He’s gone. John’s
gone for two weeks while his clusterfuck of a wedding plays out. He’s gone and his cubicle is vacant and
dead like a powerless robot. A
sign is draped over his monitor like a toe tag or a hood on an execution
victim. His “wedding countdown” on
his whiteboard, the countdown inspired by my daily baseball stat tracking, is
gone. Counted down. Dwindled to marriage. Now, the only thing on the board is a
picture of his house that he drew.
Were it not for me, the thing would look wonkier than you can
imagine. Somehow, he got through
primary and secondary schools and
college without any concept of perspective. Something tells me he’s not the most artistically inclined
individual. Or perceptive. He seems to be just a ball of clay
waiting to be slammed into somebody else’s Play-Doh press. Jackie will make him a multicolored pile
of spaghetti with no hope of regaining his original shape and consistency. If he ever had one. I think he likes the way he thinks it
makes him look. That can be the
only explanation.
Anyway,
he’s gone. How does someone step
into his empty cube and start a conversation with me about him. These people must think
we’re friends. Honestly, he talks
about himself so much, I would rather not add any of my words to the fray. I don’t know how I could compliment him
any more than he already
does. So how the hell did I have
an entire conversation based on his dogs and his upcoming wedding and that
fucking drawing of his house? And
what kind of question is, “You going to the wedding?” A simple one, I guess.
But doesn’t it imply that I am an important enough person in his life to
be invited to his wedding? The
question hinges on this assumption.
The truth is, I thanked Whomever when I found out they were at capacity
and I had not received an invite.
No chance of having to say no, I thought. But it’s still an entirely too presumptuous question.
And
even if I had been invited and was excited to go, I’m not sure a conversation
about him would be what I was looking for late on a Friday afternoon. Yes, his absence makes my job
busier. It gives me a bit more
accountability. But I would be
better off without him here. I
would have to know the answers instead of asking the questions. Instead, I let him have his dominant
role. I don’t want his
responsibility. What I do want is
my own personality. People who see
me here see me with John. They
assume we spend time together outside of work. They assume we know everything about each other and are
interchangeable. Well, they assume
I am interchangeable. “Well,” they
seem to say, “John’s not here, but I can have this same shared interest
conversation with Matt. He’ll know
the ins and outs of John’s dogs’ lives.”
The saddest part is that I did. I knew the answers she was looking for. I fulfilled her conversational needs
just enough to keep her from realizing that John was gone this week. I don’t know that people ever really
see me here. They see That-Guy-That-Sits-With-John. They see my long hair and my green
hoodie. If they look closely, they
could see that my pants go unchanged to ease my morning routine. Or that I shave about once a week. They could see that, while I do
exemplary work and nobody complains about me, I don’t have a particular gusto
for my job. They can see that I
avoid work friendships that transcend nine-to-five confines so I can forget
about this place every night until the next morning. But, instead, they see someone else who hasn’t heard the
story of their “crazy” weekend.
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