Work Fling Sting

      “So, what happened?”  The video was a little bit iffy.  The wifi was good at Mom’s house but it wasn’t great.  It worked well enough because it didn’t have much competition.  The only person using it was me.  Mom still loved her traditional hardwired TV.

     We had tried to get her to cut the cable but she wasn’t and still isn’t a huge fan of learning new technology.  I tried to show her how she could watch the shows and news programs she wanted via apps and the internet.  She wanted no part of it.  Too many buttons to push.  Too much mess to manage.

     “I just want to turn on the tv and put it on channel 3.  I don’t have time for all these apps and crap.  Just give me my clicker.  As much money as I pay for all of this, I should just be able to say what I want and the TV should just play it!”

     “Mom,” I said picking up the remote, “you, you can do that.”  Those were my famous last words.  For the next five minutes she watched me fight to have my voice recognized, try to find what I want in one place but get redirected to another, and finally put the remote down in frustration and hand her back her ‘clicker’.

     “It was fine.  He came over and we made dinner.”  Karen answered over the iffy video.

     “Oh that’s…”

     “And then, I kissed him.”

     “Oh…” I was surprised.  She had never been the aggressive one.

     “That sounds great!”  I was really happy for her.  “Annnd…”

     “Annnd he stayed over,” she dropped her shoulders.  I felt that ping thing again.

     “Was it bad?  Did he hurt you?”  I felt a little knot in my chest.

     “No.  Nothing like that.  He was kind and fun.  He was kind and fun the next morning,” she smiled a sad little smile.

     “So, what happened?”

     “When he went to take a shower, his phone rang…”

     “Oh, Karen…” I knew where this was headed.

     “Then the texts from someone named Cheryl started.  ‘Where are you?  Why didn’t you come home?  I thought we were going to meet this morning to talk?’ Then the phone rang a couple more times.”

     “I’m so sorry.”

     “When he got out of the shower I said ‘Sounds like someone’s blowing up your phone’.  He just looked at the messages and said, ‘Oh shit!  I had a great time.  I should have told you … I have to go.’  Then he just got dressed and left.”

     “Oh Karen, I’m so sorry.”

     “I mean, it’s not like I was expecting a wedding ring or anything but some common fucking courtesy would have been nice.  ‘Oh by the way I’m seeing someone’ or ‘This is my soon to be ex and we need to talk things through before it’s finally over.’  None of that.  Just ‘Oh shit! I have to go.’  The good thing about this pandemic is I get to work from home and I don’t have to see them in person.”

     “Them?”

     “They went twit/face/insta/snap official a week later.  Apparently he left his ex to move in with her and now they’re together because of the pandemic.”

     “Twit/face/insta/snap official?  How old are these people?”

     “You don’t want to know.”

     She didn’t cry.  I sat quietly.

     “This shit isn’t supposed to be this hard,” she finally said.  I was worried the video had frozen.

     “It’s not,” I replied.  “But it is.  The lows make the highs higher.  I don’t know if it matters, but when this shitshow virus thing is over and we can do movie nights again, I’ve got a big Kare-Bear hug for you.  You can even pick the next few movies.”

     “The Twilight Series,” she said, far too quickly.  She smiled a real smile for the first time.

     “Really?!?  How old are you?”

     “It’s either that or The Notebook.”

     “Why must you hate me so?” I asked closing my eyes and shaking my head.

     “The lows make the highs higher,” she mocked.

     It was my turn to smile.

     “I have to prep a zoom meeting,” she said rubbing her face.  “I’ll talk to you soon.”

     “You take care of yourself,” I said as the screen went blank.

     I knew I was too much of a mess to manage.  I also knew that if you try to find what you want in one place and get redirected back to another, the universe is usually telling you where you need to be.

Week Four

      I really didn’t mind being at home.  There were no unnecessary trips.  I was back at my Mom’s house.  I was there to make sure she was ok and her world was doing fine.  She was all of those things and more.  The rest of the world was not doing fine.

     It was hard to believe the reports of death and sickness touted on the news.  It always felt like a huge scare tactic to keep you watching.  Many of the news stations are really good at this tactic.

     The best ones make you believe everyone else is deceiving you and only they will tell you the truth.  They make you feel special with a little dopamine hit then cut to their sponsors who knocked you down a bit.  The sponsors let you know that you can get that special feeling back if you buy their product.  It’s a vicious cycle.

     After a few days the news and the podcasts were turned off.  I dug deep into audiobooks from the library.  My library card allows me access to digital audio and ebooks.  The selection can be a bit limited but I always find something to get me through.

     It was a whole lot less expensive than trying to maintain paid subscriptions to the Ama/Dis/Hu/Net/Para money grab. Sadly, I hadn’t ended all the subscriptions, yet.  I was still trying to get through my favorites lists on each platform.  These things should have been the first to go.

     This was not a good thing because there were no new clients coming in the door.  There was no door for clients to open.  The walls of fear and confusion were going up faster than the doors to discovery could be built.  Finances were even tighter.

     There were still certain clients we were trying to get into the Darwin Funds.  Not in this cycle, the next one, when the markets came back.  Generally, the markets always come back and we can move things, but at that moment we told most people to hunker down and wait for the world to work its way back to normal.  The job had become a weekly reassuring phone call and email letting people know we were monitoring the situation.

     The general thought was to hold.  You only really lose in a lull if you sell at the bottom.  We would get them into the Darwin Funds when the market came back up.  It did no good to jump ship now.

     There was literally no place to go.  Most large gathering spots (hotels, restaurants, clubs, bars) were closed.  Grocery stores had limited hours and a limited amount of people that could be let in at a time.  People were waiting to see what would happen over the next month or two.  No one needed me to help them save money they weren’t really spending.

     I didn’t miss the drive to Hartford.  I didn’t miss the clients who wouldn’t show for appointments they pushed to Saturdays.  I didn’t miss paying for parking.  I didn’t miss having to put gas in the car every 4 days.  I didn’t miss being in traffic or seeing the aftermath of car accidents.  I didn’t miss two hour detours due to said accidents.

     There were things I did miss.  I missed dinners with Marrianne.  I missed movie nights with Karen but I had to give her some breathing room to see how her thing from work worked.

     Tony and Amber were still making a go of things.  Tessa was distracted by a new age appropriate guy who was gunning for her attention.  Strangely her fling caused a little chest ping but that was a good thing.

     I still hadn’t heard from a few folks but I wasn’t going to give up on them.  You only really lose if you walk away when things are at rock bottom.  Now was time to hunker down and wait for the world to work its way back to normal.

Time to Stew

      There are certain things you do when you have time to stew.  You don’t really do the things you told yourself you’d do.  That room that was a complete mess is still a mess.  The garage still needs just a few things taken out before the car really fits.
      Speaking of fits, none of the clothes you said you were going to throw away got thrown away.  You found out if your favorite video chat app worked or if it sucked.
     Companies that told you working from home was a logistical nightmare and not a possibility strangely had you up and running in a home office over the weekend.  They not only had you up and running, they would contact you at strange hours to make sure you were doing the nothing they knew you had to do.  It’s like their job went from managing to micromanaging.  They knew there was nothing to do so they made up little bullshit tasks and then tracked said bullshit tasks, while expecting you to do the “job”.
     Streaming sites are like gym memberships.  You have them but you don’t use them as often as you said you would.  Just like the gym memberships, even though you don’t use them, you still pay for them.  You even have a routine all set.  Monday watch this show.  Tuesday watch that show.  It’s amazing how much time is spent just scrolling over new shit that will just get tossed to the back of the favorites list.
     Speaking of the favorites list, the list of “Favorites” is now so long that it would take you two years to get through them even with a worldwide shutdown!
     Streaming services were NOT used to people paying money and actually getting their money’s worth.  It could have been one of the things that caused the spike in pricing and the crackdown on password sharing.
     I found a pair of my favorite sweats and a sweet spot on my couch.  Most of the shows I streamed had aired their last episode 5 to 10 years earlier so I was able to binge from breakfast to bedtime.
     As long as I checked and responded to emails or voicemails at specific points during the day everything was ok.
     There was no great room clean out.  There was no kitchen redo.  There was no home gym expansion.  The attic was still a mess and the basement still needed some attention.
     There was also no fighting traffic on major highways or hunting for parking spaces in full parking lots.  For the first two weeks there was a lot of stewing and streaming, wondering and dreaming.  Even the machines enjoyed the peace and quiet.
     As a break between shows, I would watch drone footage of the empty cities.  It was amazing.  Sadly, there were also horror stories of people being trapped on cruises or in countries without a way to get home.  There were also horror stories of forced lockdowns where people were trapped in their apartments.
     People were on a hamster wheel that went from inaction to overreaction to blame to denial to hysteria and it all played out everywhere from the worldwide stage to comfy quiet little couches.
     I took my time to find a few more favorites to add to the list.  I also took the time to stew on what to do once that list was through.

World Wide Worry

     “It looks like,” said the owner of the firm stepping out of his office to conduct the emergency meeting, “things are going to be different for a while.”  The numbers of infected people had skyrocketed.  The number of people dying had also spiked.
     “Mandate has just come from California that we are to work from home until this ‘pandemic’ thing is figured out.”
     It was a double whammy.  The office had just produced and posted a video stating that this would not become a pandemic.  In that same video it was stated that this was all hysteria.  That video was quietly removed two weeks later.
     The idea that there was a worldwide worry had been kicking around in the background for the last few weeks.  It had made its way to the forefront.  There was fear for Mom.  There was fear that this was it.  We had pushed the boundaries of the planet to the point where it was finally pushing back.  
     Mother Earth had found the right combination to kill us all and start all over again.
     On another note, I was happy not to have to drive into Hartford every other day.  I remember thinking to myself, “This is terrible, BUT (provided my Mom and my sister are ok) if I never have to make this drive again and most people I care about don’t die, I’m ok.”
     After months of crushing anxiety something was really happening.  When you think the world is falling apart and it actually does, you are strangely prepared for it.  The machines are an internal terror.  They take your worst fears and run them over and over again.  They do everything to cause you anxiety and then feed off that anxiety.
     You feel like everything is ending.  When everything actually feels like it is ending, due to say a pandemic of unknown origin, you shift from internal terror to worldwide worry.  The machines can’t compete.  Because you have thought of every shit scenario and every soul crushing terrible thing that can happen, you are strangely prepared for the worst.
     It’s a twisted validation that cleans the slate and brings forth a moment of almost pure joy.  You are able to say, ‘See, things are as bad as I thought they were.”
     We were also going home because the building was shutting down for at least a week.
     “Oh my God!  This is just like that movie with that guy from Boston and that super hot English guy.  The one about the virus … you know the one where the mother and son died in the first 10 minutes.” started the secretary.
     “Seriously,” said the female rep.  “Why the fuck do you keep bringing that movie up?”
     “Because he’s hot,” she said, pouting a little.
     “Hot or not our clients will be just as freaked out as everyone else.”  He grabbed his backpack, jacket, and phone.  “Tragedy prints money!  Make those phone calls!  Now is the perfect time to shine.  Move that money before the market is a mess!”
     He was on a roll.  His eyes were wide with the coming commissions that could be made by ‘moving the money’.
     “Where are we moving them?” He asked, headed for the door, already knowing.
     “Darwin Defined Funds, where your money evolves with the market.”  We all responded.
     “All right.  Go home.  Don’t die.  Don’t worry.  The greatest president of our lifetime is handling this.”
     Things were going to be different all right.  We had pushed the boundaries and now the boundaries were pushing back.  Maybe Darwin had more to do with this than we thought.

Due Diligence

      Normally around this time of the year I would’ve been deep into hibernation.  Between the jolts and the job hunt I was still going out, albeit on a limited basis.  I wanted to just disappear.  My senses weren’t really that sharp.
     It took me a little time to realize it, but once it did it hit me like a bolt.  Marrianne’s husband was named Kyle.  Who was Karl?  It made sense now.  Of course, she was more interested in Karen’s guy from work story.  Was it a slip of the tongue or had she also found a new friend?  
     I would have noticed it sooner if the night before hadn’t left me feeling fuzzy.  Maybe I was overthinking things.  I hadn’t done my due diligence.  I would ask her the next week.
     Maybe she wasn’t really interested in either story.  At this age people were tired of hearing about random acts of stupidity, hook ups, crushing anxiety, and complete uncertainty with the world.
     I remember being on twit/face/insta/space years ago watching a woman we all knew have a public meltdown.  There was a lot going on in her life but a lot of what was going on in her life was for show and attention.
     In one of her posts she laid bare what she thought was the greatest tragedy of the moment.  There were tear emojis and exclamation points galore.  After about two hours she had received 5 responses from her 600 friends.  There was an all caps plea of ‘DON’T YOU PEOPLE CARE WHAT’S HAPPENING?’.
     Underneath was a small answer.
     “It’s not that no one cares.  It’s that so many people have so much going on in their own lives that they may not be able to respond right away.”
     “But this is important,” she responded with sad eye emojis.
     “I’m sure it is.”
     And with that it was done.  Two hours later there was a post of puppies that got 150 likes.  She, like so many other people, had gotten what she wanted, engagement.  There was no solution to the problem given.  There was no hint that the problem was actually solved.  There was no reason to think that the presented problem was actually a problem.
     Conflict driven reality shows with no real stakes or consequences are the most popular things on tv, streaming, etc.  Maybe people don’t mind hearing about random acts of stupidity, hook ups, crushing anxiety, and complete uncertainty in the world as long as there is a layer of distance.  They have so much going on in their own lives.
     If you get too close, the terror takes its toll.  The distance is deliberate.  I still had my questions:
     Who was Karl?  Was there even a Karl or was it a slip of the tongue?  How would Karen’s weekend go?  How would this potential new gig work out?
     Other than those few little things, I was happily headed into hibernation where my due diligence was to disappear into the distance. 

Bread Crumbs

      “She didn’t actually say that, did she?” asked Marrianne flopping back on to her living room couch.  “Seriously?”
     “I don’t make this stuff up.  I just report it.”
     I told her about the new job opportunity, the conversation with Karen, and the ‘Oh Hey!’ from yesterday.
     ‘Abby’ had caught her 5 a.m. flight and was kind enough to let me sleep in the room until checkout time.  She did let me know if I ran up the tab on drinks and breakfast, she would find out my real name and track me down.  I had actually tried to give her my name a few times but she wanted no part of it.  When people want to get lost, they don’t leave bread crumbs.
     I needed a coffee with hot chocolate.  Marrianne loves caramel with cream.  Her house was on the way and I needed to tell someone about what might be the last great act of debauchery.  Right now, sharing wasn’t for Karen.
     Marrianne and I had never dated.  I tried when we were younger but she had casually explained that she liked her men 6’ 2” or taller.  She was 5’ 10” barefoot.  If she wanted to go out with her hair up and dressed in a pair of heels, she was an impressively imposing 6’ minimum.
     I was 5’ 7” on a good day …. with a full head of hair.  Us holding hands in public would look like photos of supermodels walking with their little kids to get ice cream.  I am not tall enough for her vagina to acknowledge my presence as a suitable suitor.  She does not date Scale Model Men.
     I bring a decent ear to the table and I don’t break things when I’m around.  Lately the exchange of dinner ideas has been pretty good.
     Normally a mid morning mocha and a quick conversation could ward off a world of worry.  Today wasn’t the day.
     Her face was a bit pensive.  
     “Is this too much too early in the morning?”
     “No.  It’s Karl and the kids.  Things are just getting ...”  Her voice trailed off.
     “Do you need anything?”  I worried I had overstepped.  “Should I leave?”
     “Thanks for the caramel with cream.  Yeah, I have an 11 o’clock and I just want to make sure everything is ready for the presentation.
     “I just can’t believe she said that.”
     “I know, right. ‘And if we aim just right’..” I started.
     “No, not that.  Karen and the guy from work.  Those things never …” Her voice trailed off again.
     “You’re a mess,” she said, changing the subject.  “Shoot me a text when you get home - BEFORE you pass out - so I know you got there safe.”
     “Yes, Mom,” I said letting myself out the front door.
     As I drove home it struck me that I had come across a few bread crumbs Marrianne thought were lost.

There’s This Girl (Something Different)

      “What is that?” I asked, almost spilling some of my fourth glass of wine, standing in the doorway.

     She just laughed and rolled her eyes.

     “You’re kidding, right?  You’ve never seen this before?”

     “I’ve seen this before but …”

     “Butt … very funny.  I see what you did there.”

     It was my turn to roll my eyes.

     “I’m four glasses deep.  Any attempted witticisms on my part would be best in that thing.” I just pointed because couldn’t think of the word.

     “I mean that thing is better than the leather chairs in the lobby.  I hear it gets you cleaner.”

     Something about Karen and movie night had caught me off guard.  The friendship always had and always would come first.  As nice as it would be to explore more, the tradeoff is usually a friendship lost.

     The Derich thing was different.  The friendship might not be over but there was a bit of nastiness that had been explosive and, seemingly necessary.  He was struggling with the fact that he wasn’t where he wanted to be.  His life was a complete success by most standards.  He had a great job where he, until recently, did nothing.  His wife made enough money so, if he wanted to, he could just sit at home and play Mr. Mom.

     In his mind the man was supposed to be the bread winner.  He wasn’t.  He was mad at me because, my life wasn’t where he felt it should be, either.  We still hadn’t spoken since the blow up at the bar.  His daughter Riley was almost two and I still hadn’t met her.

     At some point I would have to find time to fix what was fucked.  Tonight was not that night.

     “You’re pretty articulate for four glances of wine,” she laughed at herself.                       

     “Glances.  It would be so much less expensive if we could just glance at bottles and get buzzed.”  She was amused and she was amusing herself.

     She told me to call her Abby.  Her goal was to disappear into something different.   She had just sat down at the bar and started talking.  I was convinced she thought I was someone else.  

     My goal was to wash away the world then work off the hangover from home the next day.  I would drown the machines in just enough alcohol to take the edge off but not so much that I couldn’t safely get home.

     She was funny, attractive, and interested with no strings and nothing to lose.  That’s a combination that wins every time.  She also had the presidential suite at the hotel.

     “It’s the executive bidet,” she said wrapping her hair back in to a ready for fun bun.  “Or as I like to call it, an ‘Oh Hey!’, because that’s how I feel every time I use it.”  Her voice slowed.

     “I like it because I know what’s about to happen,” she smiled.  

     “I know when it’s about to happen,” the smile disappeared and she pulled me closer.

     “And if you aim just right, it feels pretty damn good.”  Her kiss was deep and deliberate.

     The rest of her conference had been canceled and everyone was scrambling to get home before everything shutdown.  She had found a five a.m. flight and was looking to kill some time before she got back to her life.

     The machines were running rampant.  The job was just a job.  There was another option on the horizon, that was just a job, too.

     Metaphors have never been a great aphrodisiac.  I mean, the world was falling to shit.  Maybe it was more than just a metaphor.  Maybe this was just the distraction we needed.  There was no question of Karen.  There was no fighting with friends.  Her history was a mystery.

     We washed the world away for the next few hours.  We didn’t really know what was going to happen.  We didn’t really know when it was going to happen.  We did know that if we aimed just right everything would feel pretty damn good.

There’s This Guy

      “Last movie night until May,” I said stretching until my back cracked.

     Karen had been quiet the entire film.  No questions about the characters.  No complaints about the subtext.  Total silence.

     “You ok?”

     There was no mention of my bad French and no complaints about the prominent color theme.

     She shrugged.

     “You aren’t sick or anything are you?”

     “So there’s this guy at work,” she sighed.

     “That’s a good thing, right?”

     “Meh.”

     “But you’re getting back out there.  Getting back in the groove.”

     “I don’t need to be back in the groove.  I’ve been out there.”

     “And?” I asked.

     “And, meh.”  She shrugged her shoulders and slumped a bit.

     “But this guy from work thing?  What about this?  Is this a good thing or a bad thing?”

     “I don’t … I don’t really know, yet,” she said swatting away the questions with her hands.  “It’s just a thing.  It doesn’t really matter now that the world’s ending does it?”

     She had stood up and clicked the news app on the TV.  The infection numbers were steadily rising.  Her hair was pulled into a ponytail and she was in comfy slate gray sweats.

     “What are you going to do?” she asked.

     “Probably go to Mom’s.  Make sure she’s stocked up on supplies.  It’s not horrible.  They haven’t shut the world down yet.  They should, but they haven’t.”  

     I took a deep pull of wine.

     “What about you?”

     “Well, the guy from work is supposed to come over this weekend., but we’ll see.”  She got strangely quiet as soon as she said it.

     I felt the machines flutter.  It must have been written all over my face.

     “You can’t tell Tom,” she pointed at me.

     “Tell Tom what?  There’s currently nothing to tell.”

     “Thank you,” she said giving me a hug.  “Thank you.”

     The hug lasted a little too long.  My heart was beating hard enough that I knew she felt it through my chest. 

     “Deep breath,” I whispered.  She took a deep breath and as she exhaled, I stood to my full height and felt her back crack from the base of her spine to the nape of her neck.

     “I’m going to miss these hugs,” she said still hanging on tight.  “I like this.”  She nuzzled her cheek onto my shoulder.

     “Think of Connie, and Tabitha, and Caitlin,” whispered the machines.

     “I like this, too,” I said slowly breaking the hug. “That’s why it stays this.  Anything else gets messy.  And I don’t want to mess this up.  The friendship comes first.”

     There was a hint of disappointment in her eyes.

     “You once asked me how someone with such little arms could give such big hugs.”

     “Still haven’t figured that out.”  The machines whirred quietly.

     “That’s because it’s hard to hug somebody at arm’s length.  You have to let them in close enough to feel it.

     “I wish you could see what I see.”  She turned the tv off and dropped the remote on the couch.

     “I do, too.”  I looked in her eyes then turned to the door.

     “Let me know how this ‘guy from work thing’ goes.”  I stepped out the door and down the walkway.

     “Maybe,” I heard her say as I walked to my car.  

     By the time I turned around to wave good-bye, the door was closed and the interior hall light was out.  There was no question about the character.  There was no complaint about the subtext.  Other than the grinding of the machines, there was total silence.