The Art of Work

There is a special art to getting someone off the phone in as quick a time possible. I was nearing perfection. If a call came through that I could answer but if it would take too much of my time then I’d forward it on to someone else claiming ignorance. Otherwise I’d answer lightning-fast and unusually unhelpfully.
That was what was happening lately.
Time was ticking too quickly. Passing me by while I sat in an ergonomically-friendly desk chair with a frowning posture and miserable rounded shoulders. I was slowly dying and no one seemed to realize, let alone care.
And why should they? I mean I didn’t. Or did I?
I found my true train of thoughts constantly interrupted by meaningless phone calls. Half-witted folks droning at the end of a phone line. An old woman who has lost her husband is seeking help with the medical insurance claim. She is out of pocket to the tune of thousands. I am the one who picked up the phone.
I am the one who transfers it to someone who is paid to care.
I am paid.
But do not care.
This thought breaks when I receive a notification I have new mail. The office funny guy sending another chain-email. I would like to break him. Emotionally. Intellectually. Physically. Break him and leave him lying in a cooling pool of blood. Cloying around his ankles.
This boiling thought is broken by a phone ringing at an unoccupied desk where someone has left their mobile on and unattended.
I am tempted to break it.
Yeah so the thin veneer is crumbling down. Collapsing. It took two years. A lot of man hours. A solid regimen of 9-5. Monday to Friday. Two Towers fell. Wars raged and are raging. People fought, lost their lives, people were killed, murdered, planes exploded, trains collided, countries flooded, volcanoes erupted.
Disasters.
While I hacked away at my keyboard.
Bent over a monitor.
Sitting in meetings.
Traveling to work.
But what none of any of it has answered is where does all this go. To battle away at work until I’m comfortably numb enough to accept it? Where I can accept work and this ongoing battle with insanity as merely a means to an end? Where’s the bold dashing anti-hero – who takes me under my wing, shows me the error of my ways. Opens my eyes. Movies don’t do it anymore. I have an opinion but nobody is listening. I’m not listening to anyone else either. No one’s life plan will work for me just as mine won’t work for anyone else. Only I’m someone who accepts that. I won’t ram it down your throat – you must lead life as I do. I’m no shining example of morality. I make a choice not to sleep with someone. It’s not some moral high ground I’m taking here. Maybe it’s a superiority complex. They’re too ugly and cheap for me. They’re not worth the time and effort especially considering it takes a lot to make me feel these days. I don’t fit all the molds. I’m in this world but not of it.
The clichés are no longer fitting. Everyone else feels this way and that only makes the isolation all the worse.
You feel shit. So does everyone else.
But you don’t care. I’m afraid to admit it but neither does anyone else.
Am I being brave expressing this? No. Bravery in the new age is over, a fantasy garnered by big-selling movie executives. They dish out and sell bravery, and romance, and honor, and intrigue as they see it. They own the rights. You can only buy into it.

[extract from the novella The Subversion of Richard by Charles Lidgard, published 2002 by Trouser Books]

Number 57 West Maribyrnong Tram Home

The tram shuddered to a jerking halt on the corner of Victoria and Elizabeth Street. Its heaving hulk strained at the brakes which grunted and seethed at the effort. The doors swung clumsily open on their creaking decrepit hinges and those passengers who were standing were flung back momentarily as they gripped the plastic hand-grips more tightly against the motion.
A group of three males in their mid-twenties swung aboard with all the swagger and bravado afforded to those who move in belligerent groups of drunken powerhouses. They quickly moved to the back of the tram where they welled around the steps at the rear, safe from too many prying eyes.
I looked up from my book and studied them for a moment. One, who was shorter than the others, and with a heavier sturdy build, had three gashes across his face which were glistening with blood, still wet, from what was obviously a recent wound. As I sensed he was about to see me watching him I turned back to my book, alternating between reading and peering out into the damp wet Melbourne night. It was winter and people were scurrying between the shelter of shop awnings and the open unprotected streets. I watched a business man in a grey suit pull the collar of his coat up around his neck to keep out the chilling rain. I huddled back against the warm cloth of my seat and felt warmed by the heat coming up beneath me, generated by the trams internal heating system and listened to the short and sturdy man speak to his friends.
“Fucking bloody junkies, mate. Fucking junkies. Never trust a fucking junkie.” He was emboldened in his inebriated state, swaying with the tram’s motion as the door’s slid shut once more and with a ding of the tram’s warning bell, it shuffled off and turned the corner onto Victoria Street. He was speaking loudly as though to make his point known to all those aboard. Those sitting closest to him were predominantly Asians, families and students, trundling their way home after a trip to the Markets with black wire-framed shopping trolleys laden with all manner of vegetables and produce for the week ahead. The mid-twenties sturdy white male with the bleeding cuts and bravado then knelt down next to one such unwitting passenger – a petite Asian girl, who clutched her bag of University books and plastic bag of groceries closer to her chest for protection as he lent in – and began a didactic dribble:
“Never trust fucking junkies. D’ya hear me? Never. Fucking fuckers will fucking nearer rip your face off than talk to ya. She fucking spat on me when ah went up to grab me’self a fucking beer! Spat on me – all down my jacket and all ‘cos I bumped into her with me shoulder on the way past. Totally fucking fucked. Ah. Fuck. Bullshit. Fucking bullshit!” He looked back up at his two friends. They nodded in agreement. One spoke back, while the other settled himself further down in the back steps adjoining the exit doors not in use on this journey.
“Fucking ‘a mate. Fucking ‘a. Bullshit is right.”
“I mean fuck! Look at me face! Bleeding an’ shit all over the friggin’ place. My face is fucked up man.” He suddenly caught my gaze and I quickly averted my eyes. The last thing I needed was to be accosted by a drunk violent blow-hard Aussie yobbo. I looked out of the window once more and a smile broke upon my face as I thought about the irony of the situation.

Image sourced from: http://www.beluba.com.au/ww3/fotos/m_tram.jpg

The Super

As Richard closed his door he saw a light on in the apartment opposite and as he hovered in the doorway, head craning out a jut, a curtain twitched and then hung slack and then nothing. The light went off a second later. The apartment had been empty for as long as he had lived there.

The Super answered the door on the second knock, dressed in a singlet and wiping food from the corners of his mouth with a dirty-looking tea-towel.
“What is it?” He said.
“My place, 36G’s been vandalised again – someone’s spray painted all over the grill and window into the hall.”
“I’ll attend to it as soon as I can. Probably be the day after tomorrow, depending.”
Richard nodded his thanks, but remained in the doorway. The Super frowned and shook his head. “Is there something else?”
“Has someone moved into the place opposite me?”
“Up on 36? I’ll check the books. Excuse me.” He pushed the door closed again, it stuck in the frame before it thudded closed. It reopened with the security chain on. The Super trundled away into the mirk and Richard could see a small TV playing some game show over in the corner and behind that velvet-red curtains with long dark stains in the folds. And Rosie for 10 points… who am I? I was born in 1938, the son of a famous industrialist… On the arm of a threaded couch lay some glossy girlie magazine. A smell of refried beans and canola oil blew out into the cold corridor. “Yeah, someone’s moved in, under the name Ruanna. Moved in yesterday. Her application was accepted a week prior. Problem?”
Richard refocused from the TV to the Super. “Sorry? No, no problem. I just wondered. I thought I saw a light on in there, that’s all.”
“Yeah? Well that’ll be them then won’t it?”
“Well yeah I guess so.”
“Anything else?”
“No. Thanks. Have a good night.”
“I’ll try.” He said rubbing his neck before the door slammed shut.
Richard headed back off down the hall. Then a thought seized him and he lashed out with his boot against the wall. Fucking wanker. It must be a hard life getting interrupted by actual legitimate fucking work in the middle of jerking off to some mag while a big-titted contestant plays dumb on Sale of the Century. He can go to hell. “Wanker!” He shouted and caught the face of a frightened girl peering out at him through a foggy window, features distorted by the grill before her breath fogged the window further and she vanished a moment later.

Image sourced from: www.everythingnotrelated.com/ 2004_01_01_archives