kingtycoon | Not quite Juneteenth

It’s 5:30 and I beat my alarm awake. It is almost the solstice, the birds sing me awake and the sun is shining. I’m sleeping almost on my iPad, I pull it up and watch an episode of the Venture Brothers on it, using a streaming service that I like. Toward the end of the second episode that I watch I get up – my phone alarm is going off – its sound is birdsong.

At 6 I get in the shower which is very high pressure & very hot. I use Doctor Bronner & notice that my hair & beard are long & need to be shaved. I also don’t feel like cleaning the bathroom so I haven’t shaved. I don’t shave today. The mirrors in my house are all for shorter people & I have to lean way down to shave in my bathroom mirror.

Also my shoulders are killing me. I dry off and watch a PBS documentary about the nature of energy while I get dressed. I take my pills and put on my shoes & grab my keys, wallet, phone, cash, cigarettes, lighter, backpack – I leave my house at 10 after 7.

I walk a block and there aren’t kids waiting for the schoolbus because it’s summer. I cross Mayfield, eventually – it’s always a nuisance and often there are speeding cars. The bus has been on a streak of lateness because the street is one way past the cemetery where president Garfield is buried. There’s one lane & the bus is detoured when it comes up the hill & slow going down. It used to show right up at 12 minutes after. Now it is 30 minutes after. There are two people who wait for the bus with me, an older man who says hello whenever he walks up and a younger man who does not. I don’t talk to them. I play pokemon go for a bit, and then all along my ride on this bus – it’s the #9 and it is very crowded. It goes down Mayfield & turns on Euclid – most of the riders are getting off at the train station or the next stop, at Mayfield & Euclid – which is where the university is, and also where you can get the healthline. I stay on till 105^th street.

Today at Euclid & 105 the traffic lights are broken & flashing red. There’s a lot of horn & a little more assertiveness is called for than usual when crossing. I predict the #10 bus will be late & am right. It is uncharacteristically crowded with teens – a lot of teens are getting off the bus – I think they’re getting ready to attend the CSA where Agatha will go next year. We’ll see how that goes. These kids can’t act right, they don’t know to walk on the right.

While I wait I’m standing at the Mort & Iris November memorial – which is pretty crummy after all these years. I remember them putting it in, a few years back – and then seeing it decay steadily from destructive bums & drunken indigents. For whatever reason this stop is favored amongst those who want to drink a bottle of drug-store brandy and then smash it on the ground. There’s always a lot of broken glass from day to day & usually a bunch of fast-food debris. No trash-cans though. When they built this memorial they took away the trash cans. So now trash blows around & accumulates in the garden. I’ve never personally seen anyone litter here. I don’t know when these people come out.

The 10 is still on its detour past the children’s prison. A few people get off there – most of the people get off at Union and a few get off at Buckeye. Very often I’m the last person on the 10 as it goes south down 93^rd. Today two other people get off – one of them is this guy who is always concerned about his bike on the bus’s front rack when it bumbles over the railroad tracks. It’s Ten after Eight – I punch in on my phone and wait to cross the street. It’s usually treacherous but lately it’s been less so – summer means fewer schools – the charter schools up & down 93^rd are a hazard to everyone’s navigation.

I go straight to the stupid kuerig and make coffee. I hate that thing. I run into Skip, who sits next to me and who is my friend. Yesterday I gave him a new computer – today I need to finish setting him up, he’s been waiting for me. I finish some installations & updates & work on his User Account Control settings. Later I’ll have to teach him MS Dynamics. I finish fixing his PC up and he asks if I can swap his phone for a bigger model. I have a 6s+ handy for the new guy, Skip’s subordinate, who’ll start next week. “Give me his and he can have mine.” I swap the cards and erase both phones & then set them up again. I create all the people’s apple-id’s with spurious information about birthdates & best-friends growing up.

It’s a little after 9 when I finish that up. I go outside and drink a second cup of coffee and smoke the first cigarette today. It’s very sunny. There are creeps working outside in the yard now – pipefitters & welders, they’re on break too – I avoid talking to them – I’ve been really unimpressed by what they had to say every time I have spoken to them.

I go back inside to see what needs doing next. I’m called to attach someone’s device to the wifi and I go and do that. She gives me an Arabic cookie- I don’t know what they’re called – the kind stuffed with ground up pistachios, I remember that it’s Eid – she says her husband doesn’t celebrate but he goes to Detroit to pick up food – he loves the food. I do too. We talk a little about Arabic food. I go back to my office it’s almost 10. I’m asked to retrieve one of my old computers - the person who formerly used it has left the company and started his own business with a shady-looking private equity firm to back him. They’re suing him for violating the non-compete parts of his contract. On the one hand – this is like slavery to me, saying that these people are denied a livelihood because they no longer work here. On the other hand, the guy they’re suing is an unlikeable dick & after all, they raised him up in his profession & taught him all he knows – for him to make his own competing business is a bit shitty. I decide that I don’t much care one way or the other. I don’t think my company will succeed in their suit. They’ve failed in similar endeavors before.

I take the laptop to the executives & during its bootup sequence they somehow format the hard drive. I don’t know how or why. I give them links to the cloud backups of the computer so they can browse those while I look for a recovery tool to restore something of the drive. It might come tomorrow. We’ll see. I like new tools anyway.

I get two more phones from Fed Ex – for a new salesperson starting next week & for an old salesperson who’s constantly complaining about his equipment not working. Tony. He complains as if it’s somehow my fault that he keeps breaking his equipment. He keeps breaking it and I keep getting told to issue him more, so that happens. He’s the type of person who’ll BCC your boss while demanding a new computer every year.

My lunch appointment with the old man who’s part of the board of directors is cancelled. I’m not unhappy about this. I don’t want to go and see him. I used to go often, to visit him at Judson – but he’s gotten more and more forward & I’ve become less and less patient with him. He must understand that there will never be sex. I used to go see him every week since he lives on my way home, but, again, he doesn’t act right & when I try to fix his equipment that’s mysteriously ‘broken’ it’s always some half-clever ruse to trick me into glimpsing gay prono. Fortunately for me I’m unperturbed by porno – but I don’t like the way things have gone – so I stopped going to see him. I tell no-one about this dude’s behavior because he is small & feeble & crippled & old. I feel sorry for him. My boss determines that I should go and see him – the old man – Larry – to help him. I’ll go with someone else. Sure. Dumb old man. It’d been arranged today but cancelled – I don’t even care enough to ask why.

It’s just after noon and people are congregating in the lunch room. It’s very dingy there. I don’t eat lunch & almost never punch out. Very often people will come to share food with me because I am beloved. I almost never pay for food at work. Maybe twice or three times in 6 years. I’m reminded that It’ll be 6 years soon. At the end of this month. I’ve worked here longer than anywhere else – which doesn’t feel good. It feels like a trap, kind of. Skip’s been here 36 years. A lot of people retire from here, a lot of people are getting ready to. I don’t know. It’s a job-style-job. Never going to get ahead – but always going to have a seat. Maybe security ought to win. Maybe. The health plan is great. Incredible even. I think of going off on my own & wonder if they’d attempt to sue me over it. I think they probably would.

I take all of my recycling, all the packaging debris from my many deliveries to the recycling dumpster, I don’t even stop to smoke. I think about a 4^th cup of coffee but I don’t want to go in the lunchroom while everyone’s eating & besides if you try and run the microwave & kuerig at the same time the fuses will blow & the building will be blacked out. I often think that the owners would like nothing more than for this place to burn down so they could begin again with new facilities.

I run the order intake query for yesterday – the company made $111,000 USD. At least that’s the value of orders placed yesterday. I wish I’d known how easy it is to operate a factory back when I was in a business-making way. It’s almost embarrassing to watch everyone bumble.

My boss is in the office today so it’s not much fun. The whole company changes demeanor when he’s around. It’s strange how disliked he is – I wonder if he knows? I wonder if you’d know if everyone around you didn’t like you – since you’d only know that one face that you see – if you never saw anyone in a good or happy mood – what would it do to your disposition? He’s over there muttering and repeating my name & singing my name a little- that’s a thing he does. Unconsciously. I don’t know how someone could end up like him. I worry about how I am, as a person, because I have him, Paul, as an example.

I start to set up the new salesperson’s exchange account & create an apple ID for him. His name is Brandon, I wonder if I’ll like him. He’s working the new England territory – the guy who formerly worked there was my favorite. He kind of got fired because he kind of wrecked his car and maybe because of Oxys? There’s never been a clear story – I’ve looked into it but there’s not much to find.

A quarter to One – its weird to me how many companies make you have a personal relationship with them. Apple – they want your individual attention – you can’t just issue out these phones with any kind of pre-loaded or institutional settings – at least, not on the scale that I deploy them. I make up identities for these people – who was your best friend in high school? Whoever I say. What’s the first album you ever bought? I play around with this stuff, it amuses me a little. I get things to were they’re all progress bars and then I write some. Mainly I write about the Slatewind Valley – which is the setting I’m creating as an exercise in explaining how to create a setting. A mystical way. I work on this book – my next book In The Ruins kind of a lot – kind of endlessly. I think about how it’s going to be a 500 page, dense, very dense game-book. I almost don’t care. I think of Henry Darger a lot. Be your own hero, I think to myself. Make the biggest book. Why not. I wonder what it would be like, idly, I wonder, if people bought these. How many would I have to sell to make a living? Would I want that at all? I don’t know. I’ve always kept separate the things I do for love & the things I do for money. I think it’s important. I don’t know why.

I’ve read that people are disillusioned with work & effort because they want to have lives in which their work has a demonstrable result, they want to see accomplished things & that’s why video games are popular – because they give that. I can see it. I think. I can understand the wish for accomplishment. It’s almost 2 – my boss wants me to show him some things in Dynamics & I talk him through a few tasks. He’s got it pretty figured out, I mention that for what we’re attempting we’re only using a little bit of the software, I mention that we’re not ambitious here. We’re not. He doesn’t see it. I talk to him and feel less acrimony than I did – maybe I will later, who knows. But still, it’s almost funny how my very half-assed efforts are considered accomplishments here in the office.

It’s shocking how inept the working world is, how little is done & how little is attempted. I don’t understand how this is the world. Maybe I’m getting philosophical. I look at news aggregation sites on my phone, thinking about it. I think about the president and how he’s rich & famous and with money & fame he chose to sleep with porn actresses. It’s insane to me. I think about the petty dreams of the lowest common denominator. I’m always surprised at how feeble the imaginations of other people are. How pitiful. I get pretty angry. Very often. Later I’ll remember that what the small & petty & stupid all wish for is, sometimes, a really grotesque caricature of what I once was, what I sometimes still am. It’s kind of insulting.

It’s after Two and I’m pretty much done working. I’m just here now waiting for it to be time to go. Naturally I’ll jump up to help if needed, I’m not a shirker. But I’m finished pretending to be busy. I half ass through the day & am a top man. People are feeble, their wishes are pitiful & the best they can do is shockingly insufficient.

Anyhow, it’s two hours till time. I’ll go home with Skip. He goes my way and doesn’t like seeing me on the public transit around here, where all the gas-station brandy bottles lay shattered on the sidewalks and gangs of dirtbikers rampage. I don’t care, but he’s kindly and gives me a ride & I like saving the time. Anyhow, I justify it by saying that I’m saving him from being too polluting, since he is taking two people instead of one in his car. I like riding with him besides, just because he’s a nice man to talk to.

Skip’s been in the program for a long time & he has a lot of AA stuff to discuss – not, like, people’s secrets, just the day-to-day of working the program & being involved with it as a kind of shadow career. Keeping people sober is his real calling. He loves it. Anyhow I go with him – I think I’ll ask him to let me out by the store, I’ll get groceries & prepare for the weekend. Maybe just walk the neighborhood – play some pokemon go. I expect Agatha by – she’s in the deep throes of summer vacation – spending her days at the pool, wandering over to play Overwatch when she feels like it, going to meet her friends when she feels like that. Summer of 15 is a pretty big one, I remember mine too. 1990 – Kleck’s old mustang and a lot of industrial music & hanging out with real weird gothic creeps in real weird gothic creep houses. Sarcastic kissing noises in dark rooms.

‘Course, I had to work a lot then too. Work. Then at least it was for my old man. My brother Sam will be in town this weekend – Father’s day – I think it’s my old man’s last one. It’s no good thinking about, he’s a dying man. My mother calls, tears, I’m expecting the worst & instead she tells me about how my grandma called her to tell her that her son Jerry had died. A nice man I barely know from Tennessee – 69 and sudden – cancer. My grandma – I should do… something. I don’t know. I can barely talk to her, the feelings are way too much, too strong. Conflicted too. She left me, all those years ago, she left me & I still feel ruined by it.

But her son is dead. I should send flowers. That’s something, I can send flowers. My god. I’m better for happy things. It’s Mordicai’s first fathers’ day as a father – so I sent him a prize – Lone Wolf & Cub omnibus. I wonder if his little daughter will choose the ball or the sword? I remember smaller Agatha on a lazy day one summer years ago – “Dad, what’s a sword?” And naturally I have Captain Sir Richard Burton’s book on hand to show her all the different kinds. Every one. She’s only interested for about half a minute. Back to playing with clay & little pets. Which is weird to imagine now.

Tonight she’ll probably come by & be a little bored of her boring old man – and I wanted to think about this – because she was bored the other day – Tuesday – and I thought well? Am I boring? And I am kind of. But I. Well I am factually – not kind of. I’m putting down my day to day now – today – because I thought:

I should compose some kind of document – some explanation of what my life is, for the purpose of diary, journal, records – posterity. So I’m doing that. I’ll go home and make some dinner and think about resuming my losing war with laundry. And she’ll come by and peck at dinner and then run back to her ma’s probably late – and gear up for softball. I should probably go to softball and watch but it’s hard. The team is terrible, the games are just relentless walked in runs – with the leading cause of scoring being errors. It’s tough to watch & they haven’t once played 4 innings. I leave a little early anyway – can’t be out too late. After 10 and I’m no good, ruined. The next day.

I still prefer to be out at night & the world that happens at night is still the one that matters to me. I think about how much I used to drive through the city after dark & those are chrome & shiny memories lit by quick loud music. A neon time with danger & thrills. That was something.

I’ve got a lot more to show for myself as an early riser, as a bored working man. That’s such a weird thing to think about. How much better I am given how easy I take things.

After softball, whenever I’m finished watching it be played I think about how I should walk somewhere or hop on the bus and go to somewhere. Sometimes – once in a while I can still be troubled to have a drunken good-time downtown, in the light & shadows of the big buildings, take a long walk down to the lake & be under the moon. Sometimes. I used to. It’s summer again. I should again.

But Skip feels sleighted if I don’t take him up on his offer, and Agatha will feel a way if I don’t make it to her game, and I’ll feel a way if I don’t support her and. You have to wonder. If someone will call & go looking for me.

That’s what keeps you out at night but I’m not the top of anyone’s mind just now. No best girl who misses me or engaged players who want to roll dice. I’m at everyone’s periphery. Maybe even my own.