Chapter 1: The Challenge
"And the competition will end up eating our lunch!" Dirk finished with a flourish, smacked his lips, and swept the room with his confident gaze, the dramatic effect only slightly marred by the rabbit-like nose wrinkling that convulsed his ham-rind face every ten seconds. Dirk "Blowjob" Blowfelt: smug, hair plugs slicked straight back, Rolex, subtle wit of a fart machine, Vice President of Sales. Dirk greeted everyone with a hearty, yodeling "Helluuuuuuu" - this filched from an especially memorable Seinfeld episode about a girlfriend's talking belly button.
I had never yet completed a conversation with Blowjob without his mentioning someone "eating our lunch" with an almost sexual glee.
"Here, here" seconded Lois Yankar, Director of Human Resources, relentless ass-tonguing sycophant to anyone V.P. level and higher (the only thing I liked about her), harpy harridan to anyone else.
Without looking up, I nodded deeply, a supremely wrinkled forehead, one of my most effective business attributes, thus demonstrating my complete understanding of the scale of the challenge, my heart-felt concern as to it's almost limitless ramifications and my rock-like commitment to doing my part, as a dedicated member of the Fucht-Tup Systems executive team, to meeting and surmounting this challenge! Behind the tilt up screen of my laptop, I proceeded to pen in the second eye and nose holes of the fist-critter I was creating on my left hand. His lower jaw, my left thumb, flapped down and up, "Hello Henry, how're ya doing?" he squawked in a W.C. Fields voice. I gave him some sparse locks on the crown on his head - the knuckle of my pointer finger - and looked around for something that might serve as his cigar.
Chapter 2: The Team
Company President Irv "Jumbo" Langostino, massaged his ample jowls and narrowed his pig-like eyes. He didn't have the slightest fucking clue as to what Blowjob had just said. He eyed the tray of cheese-blueberry Danish suspiciously - he was hungry, but had been badly frightened last week by the plastic dog turd buried in the heaping platter (memoranda were distributed; an internal investigation launched. I was terribly disturbed, and had already burned my cash receipt). Irv hesitantly lifted one edge of a giant, oozing, frosted jelly donut with his platinum fountain pen, peered underneath and all around, and then quickly slid it onto his plate. His neck whipped spasmodically to the right as if he was trying to bite a fly on his shoulder - this occurred at a frequency of about four times a minute. Between the nose wrinkling and the neck jerking, I could barely restrain my arms from flying up like chicken wings - the subconscious urge to join the carnival was so strong. Jumbo turned to the VP of Technology, "Lou?"
I spelled "Lou" - L, O, U - with the big toe of my right foot. By the end of a weekly "tiger team" meeting, my toe will have taken several pages of notes. Maybe I should buy an etch-a-sketch and put it under the table. Then I could study these insights at my leisure, save them for posterity, maybe write a book, "Straight From the Cyst," "Leading from the Rear," or "Shih Tzu's Art of War."
"My team is committed to delivering the project on time, on target, on budget, just like I said last week," he barked. Lou "Parts is Parts" Knacker was a hairless, Shar-Pei faced troglodyte, who, it was common knowledge, spent seven plus hours a day surfing porn on his 36 inch, $25,000 monitor. The standing challenge was to stride rapidly un-announced into Lou's office - best accomplished when he looked particularly enraptured - to briefly glimpse the monitor's lurid feast before Lou mouse-clicked back to a spreadsheet, unchanged in 28 months. He'd then swivel his chair and gaze at you flatly, impatiently, exhaling loudly through his nose, "What is it?" - he was a very busy man. Lou was also generously undiscriminating in his tastes: he whole-heartedly loved anything, of any sex, between the crease of the thighs and the belly button. In this regard only, Parts was a "big tent" kind of guy.
Every night, our VP of Technology carefully filled his aluminum briefcase with thousands of gigabytes in removable zip drives. He'd be "working late again tonight," Parts would grumble, then briskly stride - stressed, hectored and over-worked, but, Christ, somebody had to do it - out the office door exactly at 5 pm.
Lou's department of slack mouthed dildos hadn't delivered a project on time or on budget since Hoser II was trumped by Donkey Kong in the software games charts, and that was in 1981. His elite technical team consisted of the most compulsively avoided and condescending fungal life forms on our "campus."
Irv had been caught unprepared by the unexpected brevity of "Parts'" response with a giant, leaking mouthful of cream-filled éclair. In fact, he couldn't quite close his mouth, so he looked a bit like a startled bulldog trying to whistle. He swallowed heavily - a good-sized rodent scrabbled down his throat, and for a moment we all watched, mildly alarmed and curious. Then his neck jerked epileptically to the right. Almost got the fly that time. Irv raised his eyebrows at Blowfelt, who was empurpled with rage and disdain - Sales always hates Technology, and vice-versa, it's a comforting given in the business world - but only wrinkled his nose several times and muttered "let the minutes note Lou's commitment." My right toe flew into action.
Chapter 3: The Call
"Henry, what do you think?" Me, Henry "Hannibal the Cannibal" Panky, Senior VP of Operations; I was hanging onto the last maggoty scrap of my mental health by my splintering fingernails. Well, first of all, I thought: maybe next week, I'll burrow Monsieur dead rubber rat into the pastry tray, heh heh - sparse hair, beady eyes, tongue hanging out, long scabrous tail; even my cat had run away from it and thrown up a hairball.
Secondly, I thought the company and everyone in it, the country, maybe the entire world, were irreversibly caught in the lazy ring-around-the-daisy spin of the accelerating centrifugal force of a flushing commode. They just hadn't noticed, or perhaps, like myself, they were keeping it to themselves, didn't want to scare the children. Mr. Fist Head pursed his lips regretfully, raised his eyebrows and shrugged, "So right, Quicksdraw - but nobody wants to hear that." How true, how very true.
I let my shoulders sag the tiniest bit, heaved a great breath. I wrinkled my forehead to Olympian proportions, and gazed down contemplatively at the table. Mr. Fist's jaw flapped discreetly down and up, "Hey Booboo, how about you and me go steal some picnic baskets?" The little fellow wanted to cheer me up. I let the moments tick by and the room became still; even Jumbo tried to chew his éclair quietly. I had to keep the ferrets off balance, bang their cage a little, or as Dylan said, "go along with the charade until I could think my way out."
I slammed my fist on the table. Somebody, probably Lois, farted a high, panicky squeaker; Blowjob peeped in terror; Jumbo hastily retracted his pen from under the chocolate-raspberry popover, his head jerking wildly to the right. "Pillicock sat on Pillicock-hill: Halloo, halloo, loo, loo!" I glared slowly, disgustedly, around the table at the apprehensive perplexity my Shakespearean quotation had engendered. Only Knacker was at peace, lost in an eye-glazing dream of giant, pulsing organ meats - bless his heart, the man had something to live for. I continued in the orotund bellow of the prophet, "I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpillar, and the palmerworm!" Book of Joel, chapter 2, verse 25. Amen." I held Lois' eyes until she responded uneasily, "Amen, Henry."
"Forgive my plain talking. I'm a plain-talking farmer from Missouri, the Show Me state."
Yeah, show me the way out of here. Keep it moving Henry boy; wrap it up. But don't mention the chainsaw scene in "Scarface:" that's beginning to make people nervous. It's good to be feared, very good, but don't give them an excuse to call Security.
Dropping to an impassioned whisper, I spoke directly to Mr. Fist Puppet, our eyes locked in mutual compassion and understanding, "Gentlemen, Lois, we've got the best damn team on the planet" (uh huh, us and Uncle Dergut's verminous Pirogi trailer in the parking lot). "I think we know what we have to do, so let's stop jerking off, get back to work, and kick some hind meat!"
Chapter 4: The Toe Job
God, forgive me my trespasses; I'm a weak, damaged human being, forced to do hateful things, prostrate and weeping at the horse trough of turgid, corporate banality. I pushed my chair back abruptly, gathered the papers covered to every inch with top-hatted armadillos marching on hind-legs into the bottomless pit, and strode crisply from the room.
The crowd roared and fluttered tiny flags. "I'm Spartacus!" bellowed the dwarf, scrambling up to punch the empty sky with tiny fists, eager to be crucified first.
If I didn't start scrambling myself, I'd be late for my weekly pedicure. One of the little things I do for myself, first introduced to me by my mentor in the business, Bub Suhker, a twisted, crusty, frog-like nihilist I came to love like a father. You wouldn't believe, on this joyless, spinning shitpile of ours, the sweet comfort, the delightful eroticism of having one's gnarled and misshapen toes professionally dandled by a small, dedicated Vietnamese woman.
"You like, Mr. Henry?"
"Marry me, Mrs. Ho Chi Minh, and I'll build you a castle in the sky!"
Sometimes I worry a little if I'm becoming a toe-queen. And would it be such a bad thing if I were?
When I got back to the office, there were half a dozen voicemails and emails from meeting participants, earnestly thanking me for "reminding us why we're here" and "saying what had to be said."
Oh, Dear Sweet, Merciful Lord, save me, your wounded handmaiden. I looked at Mr. Fist Face who only shook his head. He wasn't hopeful.
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