I know that I've said that a lot over the last four years. Furthermore, I probably hate saying it more than you hate hearing it. When I first started this futile little writing exercise, I asked myself a very public question "What do I hate more, my job or myself?"
When I first asked that question, I was actually working in a place that I really liked. I loved the building and I got along famously with my boss. I was extremely good at what I did and the client wouldn't stop throwing money at me. My income went up by nearly 25% in just 18 months, something that is almost unheard of in my industry. What exhausted me was doing the jobs of the nine people on my staff for them. They were a motley collection of slack-jawed idiots and drooling fools, each and every one.
Besides, it was a completely rhetorical question then. I hated myself so much more than I could ever hate any job. I'm sure that the more loyal of my fans know how that works.
What a difference four years makes.
The tables have totally turned. Despite my life being immeasurably worse than it was back then, I hate my job even more than I hate the rest of my existence. Every time I walk through the door, I feel like Hitler did in the bunker, surrounded by incompetence and disloyalty, yet powerless to do anything about it. Anyone who would like a glimpse of a day in the life of skippy should see "Hitler: The Last 10 Days," starring the great Anthony Hopkins as the hapless Furher. You won't find a better profile of my average workday.
I've toiled in that cesspool for seven months now and I completely stopped caring after only six weeks - a new record! Were it not for my father's death and the joy that near-constant meetings with lawyers and accountants brings, I would've been out of there months ago. Failing that, I would have doused myself in gasoline and immolated myself in the fucking lobby. I think my group life insurance plan actually covers that, but I'd have to check.
Yes, I'm surrounded by beautiful women who think that I'm amusing, good looking and a decade younger than I actually am. The most beautiful one of all suffers similiarly just feet from me each day. But it isn't enough anymore. As much as feminine beauty makes me loathe myself, I still hate my job more.
Saying that my job is the blinding pain in my skull and the throbbing ache in my ass would be a literary device under ordinary circumstances. This past weekend that changed in a dramatic way.
It all started Thursday morning when I felt something odd in my ass. And it wasn't the usual "something odd," like a lightbulb or the s-stop from my sink, either. This was different. Thankfully, amateur proctology is nothing new to me, so I dug around to see what I could see. And I didn't even need gloves because I know where I've been, which - for the last fourteen and a half months - is precisely nowhere.
Unfortunately, even my years of experience in asshole adventurism didn't prepare me for what I would find. It was a growth. A growth of what, I wasn't sure. It might have been from careless shaving, it could have been a hemerroid, or it could have been cancer. I didn't really have time to worry because I had to go to work.
In the interests of full disclosure, the growth wasn't exactly on my asshole, it was just north of it. It was right at the very tip of my tailbone, between my buttocks, but just shy of my glory hole. However, it was close enough to be fairly described as an asshole problem.
I was secretly hoping it was cancer. Try as I might, I can't think of a better excuse to stay home than a good case of rectal cancer. Furthermore, both my worldwide audience and those who know me personally couldn't fail to see the poetic justice of having my life eaten away by my asshole. There would be a certain beauty to that that I needn't describe to any of you.
On Thursday, the mystery growth was nothing more than a new, if odd sensation. It wasn't entirely unpleasant and I decided that if if it was going to be there anyway, I may as well make it my imaginary friend. Something to share my innermost secrets with. After all, I hardly think you can get any more "innermost" than your own digestive tract. Besides, I'm far too dignified for a MySpace page.
I resolved that I would give my growth an adorable nickname. I had tentatively decided on "Stinkystalin," but nothing was final yet. I prefer to deliberate about such things so as to avoid doing anything rash, as I'm sure you all do. I wouldn't want to do anything that might embarrass me later.
I found that my feelings had changed on Friday. It was no longer odd, but decidedly uncomfortable. I found there was a small twinge when I sat upright in bed. Although I felt an ominous sense of dread that this was no longer the little buddy I was planning to name mere hours before, I still felt no cause for concern.
By Saturday morning I learned that these things are aggrevated by stress. In a job where a day can only be judged by how shitty it is, Saturday morning was notable for its shittiness. The incompetence and disloyalty that define my workplace had become a physical force that threatened to strangle the very life from me. I found myself fantasizing about decapitating no fewer than three of my co-workers and hanging their severed heads from the lamp posts as a warning to the survivors. This day would prove to be nothing less than apocalyptic. Since the Most Beautiful Girl In The World doesn't work weekends, there was nothing to soothe my rattled nerves.
And my asshole was no longer merely uncomfortable, it was in
agony. By noon, it hurt to stand, it hurt to walk and, above all, it hurt to sit. My normally unpleasant mood had turned almost genocidal. Even though I had long ago abandoned even the pretense of hiding my contempt for almost everyone and everything within those walls, my hostility was particularly pronounced that day.
Above all, I felt betrayed. The little buddy I had nutured in my butt-crack had turned on me with a ferocity normally reserved for the more whorish of the women in my life. Though betrayal isn't unusual in my life of late, this was different. This was something with the potential to bring my pleasure tarnishing the association with all manner of pain.
Come to think of it, maybe it isn't all that different.
Suddenly, at about six o'clock, the sensation had changed yet again. It had gone from excruciating to odd again after lifting my feet to wipe off my shoes. In fact, it was now oddly pleasant. Knowing as I do that pleasant sensations are often dire harbingers of disaster, I chose to investigate. So off to the potty I went.
Actually, I hadn't broken out my Sherlock Holmes hat and magnifying glass for the occasion. I had to take a leak anyway. But this was cause for me to do something that you'll rarely hear a straight man admit, I was going to pee sitting down. I decided on this for three reasons;
- I could see if there was anything untoward left in the bowl behind me.
- I'm a motherfucking rebel, man!
- I wanted to feel like Jenny McCarthy in that old Candies ad.
Once my business was done, I peered through my urine and saw my fate at the bottom of the bowl. Sitting there were two gray chunks of an unknown origin that looked not unlike brain matter.
"Egads!" I thought. ""It's finally happened ... I've shot my brains right out of my ass!" Strangely, I didn't feel any dumber. Then again, I'm not sure that one is supposed to when these things happen. All I could think at that moment was that my mother was right all along. It had finally come to this!
But I was once a professional investigator and I knew that my work here was not yet done. There was more to be learned and, by god, I was going to learn it. That's where the toliet paper came in.
A delicate wipe produced a thick, pinkish-brown puss discharging from what I could only assume was a giant wound in my anus. Or it could have been stigmata, I suppose. I couldn't be positive, but I assumed that it was spinal fluid. I had long hoped that I wouldn't meet my final reward in surroundings I despised so, but I would take what I could get. It had been a horrid day and my nearly four-decade long nightmare was coming to an end besides. This brought a rare smile to my face.
I also felt better - and not just because I still hoped that the growth was cancer - a cancer that was now shooting through my body and consuming everything in its path - I wasn't in pain anymore.
On the other hand, I had to sit around work for another three and a half hours with a thick puss draining from my rectum and staining my shorts. Don't let anyone ever tell you that I don't have the life!
On Sunday morning I awoke with a vigor uncommon to me. That is, until I realized that I was bleeding from the asshole and that this in fact was my life that I was living. Then the sadness returned as it always does. that grief was only compounded by the fact that I was probably only suffering from a hemmeroid and not the rectal cancer of my dreams.
Then I got to back to the job that I loathe with a gauze bandage folded in half and jammed up my ass so as to prevent another pair of underpants being ruined by my sundry body fluids.
So how was your weekend?
Easy Listening Recommendation of the Day: Burning Love By: Elvis Presley From: The Essential Collection
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