VENTING IN THE WEE HOURS

It's about 1:20 AM on this Friday morning and I can't sleep. The past couple of months have seen quite a few changes for Yours Truly and few of them have been for the better, a fact that's been nagging at me nearly every waking hour.

I've been working at the design sweatshop since early May, and while I'm at least employed I've moved past the point where I merely dislike the gig and can now flat out state that I fucking hate my job. The pay is abysmal, the hours drag by and are filled with inane tasks, and the people on the staff whom I actually like can be counted on one hand. The atmosphere at the place is toxic in both a literal and metaphorical sense; the air, depending on which section one enters, is filled with minute particles of sheetrock and who the fuck knows what else that's been kicked up by a seemingly endless renovation that's carried on since shortly after I got there and appears to have no coherent planning behind it, while the entire staff toils away on thankless, mindless projects, each person being completely miserable in their own way, something I know as fact since I've been told so to my face. Adding to this is the fact that a large number of the staff are snotty twenty-somethings who are a bunch of phony, condescending assholes whom I wouldn't piss on if they were ablaze. Cliques and petty power struggles are the order of the day, and I'm frankly fed up with the lot of it. And don't get me started on the company selling out to a corporate interest, a bunch of personality-void pod people whom I seriously doubt bring anything to the table and will most likely kill what little artistic feel the place possesses. Plus, the new owner's hair contains so much product it looks like a flock of pigeons took a massive group shit on his ill-advised Prince Valiant 'do.

Those of you who read this blog regularly have seen the pathetic joke that passes as my work station, and once the construction finally ends I doubt things will improve by much. My new area has been described to me and I don't like what I'm hearing, but as I don't intend to stay with the company for any more than a year I guess it really doesn't matter. I began looking for another job about two weeks into my current gig, but as of yesterday I stepped up the search another few notches. Wish me luck.

Aside from my job completely sucking ass I'm consumed with thoughts of just how badly my non-work existence is in need of a boost. Nearly all of my friends fled NYC for parts north, and the few friends I have left in the area are seldom available to do anything, or have apartments with pets that set off my allergies so I can never visit them.

I recently got the brush-off from a friend of over twenty years, someone who was occasionally more than a friend, and having had about a month to reflect on just how she ended our relationship I have to say that I'm deeply insulted, the words of her eleventh hour email pretty much amounting to how my attempts at maintaining a friendship with her weren't worth her time or effort (if she reads this and writes me to rebut that, I still have the email in question; I'll probably never read it again, but I'm keeping it just in case). She's pretty much chosen to cut herself off from the rest of the world, and I find that a sad, pathetic waste of a person who has a lot to offer. She's attractive, smart, and, when she lets herself be, a lot of fun, but that's all moot. Despite having known her for twenty-four years, I have to accept that she doesn't even want to be bothered with me as a casual friend, so I've deleted her contact info from my email address book and removed her from my rolodex.

The one woman I trust and treasure more than any other is on the other side of the Atlantic and I won't be seeing her again for the foreseeable future, thanks to work schedules, the logistics of international travel, and family obligations when she's in town with extremely limited time. We're both classic neurotics, but I can honestly say that we understand each other like no one else does in each other's lives, and while we don't neccessarily work as a couple I do rely on her a great deal for emotional support. No one else on the planet gets me like she does, and I miss her terribly each day.

Another close friend recently found herself single again after a nearly ten year relationship and is now on the market, and I find myself having conflicted thoughts about that. She smart, curvy, very attractive and a hell of a lot of fun, and despite a purely platonic relationship during the time we've been friends I would be a flat out liar if I said I never thought of getting with her. She a major fox in every way and I would have to be a corpse not to respond to that, but I have doubts about whether I should take a stab at asking her out. She lives in another state but is in NYC often enough, so should I risk it? When she told me her long term relationship was definitely over I foolishly mentioned that I thought of her like a sister, preemptively sabotaging a potential fling since I greatly value her presence in my life and don't want to fuck things up, but she's been in the forefront of my desires for quite some time. Why can't I just be a stereotypical male and care nothing for her feelings, enjoying her sexually and not giving a damn if things go bad? Sometimes I think I'm the dumbest motherfucker ever to draw breath when it comes to the women in my life...

My ongoing lonliness has been hitting me very hard lately, and at the moment I find no prospects for romance on the horizon. But perhaps that's for the best at the moment because I've been in such a blue state, and that's a drag to be subjected to. All of the things that have been getting me down have weighed upon me to the point of me getting home after another day wasted at the design gulag and going to bed as early as 9:30 PM and attempting to sleep, sometimes succumbing immediately and sleeping for as long as ten solid hours, sometimes lying awake in contemplation of my lack of a mate and how at the age of forty-two my life and career seem to have amounted to a squirt of rat's piss.

Tonight is one of those sleepless evenings, and I just need to vent. I'll be okay eventually, but for right now it sucks to be Bunche.

Signing off at 2:34 AM. Still not remotely sleepy, maybe I'll watch a movie.