Another day at the office

Here’s a panel from a cardboard box. I love it for the low vulgar reason that it reads “ASS: THIS SIDE UP / HANDLE WITH CARE”.

Dear diary,

This morning, I, Bryan Ray, after a night of sweet dreams, awoke and tried to sit up in bed, but I found that I had been transformed into a giant insect: specifically a cricket.

So I ended up having a spat with my boss when I tried to call in sick, cuz, instead of talking, all I could do was keep repeating a noise that humans interpret as signifying silence.

Then, after that, I got into arguments with my parents and my sister. None of them could get along with me in my days as a human, so it’s understandable that our discord would escalate now that I was a genuine pest. They ended up calling an exterminator and had me sprayed; but that didn’t kill me, it only made me stronger.

After a period of time living like this, I re-transformed, just as arbitrarily, into a young man again; and everything in my life went back to its normal levels of bad.

§

Of course I’m kidding about all the above. I hope it’s obvious to lovers of literature that I was plagiarizing Kafka’s famous story “The Metamorphosis”, which I honestly wish people wouldn’t talk about so much because I find a great deal of his other writings to be FAR better than that super-popular one. I even hate myself for contributing to its overrated-ness by choosing to start out today’s entry in this way. My only excuse for doing so is that if I were to ape one of K’s superior but lesser-known texts, then nobody would understand the reference! — I’d lose my entire readership for just one goof.

What truly happened to me this morning is that I awoke from the sweetest dreams and found myself still occupying the shape of a boringly normal human named Bryan Ray — HOWEVER, listen to this: There was a goat chained to my bedpost.

This was even stranger than awaking inside of an yuge cricket-costume (by the way, Kafka doesn’t specify what type of insect or vermin his protagonist becomes — I myself added the cricket idea for the sake of cheap laughs), because now I had to learn to take care of a goat.

“NO! I don’t want to learn how to care for you, Bry Junior,” said I to the goat, whom I named on-the-spot ‘Bry Junior’ after myself; “for all I did was find you chained to my bedpost — you are not my pet or my property: it is only incumbent upon me to release you from your slavery.”

So I picked the lock on the chain that was binding my new acquaintance to the bedpost — it was easy because I’m a pro at picking locks: I make it look like childsplay — and I waved my arms like I was pushing the wind and said, “Now you are free. Run off into the wild, O little Bryan Junior.”

So the goat took a step or two away from the bed and then stopped and stood there in the room and bleated his thanks to me:

“Ma-a-a,” he said.

So I replied politely, “You don’t need to thank me. Picking locks and freeing wildlife is its own reward. I’ve been doing things like this since I was a lad. Now pardon me, Bry Junior, but I need to get ready and go to work. My boss is already angry at me for spending last week as a gigantic cricket. I only showed up at the office for two out of the five scheduled meetings. And my speech to the shareholders went over like a lead balloon. But my audience did seem to like the graphics that I had designed for the slideshow finale.”

Then, after putting on my windbreaker and my stone-washed jeans and my cowboy boots and my finest, full-bodied wig, I dashed out the front door.

Then I dashed back in the front door and grabbed my coffee mug from the countertop and my pack of cigarettes; and, sipping the hot mug carefully, I walked back out the front door.

Once outside, I lit a cigarette and stood there in my yard puffing smoke, feeling content, holding the cig in one hand and my coffee mug in the other. But then I gasped and exclaimed aloud to myself: “O shit! I forgot my briefcase.”

So I dashed back in the front door and snatched my briefcase from where it was resting atop the kitchen table, and I tossed my trench coat over my arm and placed my sun-hat atop my wig…

And then I noticed the goat, Bry Junior, standing in the hallway, looking up at me.

“Little goat,” I was tired of calling him by his Christian name, so I returned to this less personal style of address, “why don’t you trot off into the wilderness? Isn’t that why I freed you? Or did you think I was going to lead you into the land that I promised you in those sweet dreams that we kept having all thru last night, in which you were the star?”

But the goat did not answer in plain English. He just bleated again:

“Ma-a-a.”

“OK, fine,” I sighed; “you can follow me to work. But you’ve got to hurry; I’m late already — in fact, I’m even later than that rabbit from the Alice book by our good friend Lewis Carroll—”

“Ma-a-a! Ma-a-a!” said my little goat, excitedly.

“Yes, yes, you must have read his stories often, in dreams that you and I shared starring roles in — haven’t we enjoyed this lengthy history together!? Yes, that’s right…” I was gently scratching behind his ears as I said this.

“Howbeit,” I added, standing bolt upright, “I’m serious, now: I really need to get to work. If you’re gonna tag along with me, you’ve gotta shower and get dressed quickly. — Here, I’ll prepare you some breakfast.”

So the little goat watched me fix him some healthy goat food, which he then devoured with an undeniable relish.

“You’re just a greedy child, Bryan Junior. But it amuses me to buy you expensive gifts because you savor them so exquisitely.” I remarked, half-paraphrasing the 1946 movie Gilda.

After he finished his meal, I took the plates and bowls and washed them thoroughly in the sink; then my little goat friend and I labored out the front door and began to walk in the direction of the Big City, where my office is perched, at the tip of an edifice that looks almost like the Space Needle. I was gripping my suitcase in the same hand that held my cigarette, and I still had my coffee mug in the other hand, and my trench coat was draped over my briefcase-&-cig-holding arm.

“Hey, I’ve got a lot of baggage that I’m trying to clutch onto,” I addressed my goat friend; “do you think that I could maybe drape this trench coat over your back, so that you & I could share the burden of transporting my possessions to the office?”

“Ma-a-a,” said my companion.

“Fine, OK; I understand — or, at least, I think I do,” I said. “I’ll carry everything myself.”

So we returned to walking, me and my new goat-mate. I strode leisurely over the green hillocks, contentedly smoking and drinking my coffee; and the goat trotted nearby me like the sidecar of a motorcycle.

Then at one point I looked down and noticed that my single goat was now two goats.

“How did you do that?” I asked.

“Ma-a-a,” said the goat on the left.

“But you were only one goat before, and very lonely: How did you reproduce your own kind? — Doesn’t it normally require at least a couple of goats to perform the deed that allows the species to increase and multiply?”

I guess this is one of those questions that’ll forever remain unanswered, like “Were Adam and Eve born with belly buttons?” or “Why did Jehovah insist on fathering Cain himself while he allowed Adam to join in on the creation of Able?” So my goats and I just kept walking over the hillocks and accepted the ways of nature with a pure and simple heart.

By the time we reached the highway, there were significantly more goats — for they apparently kept bearing young as we went along that morning; so now I had a whole herd accompanying me to my uptown office.

“Be careful crossing this part of the highway,” I shouted over the roar of the traffic. “There’s six lanes going each way, and exit ramps heading off from the furthest lane at either end; and these drivers are impatient — they’re unlikely to allow a mother duck and her ducklings to cross during the peak moment of rush-hour, therefore they’re certainly not going to stop for an average businessperson with a bunch of hairy goats.

But then something miraculous happened. Suddenly all the lanes of zooming cars and trucks became totally blank — both streams of traffic in either direction went dry, just like the waters of the Red Sea when Moses was fleeing with the Israelites out of Egypt. So I tentatively paced out onto the deserted highway, took a long drag on my cigarette; then turned around and made a gesture with my arm which meant “Come on; what are you waiting for? Follow me!”

And the whole troop of goats trotted forth, and we made it safely to the other side.

Now the second that the last hoof of the last little goat made it off of the scary street, instantly all the twelve-plus lanes of roaring traffic surged back and filled the entire highway system with dangerous hustle and bustle. And there was the wretched smell of exhaust, and the air was polluted.

§

So we had finally reached the big city, where dreams get recycled. I took the cigarette out of my mouth and shouted to my herd of goats:

“Keep following me; stick close by — it’s dangerous here in the metropolis: I don’t want any of you to get goat-napped and end up in the zoo.”

And my little congregation all answered, “Ma-a-a.”

So we were able to hail a cab, which taxied us to the towering glass skyscraper where my office exists — I work on the 365th floor. As we entered the building, the doorwoman greeted us. She didn’t seem disturbed at all by my multitude of goats. She gave me my regular kiss on the lips, and she patted each and every goat on the head as they passed. Then, around about goat number sixty-something, she fell into a deep sleep, but I hurried over and caught her in my arms before she fell, and I revived her with smelling salts. I told her to take the day off — “You’ve done enough,” I said. “In fact, why don’t you take the whole rest of the week off. You can stay at my place. I’ll build a scarecrow to take your place here, at the doorway. The boss will never find out.”

So I did this, and she moved in and lived with me for just short of a decade, and we had a lot of fun together; and our boss never found out.

And people really loved the scarecrow that I made. It bore a striking resemblance to Lana (that’s the doorwoman’s name), just except for the face, which was plain straw. And the hands were plain straw too.

§

But, back to my workday — after saving Lana’s life and becoming her dreamboat, I took the elevator up to my office. And all the goats followed after me.

First we stopped by the water cooler to chat with my co-workers. We talked casually about the price of milk, and about the latest episode of Twin Peaks. (This is all taking place around 1990, so it’s still the first season.)

Now my co-worker Dan sez: “Hey, I see you got yourself some goats.”

“Yep,” I said. “Woke up this morning and had one chained to my bedpost. I set him free, but he wanted to hang out for a while. One thing led to another, and we ended up here. He had a lot of kids along the way. I wouldn’t have thot they’d all wanna accompany me into my office, cuz I only have one swivel chair, which is human-sized; and most of my tasks are pretty dull — I mostly just shuffle papers around and deny insurance claims — but it looks like we’ll all be able to fit. Tho we’ll probably resemble one of those old photos where a whole bunch of college kids try to squeeze into a telephone booth all at once — cuz the walls of my office are plexiglass, which is transparent, and SO many goats decided to accompany me here this morning. We won’t have very much room to move. But I’m sure we’ll manage.”

“Well, good luck,” sez Dan.

“Thanks,” I smile. Then my herd and I enter my office and begin to send faxes to people.