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lousy
Monday, April 12 1999
The plan to have me and the other engineers working an extra sixteen hours each week to redesign the site for a ten thousand dollar bonus was already seeming like an unsought burden when, today, during a private meeting with the Grand Pooh Bah, Marty left in a huff. "Steam was coming out of his ears!" Eric said. I guess Marty didn't get the bonuses he was requesting for us. It's just as well. I guess I won't be staying extra hours no matter how you figure it. I'm certainly not doing it for free, although my colleagues are acting so idealistic it looks like they might. That in itself is enough to leave me depressed. I feel like I'm the only one who just doesn't care anymore. And the fact that I feel like a Schtevish loser ever time I mention my employer doesn't seem like something that's going to change no matter what cool ideas come out of my colleagues' exuberance. Wouldn't it be great to work for a company that makes me proud, a place like Salonmag.com?
Tonight Kim flew into San Diego via an America West flight from Detroit. We'd had our share of phone fights in her absence. Only yesterday I'd been enraged by what I perceived to be her jealous prying, and I'd slammed the phone down and she'd vanished without a trace in a way that just can't happen in meatspace. But tonight I was looking forward to seeing her again.
But she wasn't on the plane that I thought she'd be on. I scrutinized ever girl having her features: a thin body and short dark hair, hoping irrationally to somehow change them into her and get this expedition over with. Finally, though, I was forced to give up and return home. I was pissed off, imagining Kim was performing some kind of ridiculous test of my love.
Back at home, Kim was on the answering machine wondering where I was. Momentarily I was in an agony of despair, thinking I'd gone to the wrong terminal and completely missed her. But it turned out she was on a second flight from Phoenix coming 20 minutes after the one which I assumed she'd be on.
Back again at the airport, Sophie was overjoyed to see that I was still alive and well.
The trip for Kim had its good parts and its bad parts. Her mother is just as loony as ever, but she also kicked down a four digit check and it's hard to argue with that.
The saddest part of the trip was visiting the paternal grandparents in Wyandotte. They're much slower than they were only seven months ago (when we last saw them). Much of the house in which they've spent the past forty years has been packed up. It's as if they're preparing for a trip, but they're not going anywhere; they're dying and they know it.
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I don't recall now if I ever saw such things when I first started getting stoned, but I can imagine dark sinister forms wriggling beneath the walls, carpets and shrubbery like the maggots I once saw animating the belly of a decomposing garter snake. Sometimes - in dreams especially, but also in fiction and even real life - dealing with such forces is best accomplished with co-operation forged at a fundamental sexual level. That's why the Greeks were such excellent warriors. But I don't see why it's not possible to forge bands of similar strength with heterosexual unions. That's what marriage really ought to be if it wants to be anything at all.
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