Just me and the mouse
All of the cats are away, which explains my uncharacteristic responsiveness to comments as of late. My director is out of the office without explanation, meaning he is off sailing his boat. My manager is "working from home," meaning she too felt the need to kick the weekend off early. My architect is "battling a terrible cold," which I believe because our four-hour code review yesterday filled me with paranoid fear that mere proximity would doom me to a similar state of excessive mucous production. My smoking buddy (or rather the guy who insists that I stand around and watch him smoke ten minutes out of every ninety) S. is at a funeral for a family friend. All of which leaves me with the perfect opportunity to get some work done in peace, or, as seems to be the case, zone out between refreshes of my Yahoo mailbox.
Before he left, S. continued our perpetual game of cat-and-mouse by asking my opinion regarding his suit ties. Seeking fashion advice from another man is just about the most homoerotic behavior possible in the workplace short of a quick blowjob behind the copier machine, but I choose to take it as a compliment that he respects my sense for such things (inherited as it is from my boyfriend). I did not particularly like either option (both of his ties were variations of wine) with his black suit/blue shirt combo, but whatever. Ties really aren't my thing; my desire to be provocative occasionally overwhelms my aesthetic sense. I passed along D.'s rule regarding the necessity of wearing square-toed shoes with pin stripes just to be a bit of a dick. I felt it was expected of me.
Seeing S. in his black suit, however, did lead to one rather mundane epiphany - S. is, well, short. I mean shorter than myself. Maybe there is some validity to the Fireplug Syndrome wherein short men work out to excess because I must admit that I somehow allowed his muscles to distract me from the fact that he is a good inch or two shorter than I am. It is yet another disparity that calls into question why the Latina manager of the Company's Bistro felt S. and I looked similar enough to be brothers despite the fact that the man is heavily muscled, blue-eyed, shaved bald, and, well, short. The only physical characteristic, other than a perpetual scowl, that we share is a mass of unruly black chest hair poking out of our shirt collars.
But I am too busy preoccupying on today's pimple to obsess about my chest hair. Overnight, I developed a blemish in one of the strangest spots yet - my columella, the bridge of tissue between the nostrils. The fucker is intensely painful because of the dearth of flesh there - it's basically skin stretched over cartilage. The nice thing is that its location on the bottom side of my schnoz limits visibility to those shorter than myself. Seeing how every one of my peers tells me that 5'10" is, well, short, I need only worry about Asians and the handicapped.
And, of course, S.
Before he left, S. continued our perpetual game of cat-and-mouse by asking my opinion regarding his suit ties. Seeking fashion advice from another man is just about the most homoerotic behavior possible in the workplace short of a quick blowjob behind the copier machine, but I choose to take it as a compliment that he respects my sense for such things (inherited as it is from my boyfriend). I did not particularly like either option (both of his ties were variations of wine) with his black suit/blue shirt combo, but whatever. Ties really aren't my thing; my desire to be provocative occasionally overwhelms my aesthetic sense. I passed along D.'s rule regarding the necessity of wearing square-toed shoes with pin stripes just to be a bit of a dick. I felt it was expected of me.
Seeing S. in his black suit, however, did lead to one rather mundane epiphany - S. is, well, short. I mean shorter than myself. Maybe there is some validity to the Fireplug Syndrome wherein short men work out to excess because I must admit that I somehow allowed his muscles to distract me from the fact that he is a good inch or two shorter than I am. It is yet another disparity that calls into question why the Latina manager of the Company's Bistro felt S. and I looked similar enough to be brothers despite the fact that the man is heavily muscled, blue-eyed, shaved bald, and, well, short. The only physical characteristic, other than a perpetual scowl, that we share is a mass of unruly black chest hair poking out of our shirt collars.
But I am too busy preoccupying on today's pimple to obsess about my chest hair. Overnight, I developed a blemish in one of the strangest spots yet - my columella, the bridge of tissue between the nostrils. The fucker is intensely painful because of the dearth of flesh there - it's basically skin stretched over cartilage. The nice thing is that its location on the bottom side of my schnoz limits visibility to those shorter than myself. Seeing how every one of my peers tells me that 5'10" is, well, short, I need only worry about Asians and the handicapped.
And, of course, S.