I’d been planning to lie if I’d gone down to San Diego to spend Thanksgiving with them, to tell them that Jane got sick at the last minute and was spending the holiday with her family. It was a pretty flimsy and pathetic excuse, but I had no doubt that my parents would buy it. They were pretty gullible about things like that.
But I never did get ahold of them. I could have invited myself, I knew. I could have just shown up on their doorstep Thursday morning. But somehow I didn’t feel comfortable doing that.
So I stayed home, lounged on the couch, watched
I was almost grateful for Monday.
On Monday morning, David was there before I was, feet up on the desk, eating some type of muffin. I was glad to see him after the four days I’d just spent in semi-isolation, but at the same time I felt an emotional weight, a feeling almost like dread, settle upon me as I sat down at my desk and surveyed the array of papers before me.
I liked David, but, God, I hated my job.
I looked over at him. “This is hell,” I said.
He finished the last of his muffin, crumpling the cupcake paper and tossing it into the trash can between our desks. “I read this story once where hell was a hallway filled with all the bugs you’d killed in your life: all the flies you’d swatted, all the spiders you’d squished, all the snails you’d dissolved. And you had to keep walking back and forth down this hallway. Naked. Back and forth. Back and forth. Forever.” David grinned. “Now
I sighed. “This is close.”
He shrugged. “Purgatory, maybe. But hell? I don’t think so.”
I picked up a pen, looked at the latest batch of GeoComm instructions I’d written. I was sick of documenting that damn system. What had once seemed like a great step forward, a huge increase in responsibility, was now a burden around my neck. I was starting to long for the days when my job had been less defined and my tasks varied with the day. My work might have been more pointless and frivolous then, but it had not been so stultifyingly the same.
“I think it might be,” I said.
It was four o’clock and the employees who were on flexible work schedules were starting to leave, passing by our office and heading down the hall toward the elevators, when David leaned back in his chair and looked over at me. “Hey, what’re you doing after work?” he asked. “Anything?”
I knew where this was leading, and my first instinct was to beg off, to invent an excuse why I couldn’t go with him, wherever he was going. But it had been so long since I had done anything or gone anywhere with another person that I found myself saying, “Nothing. Why?”
“There’s this club I go to in Huntington Beach. Stocked with babes. I thought you might wanna come.”
The second level. An invitation.
Part of me wanted to say yes, and for a brief second I thought that this might turn the tide, this might save me. I’d go out clubbing with David; we’d become good buddies, close friends; he’d help me meet some women; my entire life would change in one smooth, easy stroke.
But my true nature won out, and I shook my head and smiled regretfully. “I wish I could, but I have plans.” I said.
“What plans?”
I shook my head. “I can’t.”
He looked at me, nodded slowly. “I understand.” he said.
David and I were not as close after that. I don’t know if it was his fault or mine, but the bond that had existed between us seemed to have been broken, the closeness dissipated. It wasn’t like it had been with Derek, of course. I mean, David and I still talked to each other. We were still friendly. But we were not friends. It was as though we had approached friendship but had backed off, deciding we were better suited to acquaintanceship.
The routine returned. It had never really gone away, but since David had started sharing my office I had been able, to some extent, to ignore it. Now that I was fading into the periphery of David’s life, however, and he into mine, the mind-numbing dullness of my workday once more took center stage.
I was an uninteresting person with an uninteresting job and an uninteresting life.
My apartment, too, I noticed, was bland and characterless. Most of the furniture was new, but it was generic: not ugly, not wonderful, but existing somewhere in the netherworld of plainness in between. In a way, gaudiness or ugliness would have been preferable. At least it would have stamped an imprint of life upon my home. As it was, a photograph of my living room would have fit neatly and perfectly into a furniture catalog. It had the same featureless, antiseptic quality as a showroom display.
My bedroom looked like it had come straight out of a Holiday Inn.
Obviously, whatever character the place had had was attributable to Jane. And obviously it had departed with her.
That was it, I decided. I was going to change. I was going to make an effort to be different, be original, be unique. Even if civil-service chic became all the rage, I would never again fall into a rut of quiet unobtrusiveness. I would live loud, dress loud, make a statement. If it was my nature to be Ignored, I would go against my nature and do everything I could to make myself noticed.
I went that weekend to furniture stores, charged a couch and bed and end tables and lamps — mismatched items from the wildest and most disparate styles I could find. I tied them in the trunk of the Buick, tied them to the roof, took them home and put them in places where they weren’t supposed to be: bed in the dining area, couch in the bedroom. This wasn’t ordinary; this wasn’t average or mundane. No one could ignore this. I walked around my apartment, admiring the extravagantly gauche decorations, satisfied.
I went to Marshall’s, charged a new wardrobe. Loud shirts and outrageously designed pants.
I went to Supercuts, got a modified mohawk.
I had done it. I had changed. I had made myself over. I was a new me.
And at work on Monday, nobody noticed.
I walked through the parking lot and into the lobby feeling almost foolishly conspicuous, my band of centered hair standing tall and stiff on my otherwise bald head, my pants baggy and shiny red, my shirt lime-green, my tie fluorescent pink. But no one gave me a second glance. There was not even a pause in the conversation between two fifth-floor secretaries waiting for the elevator as I walked up and stood next to them. Neither of them glanced in my direction or paid me any attention at all.
Even David did not notice the difference. He said hi to me when I walked into the office, finished his breakfast muffin, then settled down to work.
I was Ignored no matter what I did.
I sat down at my desk, discouraged and depressed, feeling like an asshole with my hair and my clothes. Why was this happening to me? Why was I Ignored? What was wrong with me? I touched my mohawk, as if to reassure myself that it was real, that I was real, that I had physical substance. My hand felt hard lacquered hair.
That was the real question.
And for that, of course, I had no answer.
The week passed slowly, with seconds that seemed like hours, hours that seemed like days, days that were of interminable length. David was out for the second half of the week, and by the time Friday rolled around I had been so consistently disregarded and overlooked that I was about ready to attack one of the secretaries to prove to myself and everyone else that I existed, that I was there.
On my way home, I tried to speed, to drive crazily and recklessly, but my heart wasn’t in it and I failed to make even a small dent in the consciousness of my fellow freeway travelers.
Inside my apartment, the garishly clashing color scheme of the living room only made me feel tired and even more depressed. I stared at the Monster Roster poster hung at an inappropriate angle above my pink butterfly chair. I had somehow managed to make the gaudy look mundane, the garish unobtrusive.
