The Egotist Read online

  “You see Mr. Buhner,” the little man begins, “in order to get a good job within an established organization, you need to have a background more suited to the everyday workplace. Your time spent as . . .” he pauses here to check for a good one from his notes, ”a caddie, for instance, would not come in handy in the everyday workplace.”

  “Why not?” I respond, flustered by the humiliation of this entire experience. “I mean, a caddie works really hard, man. You ever caddie? It’s a lot of work.”

  “Yes, I know that. I never caddied but that’s not the point. The point is offices need somebody who can schedule and type, not carry their golf bags,” he rebuts, pushing his wire-rims up the bridge of his nose in obvious discomfort.

  I study him for a second and notice that his thin hair is gelled into a solid form, thus creating – along with his transparent, shiny-white skin – a scary plastic boy.

  I observe this for only a moment. “Well, I’m not so sure about that. A lot of those executives do more time on the green than in the office these days, you know? I bet I could get a good position as a sort of corporate caddie. What do you think about that?”

  The plastic boy doesn’t respond, but simply touches his “hair” and looks around the office in need of a solution to the dilemma sitting before him. He sets down his notes and slowly leans in toward me.

  “Look . . . do you want to get a job or don’t you?”

  I hesitate slightly, but notice the kid is serious. I realize that if I’m going to succeed in this hegemonic world of Corporate America, I am going to have to learn some humility and play by the rules. I’m not happy about it, but who’s happy? I make myself lean forward just a bit, think about the question, then reply quietly.

  “Well, I gotta pay my rent.”

  “Right. Then if you want to get work, you need two things, and you don’t need to write this down. . . .”

  I wonder for a second if he really expects me to take notes, then shrug it off and bend in to listen.

  “You need a tie.” He pauses only slightly to let the first point sink in before continuing, “and you need to know how to type. Got that?” The plastic boy leans back in his chair waiting for a reaction. I give him little.

  “Well, I have a tie,” I respond. “As far as typing goes, I’m sure I could figure it out.”

  “Have you ever typed before? Do you know your words-per-minute?” he asks snidely.

  I think for a second. I have never typed for more than five minutes before in my life. Everything I write is longhand, and I have never used a computer. I let this all slide to the back as I retort cockily, “How’s ninety sound?” I show him the pearly whites. “As in words-per-minute.”

  He smiles back gullibly. “Okay then, I think we have something here.” He makes a couple notes on the form in front of him.

  I relax the grin. “Great, so when do I find out about the jobs?”

  He finishes his jots and looks up at me. “Well, we should have something for you in a few days.”

  “Great,” I say again, getting up from the chair to leave. “Thanks a lot.”

  He stands as well. “Um, there is one more thing.”

  I turn, not expecting the worst.

  “I need you to take a typing test. It should just take a few minutes.”

  I feel my heart sink and my skin scramble. My face must have flushed, because plastic boy seems alarmed.

  “Oh, come now, Mr. Buhner, it’s not as if you’re giving blood or anything.”

  A few moments later, here I am, sitting at the unfamiliar keyboard, waiting for the signal. A piece of paper beside the machine is covered in lines of unintelligible phrases, a child’s book for madmen. It reads like an ee cummings poem, but without flavor . . .

  eats feat feet like live love fire dove dive hire

  into heat poor bask lift main mind verb cast pine

  beeb bite lick yoke rind even quit dine dean bind

  I feel half-mad just reading over the pages, and almost let out a yelp when plastic boy says, “Go!” while clicking on a stopwatch in his hand.

  Sixty seconds later, I have typed out twenty words and made about seventeen errors. He tells me it equates to about nine words-per-minute. I just nod and proceed to buy the kid off with fifty dollars. Plastic boy writes in sixty words-per-minute on the form.

  Two days later, I get a call.

  Corporate America

  “I’m sick,” I think, looking about me at the copiers, ties, paper, parcels, paperclips, pound puppies, hush puppies, thin black socks and slippery-bottomed shoes. My brain jiggles and my eyes bounce as a fax comes through and a pencil is sharpened, notes are dictated and an e-mail is sent. Business is a cancer surrounding me as I stand here unwillingly, a defenseless organ. It’s toying with me, taunting me, unnerving me, driving me to the brink of poetic collapse. I know that to join in is certain death, that decay will overcome me and make me nothing but a cog in a machine that will soon find its day in a dark, dismal hole of horror, suffocation, and pain.

  But to fight it . . . to fight it is futility. I am owned by what I am. I cannot be the smallest percentage, the most minimal statistic. I have to become part of the greater whole that is the world. I will need to email - yes. I will need to dress up for the big meeting and kiss the ass of the insolent and impolite so my salary will increase, I can buy a sport-utility vehicle, own the house in the nice part of town and pay the labor good money to mow my lawn and hedge my hedges. I need to feel the resonance of surround sound and the soothing whisper of central air. To quote a bastard: “Their’s not to reason why, Their’s but to do and die.”

  With a frown, I pull myself like a great weight away from my desk and move to the water cooler, pouring myself a cool glass of bottled mountain freshness into a recycled-paper cup. I take the swallow the cup holds and unbutton the top of my shirt, feeling the flesh on my neck crawl at the scrape of the fabric. A co-worker approaches me, pouring herself a cup of water as well and giving me blink-eye from under forty-five minutes of make-up preparation.

  “Good morning, sunshine,” she says, unwittingly assuming to turn my frown upside down. “Already loosening the collar, I see.”

  “Good morning,” I reply darkly, my frown turning into something quite evil. I crumple up my cup and hand it to her. “Throw this away, will you?”

  I walk away from a quippy comment she levies out from below her shocked, batty eyelashes and shoot back “Go to hell” while making my way toward the door.

  I make the decision: if I am not going to get out, I am going to get even. If I have to sleep with every porn-carrying bitch in this city I am going to get even.

  My Friend Doth Protest

  Donnie Lemus is no notorious gangster. He is a self-absorbed, unappreciative, ungiving, uncaring, soulless, heartless, luckless bastard. He has a solid brain and can think on his toes, if necessary. He has a knack for technology and all things mechanical. He is five-eight and about a hundred and sixty pounds with short unkempt hair, a sour mouth, and bitter little eyes. He rarely does anything to help anybody but himself, and he got beat up a lot in high school. His parents are still together and live seven states away. He is an only child.

  His current job is selling books at a large chain bookstore.

  When he was attending community college, he would entertain himself by verbally ripping the system to shreds and mocking the individual studies. In college he was liked by few and was never involved with any school activities or absorptions.

  Oddly enough, he has a rather docile, non-intimidating personality, and mostly keeps to himself. Despite his poor temperament when it comes to societal issues, he is extremely non-confrontational, expressing himself only through poetry, short stories, and occasional rantings that are mostly given to myself or whatever girlfriend sticks around long enough to hear the whole thing through.

  He thinks of girls sort of as toll booths, having also described them as bulletin boards and parking meters. Either way, he never gets very emo
tionally attached to any one of them.

  It is his way: Donnie has lots of ambitions but no goals. He prefers to float judgingly above it all rather than to scythe through to the heart of the matter. He keeps vague journals and yarns on about being the one to fight the System: Corporate America, interest rates, high taxes, monopolies, unions, unorganized road construction, long lines in stores and overpriced music. To date, he has done nothing constructive to alleviate any of the issues against which he seeks justice, but he knows his time is coming, and he is waiting it out . . . at the bookstore, of course.

  On this day, however, on this very day . . . although he knows nothing of it, his time has arrived. Yes, his opportunity has surfaced - and by God if he isn’t going to capitalize on it.

  Here it is as he told me . . .

  Donnie was standing at his station amongst the line of cashiers at the bookstore, ringing up some punk kid’s horror book, not really overly agitated by anything going on around him - with the exception of the store’s music system, which was currently piping Swan Lake throughout the store, and he hated Swan Lake.

  When the first few people holding signs come through the doors, he didn’t take notice. When the number of people increased to ten, he found himself glancing casually in that direction. When the number was thirty and they were marching through the store with picket signs, he definitely started to pay attention. Looking around, he saw that everyone in the store had noticed the newcomers, and they all listened as the protesters chanted, raising aloft their home-made signs and parading in a poor-man’s circle amid the main lobby of the giant store.

  The signs read things like: “Smut Seller,” “Den of Wolves,” “Store of Satan,” and “Leave Porn in the Hood.”

  As the people marched, they chanted over and over again: “No freedom for foulness, pornography is not literature. No freedom for foulness, pornography is not literature.” They were speaking it rhythmically, smoothly, and without too much hostility. Overall it was a pretty well-organized little protest, and after a few minutes customers and workers alike started going back to whatever it was they were doing.

  “Next,” Donnie said, signaling for the dazed persons in line to come up with their books. As Donnie rang them up he listened to the almost distant rumble of the protesters, almost thankful that there was some distraction from the in-store sound system and Swan Lake.

  About twenty minutes later, Police came and ushered the protesters out of the store. Donnie was very sorry to see them go and even went so far as to ask the cops if the people could stay, citing that it was good for publicity; the store manager cut him short, however, and told him to just go back to work and let him handle it. After that it all happened very quickly, and the sounds of Swan Lake soon dominated the building once more.

  It wasn’t until later that day Donnie found out what the protest was in cause of. Apparently, White House aid James Thornton, who had worked under the Clinton administration, had released a book of memoirs on his romantic exploits with the wealthy corporate wives who frequented the White House with their donating husbands. After hearing the premise of the book, Getting Rich, Donnie was confident it would be a best seller.

  It also gave him an idea, an idea of how to strike back, to stick it to The Man. Call it the aroma of protest or the tingly fear of seeing all those cops - or maybe little Donnie Lemus had simply grown up.

  He smiled at the next customer as he rang through the purchase, quietly humming the redundant notes of Tchaikovsky as he worked, his mind whirring like a cotton candy machine gone wild.

  The Cooperation of the Unnamed

  I’m tired and I’m hot. I sit at the dining room table in my apartment, feeling no breeze from any of the four open windows around me. My place doesn’t have air-conditioning, and these summers can be a real ass-kicker. I still haven’t taken off the slacks and button-down shirt I wore to my job today - the tie came off on the way home.

  Depressed and beaten, I allow the heat to take me over, letting sweat roll off of my face and onto the plastic-covered pressed wood of my garbage-picked dining room table. I close my eyes and think about how hungry I am, knowing damn well I don’t have any food aside from some canned beans in the cupboard and half a jar of spaghetti sauce in the fridge. The idea of combining the two occurs to me only momentarily, bringing a giggle to my lips. I rub my hands over my face and feel the dull pain of a pimple on my forehead, forcing me to curse the adolescent disease with all I have left in me.

  Finding motivation in nothing, I decide to take the rest of the day step-by-step, starting by taking off the most uncomfortable pair of shoes in the world and replacing the woolly dress pants I’m wearing with some khaki shorts. I now realize it is probably not a good idea to be sweating in these clothes, as I am going to have to wear the exact same thing tomorrow, and I wonder how long I’ll have to be at this job. They told me three days, but if it turns out to be longer I am going to begin feeling a little silly wearing the same pants, shirt, and tie every day.

  Miserable, I start to undress while making the decision to call a friend for some other clothes. I’m disgusted at the thought, for more reasons than one, but I have no choice.

  When Lemus answers on the other end, he sounds distracted . . . not nearly as hollow and bored as he usually does.

  “Ah W., I’m glad you called, you’re exactly the person I need to speak with right now,” he says.

  “What’s up, Lemus? You sound fuddled.”

  “Yeah, daddy, I’m scattered all right - I need your help . . . I’m starting an organization.”

  I have no response.

  “I’m calling it the PLV. It stands for Peace, Liberty, and Virtue. I’m going for a better America, my man,” Lemus says proudly.

  I am half-stunned and half-distracted. I search through some kitchen drawers as he speaks, stretching the phone cord to its limit in search of my goal. Reaching the end of my rope, so to speak, I open a drawer filled with candlesticks, matches, twine, tape, paperclips, a jacks set (still in its package), two empty Pez containers (one Santa, one Dracula), and exactly one-half pack of Camels which I had quit on about six months ago. I pull out a book of matches from a restaurant I had gone to about three years ago with a girl I had gone on exactly one date with, grab an old Camel from the pack and light it up, blowing smoke into the receiver.

  “Listen, Lemus, I’ve had a tough day and I really don’t have time for your crazy fantastics,” I say calmly, knowing my rudeness will have no affect on my friend, whose brain I think is half in the blender anyway. The old smoke tastes wonderful in my mouth, and I can feel myself coming down just a bit.

  “I know, I know, but W., you’ve got to listen to me here.” He pauses momentarily, “I think I’ve found a way for us to make a lot of money.”

  I take a moment before responding, allowing myself another drag.

  “W.?” he says worriedly. It wouldn’t have been the first time I’d hung up on him.

  “Yeah, I’m here,” I say finally. “What’s going on Lemus? You sound serious.”

  “I’m very serious,” he says, stressing ‘very’ with gusto.

  I sit down at my dining room table, run my fingers unconsciously over the plastic grooves. “How much money Lemus?”

  “A lot. But I need your help.”

  “No kidding. Is it legal?” I ask.

  “Do you care?”

  I look around at my apartment, feel the sweat under my collar burn into my neck.

  “Of course not.” I pause. “But Lemus . . . no names.”

  “No names.”

  I acquiesce with a sigh. “Let’s hear this brilliant idea.”

  New Leaves are for Losers

  I decide to make nice-nice with my office wench. I haven’t been seeing anyone, I’m lonely at home, and I need someone to show me how to work the copier. I’m not sure what method of atonement will work with her, so I start with the basics.

  I approach her smiling and she looks like a woman who has just been bopp
ed in the nose, but she stays to hear me out all the same.

  “It’s just . . . well . . . I’ve been so down lately,” I say, already into my rap. “You see, I like to write poetry. When I can’t write, when I can’t find . . . those words . . . I just feel so trapped,” I gush, the dialogue oozing out like bitter honey over my dry lying tongue. “That’s why you had to meet that person the other day. That person isn’t me, I assure you.”

  I pour out the pink pretty stuff big-time, doing everything from the occasional wipe of the nose to the watering at the corner of the eyes. I’m feeling terrible for the way I treated her at the water cooler yesterday, and I am doing everything I can to make it up to her, and if you believe that, you’re more stupid than she is.

  “I understand,” she says, her voice squeaky and loud, “I’m not saying I’m happy about it, I mean you really screwed up my day. I was a real b-i-t-c-h all day yesterday just because of you. I upset a lot of people, people I’m close to, do you know how that feels?” she says with a stern sadness, letting me know how sorry she is that I’m forcing her to give me the verbal spanking I so deserve.

  My stomach curdles as she talks, and I have to really fight down the dark, twisting emotions trying to make their way to the surface. I ache to tell her off again. I enjoy the fantasy of watching her face crumble in horrible disgust, seeing her trip over her high heels as she runs from me crying . . . I restrain myself from almost chuckling out loud. Instead, I just get my eyes as big as I can, and nod while she preaches.

  “I mean, I’ll forgive you. But I don’t want to have to go through this again. Can you promise me that you’ll be cool to me from now on? I mean, I’ve beat up guys before, so you don’t intimidate me,” she says with nobility. “It’s not just that, it’s also that I won’t be made a fool of,” she finishes, thinking she has me plenty on the ropes.