Working
So Oggy went to a labor hall and went to the address on the yellow ticket they gave him.
This was when Oggy 's car was still working.
Before the accident
At the end of the yellow ticket was an ugly place.
Oggy didn't stand a chance.
Workday #30 (Downtown)
By Oggy Bleacher
May 14, 2004
"I was afraid for my life," said the secretary. "I've worked here for twenty years, twenty-one if you count the time I spent on the third floor with The Simmon Group. That was when I was in High School."
She wasn't a receptionist because she was way back in a corner of the twenty-second floor. She would receive no one. But "Secretary" is one of those titles that annoys women who have worked for twenty years behind a desk answering phones and typing reports for a man behind a door. So what was she? My boss, Mo, called everyone a "Partner", which sounded completely contrived to me. I wasn't a partner. I did everything alone and apparently so did everyone else. So why was she a partner?
I went to High School in Pasadena. That was where my mother was born. That's a picture of my mother in the nursing home.
The secretary pointed to a picture. I pretended to look at it, but really I was looking at these two stuffed animals on top of the computer monitor vent and thinking how after a few hours those stuffed animals became fire hazards that could burn the whole building down. Then I remembered the sprinkler system in the ceiling. The fire would be localized and probably wouldn't damage anything important. But everyone would talk about it for years. A memo about stuffed animals on the top of your monitor would probably be circulated. That's what I was thinking about as the secretary talked..
We just didn't have the time to take care of her like we used to. She needed to be hand fed.
Needed a hand? Well, cry me a fucking river. At least there was food to pour down her throat. I didn't have shit.
It was my second day on the twenty-second floor and when I imagined a 747 jumbo jet heading directly at me, cruising at 600 miles an hour into the twenty-second floor, I didn't care at all. I'd always dreamed that I would come prepared to a high rise office building. I'd bring a parachute so I could jump out of the window and not die like the people in New York. That was before I worked in a high rise building. Now when I imagined watching an airplane flying at me I didn't move. I just stood there and watched it destroy everything and after that there was silence and something better. Something without stuffed animals on computer monitors.
"Now, Mr. Williams talked to me like a human, the secretary whispered. I'm a human being. I've worked here for twenty years. Twenty-one if..."
"Is that the light bulb that needs to be replaced?" I asked. I had the ladder and a selection of light bulbs. Lets get this over with, I thought.
"Is that...that's one," said the secretary. "The other one is my desk lamp. I just turned it on this morning and it went out."
"I'll replace it."
"All I did was turn it on and just poof."
The secretary laughed and I found myself laughing even though I had vowed never to validate that type of forced, fake, office laughter. Like the airplane thing, I'd imagined confronting the person who was laughing by saying, "What are you laughing at? There isn't anything funny about this. You just made one pointless comment. What's funny? Why are you laughing?" In the dream vision my integrity would be saved. The laughter would stop. I had a lot of dreams before I worked on the twenty-second floor.
"Well, these things happen," I chuckled, as though I were delivering a punch-line.
"Yes they do," said the secretary. "Are you the one they sent to change the bulb? The last worker they had wasn't very nice. He didn't seem nice. I think his name was Curtis. Helen!"
The secretary called to another secretary, "Helen, remember the last handyman? Was his name Curtis?"
See? No one called me a Partner . I was a handyman . A fucking handyman.
"Tall man with that angry look on his face?" asked Helen.
Both secretaries laughed. I took the bait again and smiled. I pinched my leg through my pants as punishment. Through the office window the Santa Monica Mountains rose from the rooftops of Los Angeles. A haze of pollution hid all the details of the mountains.
"Was his name Curtis? I think it was Curtis because he helped me move files once and he said his name was Kurt or Curtis. I asked him what he was angry about and," she lowered her voice to a level that was barely audible, "and he said..."
I couldn't hear what she said because she had a speech impediment and speaking so softly made it impossible to understand her words. Still, she nodded at me and smiled. I never even considered asking her to repeat herself. My only concern was pretending that I had understood her so she would quit talking. Ten years ago I would have felt sorry for this woman, sorry that she was a shell of pettiness. Now I just hated her for taking up my time, my $6.75/hour time, with her fucking pettiness. So I smiled and looked out of the office window at the downtown skyline. There were no planes in sight.
"So, I'll just change the bulb on your desk first."
Oh Right now?
Or another time, I said hoping I could leave. I looked at my watch and was horrified to see that I had only been on the twenty-second floor for one hour. I tried to think back to a time before the twenty-second floor but my brain could only fixate on some pornographic images from the movie I'd rented the night before. The movie was called Screaming Orgasms. It was solo female masturbation, not a lot of action, but one blonde actress in a light summer dress had really turned me on. I thought, When I get home I'm gonna beat off so hard. Then I'm gonna eat some frozen pizza and go to sleep. God, I hate this fucking job. $6.75 an hour for this shit? A monkey in a cage has a better shot at life. I'm worse off than a monkey in a cage because I don't even have the cage to separate me from the assholes who throw me bananas. I'm just an asshole. If those stuffed animals caught on fire I wouldn't do a thing. I would just watch the flames.
Maybe I could come back in an hour?
There were other jobs I had to do. There was a box of office chairs that had to be assembled. The assembly required a single screw attached to the back rest to be inserted into a hole in the seat and tightened. Obviously, the partners were too busy with their number crunching to be bothered with that screw. The day before, I had assembled a few of the chairs but had been called away on a priority job involving a VIP who needed his office memorabilia wrapped in bubble wrap so it could be shipped to another floor. That job had taken the rest of the day so I had not finished assembling the chairs. I was bothered by the fact that when I went home the day before and after I masturbated watching the blonde actress masturbate on the TV and as I was laying there relaxed and comfortable I remembered the disassembled chairs in the office conference room and I thought, Tomorrow I'm going to assemble those office chairs. That is what tomorrow means. One screw in one hole. Two washers. Twist. The fact that those chairs had taken up space in my brain for more than ten minutes bothered me very much. My brain space was reserved for porn and books and lottery numbers. Not chairs. But the chairs were waiting for me and after the chairs there would be more chairs and more fucking light bulbs.
Could you do it now? I can take a break.
Sure.
Because I can take a break.
Alright.
How long will it take?
How long? The rest of my life, I thought. That's all.
The secretary said something else about her mother or her boss, but I was looking out of the twenty-second floor windows at the orange haze over the Santa Monica mountains. Then I saw a plane take off from LAX and head out over the ocean. I saw it and thought, Come back.
This was when Oggy 's car was still working.
Before the accident
At the end of the yellow ticket was an ugly place.
Oggy didn't stand a chance.
Workday #30 (Downtown)
By Oggy Bleacher
May 14, 2004
"I was afraid for my life," said the secretary. "I've worked here for twenty years, twenty-one if you count the time I spent on the third floor with The Simmon Group. That was when I was in High School."
She wasn't a receptionist because she was way back in a corner of the twenty-second floor. She would receive no one. But "Secretary" is one of those titles that annoys women who have worked for twenty years behind a desk answering phones and typing reports for a man behind a door. So what was she? My boss, Mo, called everyone a "Partner", which sounded completely contrived to me. I wasn't a partner. I did everything alone and apparently so did everyone else. So why was she a partner?
I went to High School in Pasadena. That was where my mother was born. That's a picture of my mother in the nursing home.
The secretary pointed to a picture. I pretended to look at it, but really I was looking at these two stuffed animals on top of the computer monitor vent and thinking how after a few hours those stuffed animals became fire hazards that could burn the whole building down. Then I remembered the sprinkler system in the ceiling. The fire would be localized and probably wouldn't damage anything important. But everyone would talk about it for years. A memo about stuffed animals on the top of your monitor would probably be circulated. That's what I was thinking about as the secretary talked..
We just didn't have the time to take care of her like we used to. She needed to be hand fed.
Needed a hand? Well, cry me a fucking river. At least there was food to pour down her throat. I didn't have shit.
It was my second day on the twenty-second floor and when I imagined a 747 jumbo jet heading directly at me, cruising at 600 miles an hour into the twenty-second floor, I didn't care at all. I'd always dreamed that I would come prepared to a high rise office building. I'd bring a parachute so I could jump out of the window and not die like the people in New York. That was before I worked in a high rise building. Now when I imagined watching an airplane flying at me I didn't move. I just stood there and watched it destroy everything and after that there was silence and something better. Something without stuffed animals on computer monitors.
"Now, Mr. Williams talked to me like a human, the secretary whispered. I'm a human being. I've worked here for twenty years. Twenty-one if..."
"Is that the light bulb that needs to be replaced?" I asked. I had the ladder and a selection of light bulbs. Lets get this over with, I thought.
"Is that...that's one," said the secretary. "The other one is my desk lamp. I just turned it on this morning and it went out."
"I'll replace it."
"All I did was turn it on and just poof."
The secretary laughed and I found myself laughing even though I had vowed never to validate that type of forced, fake, office laughter. Like the airplane thing, I'd imagined confronting the person who was laughing by saying, "What are you laughing at? There isn't anything funny about this. You just made one pointless comment. What's funny? Why are you laughing?" In the dream vision my integrity would be saved. The laughter would stop. I had a lot of dreams before I worked on the twenty-second floor.
"Well, these things happen," I chuckled, as though I were delivering a punch-line.
"Yes they do," said the secretary. "Are you the one they sent to change the bulb? The last worker they had wasn't very nice. He didn't seem nice. I think his name was Curtis. Helen!"
The secretary called to another secretary, "Helen, remember the last handyman? Was his name Curtis?"
See? No one called me a Partner . I was a handyman . A fucking handyman.
"Tall man with that angry look on his face?" asked Helen.
Both secretaries laughed. I took the bait again and smiled. I pinched my leg through my pants as punishment. Through the office window the Santa Monica Mountains rose from the rooftops of Los Angeles. A haze of pollution hid all the details of the mountains.
"Was his name Curtis? I think it was Curtis because he helped me move files once and he said his name was Kurt or Curtis. I asked him what he was angry about and," she lowered her voice to a level that was barely audible, "and he said..."
I couldn't hear what she said because she had a speech impediment and speaking so softly made it impossible to understand her words. Still, she nodded at me and smiled. I never even considered asking her to repeat herself. My only concern was pretending that I had understood her so she would quit talking. Ten years ago I would have felt sorry for this woman, sorry that she was a shell of pettiness. Now I just hated her for taking up my time, my $6.75/hour time, with her fucking pettiness. So I smiled and looked out of the office window at the downtown skyline. There were no planes in sight.
"So, I'll just change the bulb on your desk first."
Oh Right now?
Or another time, I said hoping I could leave. I looked at my watch and was horrified to see that I had only been on the twenty-second floor for one hour. I tried to think back to a time before the twenty-second floor but my brain could only fixate on some pornographic images from the movie I'd rented the night before. The movie was called Screaming Orgasms. It was solo female masturbation, not a lot of action, but one blonde actress in a light summer dress had really turned me on. I thought, When I get home I'm gonna beat off so hard. Then I'm gonna eat some frozen pizza and go to sleep. God, I hate this fucking job. $6.75 an hour for this shit? A monkey in a cage has a better shot at life. I'm worse off than a monkey in a cage because I don't even have the cage to separate me from the assholes who throw me bananas. I'm just an asshole. If those stuffed animals caught on fire I wouldn't do a thing. I would just watch the flames.
Maybe I could come back in an hour?
There were other jobs I had to do. There was a box of office chairs that had to be assembled. The assembly required a single screw attached to the back rest to be inserted into a hole in the seat and tightened. Obviously, the partners were too busy with their number crunching to be bothered with that screw. The day before, I had assembled a few of the chairs but had been called away on a priority job involving a VIP who needed his office memorabilia wrapped in bubble wrap so it could be shipped to another floor. That job had taken the rest of the day so I had not finished assembling the chairs. I was bothered by the fact that when I went home the day before and after I masturbated watching the blonde actress masturbate on the TV and as I was laying there relaxed and comfortable I remembered the disassembled chairs in the office conference room and I thought, Tomorrow I'm going to assemble those office chairs. That is what tomorrow means. One screw in one hole. Two washers. Twist. The fact that those chairs had taken up space in my brain for more than ten minutes bothered me very much. My brain space was reserved for porn and books and lottery numbers. Not chairs. But the chairs were waiting for me and after the chairs there would be more chairs and more fucking light bulbs.
Could you do it now? I can take a break.
Sure.
Because I can take a break.
Alright.
How long will it take?
How long? The rest of my life, I thought. That's all.
The secretary said something else about her mother or her boss, but I was looking out of the twenty-second floor windows at the orange haze over the Santa Monica mountains. Then I saw a plane take off from LAX and head out over the ocean. I saw it and thought, Come back.
posted by Oggy Bleacher | 10:39 PM
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