I was sitting in my cubicle with my feet up on the desk, playing “Solitaire” on the computer the other day. It was nearing quitting time; the evening sun was fading somewhere; somewhere where you could actually see it fade.
I was really into the game, so I wasn’t aware of the approach of any predators, was not heedful of any “incoming,” like closing footsteps, fleeting shadows, or throat clearing perilously close within the maze of 5,000 square feet of cubicle office space. I was at a point where I didn’t really care much about anything anymore anyway. I was interested only in finding a black queen. I was fed up with the world, the flesh and the Republicans.
Natural law plainly states in one of her unwritten chapters on comfort that this jig was soon to be up. Nevertheless I continued doing what I was doing, and my earlier sorrows were now mercifully forgotten as I searched utterly for the black queen. There were only two choices for me at this particular time and state of mind, either an isolated life in a cabin somewhere in the Northwest Territory or the anesthetizing lucidity of Solitaire in this “hard time” cubicle.
But then I felt something hovering over me in threatening, breathless silence, like the close presence of a wild beast, and me nothing more than a spring lamb ripping at new grass in a small clearing in the forest, and bleating contentedly, naïve to the sudden ferocity of life.
Insolently I refused to let them have their meal and eat it too, so I just kept on playing Solitaire and left my feet up on the desk, like a tough lamb would do. I wouldn’t even turn to acknowledge them (there seemed to be more than one) because I didn’t want to show any receptivity at all, like a dog might oh so subtly present his posterior as a peace offering. Submission was out of the question, I stood my ground as Horatio at the bridge, until the cards would fall like a cascade across the computers screen, and would be my one magnificent gesture in my crushed cubicle existence’s measly life. I chose to duel passionately beyond first blood, until the absolute end.
They were angry; I knew this because they drifted intimidatingly closer, as if they were trying to conjure up a vital primeval demon seed in order to consume me, perhaps like impotent men would try their darnedest to be potent, but eventually descending to voyeurism. At this point I did know who they were by the peculiar aroma, and malevolent air.
They were Rich Bully and his gang. Oh how I could feel his hatred, at this moment his malevolence was to the point where he physically trembled, and lathered up with hot flashes for me not groveling before him.
I must admit much of my life flashed before my eyes, as I am a family man and the sole breadwinner. Moving to that cabin in the Northwest Territory has remarkable appeal to me, but not so to my wife, so there are tremendous implications to consider. Now however, I was too far into this contest of the wills to think responsibly. I remembered only marshal Will Kane’s pickle in “High Noon” as I suddenly had to do what I had to do; in spite of the fact that my family would suffer if this irresponsible choice yielded a less mythical outcome than Will’s. Rich Bully and his hired men had pushed me far enough already; I had to hold my ground here lest the town be taken over by their kind.
You must understand everything appeared to me as if there was no longer a familiar Heaven, the one now was ruled by a crueler god, there were no more fairy tales with happy endings, and Santa Clause had died in an air strike somewhere over Baghdad and was “collateral damage." To be fair, Rich Bully had even allowed a little sentiment at that terrible moment during a news conference. I thought I saw his Mr. Dithers eyes fill up with life for a moment, until I realized it was only that he saw the opportunity for more profit in this; he knew instinctively that he and his buddy’s could make the “toys,” now at a tidy yield, after a small modification of the shop.
What I thought was a softening of his eyes was merely an ecstasy, and all the reporters swooned too along with him as they sensed more testosterone emanating from his trousers even though it was not really his. He had bottled it after arduously extracting it over the years from WMD’s.
He and his fraternity brothers had years earlier perfected a secret process for making WMD’s in order to extract the faux testosterone using a formula they had stolen from the science lab at Yale while looking for drugs and a professor’s test questions. The only hitch is that they lost the formula and the need for already existing WMD’s became paramount, and they can not use their own countries WMD’s because it depletes them and renders them useless when certain necessary elements are extracted and used in the balm.
He thought that if he applied it every day it would eventually take, and he could be like men he had seen and secretly admired, but not to be, the stuff was as temporary as underarm deodorant. He was cunning in his knowledge of when to apply such a rare commodity though, that seldom was he seen in public without at least a maintenance dose.
Only thing is it necessitates the continual search for WMD’s. It is like extracting the small microscopic portion of the whale’s glandular residue for use in perfume; there is never enough, and many leviathans must be killed just to extract enough for a few more doses. To certain leaders who lack the authentic elements of testosterone it seems to be very important to obtain the counterfeit, and some of them will stop at nothing to acquire it.
The dirty little secret is, his whole gang uses the bottled manly balm. Bad Cop has been known to even take it internally, usually on the eve of war as he watches his standard film fare to get pumped; The Sands of Iwo Jima. Sadly, Good Cop, who everybody loved and trusted at one time, was observed dosing himself with a full rubber bulb in the UN Security Council men’s room before a presentation of, “some dandy reasons for war.”
The meetings at gang headquarters are riotous, as all the boys (and some of the girls) douse themselves in the stuff like it was tanning lotion, Whenever Rich Bully needs more, for example at a news conference he merely squeezes a rubber bulb through a tailored hole in the pockets of his trousers.
It usually smells like a barnyard whenever they all gather for strategy sessions, in fact the “help” complains to no avail. For something so infinitesimal it was very ripe. Of course these “sessions” indeed necessitate the frantic search for more WMD’s.
Even with all these efforts, and the Kevlar lined suit coats they still only appear to be post-pubescent males, there is still not a real man among them, though they bristle with chest and ear hair; it is all fake, implanted from outside sources, a kind of fertilizer lotion from WMD’s,
Unfortunately the whole world knows it and chuckles behind their backs. Unlike real prophets who are not welcome in their own country, these people are more than welcome in their own country, and despised in all the others. This telling reversal of prophecy goes unnoticed by Blood Lust, the gang’s crazy chaplain, so he just continues praying convincingly, especially to the gang, for more broken eggs to make that allusive omelet.
I awakened from my daydream. It wasn’t Rich Bully and his gang at all, it was my boss and his comely secretary; her sweet brown eyes offering up from their impenetrable depths a reason for joie de vivre and an end to Solitaire, and all the goodness of life beckoned to me once again, and I thought I heard the laughter of little children mixed with the drifting strains of a piece by Mozart off in the distance, and through a window several spaces down, the gentle April breezes played with new daffodils somewhere outside.
I suddenly understood that God was good after all, and no matter how hard we tried no man could ever make Him into his own image.
“As soon as you get your feet off the desk, I’ll give you your ‘fifteen year’ pin,” said the boss. Sheepishly I lowered my feet to the floor, as my face flushed humbly.
April 28, 2003
