Part Two (2): The Sexual Investment

A majority of us go through the week with the same thought going on in our head. This little thought is the idea that drives us through the constant idiocies of the workplace that we find ourselves subject to. "One day I'm going to start my own business and work for myself." Everyone has an idea, a 5-year plan, 10-year plan, buddies with "connections" that can get their future fortune 500 company started. The problem with plans that involve time, however, is time often has other plans. Since there are few of us that actually want to risk the guaranteed salary, the 401K, the benefits, the comfort in the fact that we can rely on someone else to keep the work coming in, we simply bide our time and countdown until it's Friday. The weekend is different things to different people. Most 20-something, college-grads in the DC-Metro area are on the same train come Friday night. This train, of course, is alcohol. Alcohol is the train that takes me from my doldrum 9-5 weekly existence into a blurry place of drunken stupor. Everyone has a preference of what kind of drunk they prefer. For those that visit the establishments of Adams Morgan and Georgetown, the general preference appears to be time-travel, out of body experience drunk. This particular state of mind, allows the participant to be only aware of certain basic sensory perceptions and that seems to be it. You walk in the club, bar, pub, what-have-you, and first thing you notice is the smell. Chanel 5, Polo Black, Versace Red Jeans, Curve... The chosen musks of the hunters and the prey. Combined with sweat and alcohol-soaked barmats, it's a lot for a nose to take in. You hear music, but if you've done your job right, you won't remember what songs were playing the next day, or the presence of music at all. You just remember there was someone grinding with you in the dark, you don't even remember what their face looks like, unless you happen to catch it the next morning (this can be a good or a bad thing). Wingmen and motherhens are in full force. Taking the dufs (designated ugly friend) and calling the bluffs, respectively. This is the game. There is no benefit come Monday morning. You're wallet and liver are that much weaker, so what is the point? Sexual investment. Every night in a bar on the weekend is a sexual investment. You invest money in clothing and drinks, negotiate through conversation, and see if you can earn a return. It's a drunken business proposition, and as long as you can sell the client what they are looking for, you're going to make a deal. However, like the office, business dominance is determined through appearances. I have a buddy that took a girl home the other night under the guise he was a medical doctor for the Washington Redskins. He was under the impression she was attractive. Once she was under him, he realized this impression was incorrect. Looks like she was the better salesman of the two.

Part One (1): The Door With No Handle

Monday. Monday is that swift kick in the nuts reminding you of the money you don't have, and the fact you have to slave away at a job you hate in order for you to pay for the grossely overpriced large quantities of booze put on your credit card at some bar over the weekend. It's the start of another 40-60 hours of yes, sir, no, sir, three-bags full, sirs that you administer out of your gritted teeth to some asinine fool in a suit and tie. You, standing there with the same apparel, appear to want to emulate this simpleton due to corporate restrictions of what you can or cannot wear. Business casual is never that. Nothing is casual in business. I make the same 45 minute drive from Maryland into DC down the beltway. I get to work and park in my assigned spot and walk to the same damn elevator. Corporate elevators are interesting, it is the closest proximity you can be to someone for an extended period of time while desparately trying not to make eye contact as to avoid an asinine conversation. Everyone in the elevator, however, does the full body scan of the others in order to distinguish who amonst the group seems to be the dominant individual. Dominance in the business world is determined by monetary wealth, or the appearance of it, and nothing else. Fuck what you've learned about being a good person, or being in shape. I examine the fat balding guy next to me: pin-stripe suit, textured shirt with french cuffs, what appears to be expensive cufflinks resting on a Rolex, clean-ass shoes that probably didn't touch anything but the floormat of some BMW, Benz, or Maserati this morning, blackberry in hand. The blackberry, of course, is to inform all that see it that electronic mail correspondence is so important to this man and those that are sending it to him that he must be able to reply at any point in time. This man was one of the dominant individuals in the elevator. Too bad his ass would be dinner if humans determined dominance like animals did. Shit, his ass would probably still be dinner if he rolled into the wrong part of Southeast DC in that aforementioned car. Isn't all of Southeast DC "the wrong part"? Anyway, you step off the elevator on your designated floor. Same coffee, same "hello"s to the people you pass in the hallways. Same path to the same cubicle to sit in the same chair and fill out the same reports. Cattle have more choice of direction than we do. Our moments of grandeur and accomplishment arrive with the completion of a document that has no meaning or importance to our daily lives. Close of business, Action-items, return on investment, CC, AR, Legal, interoffice communications; this is the language of the corporate stooge. This is the communicae of individuals that were bright enough to go to college and expand their minds, yet were not passionate enough about that expansion to allow themselves to be hammered back down into order-following drones. This is the life of those on the proverbial ladder. A ladder that leads right into a door with no handle.