Work on a Saturday

   As fast as I could, I grabbed a pair of socks and put them on fast. The guy kept ringing and ringing, as if it was possible I hadn’t heard the doorbell the last one hundred times or that I had just fallen asleep after speaking with the doorman about letting him in. Some people were just very rude and I had no idea this guy could be this rude. Finally, I went to the door and opened.

 He barely looked at me as he entered my place, sat on the sofa in front of the TV and, for no apparent reason, grabbed the remote and turned it on. Confused for a few seconds, I decided to stand in front of him and ask what he was doing here. It was then that I noticed he had brought a backpack with him, which he had dropped on the floor.

 The man, whose name was Alex, told me our boss had asked him to fix the work we had done back at the office. As the work had been done by the both of us, and only I had some of the information, he decided it was a better idea to come all the way to my home and finish the work together. In any case, he didn’t seem that interested to have any work done as he kept changing channels and moved on the sofa to find the best spot possible. As the natural nice person that I am, I decided to offer him what little I had in the kitchen (orange juice and wafers).

 But I put the plate on my dining table, a small round surface from which he could watch TV but also pay attention to whatever it was that I had to do. After great insistence and with food as my ally, Alex finally got up from the sofa only to sit down heavily on one of the dining table’s chairs. He grabbed his backpack, took out his laptop from there and asked me the password of my Wi-Fi network.

 To be honest I was going to tell him we could do it all from my computer, as I thought the internet might prove to be another distraction but then he told me he needed to send me the email with all the details about the information we had to change and some other things that we had to add. Finally I gave up and gave him the password. To my surprise, he was fast to send me the email and in fifteen minutes we were already in full work mode.

 The work we had to do was long and it would take time to get all the information necessary to finish it thoroughly. As we advanced, I realized I seemed more distracted than he was at the start of the session. I mean, I was entering all the wrong numbers; even my grammar seemed to be getting worse by the minute. And the truth is that I was distracted. After all, it was Saturday evening and I had planned to stay at home, order takeout and watch at least three movies on a row. Working with that guy wasn’t on my mind.

  Alex and I had never really bonded at the office. To be honest, we had only spoken to each other about work related subjects and for an hour straight, at most. Now he was in my house, eating all my wafers, not speaking to me and it had been more than an hour from his arrival. If he was going to stay any more time, I needed to be able to be myself in my house. After all, he had not called prior to his arrival or warned me in any possible way. What if I had been out with my friends or something?

 Well that wasn’t really possible as all of them were busy with their own stuff but, hey, it was a possibility, however remote it may seem. So I decided to try and chat with him but that seemed pointless. I asked him if he lived far but he only said he had taken the bus. No idea what that was supposed to mean. Then I asked him about people in the office and he answered me by asking a nine-digit number that I had in my laptop. No, he seemed inclined to get the job done fast.

 I hadn’t thought of it but Alex might have had plans or something and now he was stuck in my place working. So it was logical that he would prefer the job done than answering my silly questions every few seconds. So I decided to shut up and just offer him some more juice. No more wafers. Now that I realized, it was almost eight o’clock and my belly had begun to complain. What if I ordered a pizza, as I had planned? True, I hadn’t planned on sharing it with anyone but at least that way I could have part of the night I had envisioned earlier.

-      -  Hey, would you like some pizza?

 Those were like magic words as he turned, raised his arms to stretch his body and smiled. It was the first time, in almost two years of watching him in the office, that I thought he was rather good-looking. I mean, some of my friends at work had told me he was “hot” or had “a nice piece of ass or even that he looked like, at least, three celebrities. But I had not realized about any of that until that night in my place.

-       - Sure. I’m starving. What would you like on it?

 I’m sure I looked like an idiot right then because it took me a long time to understand what he had just said. Seconds felt like hours and when I spoke, it didn’t make any sense at all. I tried again, and this time I had perfectly said:

-       - What about veggies and meat lovers? That’s my regular…

-       - Awesome. Love it. Nice choice.

He only said that but I blushed as if he had just told me something much more intimate. I shook off the feeling as I grabbed the phone and made the order to the pizza place I usually called on weekends. Not that I ever dated but it had been quite a long time since that and when I got out with friends it was frequently on Fridays. For some reason, I didn’t like to go out on a Saturday, unless the day called for it, so only for very good reasons.

 I sat down in front of my laptop and started entering some more data, numbers, statistics and so on. I didn’t even try to talk for the next half an hour or so. I only stared at my screen and answered Alex’s questions as fast as I could, without even looking at him. I felt him staring from time to time but I suddenly felt very self-conscious and I really didn’t want to talk to anyone.

That thought was soon interrupted, when the delivery guy made his appearance. Apparently there had been some kind of malfunction in a machine at the pizza place, so they were handing out these bread sticks made out of pizza dough before they went bad. I paid for my pizza, took the food and thanked the nice man. As I turned, I realized Alex had taken my computed and his and put them, with everything else that had been on the table, on the kitchen counter.

  I put down the two boxes on the table and he eagerly began to talk, as he opened both boxes and grabbed a napkin. Suddenly, for whatever reason, I smiled and decided to go along. After all, we had been working for hours and we needed some time to relax. I asked him about what he had planned to do today before knowing we had to work. Alex, who appeared to enjoy pizza very much, told me he might have gone out with some friends and drink beer or maybe just watch a movie at home.

 I told him that had been my plan: pizza and movies. Then he smiled and said something I thought I had heard wrong:

-       - Cool. We could do that after we’re done.

I didn’t answer right away but apparently he was too busy dipping the “pizza sticks” on a special sauce so no problem there. Again, he smiled and looked so much more noticeable to me than ever before.

-       - Why hadn’t we ever really talked?

To my surprise, it was him that had made the question, even if I had been thinking about it for that few minutes. Weirdly enough, I didn’t have the answer or at least not one that made any sense at all. I had no idea why I had never tried to bond with him, even if I had in fact done it with virtually anyone else on our office. It wasn’t like I was friends with everyone but I had tried to be nice to everyone and let them know they could count on me for all work-related stuff. So why did I never approached him?

-       - Do you hate or something?

-      - No. – I said with confidence. – It’s not that.

-       - Then what?

 He has stopped eating and was staring at me, almost without blinking. I didn’t have the answer to his question but, deep down, I knew why I hadn’t spoke to him at all. Maybe it was just because I liked him and I had shut down that possibility from day one. So I told him that out loud and asked him if he wanted more orange juice. He nodded so I went to the kitchen for more.

 We finished work two hours later and, at last moment, I asked him if we would stay for a movie. He said yes.

Tomorrow

In his dreams, he had a perfect life, every night going to bed with the one he loved and doing what he wanted in life. The thing was that dreams left out the problem of financial instability, which was the biggest problem every person had in their lives. Not the relationships with others or the achievement or some dream or yearning, but plain and simple money.

He knew that every time he woke up and realized how it was not all that beautiful and calm, as in his dreams. In the real world, he still lived with his parents, had no prospect of finding anyone soon to have a love life or anything similar and, of course, money was not there.

He was prepared, meaning he had a career and further studies to say "I know a couple of things". But that was it. And apparently no one really cared. Every so often he would enter web pages to find a job, sent his CV to every single production company or creative group he read of and then waited. He couldn't do much more than that.

He had even sent his CV to major fast-food chains and retail stores, as he wanted money at least to buy himself a coffee every so often or for being able to pay a movie ticket at least once a month. But nothing. He thought he may have been overqualified for some jobs and under qualified for others. 

Besides, one had to remember how the creative world works: creativity is the least important aspect, ironically. There are no companies that hire someone for being creative. They hire people, anywhere, if they see they can use them some how. That's it. And most creative people don't let themselves be caught by that elegant form of oppression, so here you go. People then have to do things themselves and that takes much more effort and time.

Time... Something that seems to pass so fast. The boy we talk about has his school yearbook. One day, he decided to browse it after years of gathering dust on a shelf. He saw pictures of people he hadn't seen for a long time and then he saw his face on some of them and, for a moment, he wasn't able to recognize himself. It looked as he had age so much, although he had aged the same as every other person on that yearbook.

He then thought of the many faces he stopped seeing and wasn't surprised. He let it happen knowingly, as he didn't have the best memories of school. He had the yearbook as a memento his parents had bought for him but he wasn't keen of reading things people had written to him back them, knowing now how the friendships had fractured and, eventually, ripped apart. He knew he was to blame too, but that was the past.

He went for a walk after that to try to clear his head. He was thinking of useless things, such as the school and what hadn't happened. It was pointless. He walked for eight miles until his legs hurt and decided to sit down in a small park, away from any loud streets or sidewalks filled with pedestrians coming and going.

There he started daydreaming once again, believing there was something better out there. He knew that. But the problem was that many others wanted exactly the same as him: live a life doing the things they liked or knew how to do.

He wasn't a brilliant writer or anything but it came easy to him so that's what he wanted to do. He had no idea of real drawing, he hated numbers as he was incapable of understanding them and sports were not really one of his interests. So he only had writing to keep going. If someone took that away from him, well, he didn't wanted to know what would happen.

The young man checked his pants and realized he had some money so he walked a bit more to a mall. He got a coffee and something to eat with it. As he did, he looked at the many faces around and wished he could hear all of their thoughts. Was everyone as worried and hopeless he sometimes felt? Or were they really happy with everything, even when bad things happened?

That was his real need, his hobby if you will: just thinking on what people did and thought. Human beings were just amazing in horrible and excellent ways. People were capable of amazing deeds and also of such horror. And besides that, they have a large array of feelings and not everyone experience them exactly the same. That was what fascinated him and made his days go by a little bit smoothly.

He wrote every single day, no matter if he was inspired or not. He thought that even in a bad day, he could be able to write something great and even if it wasn't, an awful piece of writing could be the base of something much bigger and better.

The 26 year old man went back home and took off his shoes. He wrote about the people he had seen that day and what he thought of them, what he thought they might be keeping secret or the worries they had every day. Some were shallow and not very interesting but others were just a planet of opportunities and wonder.

It was not every day, but sometimes his parents would interrupt those thinking moments with a question like "Are you still looking?" or "You should be doing something". Of course he understood their worries, he was worried too every single day. But it hurt a bit to think they thought he was careless and only wanted to be a bum or something.

They wanted him to keep studying but he was done with that. He didn't feel he had any more to learn or at least not anything that was been taught anywhere. He had investigated schools and courses all around but they were all about what he had already learned and seen and he knew that so why pay big money to study the same thing again?

Of course he had interests beside writing but they thought of them as hobbies or just things he liked. Cooking was relaxing to him and photography had been extremely important to him at one time, but he didn't see those things as life choices. It would be a joke, he thought, to study cooking as he knew he didn't have many qualities needed to be a proper cook.

Same went for photography, with which he had a relationship that was now on a standby. He had used it before to overcome problems he had and to make him believe his world could be wider than he thought. But that was the past and now he felt a bit more mature and took things as they were. Evading himself from life wasn't the answer.

As he laid down in bed for one more night of sleep, he remembered he had had problems with himself, his self-esteem to be exact. It wasn't like he was done with that but he them now under control as his views had changed a bit but, of course, a problem like that doesn't just disappear. To be realistic, it never does. You learn to live with it and, after having a couple of breakdowns, he realized he needed to change the way he saw some things or he would get worse in a short time.

He finally thought of the love thing. That was a rather annoying subject he liked to avoid. In that moment of his life, he had no need or place for love. maybe for his family and friends but no place for that one person that is supposed to make you feel special. He couldn't afford, even if he believed in actual love, to have that right now. It would be the worst timing and it could only lead to unnecessary pain and he wasn't a masochist so why look for something like that?

Of course, he thought his life might improve and then he would be more open to love, if it were to happen. His self-esteem problems and thoughts on the world didn't really give him much hope to find someone that like him and no one else. It sounded a bit like an utopia.

To him, it was funny too how people thought doing things every second made them better, more prepared or prone to better things. It just meant they were active. And there are many ways to be active. People tend to forget there is more than one way to do something, even love.

But then again, like they said on a movie, tomorrow will be another day and no one knows what the future holds for anyone. It's a box full of awful and great surprises and even if we sit down and do nothing, the world will keep moving forward.