American Fez

The Enigma Machine

Receiving tax documents in the mail, I immediately sense Franz Kafka's shadow lurking in that dark M.C Escher alleyway where IRS agents perfect their notorious double-cross system known as Form 1040. 

My annual income for 2019, masquerading as W-2s and 1099s and the mysterious "capital gains," approaches the Berlin Wall dividing a healthy refund and the dark world of money owed. It makes underground network contact with various exemptions, deductions, and the treacherous Schedule C, hoping the auditors have their searchlights switched off and their guard dogs shackled. 

Encrypted messages, secret codes, impenetrable ciphers, and esoteric symbols: the sleight-of-hand stock-in-trade of the surreptitious number-cruncher at tax time. I sometimes think it might be appropriate to file my return in a dead letter drop, then hide in a safe house until I receive official clearance from the Feds.

I have nothing against paying my fair share of taxes, but I can't think why we allow the laws that govern that payment to be written by the combined efforts of Ceausescu's politburo and the Sphinx playing with a random number generator.

God knows it is easier to guess what song the sirens sang, what name Achilles assumed when he hid among women, or what Ruritanian strategy in the Balkans might have been than to figure out how much tax I should pay each year.

The Numbers Don't Lie

Raymond, exhibiting all the shortsighted impulsiveness of a lepidopterist who mistakes moth pupae for those of butterflies, has hired a new assistant. Her name is Sharon and her eyelashes are longer than her curriculum vitae; her lipstick redder than the red pen with which Raymond strikes through the names of the other, unprepossessing candidates. 'Sure, they have more experience," he explains. "But Sharon brings freshness and youthful pizazz and we can certainly use some of that around here. Plus she's really cute."

I can tell Raymond is already dreaming of Sharon dolled up like Marilyn Monroe, heavy breathing her way through "Happy Birthday Mr. CFO" when he turns sixty next year. He imagines she will order a cake decorated with innuendos in icing and organize a Viagra themed card. Such puerile displays of office flirtation are what Raymond's aging but still sophomoric mind means by 'youthful pizazz.'

He's never been married and I can't remember the last time he even dated anyone. I suppose he can be excused his peccadillos provided they don't affect the rest of us. Fortunately, he's more of a balding sloth than a silver fox, so there's probably not much for HR to worry about on that score. And anyway, the receptionist tells me Sharon called back this afternoon and rejected the job.

Apparently she got a better offer elsewhere or we just couldn't pay her enough to occupy a cubicle with Raymond all day. It seems our business can afford experience but not pizazz, for which I am truly grateful. Meanwhile, the sex pheromones visibly evaporate from Raymond's sweaty body as he receives the news, rising like the last wisps of pale smoke from a cigarette crushed in an ashtray. His attention slowly returns from its erotic interlude to the company's ledger books, from dollar bills stuffed in garter belts to invoices emailed to clients, not that there's many of them these days of course.

Lamentations in the Canteen

Throughout the day, the staff kitchen at work is cursed by so-called classic rock radio. The relentless sound of sledgehammered, unsubtle chord changes and melodious yelling pervade the air like the bad smell of somebody's stale tuna fish sandwich. Frankly, I would prefer to listen to just the buzz of the fluorescent lighting but apparently silence, although reportedly golden, isn't an option. God forbid we should find ourselves alone with our thoughts. There is enough existential angst to be found at our desks, enough silence to be heard on the other end of the telephone when calling our clients. 'We'll be right back after these messages,' the disc jockey says as if anyone might fear he and his horrible music were gone for good. Then the jingle-happy radio advertising begins, an insult added to injury in the canteen of a company that can barely afford classified ads in the Yellow Pages.

This morning, While My Guitar Gently Weeps was playing as the coffee pot was percolating. 'This one goes out to the calculator belonging to Bob in accounts,' I announced for my own amusement. 'Which is also in deep distress.' In fact, all the utilities and appliances in this office are more upset than George Harrison's instrument, many of them even wailing with despair and perhaps suicidal. This coffee pot, for instance, will surely soon shatter from the slave-driven misery of brewing bitter-tasting sludge each day. The microwave will explode with frustration after reheating one too many breakfast burritos. Only the radio will remain, obliviously broadcasting Queen and Led Zeppelin into the tear-stained ruins. But for the time being our business blows its nose and wipes its eyes, somehow manages a smile and staggers forward into another sales pitch.

From Greek God To Gray Geek

The only thing necessary for the triumph of back hair and blotchy skin is for middle-aged men to do nothing. I would apologize to Edmund Burke for the paraphrase but, well, just take a look at the old,  double-chinned windbag. He should have written it, or at least thought about it. I know I do, every day. For when I was younger, I looked like a George Platt Lynes image of Adonis: chiseled, toned, smooth, and symmetrical. Pert, even.

Oh, how Time has withered my body on the vine, brought the scourge of winter to my skin and deforestation to my scalp. Nowadays, instead of homoerotic Hollywood art photography, I resemble something by Diane Arbus that's gone wrong in the darkroom. 

My new year's resolution, therefore, is to be fitter and more mindful and ruthlessly efficient when it comes to my personal grooming regimen. Apparently such so-called manscaping requires not only constant vigilance and endless willpower but also special tools.

Behold the electric nose hair trimmer, the macho moisturizers, tiny pots of "essential" eye cream and enough particularized deodorizers to make Caliban smell like Oscar Wilde. There is even a long scimitar-shaped razor for removing unwanted tufts of dark air from beneath my shoulder blades and wherever else it has strayed. The danger, of course, is that I end up looking like a plucked turkey with inadequate stuffing. But better that, I suppose, than Bigfoot's puny brother and his associated odors.

New Years Vignette

My table provided a good view of the bar, formerly the serving hatch of a genteel Victorian home that was now the only restaurant within walking distance. Steaming piles of boiled vegetables and slabs of beef had once passed through this portal; now it was all craft cocktails, obscure varietals, and black lager although the architectural details and lighting remained the same. The shadowy figure drinking and the colors in the room reminded me of pulp novel cover art, so I quickly snapped a picture with my phone, as if I were some grizzled gumshoe tailing an errant husband meeting his mistress at the bar, a routine assignment suddenly turning tricky when a murderer concealed behind one of those fluted pillars shoots my subject in the head. Smoldering cigarette smoke twirls in the air and a smoking gun silently disappears into the black ether from whence it came. 

Then my cassoulet arrived, delivered by a Kohl-eyed waitress who belly-danced her way around the tables like she was auditioning for a Sultan, one hand holding the plate high above her head, the fingers of the other conducting whatever music was the soundtrack of her thoughts. Is there anything to do around here? I asked her. She shook her head and told me to just eat, drink, and be merry. I guess I'll have another one of these, then, I said, pointing at my empty wine glass. And can you bring me a new knife? Mine fell on the floor when I was taking a picture of the bar.