Thursday, September 25, 2008

(Untitled) Part 3 of a short story I began writing... read the first 2 parts first!!!

So I gave her the common courtesy of not making much contact for the next couple of months, though my job never really called for us to encounter that much on a regular basis.

It was only when I was going through my ‘interaction drought’ that I had even given her existence a second thought. You see even though I had entered the new situation at work completely devoid of making any new relations, every person who is put in a new environment is forced to assess their new surroundings. In other words, we tend to look for places we feel safe and people we feel comfortable being around. Your average person, regardless of being in a relationship or not, may even look for what I call ‘possibilities’. The single soul may feel they need to look for someone to bond with, while the committed soul may simply be looking for a back up! I had given the place a quick scouring when I arrived and had tagged this hidden treasure as a possibility, if ever the urge to open up again resurfaced.

The work place was an unsound meeting ground, home to gossipers and scribers of false news, in fact, it’s hard to imagine a modern business place without this similar structure. One mans private affairs is another mans, coffee break entertainment. The situation was so horrible that one would have to “play their cards close to their chest” if they were on the phone with a friend, or simply relaying the contents of a soap opera they may have watched the night before. You never know when a fictional Brooke Logan could become an at work Brooke Sherley, and for the rest of the week, the entire office would wonder if there was something going on worth blackmailing you for, just so they could get an extra spot in the lunch line. Before my third month had ended, I had learnt that I already slept with the boss to get the new office by the beach (him being a man meant nothing in this situation), taken four girls from the office for a drink, and apparently ended the night with two of them, and I was pursuing one of the only girls in the office, I didn’t feel bad calling a prostitute to her face! Which I’m sure she wouldn’t mind owning up to if the name had ever met her ears.

It was only then that I realized if I ever were to approach Cynthia and avoid the army net of rumors, it would have to be in the privacy of a secluded meeting spot; one free from tape record ears and satellite eyes. Even using the internet was threatening given the over occurrence of identity falsification that took place in this new electronic savvy generation. It didn’t take an experienced chick flick and day time drama lover to know that women would do anything to create a more interesting situation when it involves a man. Not that the whole introduction, pursuit and constant interjection of new material to keep a woman interested wasn’t enough stress on the male specie, oh no, women also had to add a slight twist when it came to meeting someone in an unorthodox setting. So one couldn’t depend on the words that would appear on a computer screen or even the voice on a telephone as evidence enough that they were interacting with the person they had envisioned.

And since we’re on the subject of female behavior, another of my observations have taught me that women tend to take comfort in numbers. In high school I used to stare in bewilderment as a drove of lanky limbs, bouncing hair and flashing skirts would make their way to the rest room, as if they were required to build the toilet before they could actually use it! Or in a club, a score of women would cluster on the dance floor whilst making the most provocative of gestures at male onlookers. You would even see a group of them packed so tightly into a large SUV at a stop light, adjusting their bra’s and touching up their make up, eleven o clock at night… or see them piled at a table in the lunch room giggling to themselves and flashing dirty looks at uninformed males seeking to approach them, under the pretense that they could disband this tightly knit fellowship of overcharged estrogen. The more seasoned male ‘rejectee’ would watch in amusement as one after one guys would make failed attempt after failed attempt to ‘tumble the pins’, with the hope that they would ‘score’ with the final one standing.

Well girls would continue this behavior into adulthood and women found it necessary to make constant checks and balances with the female she would consider her closest friend, who ironically was the same female she wouldn’t trust with her 12 year old nephew. So while I would see a picture of Cynthia Ortega appear on my computer screen above the words “Cynthia ‘Flor’ Ortega”, I couldn’t help wonder if the recurrent ‘LOL’s’ and smiling emoticons was the curvaceous poppy eyed girl I had come to see in the halls and in meetings. Also, I felt uneasy about the conversation I was having with her on my computer screen, given the nature of how I had arrived at her personal information.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

(Untitled) Part 2 of a short story I began writing... read part 1 first!!!

My love life had become as generic and rehearsed as the stories we see on television or hear our friends rant about when we go for lunch, or on that drive to the movies. Sometimes I would get so sick of hearing the same story, I became infatuated by chick flicks, just so I could believe that out of the ordinary, some ‘left field’ not by the books romance could develop. The kind of happy endings that existed in the Elizabethan era, without the incest and statutory rape.

Soon my DVD collection mutated to include movies like ’10 things I Hate About You’, ‘The Notebook’ and ‘Bridgette Jones Diary’. I only reserved movies like ‘Pretty Woman’ and ‘Dirty Dancing’ when I wanted a girl to feel comfortable enough to spend the evening with me till she was forced to fall asleep on my couch and ultimately in my arms!

It wasn’t long till I became one of those people that would slip into the routine of work, gym, shower, dinner and a movie. For those nights I had insomnia there was late night infomercials or that Maxim magazine I couldn’t help grab at the airport to quench my unbearable boredom on the flight home. You would always skim through the pictures, read an article or two and then fake like you were asleep, just so you could hide the fact that you were terrified the plane was bouncing so much.

It was in a book review section (right underneath Anna Kournikova) that I discovered Harry Potter, and would later have read all 7 books in the series. When that thrill was over my interest returned to the television set and I became a huge fan of the late night music videos on BET, or the ever popular reality show re-runs. Music channels had suddenly managed to change their agenda completely, and soon I discovered a new form of romance television that replaced the chick flick, only the stories weren’t as sweet, and the endings weren’t always as happy!

Right about the time I was getting over my ex was when I was slipping into the journal keeping part of my life which coincidentally coincides with what you are reading now. It just so happens that that was the same time my desire to break free of this introverted lifestyle started to make me feel uncomfortable just being in the same spot for more than 5 minutes. I was no longer happy being alone, and found myself making more long distance phone calls to friends back in the city. When my bank account could no longer manage that, I became a cliché to the handbook on Filling that Desire for company. When telling myself I was happy being along didn’t work anymore, I bought a cat. I played loud music in my room just so I didn’t have to listen to myself breathe. Because I had no internet at home, instant messaging and blogging was not an option.

It was also very difficult to make friends at the hotel, because half the people there were either prehistoric, pre-disposed or pre-occupied; that and an insurgence of different cultures. You see the hotel was built by a Spanish chain, which called for the inclusion of Latin cultures at the helm. It was impossible to walk through the halls without hearing the echo’s of rolling r’s and rapid gibberish. The Spanish I felt were a lot like the Japanese in that you couldn’t tell where one word ended and the other one began. Everyone back in high school was forced to learn a bit of Spanish grammar, which would ultimately amount to maybe a page of information by the time you graduated, but I discovered that a simple reply of ‘pocotito’ to “do you speak Spanish”, would amount to a nuclear attack of Spanish words that would leave even the most rehearsed linguist motionless.

I learned to just smile and nod my head as I would pass a co-worker in the halls. My IPOD became my best friend at lunch sessions, and I would pass the time in meetings doodling the faces of the managers I hated the most on my notepad. This was probably the reason I never noticed her before. She would always sit quietly in meetings with her hands tucked neatly in front of her ribs, so it would make her breast appear a lot larger than they actually were. Her responses were short and always followed by a schoolgirl smile. I’m not sure if she did this to distract the General Manager or to mask the fact that maybe she wasn’t so sure about everything she was talking about.

She spoke with a sort of broken accent which allowed me to understand more of the words she was using, but not enough to hold a full on debate about the state of affairs in the world market. She was shorter than your average Spanish girl; still very curvaceous with very simple features. A regular ‘chick-shark’ may not have given her a second glance had you not been able to see past her glasses into her curious yet understanding brown eyes, which always seemed to shoot open in amazement whenever you approached her with a question. Her cinnamon complexion was endemic to girls from her region in Mexico, but she wore her hair back and in a bulb which only meant that she wasn’t afraid to show her highlighted cheek bones and exaggerated lips. This girl almost looked like a creature from out of a fairy tale book that you would catch in the corner nibbling on hidden fruits, only to turn around and gaze at you in astonishment when they found out they had been discovered. She looked at me like I was the first one to notice she even existed, and her frightened demeanor, as if she had been called to the principal’s office, only made me conclude that maybe Cynthia was very shy.

Monday, September 15, 2008

(Untitled) Part 1 of a short story I began writing

It’s amazing ones level of persistence when it comes to particular circumstances. Maybe if I had tried a lot harder back in school, I wouldn’t be the struggling non achiever I turned out to be, bouncing from job to job in pursuit of something that can quench my insatiable desire for consistency in my life. If only someone had enlightened me back in the days, when I used to recite the numerous accomplishments I expected for myself by the age of 25, only to be 26 and nowhere close to those dreams and pursuits. Instead I jump from opportunity to opportunity hoping that one day I will stumble upon something that resembles the faintest idea of what I had hoped my life would ultimately become.

My latest pursuit, though the most suitable at the time, was a hotel job I landed earlier in the year. It was a far cry from the earlier turmoil of working back to back 18 hour days under the slave whip. You see in the beginning, I had become a dummy to the golden rule of business agreements… “read the fine print”… and was made to suffer as all the other imbeciles before me did, having failed to follow that rule. The sad thing about learned helplessness is that, it sometimes takes a wild jolt for you to realize the hole you have dug yourself in. Soon days turn to years and before you know it, you’re in the same position you swore you would overcome at your last New Years resolution. Well eventually you wake up to your senses and step out of the tunnel, and I felt my latest endeavor was the closest sign of a struggling rodent burrowing further out of the rabbit hole he’d grown to be so comfortable in.

The hours were different and the commitments were not as demanding. I found I created my own time table, and could even dictate the pace at which I had to move. I had come a long way from feeling like a puppet, but still some way off from living like a member of the Royal family.

Even though most of my domestic requirements were met: room, food, clothes and transportation, I couldn’t help feel that, as an individual approaching the twilight of his youthfulness, I may have been the victim of a non-existent personal life. You know the people we ridicule who spend their nights nestled in the latest self help manuscript, or hero impaled cover novel. Who could recite all the seasons of Law and Order or CSI (a magnificent feat I might add considering the mere number of episodes that now exist). The Soap Opera and Grey’s Anatomy era we call them. Well I found that an almost extinct love life and an exhausted imagination coupled with a location that wouldn’t fall on your ‘top ten places to visit’ list, could force you into that very same existence.

Let me tell you a bit about the town that I was now living in. 45 minutes in either direction from the closest cities in what could accurately be described as the middle of nowhere laid this lifeless rock that I now called home. Though the coast was an insightful addition to this already barren wasteland, it still couldn’t make up for the meager display of nomadic settlement and storybook country folk. Where there wasn’t another tree or shack there was a half eaten structure that I would later discover was a mini-mart, barber shop and (what I’m yet to verify) a police station. The people of this ‘boxed in’ culture may have recognized too earlier what I was just now discovering, and for the last too many years, only saw it fit to add a number of pubs and titty bars in the most random of locations. No wonder when the deep pocket suits of the new world saw it fit to build a hotel here, the town folk cringed at the idea. And now sat this ‘diamond in the rough’, the crown jewel of the West; a structure with it’s gargantuan walls and blinding lights. The town folk would say that at night it lit up the surrounding area for miles and miles.

What was first a quiet existence turned into a highway for overseas visitors. Foreigners were trafficked into the town like a swarm of bees returning to their hive before sun down. Even in what hotel management described as ‘low season’, the reservations department still experienced a barrage of bookings. Requests would come in by the thousands; bookings were made by the second and guests were channeled in and out of the hotel so regularly it was impossible to tell where one newcomer started and where the returnees ended.

The over-activity called for ‘more hands on deck’, and soon the hotel was sending to the closest cities for new employees. I still remember the day I got the job. I walked into the office, resume in hand, and within the next 15 minutes I was signing away at documents that were welcoming me to where I would be devoting my time for the next couple of months. It wasn’t a problem that I would be so far away from home as I had no outstanding commitments where I was coming from. I had just gotten out of a two year relationship, and was looking to revamp and piece my life back together.

Lets Get The Ball Rolling

As I sit here and ponder what it is I really want to start out by saying, I can't help think that I may end up rambling on yet again about something I don't want the whole world to know. Guilty already of having a big mouth... even guiltier for using it at times that suit me the worst… a condition my family has come to describe as "Foot-In-Mouth" syndrome (Open wide and insert foot here). But I figure instead of therapy and confiding in friends who will probably take your business on the road anyway... I'll let it out into the world, and maybe, some of my ideas will become some of your inspiration.

I’ve lived a life that would probably be useful material for a best seller, or maybe a chapter or two in a self-help book… come to think of it I could make a column in a FHM (For Him Magazine) slot… but I figured you never know what may happen tomorrow, so why not spread the word and see who it affects.

So this is me… all ME… my ideas, thoughts, inspiration, emotions… the ramblings of an overactive mind… or what I like to call, Mindless Gibberish!