Snacktime

I still don't know what to feed myself after all these years

Through the maze of sterile white walls, I exact frugal revenge.

I know the way well, too. From my desk it’s a left, down the khaki stairs, through the old hub, hard right, down the studio corridor, right, left, right, hard left towards the elevator bank (or another right, left, left if you want to take the stairs) then a long walk along a hallway I think is parallel to the street outside, after which you’ll see the spot – on your left. After that, it’s all the candy you can carry. Just don’t tell em I told you.

It’s pretty ugly down there, you’ll see. The whole floor’s built up ice cores marking times we’re frozen in – here’s the birth of radio, and television; there’s the glory days during the big war, which I still can’t believe; the marches on Washington; classy shit; Vietnam; the death of our empire, at least in name; the little wacky wars; then, here’s the heyday, the eighties, with big hair and big fucking paychecks and politicians who wouldn’t dream of swearing when they were mic’d up; then there, the days in which most of these people arrived, and I was born, the nineties, with Bill and Hill, Monica and OJ, Jerry Seinfeld wearing white sneakers and a big blue suit, Columbine – those fuckers, the whole Balkan situation and a million other of instances of Hell on Earth; 9/11, which was big, of course; Katrina, Iraq, Afghanistan, The Obamas, and then, here, this demonic stain mark here marks the start of the ongoing catastrophe.

But if you took it from most of ‘em round here, you’d think the nineties never ended. If they were drinking you could try and sell one of them a VCR. At least a DVD player.

But it’s been ten years – twenty! – since YouTube began with a day at the zoo. And after allat, the eyeballs and fingers’re all in new positions, gotta be. And none of it has anything to do with growing up or being a grown up. The old old world of all of ours is dead even though it still feels like we can go back whenever we want.

So we flap butterfly wings in the ash together. Alive in the undead. It sounds cynical, but it’s hard to call it living when you’ve watched your father google eulogy ideas whilst delivering one. Still, I do barely anything to change anything.

So we trend retrograde together. Single-use bottled water’s drunk and airline status’s chased as though we were God’s gift to exceptions proving rules. The men wear suits, the women dresses, almost always. I feel next to nothing.

The ethos I thought we’re ‘sposed to look down on actually looms above us. We’re supposed to profitable (wildly profitable) and, to achieve this, they think they have to pay me a salary that’s actually less than the average cost of an apartment in this city. I do barely anything to change anything about it. But, I exact revenge come snacktime.

All that means’ unless we’re busy, sometime after three, I go and walk down that khaki flighta stairs, sputter through the old hub and hustle down the studio corridor, ignore whoever’s there, hook a right, quick left, right, hard left towards the elevator bank (unless I wanna take the stairs) and hoof it along the parallel-to-street hallway.

That’s the way to the cafeteria.

Abandoned, always, I have my run of the place and whistle while I work. I steal as much shit as I can carry – Gatorades, ginger ales, kettle corn, milk for cereal, Greek yogurts and yogurt pretzels and off-brand Cheez-Its and pine nuts and a salad if I’m lucky, or a panini, to be smuggled out and stored in the mini fridge upstairs and reheated for lunch the next day. Sometimes I bring a tote bag and fill it full.

Knowing that the security guards don’t care about much of anything, but remembering that they still may be watching, I perform a little charade sometimes, an in-joke. I scan items like I might pay, then void the transaction’n whistle walking out.

I think I’m just addicted to sticking it to the man in the least effectual ways possible.