You Don't Put No Fuckin' Fear in My Heart
Ron Burch
In the morning, your fucking cubicle is
there. It looks exactly the same as when you
left it last night. You pull out your chair,
draping your light jacket over a rolling file
cabinet. You fucking hate this. You can say it. You can admit this. You fucking hate it. And that same nagging question floods into your head: why am I doing this day after day? Why am I eating some other person's shit? Because, you think, it pays on a weekly basis. But you really know what this job does to you. Makes you want to slit your fucking wrists in the white-tiled bathroom. Makes you want to stick a broom handle down your throat. But you have paperwork to do. It must be important because you have to do it now. You could be having an aneurysm but that fucking paperwork has to get done right now. Fuck this, you think to yourself, fuck this but you process the paper. You move it on to the next connection. You use your pneumatic e-mail tube to send it on your paperless assembly line. And you look up at the clock, hoping it's closer to lunch than you really know it is. And there is more paperwork to be done. It floods in. What also bothers you: Your boss drives a nicer car than you. His house is nicer as well. Fuck him. You hate him as much as the job. But you have to pay the bills and you think today, today is the day I walk out. You say that to yourself before lunch when you believe you still have your world in your control. But then you know that at 6:00 that night, you will be tired and just want to get home. And you think tomorrow, I'll do it. But you know it's bullshit so just finish your paperwork and pack up your shit and, ready yourself, ready yourself for how many days and years it will be, but then your co-workers are watching a Youtube video, five of them gathered around a nearby cubicle, watching this young guy, probably in his 20s, thin as a wire, black crew cut, hanging nonchalantly from some metal piping high, high above the ground. He could be in the Midwest, he could be in Los Angeles. The video cuts to him, in his white boxer shorts, walking on more rounded metal high in the air. He doesn't look nervous. He accepts it. In one of the shots, he hangs by one hand, his thin white arm like a pole, and he looks at the structure that he is tenuously calmly hanging from, and then to the camera and mouths something, you watch closely how his lips move, and then the video fades out and one of your co-workers mentions that he thinks this kid is a fucking idiot for doing that and he ambles back to his cubicle as the others disperse. Later, you watch the video again, alone in your cubicle, and you back up the video over and over at the part where he says that thing to the camera, that thing that you believe you recognize, and you wish you had his guts, his balls, to take on the world as he does and you hope that maybe you do too so you don't have to see this fucking cubicle once more time in the morning light of a new day.
