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Posted September 7, 2009 at 12:11 AM
"ILL-Advised was Indeed an Understatement"
As my then- typical morning anxiety dictated I issued myself 20mg of Valium along with my Starbuck's coffee…two great staples of the modern suburban office worker. I settle in for what is already appearing to be a long day in the making before the sun has even gotten out of bed. It was not yet even 6am and I had already fielded 29 or 30 calls from clients and sales reps. Handling a daily departmental quota of answering 1200 completely random incoming calls from both US and Canadian field reps and clients can be a dangerous job for the wrong sort of man. When the internal company consultant handed down the order for a new department to be created that tracks in real time the daily progress in the field, they called in this energy ball-freak, my friend Garrett. As soon as he got the go-ahead to start hiring staff, he made me his assistant director. This was both a big promotion and a big raise. We were definitely the right guys for the job.
The office Garrett and I shared was small and devoid of any natural light what so ever. We sometimes put live plants in our office-which would always die quickly- as to suggest to our superiors the effect our cave-like office had on living things. One time we even barricaded the entrance to our office with bright yellow hazard tape. By these things upper management were not entertained. The run of the place was ours, though-100%; and neither of us gave a hoot in hell what anyone else thought about it. We always made sure the general ambience of our department was more that of a college dorm room than the office of a couple of young, white-collar promotees. Over the months it became a true spectacle: 1500 watt stereo system (eventually including a 400 watt 'KICKER' sub-woofer from Garrett's Lexus), a few movie posters including a rare, life-sized "The Godfather" original print, a large Chivas Regal flag (which we kept forever flowing using a desk fan underneath to simulate a windy day), and ornate ash trays. Also over my desk hung a mounted elk head stolen from a hunting lodge we stayed at on a weekend excursion. There were, hanging chaotically, a loom of postcards from appreciative employees who were regular callers from the field. Memos, comic strips, photos, post-its, flyers, articles and anything else of general interest were taped, tacked, stapled, and hung up literally every where. It actually became hazardous. My secretary once got a nasty paper cut from a business card I had proudly super glued to the doorknob. Garrett had to get a tetanus shot and 9 stitches after he tried to move a chair that had decorative effects stapled all into the wooden parts. As an unseen staple stabbed deep into the flesh under his finger nail, he dropped the chair--nearly ripping off the whole tip of his finger and sending sprits of warm, red blood to splatter across the wall. And he always refused the mess being cleaned up. He said the amount of blood, sweat, and tears we put into things measured their greatness. Citing the arterial- style spray spanning nearly the full length of his desk, he claimed to have the greatest office at Control Head Quarters. And I felt he was right on.
Fourteen hours of a continually ringing phone might have driven us insane, but luckily Garrett was able to run our phone lines through his computer-allowing the replacement of the standard ringer with a digital sample of things like mooing cows or Halloween screams. To compound this audio-assault, we made the decision to play "House of the Rising Sun" on repeat at almost full volume for the first half hour of every morning-making serious phone call's nearly impossible to execute. And this, of course, was by our design: we needed time to get loosened up before getting serious.
7:38am—MOOOOOOO! I run over to my desk to see who's calling. The caller ID display read Olga Tachinayaski - the assistant director of human resources…known to most as an important and moody administrator. Olga had been with the company since the early 90's. Like everyone else, she started of as a business coordinator, and, was one of the lucky few who made it off the main sales floor. For a while she was a receptionist who just passed out checks on paydays. That was until she made the decision that if she couldn't find you before she went to lunch, you'd have to wait until Monday to get your earnings. She just refused to waste her whole day wandering around looking for people—if they wanted their paychecks, they would have to find her. What a bitch! To top it all off, this was not even remotely her decision to make. Sales department employees would be furious every Friday. "WHAT! You're telling me the secretary went to lunch so I can't have my check until after the weekend!?!?" It did bring more order to the previously 12 hour long payday check-fetching circus. Conversely, this righteous new ruling she established somehow pigeon-holed her more as a manager type than a secretary…so she was again promoted. This time it was to the "house and senate" of employee relations and corporate policy making, Human Resources.
But why …MOOOOOOO!!!...is Human resources calling so early? And like a 1950's grade-school classroom fallout drill, Garrett grabbed his hat and quickly stuffed himself underneath his desk.
"IM NOT HERE!" he yelled franticly.
MOOOOOOOOOO! …Again blasted out across the office. I regained composure and cautiously picked up the receiver. I cleared my throat.
"Compliance Department."
"Ben?"
"Yes, Ben Franklin here."
Her voice was lacking its' usual confidence.
"You know who this is?"
"Umm….ya…what's up?"
"Are you guys alone in there right now?"
"Ya-why?"
"I'm gonna stop by…I need your guys' help."
"Uhh….ya-fine…ok. See you in a few minutes."
I had a burning curiosity. Fortunately, her arrival was swift. Along with her came the usual huge smile, trail of Tommy Girl Perfume, and the unexpected: an extra-large beach bag with a trendy flower print. It was noticeably not office wear by any stretch of the imagination.
"Honey I'm home!" Olga jokingly said to Garrett, who, after being discovered, was crawling back out from underneath his desk.
"Hey Olga…" His eyes scrolled down.
"What's with the bag?"
She peeked once more out of our office down the hall, turned, then closed and locked the office door.
"Well…" she began as her voice cracked.
"My boyfriend and I have been kinda low on money so we started growing some mushrooms."
"Mushrooms?" Garrett said.
"Ya- you know, like, Shrooms…like 'tripping-balls' shrooms?"
As I glance back down at the oversized beach bag my mind became awash with fantastic possibilities.
"But we broke up last night…" she continued,
"…and I was like 'fuck you Chris…I paid for all this shit… so I'm leaving with all of it.' He's so fuckin' mad."
Garrett's eyes widened. He said,
"Hang on a second…there's no way you've had some kind of mental lapse and you're just meandering around the building with several pounds of 'shrooms in a beach bag, is there?"
She hoisted the bag onto my desk, opened it, and pulled out the most incredibly huge package of hallucinogenic mushrooms I had ever seen. Garrett's eyes were wild with conflicting emotions. The satchel was enormous—legendary. I was like, "It's the size of a medicine ball!"
"Medicine ball…." Garrett belted out and then lowered his voice.
"Medicine ball my ass! It's bigger than a beach ball!"
The unmistakable odor was powerful.
"Whatever size it looks like," I said, "How fucking much is that?"
"I kinda packed and left in a hurry last night but I think about 8 pounds. They're still real wet so it'll end up being about 3 or 4 pounds if they sit around long enough to dry out."
Garrett was nearly drooling with fiendish anticipation.
"Is there a reason—why the fuck are you carrying it all with you?"
"I had to go back to my parents house last night and I couldn't risk them finding all this stuff while I was at work all day."
His brows narrowed in typical Garrett fashion ---with his two blond bushy eye brows coming together to form one angry looking master brow.
"And that's the reason you've brought a thirty year prison sentence into my office…I could get locked up!" he shrieked.
He badly needed to loosen up. This type of situation, in my experience, requires sensitive handling on all ends.
"Alright Garrett god dammit –stop yelling before that drug Nazi of a temp across the hall calls the fucking authorities. You've got nothing to worry about…not on this one…and she's got a full plate, fucker."
Olga interrupted,
"Guys stop…if I can hide these with you guys you can eat all you want for yourselves while I sell them all off…and I'll get you some cash."
Garrett's mood instantly shifted. Any regular visitor to the world of illicit drugs knows that it’s a rare occurrence to get drugs for free; let alone to be nearly paid to consume them. I could almost hear the wailing of a garbage trucks' beeping :"backing up" siren as my boss's sentiment shuddered to a halt and changed direction.
"Like I was saying," he said, "I love being sucked into other peoples' shady drug dealings…of course we'll help you." He continued, with ear to ear grin, to wrap up the remaining details with our new best friend. And just that quickly, Olga was gone and the beach bag was not.
My office mate slammed the door and threw his arms up.
"Can you believe that crazy bitch?! Walking around with all this stuff! This is almost as crazy as that shit she pulled last year at the Hyatt."
"What shit at the Hyatt?"
"Uhh…never mind. What do you say we take some for our personal stash before we hide this stuff?"
I did concur.
They were fresh so it was hard to gage, but we took about a ¼ oz. each to be bagged up for later consumption.
"I can hardly---" Garrett started to proclaim before he interrupted himself and shot me a stone cold glare.
I was already mid-bite into a sizable, pulpy mushroom cap.
"WHOA! We are NOT taking these now you scumbag! Save 'em for sometime after work—they're reportedly very strong."
"They always are." I shot back with contempt.
"You think eating these here is ill-advised?"
"I'll-advised is an understatement." He replied.
We shook hands to our new accord and stashed the drugs in our best spot: above the removable ceiling panel over Garrett's desk. Genius!
The rest of the day flew by of course. Nothing mattered until I saw the clock turn 6:00 pm.
"The day's over enough for me!" I said out loud as I whipped open my office drawer where I had neatly laid out a hefty dosage for quick and easy consumption.
They were silvery and blue with yellow spots and furry insides. I had just about finished gagging them down (with the only true flavor masking agent: peanuts with extra salt on the side and coca-cola to wash it down) when Garrett busted through the door carrying an extra-large stack of office paperwork. And just by the look on my face he could tell what kind of no good I had been up to.
My delusions of fancy-free times to be had over the next 6- 10 hours were about to be crushed.
Garrett slammed the stack of paper down on the sub-woofer next to my desk.
"You didn't just…when I said...not today's end of the day?"
"Why not?" I said in a relaxed tone and continued.
"We hit our quota today, the day's over, the boss left early, these were fucking FREE, and tomorrow is Saturday!"
I wish I had a picture of myself in that fine moment of bliss. If for nothing else, to compare to a picture taken two minutes later; showing first a look of freedom and righteousness, then a scowl full of regret and wild panic. The look of pity on my bosses face instantly made me anxious. He let out a sigh.
"Because," he continued, "In 25 minutes we have that late meeting."
"What late meeting?"
My mind snapped and clicked like the flippers inside a 30 year old pinball machine in mid-game as the reality of my situation began to hit me.
"You dumb fuck…" he snarled, "that sexual harassment seminar for all the bosses…"
I gulped. And my boss continued.
"Remember? We're having those moderators from the state of Illinois come in?"
Garrett later told me that the facial expression that was beginning to warp my face could only be compared to Jack Nickolson's face after he was lobotomized in "One Flew Over The Coocoo's Nest". Slack-jaw, nearly drooling, lights on but nobody home. But he continued his rant in a vicious attempt to scare the holy shit out of me—just for kicks.
"You may just be fucked—what could possibly possess you to do this?"
"I…uh…I mean… c'mon man!" I sputtered out. "I just forgot about it, OK?"
The boss wasn’t buying it. "YA RIGHT YOU FORGOT! We got TWO separate memos…I mean, shit! One is still posted to your monitor right now! You're a monster…you wanted this!"
I felt like I was going to the gas chamber.
"You evil bastard…getting me all worked up like this! I should sell your worthless ass to the Shiners for medical experiments. Now what the hell do I do?" I badly needed some direction.
"Well, the meeting is mandatory…so there'll be no ditching out. You should probably go get to your seat early to settle in. The likelihood of you freaking out or doing something wacky in there decreases exponentially if you don’t come ambling in late unaccustomed to your new surroundings." He calmly said, "And if you don’t want to be stuck staring at the office floor when the shrooms kick in, I’d hurry the fuck up."
"I can't believe you let me do this." I said furiously.
Garrett snapped back.
"Whatever, dude…you did this. And besides- I learned a long time ago that I can't stop you from doing anything."
"Oh, God!" I moaned. "I hate both of us right now…especially you."
I packed a pipe and handed it to the boss as we rushed to pack up the office so we'd make it to the conference room without a hitch.
"Hey G, how much time do I have?"
He cracked a smile and quoted Hunter S. Thompson, as we often did…trying to blurt the words out between broken fits of laughter.
"If we move at top speed it'll be a god damn miracle if you're there before you turn into a wild animal, or something."
"This is not the time for the good Doctor you fiend," I demanded, "Answer me now!"
"I don’t know…you know as well as I do—probably about 45 minutes…possibly less 'cause their wet."
Only ten minutes after ingesting the mushrooms—AKA-"ten minutes in", I could already feel them beginning to sizzle away in my belly…and still not out of the office.
Twenty-five minutes in and finally locking up the office and jettison for the conference room. About half way to the other side of the building through the winding, seemingly maze-like corridors at Control Head Quarters…then an all-to familiar calling card of the beginnings of a powerful hallucinogenic experience suddenly reared its' ugly head: flash nausea. I needed to reach the bathroom at the end of hall fucking fast.
Flash nausea is common in various drug-using populations and binge drinking alcoholic circles who have not yet hit their bottom. The after math of such an encounter when anatomical flex takes control…when various parts of your digestive system put in an emergency call to the brain and says "He's gone too far again. Enough is enough…requesting immediate permission to forcefully eject perceived toxins..." can be both comic and devastating. It's on set doesn't include the normal recognizable build up of stomach aching, bubbling, cramping, sour-stomach or anything of the sort. Rather, the onset of flash nausea is comparable to the firm and professional voice on the loud speaker at a NASA launch facility: "Good Day. This is your stomach. Uncontrollable vomiting will begin in 5…4…3…2...". A true testament to handling the heat; buying the ticket and taking the ride.
I blurt out in mid-flight for the conference room, " Fuckin' A, Garrett…I need the bathroom. I'm gonna yak."
He shot me an ugly look. "Well hurry the hell up then and go puke. We've only got about ten minutes. I'll be right out here. The meeting room is just around the corner."
A violent lunge into the bright white bathroom resulted in my nearly running over Kevin Owen, a well-respected senior sales executive. For a moment I was damn near certain that the minor collision was about to accessorize his $900 suit in an explosion of regurgitated mushrooms and peanuts…but as any pro would, I stood strong.
"Watch the tie!" Kevin shouted angrily. "It's a Geoffrey Beene!"
The poor bastard never knew just how close he was to a full body make over. There's no way in reality this guy would even remotely remember our brief encounter; but he would have…
And just as quickly as I could lock the stall door behind me, the flash nausea was over. Almost as if my internal engineers heard the pull of the whistle at the work days' end to pack up and go home. A moment of stillness. But based on all my previous experiences, a three minute wait period is recommended for all flash nausea cancellations…as the halts in nausea are often a prequel to a much more powerful beast: the flash nausea/ hot-flash combo.
To keep from focusing on the sickness I sit on the can and listen to the only CD I had with me, the "Good Fellas" sound track. I noticed almost immediately with the start of the first track that the stall door had taken on an eerie orange tint.
A funny thing about 'shrooms is how they mess with your sense of time. Hell, they make you more like a dog--come to think of it. No sense of time at all…an internal clock guided 99% of the time only by raw instinctual reflex. No communicable plans for where, when, what or with who. To a dog, you put them alone in a room and close the door—15 minutes…five hours—it's all the same.
I look down and notice five tracks have played. How fucking long have I just been sitting here visualizing scenes from various parts of Good Fellas with each song? I had spaced out for 25 minutes. I was over and hour into the trip and the meeting around the corner was well under way.
I jump up and flee the bathroom for the meeting. Would I even be able to answer the simple question of why I was so late? I could feel my brains' CPU struggling to put together a coherent answer. A single sentence delivered with some confidence would do, but suddenly the task seemed well out of my range of ability. And to make matters worse, that rotten little bastard Garrett had left his post outside the bathroom for the meeting without me. Being unexpectedly abandoned while under the influence of such a drug can stop the inexperienced user in his tracks for hours on end…wondering deeply where your escort has gone and how you'll be able to assimilate to the new landscape that stretches out before you in damn-near Technicolor.
And for no reason at all, at that moment I said out loud, "I can feel my ankle vibrating somehow…run straight you fiend." I recoil in horror as my voice boomed down the hallway and back. Finally I could see the door to the conference room within spitting distance.
"It's fine," I thought to myself. "…they probably won't notice in you slipping in…just take a deep breath and open' the door with some authority to show I am not afraid."
Easier said than done apparently, because instead I reversed the order of operations—most likely a glitch in the motor skills department, and I make my grand entrance by opening the door to the filled conference room widely, taking a very out of place deep breath and standing in place like a stone at the entrance while the whole room paused and starred. The moderator whipped her head around to see what the interruption was about. Her voice boomed out at me like a cannon ball to the belly.
"Can I help you, sir?!"
I stood still and sputtered out, "Uh…yeah, sorry…I'm a bit late."
The whole conference room, seating something like 30 of my bosses and co-workers, were all gawking at me with heavily judgmental eyes. Their weight on me was nearly unbearable.
"And your name sir?" the moderator said while she flipped over a couple pages to scan for my name on the roster.
"Franklin…Ben Franklin."
She stopped and turned back towards me with mounting frustration. "This meeting is serious! You have some nerve showing up late just to…" I had lost focus on her voice; where had I seen her? When angered, she looked like an emaciated Pam Grier from Jackie Brown. Several people burst out in my defense, "NO LADY, THAT’S HIS REAL NAME…HE'S NOT KIDDING!" Jackie Brown's eyebrows' level out as her frustration dissipates after finding my name.
"OK, here you are. Sorry about the confusion Mr. Franklin—just have a seat so we can continue. Some smart-ass coworker with a death wish—probably John Morris in hind-sight, simultaneously blurted out, "YA! Geez, Ben! Have a seat so we can continue!"
"Vultures!" I mutter in a hushed yet obviously audible, angry tone. Several of the executives were struggling not to laugh. However, I was certain that the laughter was directed at Jackie, so I felt bad and felt a need to apologize before I took another step. I knew she was trying to lead a sincere forum of adults. To her, admittedly a past victim, sexual harassment in the work place was a crisis in need of immediate reconciliation…all the while knowing that 99% of the people in the room couldn't give less of a shit about what she was saying.
"Look, I'm totally sorry I'm late—and for the confusion caused by my arrival. I will now be seated…because I know this stuff is important." An incredibly unorganized and awkward series of thoughts to verbalize. Laughter from my coworkers was now abundant. I remained frozen in my tracks for a full ten seconds—lost—standing dead in front of the whole group.
Someone I knew but couldn't recognize finally grabbed my arm and whispered,
"Ben! Just sit the fuck down—what's wrong with you?"
I felt he deserved an answer.
"Well, I don't know, man…I'm kind of…"
"SIT DOWN!" The voice said. And with a hand planted firmly on my bicep, I was cut short by being yanked down into a seat.
"Sorry." I whispered.
"DO YOU MIND, MR. FRANKLIN?!" The moderator yelped.
"Sorry…sorry."
I was now seated, yes, but hardly settled. I tried to scrawl my name at the top of the form I was handed but my hand looked as if it were breathing heavily…Fantastic but extremely distracting. The seven o'clock summer sun coming through the blinds was bright orange and in turn, changed everything in it's direct path to a similar shade…slightly faded in comparison. Everything orange had heat lines rising off them like the four-hundred fumes that spit out the back of a busy oven.
To add to this, it was getting progressively harder to read whatever was on the page in front of me. It was if the words were being projected onto the page from overhead by a shaky projector…they wouldn't stay centered or still on the paper.
Occasionally Jackie's voice made it all the way to my brain:
"…but nowadays it won't fly. You can easily get sued, loose your job—it's even possible to get sentenced jail time if you don't learn to act like a professional. Some people would claim that this type of behavior is often prompted or spontaneous. But the truth is that 'either way it's not OK'."
I felt like I was being singled out. Was she speaking to me? I fought to hold strong. I had to wrestle with the notion of asking the moderator to stop picking on me, but no, no…just sit still and shut up.
Jackie paused and asked the audience,
"Now, can anyone give me an example of sexual harassment that's disguised as a compliment?" The participation level of the room was that of fifth graders during math class. It was all ears, though, when senior executive and veritable comic genius Johnny Mo raised his hand to give a response.
"Yes, you in the back…Mr. Mo I believe…"
"You got it." John said with a devious grin. "The other day I was walking into a meeting and my secretary Jenny said, 'Gee, John, I like your pants. They make your cock look fucking huge."
That was just about the funniest thing I ever heard said in any meeting. He had delivered the line with perfect timing. The entire room erupted into wild laughter. Even the moderator was howling. But would I be able to regain my composure once everyone else stopped cracking up? As normal with this type of drug, my skill at ascertaining what was and what wasn't funny, clearly, was malfunctioning…and the on/ off switch in my brain controlling hysterical laughter was gone all-together. I became nervous as the laughter died down from a rolling boil…except with me. I mean, c'mon, 'those pants make your cock look huge?!' What the hell could be funnier, I thought while attempting to hide my giggling face behind my note book. Other employees began to notice my strangely over-active sense of humor, and were not impressed, to say the least. And for the next thirty minutes I battled to keep my convulsive guffaw to a minimum. I tried to talk myself down. Don't think about it…don’t think about it. Focus on looking like you're busy taking notes. But every time I looked up and saw Johnny Mo I couldn't keep buttoned up…all the while increasing the rooms' understandable perception of substance involvement to an uncomfortably heightened plateau. I was, however, versed enough in the illicit drug-user's version of pharmacology--the discipline of sky-highetry, to realize that the unwelcome "we know what you're up to" vibe was probably a regular old case of a galloping, hallucinogen-induced paranoia. A common affliction that would surely pass granted I change my environment.
Truth be told, they were shooting me some very real icy glares… and in particular, the director of Human Resources Shelly Barat…who was like the IRS, FBI, and DEA to the employee population of International Profit Control and all it's subsidiary companies; a grim sign. And as Hunter S. Thompson would write, "I was ripped straight to the tits." Being so, it didn't make me uneasy that Shelly was starting to take on a frog-like appearance. Green hues wrapped her face as a pair of flat, thin lips—gaining amphibious definition progressively with each corner-eyed glance I made in her direction as the mutation progressed. At one point, I could swear I heard a swamp-born "rib-it…rrrib-it" coming from her direction. I quickly whip my eyes in her direction to see if the unlikely transformation had actually completed, and lock eyes with her in a most unnerving manner. I made the mistake of giving away that I really was gawking at her by making a sudden nervous, jerky look in another random direction. It felt like I had gotten busted trying to check out a pretty girl perched next to her muscle-bound man on the train. How would my glance be sized up? Would it be passively over-looked or was I headed for an unpleasant confrontation involving an aggravated line of questioning about what the hell I was looking at and what the hell was wrong with me. Christ! I was ready to start silently praying to the ghost of Hunter S. Thompson for the ability to hold it together and not let my jangled, misfiring synapses get the best of my emotional fortitude.
Jackie Brown began shuffling through her black, wheel-bearing suitcase of anti-libido propaganda--finally producing from it a copy of Black's Legal Encyclopedia…the lawyer's bible. I recognized the mammoth from my previous enrollment in several Contract and Criminal Law classes at Columbia College in Chicago. The book was at least nine intimidating inches thick…about 4600 or so pages of fine print on phone book-thin paper. I noticed almost immediately that Jackie must have studied the life out of the volume; without a book mark, she cracked the beast open with skill and grace to nearly the precise page she was after. She was not, as I now started to realize, just some state-appointed speaker, but rather an avid studier of law. Obviously not the cheap-jack mouth piece for hire I had pegged her for when I first entered the room; but an integral part of the states' attorney's office who had a genuine and public mission. If those attending her workshop weren't going to take her seriously, it didn't sway her confidence in the least. She knew she could break out the big guns—dense legal text complex and uncomfortable enough to torture the piss out of any disrespectful pig by simply making them read sections of Black's aloud in front of their peers.
"OK, guys…" she said in a firm tone, "…these are the current laws and definitions in the United States regarding sexual harassment. We're going to pass this around…" She slammed the book down with an echoing thud that shook the windows, "…and each take turns reading out of it to the group. Just read whichever paragraph is next when it gets to you."
"My fucking God!" I thought to myself with a cringe. "This is it…the bitter end." For a split second, I seriously considered that rather than actually trying to read coherently in front of all my superiors in this condition, it may just be easier on me to make a fucking run for it. There would be a reprimand of my actions from a superior or two, of course, but I'd rather face a private ass chewing than certain disaster and public humiliation when it was soon my turn with that god damn book. I stood up and tried to politely excuse myself for a trip to the men's room. When you gotta go, ya gotta go, right? What could they possibly…
"Excuse me, Mr. Franklin! We're not finished yet…" Jackie trumpeted.
"Yes, uh…I know that much Jackie…I just need to use the…"
She abruptly cut me off. Maybe she was frustrated by me having given her a new name. Regardless, it became crystal clear; nobody leaves her 90 minute seminars early, period. Unless you are being rushed out the door by paramedics, police or perhaps in the event of a real-life alien abduction, she meant to make an uncooperative member of any group she was lecturing, until her time was up, at least, her bitch.
"Please just have a seat. We'll only be a little longer."
I was trapped in the most frightening sense of the word. The book was coming ever-closer; the subject matter becoming increasingly more graphic and detailed with each paragraph. It finally arrived in front of me with a coworker's finger planted firmly where I was to begin. Fuck it, I thought." Buy the ticket, take the ride" ran across my field of vision like a ticker tape stock quote. How bad could this go? I didn't want to know… but here it goes. I carefully started to read the half-page long, eight point font paragraph as it floated around the page coming in and out of focus:
"The 1999 US policy guide lines were subsequently amended to include specifics not clearly defined by the EEOC's current standards and definitions of unacceptable work place behaviors that violate personal rights. Also, henceforth included shall be a referendum of Civil Harassment Suits previously dismissed due to the defenses inability to cite specific laws being violated—solely regarding ways to close several loop holes for dismissal of non-physical discriminatory and defamatory actions and behaviors not specifically defined by current statutes. 2007 Supreme Court precedents held as definitive are as follows. It is deemed inappropriate and a breach of rights for unwelcome sexually-based or sexually-suggestive comments to be made regarding the perceived size, shape, quality, and functionality of another's attributes including but not exclusive to the hair, face, breasts, buttocks, genitals, back, stomach, legs, outer extremities, mouth or tongue, and rectum. I continued in horror: Additionally, uninitiated discussion/ comments regarding taste/ smell/ consistency of bodily fluids and/ or excretory materials are now so included…"
I could not continue. The words were moving all around the page in a pond-rippling like motion. My voice had a booming delay effect like when the music from a stage reaches you at the back of a pavilion at a huge concert after you see the band start the song.
"Are you alright?" Jackie said.
"Um…yeah…I'm OK I guess…"
Half the room thought I was illiterate, the other half thought I was on drugs; all present were appalled. I had to climb out of this little hole before I got buried alive. Wait…I got it…a moment of clarity…I sputter out,
"Sorry—I've got a migraine…when they get bad it's hard to focus."
Would the room buy it? My fate loomed in the air.
"OK. Just pass it on then." Jackie calmly said.
My neighbor would pick up where I left off and I seemed to be off the hook. But could it possibly be over that easily?
I slid the book to my left and thanked whatever god was responsible for the undeserved mercy. I had walked the thin line, on that day…the road less traveled…and reached the end.
The lecture was winding down. With a bit of luck, I had no more traumatic experiences that day—at least not as far as the meeting were concerned. We were all exiting. Garrett stopped me with a punch to the shoulder and said,
"You are certifiably insane, buddy. Good luck getting home."
I sloppily reply, "I don't need luck…good fortune finds me. I am one with the force, remember?"
Garrett couldn't help but laugh out loud at the depths of my my intoxication.
"Whatever you say there, Ben. See you bright and early Monday morning. Have good weekend."
"And you as well, Sir." I say with a salute as I turned to leave the confines of the office…
And I guess that was that.
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