My problem is I never sit down and write. That's the hitch in my giddyup. It's easier to spin dry this shit through my head, I guess. I’m a Maytag with its on-button stuck. Then I remember the tape recorder at the office. At the bottom of a drawer. At my desk. Hiding. Not spinning.
"Do you want half? It's egg salad; I always make more than I can eat." Jenn from HR stares blankly. I know it's untimely for lunch, but I’m famished. I got an early start. I always wondered why she needed the extra "n" in her name. It seems decadent to me. I'd often play a game in my head when talking to her: okk, jenn, soundss, goodd. I never capitalized her first name either; she never caught on as far as I could tell.
Startled, Jenn has spilled her pumpkin latte on her white blouse. They sell that liquid junk year-round now. I smell cinnamon and sickly-sweet oxidizing iron. Normally, I’d run off and come back with a damp paper towel, trying to help. But I’m traveling lighter today, at least from the neck up—with more purpose. Jenn’s wardrobe is likely not a top priority for her, either. Her eyes suggest indifference. Her breathing seems off. I tell her I won’t be submitting a timecard today. I’m not sure she really cares. I’ll miss her titillating and stern weekly reminders. TIMECARDS ARE DUE BY 9 AM. NO EXCEPTIONS!
My therapist conveyed to me I have a fear of success. Success? I remember Coach Santos screaming, “medals are for winners, and you get only what you earn.” Looking back, he was spot on. I swung by his house on the way in this morning to tell him that. He didn’t recognize me after all these years, of course. Nevertheless, it was good to catch up. He looked fit in his matching powder blue tracksuit, and he had oatmeal bubbling on the stove.
“Today is a new day,” I said. I told him about the poster in our break room that squawks in large type: EAGLES SOAR! I have read that message precisely 1,009 times in the past four years. I know because I log it in my notebook, like many other important observations, some trifling, some significant, some I prefer not to face. All my notebooks sit on my bed stand, neatly stacked. There are twenty-six in total. They begin chirping at dawn, dry pages, thin birds warming and stretching and rustling. It is my alarm clock.
I tell Coach Santos all this—how I eat my egg salad sandwich day after earthbound day in the lunchroom, the hard plastic seat aggravating my lower back, the pain constant—the laughing in the hallway a foreign language to me. I repeat myself to make sure he gets the point—just as he had done to me—hustle, hustle, stop dragging ass, JOSEPH! How badly do you want it?
Badly.
eagles soar, eagles soar, eagles soar, eagles soar, eagles soar, eagles soar, eagles soar, eagles
soar, eagles soar, eagles soar, eagles soar, eagles soar, eagles soar, eagles soar, eagles soar
soar, eagles soar, eagles soar, eagles soar, eagles soar, eagles soar, eagles eagles soar, eagles
soar. eagles soar, eagles soar. eagles soar, eagles soar. eagles soar, eagles soar, eagles soar.
I turn off the stove and lock the door on the way out. The key is under the welcome mat.
I’ve decided I do not fear success; instead, I have a fear of exposing myself to others. I have a recurring dream where I walk through my bustling office, a jungle of cubicle jungles, lost in the thick jungle of another cubicle jungle. The cavernous, echoing floor sprawls to the end of my waking world. I am only clad in glowing white underwear. Typically, no one notices me as I walk to my desk, eager to sit and hide my near-nakedness. But this dream feels different. People seem genuinely astonished and interested in me. No one is laughing. My paunch stretches the limits of the elastic holding up my clinging underwear, but I am no longer hiding, no longer humiliated.
I then notice that my feet are cramping in a pair of luminous cordovan cap-toe oxfords. I only know that kind of detail because Lawrence—never call him Larry—from Sales talks about his dress shoes incessantly. He has a Sharper Image shoe buffer in his office. I would hear the low hum from my suffocating desk, and I would talk over it each morning as I narrated yesterday’s production numbers to him, his Ping golf bag angled in the corner, snoozing. As is the man formerly known as Lawrence. Larry's shoes are small. I should have snatched his socks, too.
And what am I doing to do with this gun? That’s new, too. I may still be dreaming, but I know I am awake. I feel its weight, pulling my right hand to the floor. My trainer says that it's OK to put on "good weight." Maybe this is what he means. I feel the air conditioning on my puckering skin, and I am inspired.
Finally, I will finish something important.
I will finish my book. I will recite every word of it now. No one is going anywhere, at least not until the sirens arrive. I fish the tape recorder out of my desk drawer, packed with a bunch of other shit that I forgot I had, artifacts from an earlier era. I divorced about ten years ago; my wedding band is here, and the family photo of that family blown to smithereens. My teeth were so white back then when I smiled. What a shitty fucking year that was. I'm sure I'll get around to that and a rampaging horde of other memories that have been rattling inside me for, fuck, forever.
That’s a long time to bite your tongue, don’t you think?
“It is,” I say, waving that heavyweight at the end of my arm. I am floating.
My story begins now.
Is this thing on?