Range
I.
A few days ago my boss called me in his room.
“Son, I’ll tell you this as your manager and your friend: I’ve been watching you,” he said. “And I’m pulling your emergency brake.”
Then he went on that people are now quite used to seeing me hurrying things up a bit and moving at 100 mph day in and day out, but turns out that day, it was a little after 7 am and I’d been pushing things through at 200, 300, 1,000 mph already and people were getting edgy and he was getting edgy and I was getting edgy myself; then later in the morning I snapped at this other guy and I think after that I broke down on him and boy, it wasn’t pretty.
He was actually pretty cool about the whole thing; he wanted to know whether HQs was giving me a hard time and even offered to call them up and tell them to cut me some slack. “Not really,” I told him. “They’re actually pretty cool about the whole thing themselves.”
(On a sidenote, this is what I’ve been getting from Headquarters: Tranquilo!! No te apuras!!)
He then asked if I thought I had something to prove to myself.
I said nothing, just shrugged.
“There’s this question that’s been on everybody’s lips for the past couple of weeks, son,” he said, “and that what’s bothering you?”
I told him it was the whole apartment thing; it seemed to suffice for him but it was only half-half-half-half the truth.
Here’s the truth, then: Three years now and I think I’ve had it with the neckties and the shiny shoes and the power-plays…
Once College was over and I’d pulled out of all the bad bits towards blue skies I honestly thought the restlessness was over, that I was through with feeling lost, that I had a purpose in life, etc… and three years later of keeping this beast repressed, nagging inside my guts, I can feel it clawing its way back to the surface once again and it’s telling me that it’s not here either.
It’s telling me that life’s to happen somewhere else, under different circumstances.
Still, money changes everything. Period.
The whole apartment thing taught me something invaluable, the concept of a safety net because I sure as hell need a roof to get back to if things go wrong, and it pretty much set the tune for the next couple of years or so.
“Just you wait a little longer, buddy,” I’m telling myself. “It’s not really that late to fly when you’re twenty-eight or twenty-nine.”
II.
It was very warm that evening and to put it bluntly I was kind of bored sitting alone in that hotel room so I got myself some nice little pills and popped in thrice more than anybody should, confident that it was enough to down a horse and make me relax; then I took to the streets outside by the sea shore and sort of hang around by myself for an hour or so in quiet introspection. What is it that they say? Better living through chemistry?
The pills hit and I felt pretty relaxed. I rested my back against a lamp-post by this statue of a man surfing over an actual working fountain and closed my eyes under the quiet moonglow; I bit my lower lip and thought of you.
Life became perfect for a couple of seconds.
III.
I called up my father when I got back from the beach and he said, “You’ll never guess who stopped by this afternoon looking for you.” I told him I had no idea; I wasn’t very interested anyway. “Well, it was your old friend XXXXX,” he said.
“I don’t have any friends with that name,” I replied.
He said sure I did, how come I didn’t remember the kid who was the doctor’s son (now a doctor himself), one of my closest friends from age 5 to 18, et. al.
“Why did he do that for anyway?,” I asked. “What does he want?”
My father gave me hell and asked why I had to be like that. I didn’t say anything in return but thought to myself if I owed the guy some money.
No of course I don’t, so no real need to call him back.
…Old friends are a failed institution anyway.
IV.
…so we’d all gone to this wedding on Saturday night in some restaurant on the outskirts of the city and the bride was very pretty but also very young and everything else was made so half-assed I seriously wanted to scream for all the wrong reasons and also I was eyeing this other girl wondering for the entire evening whether I should make a move on her or something but then I figured maybe it wasn’t really gonna amount to anything extraordinary and let it go- to be frank with you I wasn’t really giving it much thought and it was past 3 am and this guy was driving everybody home in his car so I turned to her and blabbered something I expected to sound smart as usual and…
Anyway, it was only later as I lay in bed that I remembered it had been the very same words I would frequently tell everyone during my time in College.
I told her, “I think I don’t exist.”
It sounded just as true as it did all those years ago.
A few days ago my boss called me in his room.
“Son, I’ll tell you this as your manager and your friend: I’ve been watching you,” he said. “And I’m pulling your emergency brake.”
Then he went on that people are now quite used to seeing me hurrying things up a bit and moving at 100 mph day in and day out, but turns out that day, it was a little after 7 am and I’d been pushing things through at 200, 300, 1,000 mph already and people were getting edgy and he was getting edgy and I was getting edgy myself; then later in the morning I snapped at this other guy and I think after that I broke down on him and boy, it wasn’t pretty.
He was actually pretty cool about the whole thing; he wanted to know whether HQs was giving me a hard time and even offered to call them up and tell them to cut me some slack. “Not really,” I told him. “They’re actually pretty cool about the whole thing themselves.”
(On a sidenote, this is what I’ve been getting from Headquarters: Tranquilo!! No te apuras!!)
He then asked if I thought I had something to prove to myself.
I said nothing, just shrugged.
“There’s this question that’s been on everybody’s lips for the past couple of weeks, son,” he said, “and that what’s bothering you?”
I told him it was the whole apartment thing; it seemed to suffice for him but it was only half-half-half-half the truth.
Here’s the truth, then: Three years now and I think I’ve had it with the neckties and the shiny shoes and the power-plays…
Once College was over and I’d pulled out of all the bad bits towards blue skies I honestly thought the restlessness was over, that I was through with feeling lost, that I had a purpose in life, etc… and three years later of keeping this beast repressed, nagging inside my guts, I can feel it clawing its way back to the surface once again and it’s telling me that it’s not here either.
It’s telling me that life’s to happen somewhere else, under different circumstances.
Still, money changes everything. Period.
The whole apartment thing taught me something invaluable, the concept of a safety net because I sure as hell need a roof to get back to if things go wrong, and it pretty much set the tune for the next couple of years or so.
“Just you wait a little longer, buddy,” I’m telling myself. “It’s not really that late to fly when you’re twenty-eight or twenty-nine.”
II.
It was very warm that evening and to put it bluntly I was kind of bored sitting alone in that hotel room so I got myself some nice little pills and popped in thrice more than anybody should, confident that it was enough to down a horse and make me relax; then I took to the streets outside by the sea shore and sort of hang around by myself for an hour or so in quiet introspection. What is it that they say? Better living through chemistry?
The pills hit and I felt pretty relaxed. I rested my back against a lamp-post by this statue of a man surfing over an actual working fountain and closed my eyes under the quiet moonglow; I bit my lower lip and thought of you.
Life became perfect for a couple of seconds.
III.
I called up my father when I got back from the beach and he said, “You’ll never guess who stopped by this afternoon looking for you.” I told him I had no idea; I wasn’t very interested anyway. “Well, it was your old friend XXXXX,” he said.
“I don’t have any friends with that name,” I replied.
He said sure I did, how come I didn’t remember the kid who was the doctor’s son (now a doctor himself), one of my closest friends from age 5 to 18, et. al.
“Why did he do that for anyway?,” I asked. “What does he want?”
My father gave me hell and asked why I had to be like that. I didn’t say anything in return but thought to myself if I owed the guy some money.
No of course I don’t, so no real need to call him back.
…Old friends are a failed institution anyway.
IV.
…so we’d all gone to this wedding on Saturday night in some restaurant on the outskirts of the city and the bride was very pretty but also very young and everything else was made so half-assed I seriously wanted to scream for all the wrong reasons and also I was eyeing this other girl wondering for the entire evening whether I should make a move on her or something but then I figured maybe it wasn’t really gonna amount to anything extraordinary and let it go- to be frank with you I wasn’t really giving it much thought and it was past 3 am and this guy was driving everybody home in his car so I turned to her and blabbered something I expected to sound smart as usual and…
Anyway, it was only later as I lay in bed that I remembered it had been the very same words I would frequently tell everyone during my time in College.
I told her, “I think I don’t exist.”
It sounded just as true as it did all those years ago.
posted by 186282mps at 7:26 AM
<< Home