Dog Days Are Over

Yep it's been three months...

It's 7pm.  I'm sitting at my kitchen table-cum-computer desk listening to the alternating sounds of Backstreet Boys Greatest Hits (I Want It That Way, et al.) and an angle grinder, eating re-purposed spaghetti sauce on noodles for dinner while Reyna is tutoring.  And while I heartiningly carried a journal around with me most places over the past nine weeks, these are the first words I've actually written.  When there's no Man to stick it to, I'm less motivated.

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I'm sure you've been waiting breathlessly to hear how the job actually ended up.  You might have noticed, if you're a serious devotee of The Tatveg, that my last post was dated one day BEFORE I actually stopped having a job.  On my actual last day, I awoke with dreams of writing an epic post;  one in which I skewered all the things I hadn't already.  The post where I bit my thumb at my oppressors and skipped out the door giving the finger behind me all the way to a waiting taxi cab.

What actually happened was that I laid in bed until ten o'clock, before mustering the energy to ride the elevator downstairs and eat at the Sofitel breakfast buffet*.  From there, I went back to bed and finished my book.  Then I went to the hotel bar and drank beer until it was time to go to the airport.  It was how I imagine CEO's spend their final day at "work" before jumping out of their corner office window with a golden parachute.

*The Manila Sofitel Breakfast Buffet is a destination in itself.  It was an orgy of food.  If you find yourself hungry for breakfast and you happen to be in Manila....well you know what I'm getting at.  

But I didn't go to the International Airport.  I went to the Domestic Airport and checked into a flight to Cebu, Philippines.  In roughly thirty minutes I went from a top floor delux room at the Manila Sofitel to ass-sweating through my shorts in a metal chair at the Domestic Departures Terminal in Manila.*"  Clearly a CEO, I am/was not.  As I sat in the front seat of the taxi I noted that 5pm came and went without my phone ringing or a friendly clap on the back.  The taxi driver didn't break into song or turn and say "FIVE O'CLOCK FRIDAY BEE-YOTCH!  YOU JUST QUIT YOUR JOB! LET'S PARTY!"  The reality is that I just felt my Pad Thai and half-dozen Hoegaardens (which I happily expensed to The Company) churn in my stomach.

*Dear America, 
Have you ever considered that when you live in a country like the Philippines that 99% of the time you get on a plane you are flying internationally?  Because it's true.  What does this mean for you?  It means that when you fly domestically, you are in the tiny, crappy, only occasionally used sector of the airport. This does not mean it is empty.  Oh no.  It's packed like a feed lot.  There was a sign in front of the airport suggesting, not demanding mind you, that travelers lock their guns in a locker before departure.  I walked through the metal detector with my iPad in my hand.  If you think the security measures at a US airport are kind of ridiculous, try doing it after a year of domestic Asian travel.  You'll consider setting the place on fire, I promise. **

**This also explains the confused looks and generally slow footedness of foreign travelers in line when they learn they have to take half their clothes off to get through the security checkpoint.  The shit does not happen anywhere but America, Land of the Free, Home of the Paranoid.  So let's cool it with the sighing, muttering and eye-rolling when the non-English-speaking, elderly Asian man is holding up the front of the line.  He's not being stupid, you are being an insensitive jerk.  Repeat after me, "I am checked in, the plane is not leaving without me."

Upon arrival in Cebu I met a tiny, smiling man whose name I have forgotten.  He and his pal put me and my things in the back of the world's most uncomfortable van.  We left the airport and I rolled around in the backseat for over three hours.  It rained the entire time.  From the van window, I watched scenes of the Filipino late night roll by:  shirtless bros slouching around pool tables, people riding bicycles and holding umbrellas at the same time.  You know, the usual.  No words were spoken until the driver turned to me and handed me his cell phone.  The voice on the other end of the line informed me that the bay was too rough for me to cross to the hotel I'd booked, so the driver was going to take me to a similar place on the island, and that I could then ferry across to the resort in the morning.  I didn't have a choice, so I agreed.

Shortly after, we turned onto a dirt road and passed a sign which read "Skip's Beach Resort."  The lady working the desk, who I later learned was Mrs. Skip, showed me to my room.  It consisted of a bed, chair-less table and a circa 1988 television*.  She flipped on the air-con unit in the window.  To refer to it as a "window rattler" would conjure thoughts of a trailer in the woods.  This was much much worse.  Again, I reasoned that I didn't have a choice, and it would be a king-dick move to be all, "this won't do" after these guys had just driven me across the entire island at one in the morning to get me there.  So I thanked them, shut the door and drank in my surroundings.

*Seriously.  I never saw a remote for the TV and it had dials.  DIALS!

When I was a kid, I remember my brother going for an entire year without washing his sheets.  At the end of the year, they were so threadbare you could clearly see the mattress underneath.  This was exactly the same, except instead of a mattress, there was a foam rubber pad.  You know, the kind that if your skin touches you immediately start sweating and itching at the same time?  That kind.  The pillow was the same, and felt like placing your head on a bookshelf. 

"No matter," I thought.  I'm dead tired and it's just for the night.

I turned out the light, lay in "hotel dark*" and listened to the rain fall on the tin roof.  I took a deep breath and said out loud, "It's Over."

*You know that dark that's so dark you can't tell the difference between what you see when your eyes are open or closed?  Hotel Dark.

In the morning I woke up early.  And by woke up early I mean, I never really fell asleep.  I wandered around on the rocky beach, and said things to myself like, "this is so great" despite the fact that it was chilly, cloudy and the beach was trashy.  Later Mrs. Skip asked me if I'd like a ride to the ferry station.  I said yes, but not before she presented me with the bill for my stay.  I was busy admiring a framed 8x10 glossy of a heavy set white man with a voluminous mullet when she handed it over.  $45. 

"Do you take credit cards?" I asked, already knowing the answer.
[Giving me a quizzical look as if to say, "did you see the room you spent the night in?"] "No."
"All I have is Vietnamese money.  If you take me to an ATM I can get money."
"The closest ATM is one hour away."
"Can I pay you in Vietnamese money?"
"If that's all you have, then yes."

I paid her $10 extra, feeling like a complete ass.

We chatted as she drove me in an even more beat van to the ferry.  I learned that the wonderous mullet in the restaurant/front desk was Skip, her husband.  Skip had died five years earlier, and she told me keeping up the place had gotten tougher since she'd been on her own.  Did I say I felt like a complete ass yet?

When I arrived at the resort, I had a few hours to kill before my first dive.  That was the last time I wrote anything before this here post.  I will share a small exerpt of what I wrote that day:

I wish I could tell you that I stood up and yelled “I CAN’T TAKE THIS SHIT ANY MORE” while throwing a stack of drawings into the walkway and storming out into a spectacularly sunny Vegas afternoon.  I wish I could say that, because it’s exactly how I felt.  But sitting behind a desk for four years can do funny things to you.  Do not believe for a moment that you can shake off a day in which 25 people lose their jobs, even when you are spared, with a cocktail and a blowjob.   The shock of seeing your friends packing up their desks at 2pm, when three hours earlier it was just Tuesday, secretes The Fear into your soul. Tomorrow it could be me.

And The Company loves The Fear.  It feeds and thrives and has romantic dinners with The Fear. The Fear keeps its employees coming back every day to be worked like pack mules; to be forced to share a toilet with 50 other men that is only cleaned twice a week without complaint; to never ever be thanked or told you did a good job.  A confident work force could leave and find another, less crap job.  A work force languishing under The Fear is a slave.  The Fear is like a drug without the fun part in the beginning –that initial love affair when you dropped Oxy the first few times and it was mind-altering and life changing.  The Fear makes you an instant junkie.  You are powerless against it and you hate it.  Every. Single. Day.

People said, “Why don’t you quit?”  But it’s not that simple.  It’s like saying the same thing to that kid who tried Oxy after a couple years of serious abuse.   In his mind there is no life beyond the next fix.  Even sucking dick for it is preferable to not having the fix.  The illness that sweeps you away when you detox is the essence of The Fear.  Even though you know the drug (or the job) is bad, or it’s going to send you to a premature grave, the thought of NOT doing that thing is too overwhelming.  It’s the same for the cubicle slave.  You know the escape is out there, but it feels so foreign and frightening, it’s not really worth looking for.

I love how raw I was.  I cranked out seven single spaced pages in under two hours.  It was beautiful.

 The next three days I spent diving at the Malapascua Dive Resort in Cebu.  It is one of the only places in the world where you can see Thresher Sharks in the wild.  I also dove the Dona Marilyn Shipwreck, which was spooky and sad.  For three full days I went barefoot, rode on boats until I felt seasick on dry land and dove.  The thought of not wearing shoes for that long struck me as perfectly poetic after nearly six years of abject misery behind a desk.  Think about it.  Have you ever gone for three days without shoes and not felt like a completely lazy fuck?  I didn't feel like a lazy fuck.  I didn't even think about turning on my television, slept like a dead person and thought about how lucky I am to be in a place where I can experience three special days. 

Then I got shingles and was sick for three weeks.  You win some, you lose some.  I have a bunch of stuff I want to write about, so let's hope this is the first of a flurry of blog posts in the coming days and weeks.  It's good to be back!