I was not ready to wake up. The downside of perpetual three-day weekends is, of course, Monday. It’s as if everyone else started partying at the designated Happy Hour, but I’ve been slugging margaritas since noon. I jump higher; I fall harder.
I was applying my deodorant after showering when my mind became stuck on the euphemistic phrase for when a person’s body odor is perceivable: their “deodorant failed.” I felt a twinge of empathy for deodorant, overwhelmed by excessive perspiration that surely it was not formulated to handle. And the 99% of the time when deodorant succeeds, it doesn’t get a lick of glory.
I was walking on the bike trail to the subway station behind a man in a natty business suit. His pace was a bit slower than my normal cruising commuter speed, but not slow enough that I was willing to spazz-walk in order to pass him. His suit jacket’s shoulder pads were extremely excessive. He was around my height with a neat boyish haircut, and I could just picture the knobby shoulders that naturally sat parallel to his ears. But his shoulders pads were about twice the width of his hips, resulting in comical bodily proportions not unlike an extremely gaunt woman with breast implants.
I was crossing the Fort Point channel to get my lunch. The channel’s water level was at peak height. There was a solitary duck in the channel, diving under the water for long periods of time. I grew anxious while waiting for the duck to surface. What is he doing down there, anyway? There’s no plants or animal life in the Fort Point Channel. There’s razor blades and industrial waste. Where is he? Ah, there he is, whew. NO! Don’t dive again, you stupid fucking duck!
I was yawning in mid-afternoon when a co-worker approached my cubicle. Wouldn’t you know it, the first time ever this co-worker ventures to ask my opinion, and I’m in the throes of a sustained yawn. My arms are raised in the air as I stretch my arched back across my chair. My jaw is so wide open that it cracks when I clamp it shut. Actually, it was the first break from staring at my laptop that I had taken in nearly three hours, but I looked like a cat whose just been roused from a day of napping in a sunny field of grass.
Do people still have existential crises, or did Apple cure them? Anyway, I think I was having one, and then the workday ended, and I forgot about it.
