'd share a conversation or two, but no. Ants have more sociability than commuters.
So we arrive in the big city and i get to my building and i sign in and i go upstairs to level 24, accounts. But once i'm there i'm stripped of persona and i get on with my work in a 6x6 cubicle with a computer that doesn't work next to people who don't have any life left in them. My cubicle walls are blank apart from a picture of my wife and two kids and an old poster advertising a music festival in 1982, just to remind me that i used to be alive; once.
My wife is called Catherine and i love her. I thought she was going through a phase - like a mid life crisis for women. Whereas men get flashy cars or have affairs with young greedy women, i suppose women get more stroppy and more emotional and maybe decorate the kitchen? Admittedly, i don't know much about women.
So i was hoping this was all a phase. Hoping all this mumbling in bed about not knowing who she is or not having a life was all going to pass as she got into her age a bit more. This is all just a second adolescence, i told myself. I never thought this would happen.
I took another slurp of my cough syrup drink and motioned to the barman for another. There is an old jukebox on somewhere that is playing some old morning FM radio song. The kind of song those bastards at the station put on to trigger some memory in the minds of their communter listeners that makes them remember how they used to be alive and used to be interesting and then they throw themselves on the train tracks as the number 6 to the city arrives.
So Catherine was having sex with another man. Whether it was for the thrill or it was love or it was a phase or what it was, i don't know. The house is hers, the kids are hers, and she says she needs time to think. She needs time out of herself. She needs me to be away. She has packed my suitcase and with a face of nondescript emotion and blunt-tone seriousness she heaves it out of the house and hands me a scrap of paper with the address and phone number of a good hotel.
Bitch.
Slut.
Slag.
Whore.
I love you.
The cash in my wallet is gone with the exception of taxi money. All my stuff is in the hotel room and it's now nearing one AM. The drink is finished. I pick up my bones and set sail for the door. Of course, in my punch-drunk depressed state, a simple journey to the door can be a complicated procedure. As i get up from my bar stool a cloud of dusty dead skin from men who have sat her before, sad as hell because their wives have left them. In the corner of my eye i spy a young girl. she's got to be 19, maybe 20, 21? She's got a haircut that makes it look like a wig, and it's bubblegum blue. She's wearing a big puffy dress that wouldn't look out of place in a thrift store or flea market, and she's got tears and mascara streaming down her face. Do i go back to my hotel room and drink myself to sleep from an over-priced minibar? Or do i stay?
The walls here smell like they look and reflect the company with a pinpointed accuracy. I'm sitting at this long scummy bar holding a glass that i should be able to see through, but the thin film of dust (or what i hope is dust) along the bottom makes it somewhat translucent. I knock back another throatful of this cough syrup and reflect on my current life.
I'm approaching 38. I live in the suburbs in the south of England. where exactly is not important, because all of these places are exactly the same. I could go into any house on my street and cook a meal because all the draws and cupboards are the same. I could navigate my way throughout the house in the pitch dark; because these houses are exactly the same.
My life doesn't contain many surprises. I work in a big building in the big city where i am a paper-pushing slave-driven corperate accountant whore. My pay is good but i work a lot. Sometimes i think that maybe i work so much to avoid facing the future, or to avoid making an decisions as to what to do with my money or with my life... but any thoughts like these are soon driven out with more work.
I get up at 6.30 and get ready. I take the car to the train station where i catch a big metal railbus with a hundred other people all doing the same as me. You'd think that as we are all going to the same place to do the same thing, day in day out, that maybe we'd share a conversation or two, but no. Ants have more sociability than commuters.
So we arrive in the big city and i get to my building and i sign in and i go upstairs to level 24, accounts. But once i'm there i'm stripped of persona and i get on with my work in a 6x6 cubicle with a computer that doesn't work next to people who don't have any life left in them. My cubicle walls are blank apart from a picture of my wife and two kids and an old poster advertising a music festival in 1982, just to remind me that i used to be alive; once.
My wife is called Catherine and i love her. I thought she was going through a phase - like a mid life crisis for women. Whereas men get flashy cars or have affairs with young greedy women, i suppose women get more stroppy and more emotional and maybe decorate the kitchen? Admittedly, i don't know much about women.
So i was hoping this was all a phase. Hoping all this mumbling in bed about not knowing who she is or not having a life was all going to pass as she got into her age a bit more. This is all just a second adolescence, i told myself. I never thought this would happen.
I took another slurp of my cough syrup drink and motioned to the barman for another. There is an old jukebox on somewhere that is playing some old morning FM radio song. The kind of song those bastards at the station put on to trigger some memory in the minds of their communter listeners that makes them remember how they used to be alive and used to be interesting and then they throw themselves on the train tracks as the number 6 to the city arrives.
So Catherine was having sex with another man. Whether it was for the thrill or it was love or it was a phase or what it was, i don't know. The house is hers, the kids are hers, and she says she needs time to think. She needs time out of herself. She needs me to be away. She has packed my suitcase and with a face of nondescript emotion and blunt-tone seriousness she heaves it out of the house and hands me a scrap of paper with the address and phone number of a good hotel.
Bitch.
Slut.
Slag.
Whore.
I love you.
The cash in my wallet is gone with the exception of taxi money. All my stuff is in the hotel room and it's now nearing one AM. The drink is finished. I pick up my bones and set sail for the door. Of course, in my punch-drunk depressed state, a simple journey to the door can be a complicated procedure. As i get up from my bar stool a cloud of dusty dead skin from men who have sat her before, sad as hell because their wives have left them. In the corner of my eye i spy a young girl. she's got to be 19, maybe 20, 21? She's got a haircut that makes it look like a wig, and it's bubblegum blue. She's wearing a big puffy dress that wouldn't look out of place in a thrift store or flea market, and she's got tears and mascara streaming down her face. Do i go back to my hotel room and drink myself to sleep from an over-priced minibar? Or do i stay?
posted by TokenArtStudent at 8:15 AM
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