A long day ahead

My back hurts. It’s rare to me such condition. I’ve been pulling plenty of overtime lately and it can be due to stress and not having a day off anywhere in sight. I will endure this torture for now. I feel sluggish and am half asleep. Yesterday night, I went to Calico Bar, crossing the second avenue street from Pfizer’s corner between 42nd and 43rd. I had gone with enough to buy only a few beers, and didn’t quite enjoy the night out. I told Isabel that I’d be gone for two hours or so. I got home before three in the morning. Now I’m back at work. It was raining last night. My brand new Kenneth Cole shoes got wet to their leather root. The whole experience was a departure from this weekend shift. In fact, I remember always wanting to go back there again someday. Of course, the first night I was there was superior to the one I enjoyed yesterday.
Not a good idea, anyway. As I will have to work tomorrow morning. I think it was the computer "seat" that gave me this pain. I should buy a real computer chair and not continue to use that uncomfortable dining seat.

Mean-while

It seems to me that when I was at my most primitive state, girls often will comply easily with my absurd demands and caprices. Take the nightclub scene: the idea, I remember, was to get wasted and therefore lose your inhibitions, and go after the girl. That, alcohol does. But behind this masquerade lies wisdom for the ages. See, girls nowadays respond more to me than when I was single and horny. Actually, as I try to put aside all of these frivolities and concentrate on the task at hand, ignoring them I get more of the attention that under other circumstances failed. What are all of these gravitating mirages that twirl and twist our perception of reality are all about when it comes to the opposite sex? First, I suspect is the overwhelming responsibility on behalf of society to instill in its citizens morals and principles that downright go against the individual but seem to work on a social sense. In other words, we are getting the wrong advice because, otherwise, how will I sound if I told you that in order to succeed, whether in business or in love, you need more balls and less politeness. It wouldn’t be nice, now, would it? Meanwhile, the aggressive type, the one who doesn’t need approval or even seeks guidance, is the one that gets it always his way and has his/her fun.

Shifting again

I have been assigned a new schedule as of today. I wasn’t as thrilled with the idea, even though it embodies the ideal hours, specially now on summer days, Monday through Friday, 4am to pm. Why aren’t I as happy with the circumstances, I may ask. Well, on my old schedule I put in forty hours in four days as instead of five and I had three days off throughout the week in any of which I could put my overtime. Not having weekends off wasn’t necessarily a bad thing; plenty of things can get accomplished on weekdays and having weekends off will mean that if I want to pull some overtime hours, I will have to work more than five days (food, travel, time, etc). If I wanted to party on a weekend, I could have done so after work: I got off at eleven in the evening and I didn’t start work until 3pm the next day. Besides, I know that my weekend schedule hasn’t been filled yet which brings to tears the whole point of having weekends off.
That said, I may add that I’m excited with what the new position represents for me. It means that I was chosen over other people who wanted it or even needed perhaps more than I did. I will get to spend more time in the lobby area which is where the implementation of my character-improvement techniques will take place. By character, I mean the way in which others perceive me as a person which can be and should be and will be magnified by the social skills I put into play: neatness, posture, relaxed rigidity, an air of graveness to the whole equation.

A road paved in burning stones

On my way to work today, I left with plenty of time to wait for an MTA train that will not come on time but not enough so that it would be making local stops. It all translated into me being late –no, I’m not kidding –two minutes late. Lately, improvements are based on a daily basis, and I think some people are starting to notice already. So, instead of praises, they look for loopholes in a seemingly solid structure. Of course, there are many. I intend to bury them in time and walk in here as if the Hand of God had just polished my genuine leather shoes.
Ah, yes. That was another dilemma.
Three days ago, I walked into an Aldo store and bought a really nice pair of shoes with the money I was supposed to pay my cellular-phone bill. That could have been seen as the starting point of a chain of events that left me all worn out questioning the veracity of my judgments. I decided to be bolder and still stricter on my approach. But before I go on to say the implementations taken, let me just give say that after wearing the shoes, I decided that I didn’t want them because they were uncomfortable. The truth is, a day after I bought them, I saw this superior pair of shoes downtown in Century 21 shoe store. So, I thought, with the money I spent on these shoes, I should be able to buy that other pair and still have some money left. My plan didn’t come to fruition. The manager at Aldo’s would not let me have my way but went out of his to offer me the opportunity to select a new pair. He refused to give me a refund. In the course of a civilized but testosterone-oriented deliberation, I countered his arguments. Irrefutably, however, he had the upper-hand. Therefore, I did what any normal human being under those dire circumstances would have done: I defiantly walked out of the store and told him to keep the shoes. He insisted he couldn’t keep them. But I was already on my way out.
I felt so good, I remember. It was that hard-ass feeling people used to have it their way have when they are beat and still manage to make a stance. Even if it meant having seventy-something dollars worth of merchandise, logistically I knew they would not throw the shoes in the garbage. Although they could have, argued a desperate but weak voice of reason on my behalf. I said to myself, oh screw it! It is worth the feeling. So, there you have it. It felt good to misbehave because all I do day in and out is to behave. And certainly when it comes to me being the boss, as in the situation of the costumer, I wasn’t about to give up my god-likeliness. That night I slept torn inside, divided between guilt and guilty pleasure, with sporadic delusions of grandeur and astounding fear. Now, fear is something that anyone, even a newborn asshole is not exempted from. But the difference is, when others choose the path of tranquility of mind, and give in, they walk on a road paved in burning rocks and levitate in an ash-like state if necessary. Sort of like the great Mexican revolutionary would have said: “It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.”
Of course, the next day I went back to the store. But that is another story I shall tell you in a little while from now. As I am at work right now, I will do what I must first and then, if time and leisure allow, narrate later.

Love deliberately

Oceans of girls are getting ready to get out and enjoy the night. I can see them pass by the street on the other side of the window and normally I’d be prompted to want them all, as if I could satisfy all of their desires. My sad love is just getting home from a long day at work around this time; I imagine her world as she makes her way home and I sigh. How did we ever get to this? Some questions are better made than answered. So, I will head home and caress her feet, and touch her hair, and love her madly, like I never have before. Not out of guilt, of course. It may have something to do with the opposite of habit: a new perspective that will transform my life based solely on tending to their needs, at least for the time being. We may not know how long love will last. But we can always make it the best we can every passing minute we have. After all, the rest are only beautiful, tempting, and, in the end, always deceptive mirages. Caring for her, suddenly, is part of my routine. I guess that instability of having one foot home and the other out of the house, my fear of commitment to the woman I love. How lucky have I always been, indeed, when it came to the opposite sex starting from my mother and all the way to Isabel. Something stronger than my desire to break away and never give in completely has taken its toll on me. Fact is, I have spent valuable resources on partying and cheating which have taught me absolutely nothing about life except that I am a very selfish individual. Selfishness, to an extent, is healthy. I could, however, have given her and myself so much more had not been so selfish. If it is to last a day or a century, I will make sure that as long as we are in this lovely mess, I will strive to make things better day by day, and put more on top of my shoulders to lessen her load. I know I am wanted, and the games of vanity, and my sense of failure have nothing to do with her. I could, if I wanted, make her happier than she already is. It is not only pain that we can sometimes cause deliberately. Loving too could come off as the result of a conscious act.

Updating myself

It’s been a wild while since my last entry, but I thought I’d resume from now rather than where I left off. I lost my cell-phone two weeks ago, and along with it the countless numbers I had. I thought it may be a good idea to start fresh, forget all the distractions and focus on my own development. Yesterday night, however, was a step back. It seemed very unlikely a prospect to have fun but fun is what I tried to have. It was really a disaster because I stood in the deli nearby drinking beer after beer and conversing with the shy-type guy about girls. That was a mistake because the availability of females back at the bar was very low, and there was at least two guys for every girl in there. I had made eye contact with potential candidates and the reception I had was positive. But by the time I went back to the bar, all of them were taking and dancing the night away. Usually, nothing is decided on this scene before twelve thirty but by two, if you still haven’t found what you were looking for, the odds that you could are greatly diminished. I had four beers and a long-island-iced tea. I left the place around three thirty and got home at almost six in the morning. How? Let’s just say it was all due to the alcohol I had consumed. Well, I now firmly believe that what was supposed to be an adventure sealed the deal to call going out quits for now. Isabel knew I went out and I don’t take lightly the vote of confidence. I had said that I would be home before four in the morning. I better start making it up to her.
So the plan is to take her out to the movies before the week finishes. As for the cell-phone, well, I will have to buy another one. All because I didn’t want to stay home two weeks ago and went on a date with a slim but nicely perfect apple-shaped booty. I have a weakness for those. My girl has it all. Dominican Republic exports the best asses in the world.