The scene is this, two women mid to late thirties sit in a nondescript beige break room at the back of a large, well very large suite in a strip mall. On either side of a battered old kitchen table from the 1980s they burn the 15 minutes of their break.
These two women are clerks for the agency that issues titles and tags for vehicles. Their day are spent arguing about who can sign what form legitimately and what fees must be charged. Each of them is constantly monitored by cameras positioned behind their work stations. Any mistake or malfeasance will be captured and analyzed off a DVD.
These two are good people. Each works hard. Both clearly care for other people. They are diligent and conscientious in their work. Neither has had a performance tickets in years. Still, their managers constantly fuck with their breaks and their weekly schedules. If you were to watch them closely you would think they were the epitome of stoic resolve and the ideal of what a dedicated worker is supposed to be. They are kind people. Each of them wants to help.
As they sit scrolling through Twitter, Facebook and texts about one pot meals a coworker enters the room. Both of them like their coworker. He has a sense of humor, but its somewhat crude and often fill his remarks with double entendres. But for the most part he is usually smiling and has a joke or a self effacing story to tell. They like him or at least they don’t dislike him.
Last week they learned that their coworker has come down with renal cancer. Both of them had heard his stories about his prior surgeries for prostate cancer, a problematic gallbladder and also appendicitis. To hear him tell it each of these events was hilarious. But both of them have had diagnoses and medical procedures that were problematic and painful. In each of their minds they are worried about their work friend and his mental state
So this day as he walks in to pour himself a cup of black coffee-black decaf coffee, they know his cardiologist has ruled out the real stuff, (yeah this guy over shares) they ask him how he is doing. The man is due for major surgery in a month and a week; he will be losing part of his kidney. Each of them worries that his emotional state may be growing more fragile. The threat of major surgery has a nasty way of unnerving even the strongest of souls.
Dressed in his bow tie and suspenders, wearing his pink and blue plaid shirt the man responds. “Now if you are asking me about how I am feeling about my surgery, you know, am I anxious the answer is no. I have a month to wait. Because of that I have just put all my nerves about being cut open in a box in the back of my mind. I will not think about the surgery and the pain until probably about a week before the event. I have been through so many surgeries at this point, I don’t want to contemplate the upcoming pain until I have to.”
Both of the women nod and one of the says, “That is a good attitude; the best attitude.” The man smiles.
He then continues, “ Now if you are asking me about my overriding fear that comes to me late at night when I am trying to sleep that I know I am going to die and that I am not sure if any of this, life, religion, good works, bad works means anything at all and we are just heading into the abyss, into entropy, well that hasn’t hit me in a bit. I mean when I was ten years old I had a dream that both of my parents were killed in an accident in my father’s 1965 Mustang and when I awoke I realized none of us gets out of here alive. I mean I have answered altar calls, I have read Buddhist scriptures, I have taken hallucinogenic drugs to drive this fear way but to no avail. I have taken college course on metaphysics to see if that would drive the black nothingness back. Still, every so often that raw fear of impending oblivion hits. Eh, that hasn’t happened in a bit.”
Almost in unison the two women said, “You need to get on medications”. With that the younger of the two of them (by a few years), began to tell how 10 years ago or so she came to the same realization and that it was at the edge of absolutely driving her nuts. She talked about the cold sweat she experienced in the middle of the night and the nausea that constantly plagued her when she came back to this idea. She then rattled off a list of medications to try and finally offered the one up that seemed to work for her. She said, “Meds help. You just can’t leave the door to those thoughts open too long.”
The other woman began to describe how paralyzing the fear was when she came to the same realization. She talked about being rendered almost immobile from the thoughts. She opined that she was not sure she would be able to go on after the waves of existential fear (she didn’t use the word existential) rolled over her. They she offered that you just had to find the right medication.
The man was shocked. The women were shocked. It seemed as if they never realized that they were not the only people who felt lost in the world. None of them had really though out that others felt bracketed in the hours between the forceps and the shroud. It came in a moment of unvarnished reality where all the defenses we usually hold in place fell down. The man had to run off for a minor task and when he returned the women were still talking about what had triggered their dive into this endless well of thought. The man wondered if they had read Camus.
Later in the day the man came back to the room. It was awkward. The emotional quality was much like running into someone you somehow slid into a sexual union with quickly and unexpectedly and then you meet them a day or two later. You are not sure if you should talk the sex, or anything that happened the other night or whether it is better to pretend that it just didn’t happen.This time the three of them talked about the weekend weather forecast.
Opening up that you suffer the great fear that this is all without meaning or purpose, that life is a fluke, and that entropy wins, is about as raw and naked as a human soul gets. The conversation those three shared was probably more intimate that ninety five percent of the one night stands in this sordid old world of ours.
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