Boxes - Part I

The alarm went off at 7am like it always does Monday through Friday unless it’s a much sought after and rarely seen long weekend. Or if I forgot to set it the night before. That happens. You’d be amazed, but that does happen.

Tropicalia by Beck was playing which sounded a shit lot more cheery than I felt. I was actually having one of those panicked “what the fuck is happening” mornings where you lurch out of bed a lot more quickly that you really intended to, and you’re not actually sure what day it is and you trip over the pair of jeans that you so thoughtfully stepped out of the night prior before falling into a comatose, scotch aided sleep.

By the time I made it to the bathroom I discerned that it was, in fact, Tuesday. It would be Tuesday all day, most likely. Sometimes I like to say to people “see you next Tuesday” which most of them don’t get because they don’t watch as much “Family Guy” as I do. Furthermore, most of the people to whom I say this I will not be seeing the following Tuesday because they’re my coworkers so I will likely see them the next day, and on the friend front I tend not to go out too often on Tuesdays anyways even though there was a time when I did because I got caught up in that whole cheap movie night scene, but now there’s Netflix and bit torrents. Not that I actually do the bit torrent thing, I should confess. I tried it once and what can I say: I have a very short attention span when it comes to technology or things that I can’t figure out in five minutes. You should’ve been there the time I attempted to learn how to play golf. Holy shit. I actually gave my golf clubs away to a friend this summer. Some things you just know you’re not going to return to.

Anyways, I looked in the mirror and it just wasn’t going to happen. I was pale, drawn and probably still mildly drunk since the hangover had yet to make an appearance. I noted that my t-shirt was on backwards as I fired up my Macbook and emailed my boss that I had severe cramps and wouldn’t be in today. I don’t often do that: I’m a pretty reliable if not totally uninspired employee, but I get a free pass when I start with the womanly stuff because my boss is pushing 60 and his kids are boys and he wasn’t in the delivery room when either of them were born and his wife makes his lunch for him. I took two extra strength Advil and went back to bed.

I woke up, for the second time, at 2pm in the afternoon. I lie. I woke up around 1pm and fretted about what it was the led me to get completely hammered on a Monday night and then I started thinking about Denis Leary and jerked off. Then I got out of bed. I felt better, but still rather fuzzy headed and tired as I got into the shower and then started feeling guilty about sleeping away what looked to be a rather stellar day because if you’re going to call in faux sick, you should really do it for a fun reason like: you’re up in Whistler and the hotel you’re in slips something under the door pre-checkout that says they’ll give you Sunday night for half price which actually happened once but I didn’t take it. I mean, really.

By the time I was relatively clean and somewhat presentable I was also kind of hungry and so I texted Sam – a programmer – and said I was going to Vera’s for a burger and a beer even though the burger/beer deal is actually on Wednesdays. Whatever. Sam texted “What national holiday is this?” to which I responded “National Irritate a Programmer Day: or NIPD for short”.

Dutifully, Sam showed up in only slightly rumpled jeans and a t-shirt that likely should have been in the laundry yesterday, but he was covering up his lank hair with a ball cap which I really appreciated. I had a G-Money burger and beer waiting for him. I swear to Christ he just likes that burger because he likes to say G-Money. Naturally I went for the Pawer burger because everything is better when you put a fried egg on it.

“You look like shit,” he greeted me.
“I know,” I said.

“What’s the special occasion?”

“You. You’re my special occasion,” I smiled, taking a sip of my beer.

“Dead to rights, I am” he nodded, looking only slightly mystified.

A bit of back story on Sam. We met maybe ten years ago when I was taking a Statistics class and failing miserably. For him it was innate and everything made sense and for me it was like... well, it was like taking a Stats class. Anyways, I needed to pass this class with at least a C+ and we sort of struck up a friendship because we sat next to each other and because we both had Transformers pencil cases. More than meets the eye. He would come over to my apartment in the evenings and on weekends to help me understand probability and scatter charts, and I would reciprocate by feeding him food and booze because he could adeptly tackle the Poisson Distribution but was terrified of turning on his oven elements.

I wish I could say that it was more exciting than that, but it really wasn’t: Sam’s asexual. I actually kind of wish he had just come out and told me this up front but he didn’t and it wasn’t until I’d had one too many glasses of wine and was feeling particularly sexy because I had shaved my legs all the way up and I came on to him. He attempted to dutifully oblige but it rapidly became painfully passionless at which point he physically pushed me away (me!) and explained that it wasn’t that he didn’t like girls, he just didn’t really have a hankering for either sex.

Anyways, Sam’s like freaky, Bill Gates smart and takes courses with titles that I can’t even comprehend for fun and he contracts out and works remotely from home. He’s paid off the mortgage on his two bedroom condo and has a Lexus IS250 which he hardly ever drives and he has a lot of hi-tech shit that I’m not allowed to touch, but other than that he looks like a dishevelled hacky-sacker that likes to listen to Dave Matthews and eats in vegetarian restaurants and drives a Westfalia.