This past weekend nearly killed me and even free booze in the First Class compartment on Eurostar can’t repair the damage.
We knew it was going to be hell when we parachuted in on Thursday but all the foreknowledge in the world couldn’t have prepared us for the reality that was Lowe Paris.
The details would bore all but the most hard-core, pimply faced, geeks out there so I’ll restrict my description to this: imagine that you had 72 hours to knock down and then rebuild the Golden Gate Bridge using only a pair of tweezers and half a pack of tape. Can’t grasp that? How about pounding a six-inch spike through a four-inch slab of concrete with your forehead- got the visual? Great. Now imagine something about a thousand times worse and the unequivocal certainty that if something, anything, goes wrong that you will be publicly flogged and set alight by 175 angry users.
I can’t remember the last time I slept at all. I don’t mean a couple of hours rest or a nice nap before dinner. No, I mean as little as five full minutes of unconsciousness. I am absolutely mad from exhaustion and my rational mind has packed up and moved to Palestine in the hopes of finding a more peaceful environment.
I don’t get paid enough to do what I do. There is not enough money in the world to make up for the hours, days, weeks, months, years, I have surrendered to this job. Maybe that is one good thing that has come out of this: cash is trash- money means nothing. I used to think that an extra twenty bucks a month would be all I needed to reach Nirvana. Please God, let me eat this week. Let me get one more client that pays in cash. Let me not blow a head-gasket or knock-up my girlfriend because I swear to God, God, if you don’t come through, you’ll have to answer to me and I am one pissed off, poor motherfucker.
Now I can’t spend what I earn and my expenses, which are huge, are paid promptly. Our Finance Department has been told, in no uncertain terms, that anything that lands on their desks with my name on it must be approved immediately or their blood will be on the tracks before nightfall.
Which is only fair. I am the one suffering slow soul death here on the road while they plod away like dumb animals shackled to a desk all day. We all have our demons and mine cost a lot to feed. If I turn in the occasional receipt for a quart of gin, a machete and three-dozen boxes of surplus Russian army pistols, who are they to question it? They can’t possibly know or understand what we are going through out here. We get the job done, beyond that, no one needs to know the ugly truths hidden behind the numbers. Just sign it Jack and transfer the funds. There is no accountability in this league and the truly extravagant only serves to mask the outrageously ludicrous.
We’re pulling into Waterloo now. My first day back in…in…fuck, I don’t even remember the last time I was back in London. I know they speak English there- or at least what passes for it. I’m counting on a warm bed and some company in it or, barring that, at least a morning without a maid barging in while I am naked and screaming at the TV.
Jesus, I miss my home.
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