Post-Modern Drunk: Please Don't Confront Me With My Failures. I Have Not Forgotten Them
Almost a month ago, in a section of one of my portmanteau posts entitled "Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me is Gone," I whinged that it seems like everyone I know has left me or preparing to leave me. It was mostly tongue in cheek. There's a literary rule of thumb that I learned back when I was grudgingly earning my English degree that, in fiction, it takes three recurrences to become a pattern. One is an event, two is a coincidence, and three occurences demonstrates that there's some larger theme at work.

Well, at the moment I'd written that paragraph a month ago, I was only at the Coincidence level. Now, a short time later, we've overshot the Pattern by a couple of notches.

My department at work is normally made up of four people (doing the work of five). In the past month and a half, attrition has set in, and one by one, my co-workers have all quit or otherwise left the department--no replacements for any of the positions have been found yet. I'm thinking of having the department renamed after myself, mostly because I like the thought of answering the phone: "Post-Modern Drunkard Department, this is the Drunkard in Chief speaking." People I don't even know have been talking to me in the elevator, asking me "How are you holding up?" though they're careful not to stand too close, as if knowing me is the kiss of death.

I'm starting to feel like I'm in a particularly boring horror movie, as everyone I know is picked off one by one behind my back in various gruesome ways (gory promotions! Vicious new job offers! A hair-raising exodus from the City!) by some faceless evil. Of course, if this were a horror movie, there'd be a lot more skin and sin and general depravity. I'd love my life to be R rated for a little bit (and not just for Strong Language this time), but right now I'm firmly mired in the PG section. If it were directed by David Lynch or the Coen Brothers, so much the better! Right now, it's one of those Warholian experimental films. Watch Office Man sit at a computer for 8 hours! Watch Office Man chain smoke outside the building! Office man is tired!

I'm starting to think that it might be something I'm doing. Is it something I said? Should I be bathing more than once a week, whether I need it or not? Are the whiskey fumes too overwhelming in the office space? Should I not be swearing at people like I'm an extra from Deadwood? (Though I would like to point out that I am the only person I know who said "Fuck" in a job interview and still managed to get the position.) Was the constant blaring of Stryper a bit too much?

Okay, maybe the Holocaust humor didn't go over too well, either.

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