“Till you have drench´d our steeples”

I.
“You really thrive on days like this, don´t you?,” asks this girl at the office once the clock finally hits eight, eight-thirty p.m. as the last waning traces of stormy clouds dismount then melt off somewhere beyond the concrete skyline and the slums past the train tracks and the river, giving way to a placid, cool evening air. “The hardest of our days so far and you were not afraid for one second?!”
“Hey c´mon, I was scared witless,” I tell her with a smirk then nod out to my own reflection on the window.
“You loved every minute of it. I was terrified but your eyes just gleamed. We could see it in your eyes. That´s masochism. You´re nuts.”
“I´m like, a Corporate superhero. Fastest boy alive and all that,” I tell her under a toothpaste ad-like smile. “Corporate Batman!”

If you saw me then, you´d swear all the panache and the bravado were true, too:

Upon reaching the toilet at the mall afterwards, to change my clothes and get into my jogging gear, I locked the door to the stall, lowered the toilet seat and sat down.
I stretched out my left arm and looked at my hand- - it was shaking, trembling- - and so was the rest of my body.


II.
The best moment of my day is...
There´s this slope going up the avenue, it starts once the last traffic light lets go the swarming ocean of red lights past the last large intersection. And they speed up uphill.
It´s on that very block I stop walking, regardless of my current walking speed, and speed up as well- - but that´s not jogging, no, that´s actual uphill running with a somewhat heavy backpack behind me, sneakers ready to burn rubber on the sidewalk.

Car-chasing like a dog you know? Close to howling out. Actually trying to keep up with the cars. Then sweating, panting.

The very best moment of my day comes right before I take that first step in running: It´s right then, right there, right in the thinking that regardless of what I do, regardless of any effort or performance, what it boils down to, ultimately, is that it´s probably gonna hurt so much in the morning once my calf muscles have all cooled down..


III.
So whatever comes our way - - it´s the computers crashing and the phone lines down, then the whole sky pouring down as the lights go out then start flickering on and off as we hope to god the generators to kick in and keep up - - Until you catch a glimpse of yourself running across the office with 3 literally purloined, stolen desktop CPUs in your arms at once to replace your team´s - - Until you get yourself leaping steps in the stairway with a borrowed password you shouldn´t even have - - Until there´s that fleeting moment that takes you back to that time maybe ten years ago when the milkshakes at Red´s (where we first kissed between jokes at Aquaman´s expense as it should be the norm in dating) were so expensive that me and D. and G. could only afford it maybe twice a year and now these days the red wine flows intertwined with the champagne like f*cking Coca-Cola at a McDonald´s - - so whatever comes our way, man, the only thing that will ever actually make any sense in blurting out amidst the chaos is- -

I call out to whoever is standing by me when it gets darkest, then politely ask if I can ask him, or her a question. “Yes,” I´m told everytime.

Then I ask if the theme song for 21 Jump Street was an Oingo Boingo song, even though I know it really wasn´t, and smile - - because it takes everybody back and out of the horror movie loop even if for a single second - - and my hands shake then tremble inside my pockets anyhow.


IV.
So hey-- rain it might, but baby you wanna see my steeples drenched?
Rain harder, then, because I´ll car-chase and follow suit every time, see? And play just as hard as you pour down.

Still on the Oingo Boingo song, though, a line: "The fire in your eyes - may it never go out" -- and my eyes are spitting out searing, white-hot lightning bolts right now.

It was a dark and stormy knight!

It was a dark and stormy night- - no kidding there, it really was, last Friday there about 8:30pm at the office, raining like hell and stuff- - and a phone rang at a desk far from mine and there was no one to pick it up.
So I dashed across the room and upon reaching said desk and gazing over at the ringing telephone´s caller ID display- - the surprise!. You´re not buying into this one for a million years, but I swear on a stack of comic books the caller ID display read, Bat-phone!

I did pick up the receiver, however, and a female voice told me, in English, no less, that she´d probably called a wrong number.


I have no idea what to make of this one but I was thrilled anyhow.

This is how I feel ten years after 1999

I.
It´s the 7th day of the year and I´ve been working 14 hour days from Mon to Fri with maybe a 10-min lunchbreak for two, three weeks now: I´m tired, I´m frustrated, I´m all-out spent.

I feel like I´m moving way too slow, borderline wading through molasses, and I can only dream I could be leaner, smarter, faster:

“You´re doing it again,” I´m told at the office. “You´ve been moving around way too fast and your team mates and employees are getting all freaked out because of that.”


II.
“There should be a verb or an expression like to Sting it out, says **** during New Year´s Eve between the Veuve Clicquot and the Nespressos. “You know, to do it like Sting, to start out so great, so cool, only to really screw it up in the end”.
“Yeah. Figures. Whatever, man,” I tell him, only mildly drunk.

Then up pop the fireworks from the thronging avenue a few blocks up the street and I get a little disappointed because there´s no countdown afterwards.

Yes, afterwards: How grim is that?


III.
...I wish ´09 could last forever like this: Year zero, Anno Domini, ground zero, less than zero but can´t you feel it´s only stretching out into infinity like catgut: And baby it might even twang for us a couple of times but come December it´ll let go. You´ll see it´ll let go. Some people say you´ll see to it yourself. But no, you´re my Lyla Lerrol not my Jezebel Jet:

Father Time carries a scythe but Batman a batarang.