so very alone…

I used to complain so much about how I am so alone, but I’m starting to realize that a lot of this is because I never asked anyone out. I don’t think I’ve ever had a group of people over for a birthday party in my adult life. I don’t ever make efforts to make or keep friends. I don’t even stay in friendly contact with my family.

I need to fix that, and for the first time in my life, I feel like I have the courage to do so. Here’s a list of the people I’m going to get back in touch with today, and try to see if I can repair what used to be good relationships.

• Richard: He was a good officemate and introduced me to Bertha. The fact that Bertha and I didn’t work out isn’t his fault.
• Jane: I was creepy to her before. I admit that freely. But I’m not creepy anymore. She needs to get to know the real me.
• My Sister: I’ve been angry at her for years because she kept telling me to get help. Now I’ve gotten some help (Celexa!) and it turns out she was right. I wonder what my sister would do if I called her up and said without irony, “You know, you were right. I got help. I feel better. Thank you.”

I’m also going to try to start developing new relationships. I’ve asked Stan to go out with me to lunch this Friday.

On an unrelated note, I made a note of the license plate of the jerk who beat me up yesterday. It’s a vanity license plate, on a silver Porsche Boxster. The text of the vanity plate is exactly what you’d expect it to be: “FASTER.”

Oh, please.

It occurs to me that if one were to exchange three of the letters on that license plate for a different three letters, the license plate would be more accurate, though perhaps less self-aggrandizing.

It also occurs to me that I have a color photo printer with a reasonable stock of glossy photo paper, and that clear adhesive plastic can be easily acquired at any office supply store.

54 Comments »

Back when I first started my new job, I ran across a guy who works in the same building (not the same company). Since I didn’t give this guy a cheery smile, a salute, and a how-do-ya-do, he decided it was his right / obligation to insert himself into my life by telling me that I had dropped my smile, and had better pick it up.

Honestly, I do not understand how the theory of evolution allows for people who are nothing but asshole.

Anyway, I saw this guy again today, in the office condo parking lot. And while last time I saw him I was too shy and humiliated to reply to his unwarranted intrusion, that is no longer the case. He was walking toward the building from his car; I was walking to my car from the building. He did a Zig Ziggler-inspired smile and wave, and I said, “You should just leave people alone. Whether I am smiling or not is none of your concern.”

Or words to that effect. I think in the moment I might have stumbled a bit on the actual phrasing.

“I beg your pardon?” he replied. Who says “I beg your pardon?” Does he think he’s Jimmy Stewart or something?

So I explained to him, “The last time you saw me, you told me I had dropped my smile and to pick it up. You had no right to say anything like that. For all you know, my sister might have just died.” I wish.

“Hey, buck up there, little camper.” Yes, he really said that. I am dead serious. Which turns out to be a good thing, because the correct response occurred to me right there.

“Hey, fuck off there, you big asshole.” And then I pushed him. Palms out, against the chest. A get-out-of-my-face gesture.

And then he punched me. Three punches, only one of which I sort of deflected. Sternum, stomach, throat. I kind of blocked the one coming at my face, which is why it hit me in the throat.

I’m not absolutely certain, but I think it would have hurt worse if the blow had hit me in the face. Still, getting hit in the throat hurts a lot.

I sat down in the parking lot. I couldn’t breathe. For a minute I thought I was going to die. Then I was able to breathe again, and I was sure he had broken a rib.

The doctor says nothing’s broken, though. Just a bruise.

Mary says I should press charges, but I just want to put this episode behind me.

39 Comments »

I had my first recurring Thursday lunch appointment with Mary yesterday. And get this: apparently, I am now Mary’s confidante.

She explained why, but it took a long time and sometimes my mind wandered. In fact, a couple times I told her when she was starting to repeat herself or had already made a point. It is a freaky and wonderful sensation to find myself with the confidence to say things like this.

Celexa, I love you.

Mary explained to me why she felt she could confide in me. She was long-winded, so I will boil it down to the essentials:

1. She finds me entirely unattractive. I asked her if this wasn’t the case with all men, seeing as how she was a lesbian. “No,” she replied. “Some men are still somewhat attractive to me, but not you. No offense.” Of course. How could my feelings possibly be hurt by that?
2. I know her secrets. I know, for example, that she is a lesbian. I also know that she goes in for hardcore girl-on-girl amateur porn. And I know that she hates herself for loving porn more than her church, which she also loves.
3. I don’t care about her secrets. She sees me as being non-judgmental, but really I just find her secrets to be funny. Like she’s punching herself in the face while saying, “I wish I would stop punching myself in the face!”
4. She doesn’t feel obligated to convert me. With most people, Mary feels like she needs to approach every conversation with the end-goal of saving their souls. We have agreed that she will not save my soul, so she can now say whatever she wants.

We traded stories at first, until I realized she is one of those “toppers” — people who start their stories with “You think that’s bad? One time I….” Except she was more of a “bottomer” than a “topper.” When I told her about my brother and his wife and how I still get an erection when I think about our time together, she told me about her pastor (or preacher or priest or whatever — I don’t know the difference) and how she’s married and everything but Mary is still certain that she (her pastor) secretly wants her (Mary), and that she is both aroused and horrified at the thought.

I told her that I steal at Walmart because I’m good at it (I didn’t tell her about the getting caught part) and because it’s a good release valve; she told me she masturbates while watching Rachel Maddow on the Keith Olbermann show. I am not sure how she saw those two things as connected, but she sure did.

I told her that I once traveled to Vegas to hire a hooker, but then spent the entire time alone in my hotel room. She says she has gone to Atlanta for the same reason at least thirty times, because she figures she doesn’t have to worry about seeing people from her church there. Although she points out that she at least isn’t afraid to pull the trigger.

I’m tempted to share my Celexa with Mary, because I think it could help her. But I only have enough for me.

What caught me off guard, though, was that toward the end of the lunch, Mary asked me what she should do. She was that general. “What should I do, Harlan?”

“About what?” I said.

“About life.”

“I think you should stop punching yourself in the face,” I said. And I started laughing again, because it’s such a funny image.

I thought that would offend her, but she did a little ha-ha laugh too.

37 Comments »

I had a work emergency. As I mentioned a while back, my boss here is, in addition to my tattletale duties, asking me to build email and web tools that, as far as I can tell, already exist in the form of open source projects, giving me unprecedented amounts of free time.

Except on Tuesday afternoon, he pulled me into his office, all excited, and showed me an article he had been reading in one of his multi-level marketing guru websites about an exciting "program" that could be repurposed for spamming.

It came complete with screenshots.

So Devin has me look at this and says, "This is a lot like one of the projects I’m having you work on, but with some cool extra features. Could you add those features to the project?"

What I did not answer was, "Sure I can, because I found this utility about two weeks ago, had inserted the company logo and removed the opensource citations from the interface, and was planning on giving it to you next week, saying I had come up with a few new features you might be interested in, therefore making you think I’m the best employee in the world even though I’ve spent exactly 90 minutes actually working this month."

Instead, I said, "No problem, but some of those features may not make it into version 1.0" and then I’ve spent the past two days doing the first actual hard work I’ve had to do for this job: covering my ass. I’ve been skinning the interface to make it look completely different (and let’s face it: worse) than it used to. I’ve disabled or hidden the interface to some of the features he was excited about. Then I can add them in later.

I think I’m safe. I also think I need to start paying attention to the work-related sites Devin reads, to make sure this doesn’t happen again.

Anyway, that’s why I haven’t had time to post.

I should recap really fast what happened in that lunch with Mary, even though it’s nowhere near as fresh in my mind as it used to be.

Basically, she told me how hard it is to resolve her faith with her "animal urges," as she called them, and that she hoped I would not tell Devin either about her "devil-sent desires" nor about her "disgusting" workplace porn habit.

And I did the weirdest thing: I started laughing. I told her I was sorry for laughing, even though I was suppressing a laugh while I did it. And I told her that I didn’t really care about what kind of porn she looks at, as long as she stopped pushing religion on me. And that I didn’t plan to tell on her or anyone else in the company.

When, a second ago, I said laughing was the weirdest thing, I was wrong. What came next was the weirdest thing. She offered me her hand, and we shook. As if we had just concluded an important negotiation. If I would have thought about it, I would have suggested we spit on our hands before shaking.

And then, later that afternoon, Mary sent me an Outlook meeting: a recurring Thursday lunch meeting. I accepted. Hell, why not?

45 Comments »

I had decided to stop writing this blog, but then today I had lunch with the weirdest person I have ever talked to. Yes, that’s right: Mary. We had lunch. And while she was telling me her sad, sad story, I kept thinking to myself, "I’ve got to tell someone about this."

And that someone, I realized, is this blog.

I’ll get to that later this afternoon, when I have time. Right now I just wanted to mention that I am sticking around.

55 Comments »

I have something to reveal today.

No, it’s not that I’m not real. Because I am real. More real than most of you.

It’s that I’ve been taking Celexa for the past month. And you know what? I’m starting to feel pretty damn good. And you know what else? I look back at about 90% of the blog I’ve written so far and am pretty mortified by the fact that I ever wrote such crap.

By the way, judging from the substance of the comments this blog generates, about 95% of you ought to be looking at either starting or adjusting your medication, too.

Except Lily, who maybe might want to simply lay off the medication altogether for a while. Just to see what it’s like.

For about two weeks, I’ve been trying, when I write this blog, to continue to push the "woe is me" thing. Give the yokels what they paid for. But the truth is, I don’t feel too woeful right now. And I don’t feel like I need the cheap therapy that this blog used to provide. And above all, I don’t need the shit advice I generally get here.

Bertha, by the way, can take a flying fuck. Oh, and Jane too. Yeah, Jane. I just mentioned you on my blog. Bite me.

Yeah, I’m still alone. Probably always will be. And guess what: most people are assholes, so maybe being alone isn’t a bad thing to be.

I’m going to take a few days off to decide whether I am going to continue this blog. If I do, I’m just going to talk about my life as it is. I’m not going to pretend to be more pathetic than I am.

And if I don’t continue the blog, well then, it’s been fun. Occasionally.

113 Comments »

I feel awful.

I left a bag of rotten chicken hearts hanging from Bertha’s door knob, and haven’t heard a peep from her.

Last weekend, after spending so much time holed up in my condo, I decided to “get out there” and go downtown. People like my sister are always saying “get out there” as if that’s the magic elixir. It’s not. If I had a decent life coach, he would have said, “You’re in no shape to get out there. You need to hole up for awhile. It’s best for everyone.”

So I was downtown alone. I went into a restaurant to eat lunch and ordered food to go. It was a simple meal — chicken teriyaki with fried rice – but there was more plastic and cardboard than food. I sat at a bench by a bus stop to eat the meal. Cigarette butts were all over the ground. My drink was watered down. Some cyclist riding by hocked a loogie in the gutter.

The meal was bland.

Even though I was still hungry, I wrapped up the rest of the food and was going to throw it away. The bundle was too big to fit in the little hole on the top of the trash can. I tried to jam it in. Then I just hurled the whole mess high into the middle of the street, where a car ran over it right away as a different car honked. I assume they were honking at me, but you never know.

A woman pushing a baby stroller said, “You shouldn’t litter.”

A few minutes later, I thought of the line I should have said: “You shouldn’t breed.”

29 Comments »

Something’s been tugging at the back of my head lately. I haven’t been able to shake it. I’ve been forgetting something. But what is it?

Yesterday afternoon I finally remembered: I was supposed to start my second job last Monday.

I called HR and left a voicemail that I had been in the hospital with severe dehydration brought on by acute pneumonia, but that I was better now and would be coming in this Monday, and that I hoped they would not count this untimely illness against me.

They didn’t return my call, but it was Friday afternoon, so I really didn’t expect them to.

17 Comments »

I was expecting Bertha to come over last night at the very least to talk about the letter I sent. And I wasn’t sure how I would respond. Perhaps I’d send her on her way. Perhaps she would confess her undying love for me. Perhaps we’d make love one more time for closure. I hoped to stand my ground.

I sat around waiting . . . waiting . . . waiting . . . for my phone to ring or for the door to swing open. At around 10:30, Bertha texted me:

got yr ltr. thx cutie. very sweet. must say no. luv always. b

I have to admit her message disappointed me on a number of levels. Actually, “disappointed” is the wrong word. I think “infuriated” is closer to the mark. I thought I was getting my head around a break-up, and now I’m mad.

It can’t end that way. I have to do something.

36 Comments »

In a fit of anxiety, I decided to go “jogging” last night. For me, jogging consists of alternating between shuffling and walking. And these days, there’s more walking than jogging since I’ve been smoking half a pack of cigarettes a day. (Don’t worry — I can stop anytime.)

There’s no way I would ever go jogging if it weren’t for the trails that run through the greenspace behind my condo. As I was making my way through the network of trails, I took a wrong turn and ended up running into someone’s back yard.

What I saw stunned me.

In the groomed back yard was a treehouse and a play structure with a long slide and several swings. Between the treehouse and play structure was a rope hanging from an impossibly tall tree. I’m not certain, but I imagine you could swing Tarzan-style between the treehouse and the play structure.

Inside the house were shiny people ranging from all ages. A grandmother was sitting in a big chair. There were three adults who all touched each other affectionately several times. The older children were in a circle on the floor, playing a board game or cards. A couple of toddlers too young to play the game bounced in and out of sight. The glow of a fire lit the room.

Outside the sliding glass door was a medium-sized yellow dog. The dog wanted in. Badly. It was whimpering loud enough for me to hear it, but the the people inside the house didn’t seem to notice. I like to think music was playing, because it would seem too cruel for them to ignore the dog. The dog sat erect for a long time — at least a half hour – every now and then walking in a little circle and then resuming his stance.

I wanted so badly for someone to open the door and let the dog in.

33 Comments »