लिखा निष्क्रियता

I came from work today having a hard time justifying time spent.  So much of what I do shows no result—lack of information doesn’t mean lack of research.  It’s usually just the opposite; when there’s no information in my write-ups, it usually means I’ve scoured everything possible to verify that there’s nothing, and given the amount of crap there is on the internet, that can be quite a lot. 

To make matters even more frustrating, it’s gorgeous out, all three of my supervisors are working from home, and I’m sitting in an office where most people tell me I should just go home.  It’s days like today that test one’s moral fiber.

But stay I do, though I do meet Becky for lunch, which has been required by both her and my bosses.  Her, because she demands it, and them, because I apparently need to “calm down” a lot, and require a break.  Often, the lunch break can simply be a reminiscence of the life that I used to be in control of. 

Beckers and I meet for lunch at the bottom of her building, find a table near the part courtyard, and eat what we’ve packed while watching the crazies, and since the weather is warm, there is no shortage.  On the corner there stands the guy who lectures about god to an audience of 30 or none all the same.  The teenager who is a regular 5 o’clock shadow guys guy with the exception of the makeup and sundress.  The guys wearing wigs and driving through the city in their Hummer, pumping the breaks to make the car bounce as though it had hydraulics.  This is better than TV.

After we finish lunch and observe with more amusement than horror the little girl who has been strapped into her stoller, but who attempts to walk away from it anyway, screaming, as her parents laugh at her efforts and enjoy a cigarette.  Once this living theatre is over, we make our way up Pike St. to the Paramount Theater, where we buy Avenue Q tickets, which is my birthday present from Beckers.  The woman behind the counter is beginning to recognize us, which I kind of like.  I’d sooner take one live performance every few months than a movie a week.

Back at work I do my best to get some work done, specifically because I’ve managed to blow another $12 on a Moleskine writing pad on the way back from lunch.  The good news is that I don’t have to think about this for long—late lunches mean short periods until the end of the day, and as I look up from what I’m working on I see that I’m within striking distance of the weekend.

Today is particularly good because I’ll be heading to the Owl and Thistle for Happy Hour with Mick, Beckers, and Rob.  It’s not that I’m particularly excited about going to happy hour as I am at the prospect of hanging out and being social.  So much of my day is spent being someone that is an exaggeration.  It’s not that I’m not the person at work—I am—but I’m not him all the time.  I’m not Mr. Wholesome all the time, and in actuality, that’s a pretty rare persona for me.  So I look forward to going the bar to basically treat my friends like dicks, who will I turn treat me like a dick, and we will be stronger for it.

I get out an hour early and make ambitious plans to go to the library in order to balance my checkbook, which doesn’t work.  Becky has also gotten out of work—earlier than I have—so we decide that we will continue our one-time tradition and go to the Seattle Aquarium, which we do.  It’s nice being a member, since you get an excuse to drop in and take a walk through whenever you feel like it, which is frequent for me.

As we walk by the touch pool I see a few volunteers with a grabber arm poking a large crab in one of the deeper tanks.   When I ask them what they’re up to, they tell me the crab is hungry.

Hungry, I ask. 

“Yeah, she’s been molting, and she get really hungry, so when we see her out and about in the tank, we know she’s on the prowl for something, and she tends to eat her tankmates.  There used to be a whole like of urchins and anemones there, she said, making a sweeping gesture to a barren rock shelf just below the water line.  “She just clipped the spines off the urchins and crushed them.  So we’re trying to feed her some mussels right now.”

You always learn something new at the aquarium.

Mick calls me to tell me that he’s up at the bar, so we leave the crab to her devices and walk a few blocks up to the Owl and Thistle.  It’s packed, and as I make my way through the crowd I wonder how all these people who come from work have no bags with them.  Damn them and their bagless bliss, I think, as I slam into someone else with my overstuffed work bag.  There are no tables, the walls are packed, and my patience for crowds has run out of the day.  We settle on standing at a small table in the middle of a room of people sitting, many of whom are saving seats for their friends.  Good for them.  After a few minutes of pointless standing I take walk around the bar for extra chairs, see some people stand up, and jump on the table like a lion on a paraplegic gazelle. 

Are you folks leaving, I ask.

“Sure are,” comes the reply “It’s all yours.”

Thanking them, I sit down, order two drinks, and proceed to sit awkwardly by myself as the wallflowers glower at me having staked my claim.  About 3 minutes into defending my territory I see the flaw in my plan.  The text message I have sent to the others to report my success never went through—I have no service.  Now I am stuck at the back of the bar in no man’s land.  I could sit and wait in the hopes that someone would come looking for me, or I could try to walk up to the front, leave the table unguarded, and hope that I don’t lead everyone back to an occupied table.  Minutes tick by and I take a lead from the table like a runner from a base, but each time I do the people lining the wall tense up and look ready to pounce as soon as I’m far enough away.

It’s about this time, as I sit with my two beers, that I realize that the bar separating the front and the back of the Owl and Thistle has a glass backing.  I can actually see Drej and Mick from where I’m sitting so I spend my time pointlessly gesturing through the glass to them, hoping against all hope that they might at some point decide to start scanning individual panes of glass for a man in a dark shirt against a dark background. 

Oddly, this never happens.  Instead, I attempt the impossible—I ask the table next to mine to “hold” my place.  I only plan to run around the corner, shout at Mick, or, if it is too loud, fire something substantive at the back of his head, and run back to my table.  Should one of the wall-clingers attempt to usurp my seat, my hope would be that the men to whom I’ve entrusted my “spot” would have stalled them long enough for me to return.

Just as I break away from the table of men now smirking at me I see Mick come around the corner.  “Where the fuck have you been?” He asks.  Holding down the table I got waiting for you giggledicks to come look for me, I say back.  “You’ve got a table?  Nice work.”

Eventually we all crowd around the table and, fortunately, beat the happy hour deadline with our drinks and food.  The Owl and Thistle is pretty good about being blatantly exploitive with their “happy hours”.  They start remarkably late and end incredibly early.  At 5 minutes before 6 they call off happy hour, and that’s according to the wall clock that’s 10 minutes fast.  In reality, happy hour lasts about 15 minutes. 

The afternoon runs on and we drink more than we should, with Beckers and I eventually making our way crookedly but briskly to the 16 busline on our way home.  The ride seemed to go fast, and while I don’t remember much of it, I’ll bet it was fun.