I just ate eggs. Breakfast for dinner is what Robin called it. Is there
such a thing as dinner for breakfast? I’m sure some jabony has fired-up a
cheeseburger and fries at 8 a.m., and hey, why not. I’ve read how clocks
are just inventions for us to feel structure in what is a chaotic world. So
there’s no difference between breakfast, lunch, and dinner, it’s all one
structure-less space we’re floating around in. Kind of bleak, but
comforting.

Eggs are in my top five, maybe three, breakfast foods, with bacon and
French toast. It’s difficult to make an exceptional scrambled egg because
your brain thinks it’s simple. Then you get confident and mess the whole
thing up – dry the eggs out, over salt, maybe an eggshell stuck between
your teeth. A lot can go wrong with eggs. And if you think about it,
cooking eggs is a lot like living life.

My marriage was an adventure, but it’s not something I’d want to tell
everyone. It wouldn’t make a good movie because the dialog would become a
trickle, and the last forty-five minutes would be silence. God, I can see
it now: Robin and I standing in the kitchen, not talking, two sausage links
sadly frying in a pan.

I’ve been thinking about a conference call.

A conference call is when everyone lives in different places but you call a
number and suddenly you’re on the phone together. It’s amazing and awful.
When I’m on a conference call I imagine what everyone else is doing. Is
executive-assistant Michelle in the tub having a bubble bath, shaving a
raised leg? Is lobbyist Steve doing that move where his hand is in his
pants pocket, adjusting himself by swirling two fingers?

How many of us walk through our home on our cell phone and surprise
ourselves in the mirror because we have identity issues?

This particular conference call, the one I’m thinking about now, had thirty
people on it. How the phone’s fibers can stand so many terrible voices I’ll
never understand.

Typically, four or five people do all the talking on a conference call. And
it’s never the smartest people. If you want to be taken seriously on a
conference call you need to talk over everyone else. You need volume. The
louder you are, the more powerful you are. Shout, “Good morning!” when you
get into work and you’ll see what I mean. If done correctly, and with
enough force, you can take the rest of the day off.

On this call, six people were fighting about which Councilmen to go after.
Who should be labeled a Hit. This lasted about an hour, so I clipped my
toenails with the phone wedged between my head and shoulder. I heard noise,
but it sounded like whappa whappa, coughs, sneezes, whispers, keyboard
clicks, heavy sighs, beards itched against a receiver. I don’t remember how
long I wasn’t paying attention, but my mind woke when someone said my name.

“Sorry, repeat that,” I said in my professional work voice.

Imagine thirty separate laughs coming at once through a single hole and
into your ear. I wanted to die. Picture your wife saying she doesn’t love
you and you know it’s your fault.

I put the clippers back into the medicine cabinet. When I closed the door,
I was looking in the mirror.

“Peppers,” said my boss. “Tell me. What’s your opinion on what we were just
discussing?”

Certain events and images you remember forever. Every person has, probably,
like, ten open slots to fill and then you die and the slots flicker around
your eyes. What would I see? Pastrami sandwiches, computers, Councilmen’s
fat blurry faces, Robin slamming a bedroom door, and myself, standing at
the bathroom mirror on a fucking conference call.

“A-hem,” went my boss.

I’m not sure why, but what I did was laugh. Not laughing at the conference
call, but how I appeared in the mirror and the idea I participated
in something called a conference call with a bunch of people who only had
one thing in common: they were paid to be on the line. We didn’t want this.
No human being would put up with something so absurd. No one felt anything
good from a conference call. We were being paid for a job and we were doing
it and that gave it some strange and terrible meaning.

I don’t think I cried on the conference call, thinking about Robin. My eyes
were just watery. I couldn’t stop looking at myself. I appeared old and
sad. I wondered what the ten-year old me would have thought if he saw me on
a conference call. I imagined my shins being kicked.

“Everything will work out,” I said into the phone.

“What?” said my boss, followed by laughter scattered across the city.

I don’t think I was thinking about Robin.

“I’m on it,” I said.

My boss sneezed. “Um, elaborate?”

I put my mouth an inch from the mirror and spoke into the phone, “Going
forward on this project I will implement synergy to achieve positive
results. Good night.”

Total silence.

Every motion performed by a man in a suit is tethered to consumption.

“Thank you,” said my boss. “Whew. Thought we lost you there for a second,
Vincent. Great work. Everyone hear Vincent?”

My breath created an egg-shaped fog on the mirror. I wrote my initials on
the shell, and over my initials, a question mark. The bathroom tile was
cold on my bare feet. I felt empty.

“Good night,” I said into the phone again, my voice near a whisper, and
hung up.

When businessmen look in the sky, they see conference calls.

The reason I let Robin sleep with another man was because I wanted her to
be happy. I wasn’t enough. People are like bags, and the more problems you
have, the more holes in your bag. Not like an

Oh, I’m hungry for peanut butter crackers but I don’t have any in the
house

kind of problem. More like, Everyday I lose another day and get closer to death. That’s a
problem everyone has, even if they don’t think about it. That’s a hole in
your bag. For Robin, needing someone to fulfill her sexually was a hole in
her bag. And a big part of life is having few holes in your bag. You want
to give yourself the illusion of moving through life as a solid form.

As a kid, I had a hole in my bag and didn’t tell anyone. The hole lasted a
year. I spent nights in bed looking at a poster of a basketball player on
my ceiling. I can say now with 100% certainty that I will never slam-dunk a
basketball. You don’t think about that stuff as a kid. You think you can do
anything because you don’t count days and you don’t fully understand that
there’s an end. A few years ago, after work with colleagues for drinks, we
walked through a parking lot and saw a basketball hoop near some dumpsters.
I ran and jumped and felt my hand graze the bottom of the net and Kevin
said to me in the car, “Not too shabby, Vincent.”

As a kid, any time I went for a bike ride I had an impulse to steer the
bike off the road. Even worse when I went over bridges, or near cliffs, or
near the railing around The Bend. Did other kids have this desire to glance
down at their hands on the handlebars and envision their left hand rising,
their right elbow coming into their ribs, their bike losing control beneath
them and floating away? Many times I saw my body, wind-blown, go over a
bridge. The impulse went away when I felt too old to ride a bike and got
car rides from friends. Then I got my license and it came back. I drove as
close to the guardrail as possible. My car swerved from imaginary
squirrels. You can drive pretty close to a cliff and not fall off. One
time, late at night, I drove outside the city until the road fell apart to
gravel, and then, a field. No one was around so I backed the car up until
the rear tires crunched. I hit the gas and drove into the field and turned
and weaved the car and screamed and yelled. The back end of the car skidded
out and pushed dust-clouds into the sky only the headlights could grab. I
cracked my head against the driver’s side window, and from then on, I never
had the impulse again. That hole closed up.

Robin often asked me if she was destined to a life of sexual
un-fulfillment. I always said something like, “I’ll work on it,” to which
she would say, “But what if you’re already doing your best?”

Here are some other holes in my bag:

– Fear of orange cats.

– Habit of saying for five minutes straight this day is a grave in
order to fall asleep.

– Do I need to eat or I want to eat?

– Fear of being alone when I’m dying (no one in or around my bed).

– I’ve imagined throwing coffee into a stranger’s face to experience the
consequence.

– Too much time spent re-watching television shows I’ve already seen and
disliked.

– Fear of cars exceeding 100 miles per hour (metal coffin).

I have more. Everyone has things to work on.

I had days at work where I didn’t talk. I just sat in my cubicle and
listened to my co-workers, which is easy, because they couldn’t see me. I
had the best cubicle in the office because it was located in the back
corner and the padded carpeted walls were just high enough where I was
basically invisible. It’s like I didn’t even exist. Sometimes they’d talk
about meatball subs or butt fucking. On occasion, my boss called, and I had
to speak, and the words hurt coming out of my face after hours of silence.

I’ve been thinking about my body lately.

If you’ve ever worked in an office building you’ll understand that there
are some truly horrendous bodies that enter and exit an office building.
I’m not sure how they make it through the air. Lots of people dragging
their legs. Lots of people seemingly shoved by a thinner version of their
current self who seemingly wants nothing to do with squeezing through the
security portal and entering the work elevator they’ve entered a million
times before.

Once I saw a man in the elevator press his body, his entire face, against
the gray doors and, for a moment, fall asleep as the elevator went up to my
floor, 14. I had to peel him off.

But my God, all those bodies. Having to see all those bodies full of hurt
and non-love on a daily basis gets to you. I haven’t traveled anywhere
outside this city so I haven’t seen much, but I do believe images get
inside you.

One time I saw a three-hundred-pound man eating a family size bag of chips
on the front lawn of my office building at 8:30 in the morning.

Even from my cubicle, during all day hours, I could feel them, those
bodies, outside the walls moving in ways they shouldn’t be moving. I’m in a
better environment now. I’ll do the occasional conference call and then
spend the rest of the day doing whatever. I’m okay now because I’m here.

I was always the skinny guy in my office because everyone else was
overweight, which made me extra skinny, someone near dying. A constant joke
at lunch. A mouth to push unwanted pizza toward. Once my boss said that if
I skip my next meal I’d disappear.

“Really?” I said. “Sounds nice.”

Everyone laughed because they were uncomfortable. Most people don’t
actually believe they are going to die. They just think it might happen.

What they, my co-workers, were really uncomfortable with was their own
bodies and my weight was a direct insult. I get that. It makes sense. They
wanted to blow me up and have someone else to share the misery with.

I’d do push-ups in my cubicle quietly and hide salads. Sometimes I’d make a
show of eating a chocolate bar in the common area.

Once, I had this moment with Sarah, a receptionist. I can still feel the
way my blood was during this odd little moment. I always liked Sarah’s
face—a kind of tragic fat but loving and wanting. I liked her. She was a
good person. We were talking about how skinny I was. The conversation had
carried over from a hot dog lunch where I denied eating a second hot dog.
You should have seen the looks. I eat so much now, where I am now. I’ve
gained so much weight in this place.

What Sarah and I were talking about specifically was how in ads, sexy ads
featuring men, the camera always scans up/down on the man’s abs. How a
man’s abs were the definition of sexy. Sarah said something about a
celebrity and what I did, just totally random and not thinking, was lift my
shirt up. I didn’t have abs, just a flat kind of white and a little hair
around my belly button but what Sarah did, very quickly and almost
instantly after I randomly lifted my shirt up, was place her hand, flat, on
my stomach.

Like I said, it was a weird moment, with no talking, just me standing there
next to Sarah in her padded swivel chair holding my shirt up, crotch kind
of toward her, and Sarah’s hand feeling all warm on me like she was feeling
something inside me. It lasted somewhere between five seconds and five
minutes. I never talked to her after that.

I want to think she was trying to transfer some wound or burden, or both,
into me.

Now I want a hot dog but I don’t live in the type of city where there are
hot dog vendors. Not sure there’s anything more depressing than buying
yourself a package of hot dogs. But you do what you have to do and keep
going under all these stars and weight.

I just thought this day is a grave. Terrible words to have running
through your head this early, but I can’t help it. I’m waiting for a
scheduled 11 am conference call. I live alone and sit when I pee. I have
problems with reality. As a child, I’d stand in my family’s driveway and
close my eyes and think so hard about being alive that I’d give myself a
panic attack. I can’t do that anymore.

The reason my boss pushed me to apply for the work from home program, which
I’ve been doing now for two weeks, is because of what happened at the
podium.

Every summer my boss gives a speech at the annual summer picnic, sponsored
by the higher-ups who rarely attend. They print banners. They print
directional signs on where to park. They have it catered with the finest
deli meats and all the Michelle’s and Sarah’s and Steve’s of the world make
colorless and unhealthy salads. Everyone pays five dollars. Doritos are
poured into large plastic bowls. And every spring my boss picks one
employee from a hundred and fifty to introduce him in what is supposed to
be a light and funny roast with some brown nosing at the end. He chooses
randomly, pulling the name from pieces of paper he swirls around inside an
empty jumbo sized cheese puff bucket. It’s a real show. They applauded my
name. Brian said, “Show the boss who’s boss!”

It makes sense why everyone laughed on the conference call I explained
earlier. They remembered what happened to me at the picnic. They remembered
Chuck and Dan, two shipping clerks, walking me to my car before I even got
the chance to eat a cheeseburger.

“Vincent, good luck today,” said my boss that morning. “Get me good!”

I walked to the podium and took out my speech. I wore my best suit, the one
I got married in, the one I never wore to work because it was a summer
suit, baggy clothes (fitting = too tight) are popular in my work place and
this suit was tailored. Besides, our office was always cold. Do you know
that the number one complaint in the American work place is that the
temperature is too cold? And do you know what the second most common
complaint is? That it’s too hot. How wonderful is that?

Everyone waited for me to speak at the podium. All those bodies in khaki
shorts and short sleeve button ups held paper plates of meat. My boss stood
off to the side, laughing and hitting elbows with Sarah. Were they fucking?
Maybe they loved each other? A few guys, way in the back, played Cornhole
on boards they had painted in the American flag with bordering yellow
snakes. There was one cloud in the sky and it was shaped like a chicken.
The chicken kind of fell apart as I stood there thinking about my life.

“Come on, Vincent!” someone yelled. “Blast him!”

Everyone’s face went blurry and I felt extremely hot. Things looked a
little fuzzy. My head started to spin a little. I realized I hadn’t formed
a human connection with one of the hundred people in the audience. I
realized none of us would remember this moment in a few years, and if they
did, how scrambled it would be from reality. How great is that? How all our
daily tasks, even something more heightened like a summer work picnic, will
be twisted from what truly happened or forgotten completely?

Steve started a chant. There are people in the world like Steve who do
things like this and we follow. We never say no to Steve, although I
imagine a small percentage just pretend to mouth the words, like I always
did in school chorus, standing in the back and opening and closing my mouth
with nothing coming out. I fainted once during school chorus. I left in the
middle of Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho and walked from the auditorium
and into the school and right before the nurse’s office, I collapsed. I was
on the school floor in the hallway and no one was around and all I remember
is seeing stars and how cold and alone and embarrassed I felt.

Someone like Steve, just imagine what he’ll see when he dies. He’ll be at
the center of every experience because he was the beginning of every pool
party applause, stadium booing, raised lighter, protest slogan, traffic jam
car honk, and first name chant. The Steve’s of the world are the energy
cores.

“Vincent! Vincent! Vincent!”

My boss was the first to realize something was wrong. He took a few steps
toward the podium. People stopped chanting. Even Steve. People looked
worried. My boss immediately regretted picking me for the big introduction.
He should have known. I never really talked before, so why would I now? Why
would I do a good job?

I stared at the speech because it was my wedding vows to Robin. The paper
had been in the suit all this time. The speech was in the opposite side
pocket, but I couldn’t stop re-reading the wedding vows. So sentimental! So
sappy! Not that they were so heartbreaking and true, it was the opposite,
the vows were clichéd and rushed and I couldn’t believe I confessed these
soggy words to Robin. Did she think this when she heard them? I’ll have to
watch the tape again. Did her father, who paid for the wedding, understand
then that she was making a terrible mistake? Did everyone know we would end
in divorce?

What I did at the podium was smile and put my professional voice on. It’s
the same voice I use on conference calls. I made a joke about my boss
drinking so much coffee that when he went into the hospital for a colonic
they hooked him up to an IV drip of Dunkin Donuts dark roast and everyone
laughed. I don’t think I had tears in my eyes when I made that joke. I
don’t think I was still thinking about Robin. I made a joke that when my
boss approved personal time requests he wrote our names in a little black
book called the “Hit List” and not everyone laughed. I told the crowd how
my boss is the most compassionate, fair, and hardest working boss I’ve ever
had the pleasure to work for. I didn’t hear any applause. No Steve power
slapping his hands together first in a booming echo because I looked up,
laughed at the chicken in the sky, which was just a mess at that point, and
fainted.

I sat in my car for a good twenty minutes supervised by Chuck and Dan, who
didn’t say a word, before driving home and getting a phone call from my
boss that everything was okay, that maybe the work from home program would
be a good idea. He told me to think about it. Then when I returned to work
the next day and everyone treated me differently he pushed hard for the
work from home program. I knew what it meant.

Conference call time now. I should have grabbed a snack because this could
be a long one. The conference calls have been getting shorter and less
frequent. I don’t have very much work to do. Maybe we’ll break the record
for voices on a shared line this time around. A hundred? A thousand? A
million? Could there be a conference call with all of America on it? What
would that sound like? Would it be absolutely horrific? Or would it be
strangely beautiful to know everyone was in one place? Could you pick out
your mother or father and say that you missed them? Could you find your
sister and ask her if she’s okay after the car accident? Could you ask a
stranger what it’s like to live and get an honest answer?

Through all the yelling and power-grabs to be the loudest person in
America, could I find Robin? Could I pull her through all those voices and
tell her that I loved her?

Would America be on my side in weepy silence? Or would America just laugh?

#

Illustration by Carolyn Tripp