Hey Man!

A short story about names and crime.

Hey man!

It’s a ritual, a cant, an invocation of the stunted, minds fried by dopamine, THC, take your pick, to addled to bother remembering another human being’s name. The signal call of the self-centered. Ahedonia.

Hey man . . . 

Picture this: you wake up and get dressed like every other day. Hair combed teeth brushed tie tightened. Is that a half Windsor or a Balthus? Who knows; it’s the one knot you learned when you were fourteen. You wolf down some granola and a half-cup of coffee, enjoying the burning esophageal flare of haste. Makes you feel like you’re alive. You trip on some detritus strewn about the floor, say goodbye to the wife and kids, and off you go. Driving now driving after driving the kids hither and tither after then pass out, wake up, and do it again. Maybe you should put a meter in your car and wear one of those old-school cabbie hats like you used to see in movies. Be a hack! You used to like movies. You used to like stuff. Now, you forget where you end and your obligations begin. Who are you? Where did you come from? Didn’t you used to have ideas? Oh, you still create things, you produce, but it’s ephemera, nonsense, digital paperwork shuffling back and forth like a dying man between doctors’ visits, “This test will really get to the heart of what’s wrong with the data, and maybe insurance will even cover it.” Don’t use up all my benis; kindly save some for my funeral expenses. We grow up, go to good schools, get a good job, incur tremendous debt so we can raise kids to go to good schools and get good jobs and incur tremendous debt so they can raise their kids to go to good schools and get good jobs and incur tremendous debt. But that’s just growing up, right? Where was I?

You pull into the office parking lot after 45 minutes to one hour of stop and go traffic, the six-month construction project on your route entering year three. You’re on time, though, you factored that in, you’re clever like that. In the building, up the stairs (no elevator for you; gotta fight the battle of the bulge, gotta get those steps in. Remember when you didn’t have to schedule physical activity because you actually used to move?) And then there he is. Notan angry supervisor or a pissed-off HR lady there to talk to you about something you poasted last week. No, it’s the smiling, friendly dude from accounting you you’ve seen every fuckin’ day for six years but you cannot for the life of you remember his name, though he remembers yours. 

Hey man.

That’s it. That’s the tweet. Book it post it see you later bye. 

Sitting in a meeting next. Words drone on and on. There’s a golf game with the boss this weekend. It’ll be a change of pace and a good opportunity but it represents time away from your family. It’s good to get away from time to time, but not like this. Not with work. No matter what they say, your office is not your “family.” How degrading to the very idea of kinship. The boss has the ageless face of every successful near-retirement-aged sociopath. Smooth cheeks. Full head of hair artfully graying. Turkish smile. What an easy life despite the long hours at the office. No premature balding or bad posture for him. The Dr. Spock generation. Millions of parents were told to let their children do whatever they wanted and never interfere or say no because it might negatively affect their self-esteem. Didn’t matter anyway because they could fart and land a great, high-paying gig while the poors got blown up in foreign jungles. How good it would feel to swing your driver right at that face and send it hurtling some three-hundred yards down the fairway. A little payback, a little karma, man. 

Hey man. 

You never liked golf anyway. 

Picture this: As you sit there, not catching a single word, your mind wanders to YouTube clips of men from the same era as your boss’s, experimenters, psychonauts. There was one in particular with these wild blue eyes that are not of this earth. Even his voice is from a bygone day. Every era had its own voices. Your generation’s was an adenoidal whine, but there was at least some regional favor. The younger are occasionally lispy with a Californian Canadian cadence. This could be anywhere, man (Hey man!). And that’s the boys. The girls are huskier, deeper, with a vocal fry that trails on into the sunset. You miss the way your grandfather’s generation sounded. They sounded like men. Even your parents’ did, but instead of men who’d seen some shit, it was men who had it all and didn’t even feel bad that they didn’t earn it. What with microplastics and estrogenic chemicals everywhere, even your poop, sperm counts are down, fertility is down, hell even penis size is down. You are literally half the man your grandfather was. Your kids don’t eat the bad stuff, only organic locally grown hormone free, which costs more, but you buy it anyway. You and your wife make sure they avoid plastics and, when they can't, you make sure it’s BPA-free. Somewhere in the back of your head, though, you worry your little daughters will start puberty at age ten and go trans to avoid the stares of middle-aged creepers. You never thought the “male gaze” was a real thing until you had girls. 

Anyway, this acid head. Researchers (read: intelligence agencies) realized that a mere one dose of lysergic acid diethylamide could change someone’s personality irrevocably. So this one guy, former military, said that after dropping acid once, once, he knew that the straight life wasn’t for him. He’d see these pinheads with their crew cuts and their dorky suits walking to their office jobs and just laugh. Chasing money. Your worth as a man is based on how much you contribute to the line going up. Thank God, thank sweet Jesus Christ Himself, your wife doesn’t think like that. 

So this guy, he got into nature. Watching the surf. Contemplating the petals of a flower. He didn’t want to fight and die against international communism for the sake of international capitalism, to give his life to see who could despoil God’s creation first. The measure of a man can be determined through what he thinks about nature. By that token, many of the hippies were the godliest who ever lived. But what do you do for a living, then? Parasitize off the labor of those who work? There’s no easy answer, no easy way out. But what strikes you is that you’ve felt the same way all your life and you’ve never even been in the same room as a tab of LSD, let alone ingested one yourself. You were a natural born acid head, altered at birth, without even the fun of an actual trip. 

You feel like this guy stumbled on to something, but you’re too straight to imbibe anything mind-altering. This is a good thing! You’ve read too many of your favorite rock stars totally lose it, man, after dropping acid, or getting hooked on darker, more sinister concoctions. It never seemed worth the trouble. Imagine tripping balls while having young children to deal with. Learning from other people’s mistakes is a sign of maturity. Yet somehow you dove into the world of fulfillment-via-consumerism even though you had examples to see of what not to do.  You knew better. It would’ve been best for all to renounce all earthly possessions, don a hair shirt, and seek God in the desert. 

The day of the golf game comes. Imagine: playing golf with your boss! He loves the game, you can’t stand it. You only picked it up because your wife, bless her, recommended it as a way to get opportunities just like this. So you spent too much on a set of clubs and started hitting the links (what a dumb term), playing with men from the office for whom even walking from hole to hole is too physically demanding. What separates you from these dudes isn’t only the paycheck, but the size of your paunch. Vaguely, you remember an article in the Economist or some shit you pretend to like about how obesity has gone from a signifier of wealth and status to déclassé and back to being the sine qua non of those who’ve made it (magazines like that also add pretentious terms like déclassé and sine qua non to your vocabulary; the old punk-rock show attending you would’ve mercilessly beaten current you).

Silly man you are, you keep trim. Anyway, there’s a potential upper management spot you’re a candidate for. Golf with the boss can only mean two things. And you find out which one it was in the 17th hole. 

Picture this: you’re alone. The boss, whom you notice doesn’t have a paunch either, bends down, places his ball on the tee. His ass points towards you, that thing you kiss metaphorically every goddamn day. Maybe he’ll make you kiss it for real in order to get promoted? Anything for a buck, right? We’re all merchants, all brands, the attitude drilled into you since before birth. God wants you to be rich, right? The great stockbroker in the sky. Heavenly green eyeshades, maybe those little bands around His divine sleeves. Just as the Founders intended. You know, though, you’d do it. College ain’t cheap.

“Well, chief, here we are.” He’s called you some combination of “chief” and “champ” all day. It’s his thing, his gimmick, his differentiator. You’re just like the boss, you realize, a good sign. 

“Yes sir,” you reply. 

“You know, you’ve got a good putting game.” He shakes his ass as he prepares to drive. “Drives could use a little work. We’ll work on that.”

“Yes sir.”

“I’m glad you came out with me, champ. There are some things it’s better to discuss face-to-face.”

Or face-to-ass, you think sardonically. “Yes sir.” But this is it. The moment of truth. You will return home with your shield, or on it. If only. 

“Fact is, you’re doing good work. That doesn’t go unnoticed.” But he still doesn’t look at you when he speaks. Whack goes the ball. “What do you think?”

“You cut that one a bit to the left,” you say nervously. 

“So I did. Like I said, I’m glad you came out today. I wish I had good news, but it’s not gonna happen, chief. What we’re looking for is someone a bit different. A bit younger. A bit, you know. Reflective. Don’t take that as a knock on you, all right, champ?”

It’s a cool, clear day with a moderate breeze from the southwest, but you sweat in all the wrong places. Was it your comment about his drive? You’re on autopilot now, mouth moving on instinct. “Is there anything I can do to change that? To be what you are looking for?”

“Tut tut.” That’s how the boss’s laugh actually sounds, like some monocle-wearing railroad magnate. “Not unless you can change the circumstances of your birth. No hard feelings, champ. I don’t make the rules. I just have to execute them. You’re up, chief.”

It hits you then: calling you “champ” and “chief” isn’t the boss being quirky or brotherly or avuncular (another pretentious Economist word). He just doesn’t know your name. It shouldn’t bother you so much, given your own poor memory for nomenclature, but he’s the guy in charge. He’s the boss! Isn’t a general supposed to know all of his men before sending them off to what could be their doom? “Sorry you got your legs blown off, champ. I know you’re not gonna make it through, but let me know where to send the flag, all right, chief?”

Hey man.

You weren’t imagining swinging your club at your boss’s head in lieu of the ball. You actually did that. And it didn’t sail through the sky en route to the 17th hole. It stayed attached to the old boy’s neck, but he crumpled like he’d been shot, the new dent in his head soon to be the object of intense police scrutiny. You stand there amidst the chirping birds and pleasant breeze sort of numb, escape plans already being formulated in that great big overeducated brain of yours. Excuses come and go. Extreme duress. Financial hardship. This motherfucker knew your middle daughter had kidney troubles since birth and you needed this pay raise for the transplant. Otherwise, you’d have to start selling off everything you own, which you would totally do, but this dead asshole could’ve just given you the job. Did all the ass you’ve kissed over the years not mean anything? Does not learning you were passed over due to your immutable characters not constitute multiple legal violations, enough to make a man see red?

Doesn’t matter now. Everyone knows you were here with him. You’ve got to run. 

Oh wait, this whole time it wasn’t you doing these things. It was me. Hey man!

Now I’m standing outside of a bank downtown, finger in coat pocket, this is a stickup. It’s a child’s cartoon idea of how robbing a bank goes, but most of what I know, despite my education, comes from TV. The benefits of the great journey up the corporate ladder included. Moving pictures are our church. Ladder of Divine Ascent? More like the Ladder of Divine Ass-Scent. There’s always one on the rung above you. The medium is the message. 

Here’s the plan: life is over and daddy is a murderer now. Maybe I can go out in a blaze of glory, the only glory in my life, and get let the family reap the life-insurance windfall. Death by cop. It’ll be nice to give them a target they won’t get in trouble for pumping full of lead. All lives matter except for mine. What was it all for? I can’t say, but I know it was supposed to be better than mere existence. Thanks for listening, man. Look, the signal says I can cross the street now. No jaywalking for me, I’m a rule-follower until the end. Almost. 

I walk into the bank. The teller looks up. It’s a she, and she has a name tag, but that doesn’t matter. We make eye contact. I smile and speak: “Hey man.”

- Alexander

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Thank you for reading yet another bizarre short story. I appreciate any comments and feedback. If you like, please share using one of the buttons below. I write normal books, which you can find here. Also kindly consider buying me a coffee here. I’m down to one cup every other day or so from a pot—a literal entire pot—on a daily basis. Every little bit helps in keeping this whole thing going. Thank you and I hope you derive a small modicum of enjoyment from reading my stuff. God bless.