A little touch of fiction
I found this in a old file, it's about 4 years old.
Enjoy, or don't, whatever...
This is where you break out of your trance. In a meeting room, surrounded by a small group of tabloid hacks. Your coffee is cold, your eyes burn, your tie undone, your mouth tastes of salt water, and you feel as if you've shared a private moment with a pig in its shit pen. The men and women sitting around you reek of cheap cologne and deodorant. They wear pastel lipstick, glitter-gold painted hoop earrings, clip-on ties, gummy bracelets, armpit stains, and rips in old stockings, penny loafers, with pennies included. The man at the head of the table, the important one who talks, then yells, then talks again, carries a mole on his chin, fat in his jowls, heavy gold and silver rings on his Vienna sausage fingers. You can smell him from twenty feet away. You sometimes dream of murdering your editor when you get bored with everything else.
You've been in this meeting for over an hour now and no one has come up with anything to make your editor happy. He yells at you and the others about not having enough copy for next week's edition. He yells about no one going out and hitting the streets, finding the stories and you wonder: What does it matter? None of the damn stories that he prints are true anyway, this is a tabloid newspaper for fuck's sake. Everything is either made up or is simply gossip, with no fact checks or true quotes.
No one cares, and no one listens. Hell, half of the people in this city can't read anyway, they'd rather eat, for every bookstore on one block there's five restaurants. The people in this city are getting more and more corpulent. But are they getting smarter? Of course not, stupid question.
Your editor yells, you yawn, the men undo their ties and the women shuffle in their seat, adjust their stockings under the mahogany conference table. You look around and you wonder why you can't get a job where there are attractive women. Every woman in this meeting room is unattractive, at least to you. You do know for a fact though, that some of the people in here are screwing each other. You've heard the rumors, seen the tell tale signs; the cryptic conversations at certain desks, even caught a few of them coming out of storerooms, claiming that they are looking for paper clips, or binders; flustered and red faced. Who gets embarrassed looking for a binder? Who unzips their pants while trying to find the perfect paperclip? You hate your job more than anything else.
You hate you job until your editor yells to you and the others that he is bringing in someone to shape things up, someone who will put this "office" back in order, like it used to be in the old days, when he was a young reporter working the streets. He slowly rises out of his chair, which you imagine will topple over with relief from his massive frame, and goes over to the door, opens it and makes a gesture for someone to come in; that is when you feel faint. You get one look, and you're finished for the rest of your days, you have fallen in love at that exact second she walks in the room. You notice a shift in the air, a change in the gravational pull of the planet. Her perfume takes over your senses and you feel euphoric. The rest of the men in the room straighten themselves, the women tighten up. Your editor sweats, wipes his forehead with his tie.
You watch her walk in and she sits next to your editor. She smiles warmly and you feel the need to clean up. You want to look presentable. You want to sweep her off her feet in the most pathetic romance novel way possible. For once you want to be noticed and acknowledged during a staff meeting.
Your editor announces her as Valeria Strummer, the new managing editor. There's a lump in your throat the size of a golf ball. Your editor says that she's going to put things in order, make the paper readable again. You want to smell her long, flowing black hair, breathe in her breath, taste her fluids, and lick her thin-rimmed black glasses. You've just seen the woman of your dreams, and she's your new boss.
And you know, from that moment on, that you are completly and utterly fucked.
But you couldn't be happier.
Enjoy, or don't, whatever...
This is where you break out of your trance. In a meeting room, surrounded by a small group of tabloid hacks. Your coffee is cold, your eyes burn, your tie undone, your mouth tastes of salt water, and you feel as if you've shared a private moment with a pig in its shit pen. The men and women sitting around you reek of cheap cologne and deodorant. They wear pastel lipstick, glitter-gold painted hoop earrings, clip-on ties, gummy bracelets, armpit stains, and rips in old stockings, penny loafers, with pennies included. The man at the head of the table, the important one who talks, then yells, then talks again, carries a mole on his chin, fat in his jowls, heavy gold and silver rings on his Vienna sausage fingers. You can smell him from twenty feet away. You sometimes dream of murdering your editor when you get bored with everything else.
You've been in this meeting for over an hour now and no one has come up with anything to make your editor happy. He yells at you and the others about not having enough copy for next week's edition. He yells about no one going out and hitting the streets, finding the stories and you wonder: What does it matter? None of the damn stories that he prints are true anyway, this is a tabloid newspaper for fuck's sake. Everything is either made up or is simply gossip, with no fact checks or true quotes.
No one cares, and no one listens. Hell, half of the people in this city can't read anyway, they'd rather eat, for every bookstore on one block there's five restaurants. The people in this city are getting more and more corpulent. But are they getting smarter? Of course not, stupid question.
Your editor yells, you yawn, the men undo their ties and the women shuffle in their seat, adjust their stockings under the mahogany conference table. You look around and you wonder why you can't get a job where there are attractive women. Every woman in this meeting room is unattractive, at least to you. You do know for a fact though, that some of the people in here are screwing each other. You've heard the rumors, seen the tell tale signs; the cryptic conversations at certain desks, even caught a few of them coming out of storerooms, claiming that they are looking for paper clips, or binders; flustered and red faced. Who gets embarrassed looking for a binder? Who unzips their pants while trying to find the perfect paperclip? You hate your job more than anything else.
You hate you job until your editor yells to you and the others that he is bringing in someone to shape things up, someone who will put this "office" back in order, like it used to be in the old days, when he was a young reporter working the streets. He slowly rises out of his chair, which you imagine will topple over with relief from his massive frame, and goes over to the door, opens it and makes a gesture for someone to come in; that is when you feel faint. You get one look, and you're finished for the rest of your days, you have fallen in love at that exact second she walks in the room. You notice a shift in the air, a change in the gravational pull of the planet. Her perfume takes over your senses and you feel euphoric. The rest of the men in the room straighten themselves, the women tighten up. Your editor sweats, wipes his forehead with his tie.
You watch her walk in and she sits next to your editor. She smiles warmly and you feel the need to clean up. You want to look presentable. You want to sweep her off her feet in the most pathetic romance novel way possible. For once you want to be noticed and acknowledged during a staff meeting.
Your editor announces her as Valeria Strummer, the new managing editor. There's a lump in your throat the size of a golf ball. Your editor says that she's going to put things in order, make the paper readable again. You want to smell her long, flowing black hair, breathe in her breath, taste her fluids, and lick her thin-rimmed black glasses. You've just seen the woman of your dreams, and she's your new boss.
And you know, from that moment on, that you are completly and utterly fucked.
But you couldn't be happier.
posted by Shoun at 11:37 AM
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