You are a man now
You are alone now
You gotta get a job now
You have to have a game face now
You have to shoulder your responsibilities now

No more love for you
No more mercy for you
The fun is carefully limited

8 hours a day
8 hours of pain
8 hours you can’t get out of
8 hours of involuntary mind control
8 hours of shabby office desks
8 hours of pushing each other

You are a man
Feel bad for being a rapist by birth

You are an employee
Feel sorry about not measuring up

You are a colleague
Shut yourself off and smile

You are a consumer
Shut up and consume

You are a man
No woman for you

You are an employee
No business glory for you

You are a colleague
No support for you

You are a consumer
Overcharged and out of warranty

Your face is all excited and recluse to show your real self.
I ignore it.
You punch me again.
You laugh at what a good natured buddy I am.

Each punch of yours was felt
Like a ball of destruction battering down another floor.
Your destruction has reached me ground floor.

The angel says to stand up to the bully.
The teacher says to share your pain.

I look at your face.
You are not conscious
You are not responsible
You do not care
There is no love but for yourself

You are no good. Go away
You were weight and found to be unworthy
Just another fool of the millions rubbing past my life

You sit there like a big cuddle bear.
Your body is so big like a puddle of love.
Your smile is warm and kind.

I look at you
I melt
I yearn to touch your soul

Yet, I know
The moment I step to your door
The moment I say what I feel
The moment that I take your warm invitation
That moment you will holler and laugh at me
like the big klutz you are
steamrolling me
breaking my emotions like little twigs for a fire
for the fire that you keep inside of you
to avoid feeling the pain of your divorce

I will fall into the abyss of pain and sadness
I will have pain all around me
Inside a womb of black pain
My soul will be filled with pain
I can’t see you anymore

So, I stay at a distance, at safety.
I stay with the pain of yearning for love
I can manage that pain that black ball pumping in my chest.

I can look the other way
Most days until the seams become undone
Then all the black balls sowed inside of scars come up
I die and bleed to death

Another day or maybe two with dried blood on my hands and body, I get up again.

There is this place in my head. It’s a very special memory for the way the place felt. I rarely remember it, because the world these days doesn’t bring up similarities. The rough concrete floor of the bathroom in the pizza joint today, however did make me remember.

When I have been to the place, I was a teenager visiting my dead during spring break in Israel. The son of the friend of my dad took me to an ocean club. We went into a municipal bus. The light was unusually intense and bright for my eyes used to Germany. The bus was rather simple. The driver would leave the door open while driving to let the air flush into the place a nice draft. A German bus driver would never do such a thing. We started near the center of a small city called Chadera. As the bus went on, the buildings got poorer.

Eventually, near the end, we got out in an are with neglected land in between buildings and fallen down fences. We walked towards the beach through rubble of dust, dried hard ground, and dead plants. The beach was small in between two rocky hills. It wasn’t very pretty easier. It was during the day on a working day. We were by ourselves.

The beach had one concrete building. It was a two story tall storage hall with boats filling up the floor and smaller ocean crafts hanging on the walls. Everything was really basic, old and uneven concrete. In the back was a den with some old meddled couch and dinky chairs to sit down. A chart with knots reminded of weekend youth classes. My friend rumbled for things. Later he made me lunch on the stove top in the corner.

What I remember very clear is the rough concrete. The different shades that it had, the holes that it had, the lack of any refinement that it had. My eyes went looking on and along. It is so rare to be alone. Yet, there we were completely alone. All the grown ups were at work. All the tourists and kids were at the main beach.

We spent the day paddling around in the ocean. He was a lot better then me. He spent every day out in the ocean and eventually became a marine. I was new to things and totally appreciated all the things that he took me out to. Thinking back now, I feel jealous about, how he gave me so much and I didn’t really have much to offer but try to impress him with all the jokes that I could remember.

At the end of the day, we would go around the building and to the back. There were showers. There were two large rooms with uneven concrete floors. The shower heads were lined along the wall. An old glassy windy let light come in. It wouldn’t have needed to be glassy for privacy. It was dirty enough to serve that function. I was ashamed of taking my clothes of completely. He seemed to feel somewhat impatient about it, as he was used to showering there with all the boys.

Later an older girl came by and took a shower back there. I wouldn’t have minded running into her, seeing her naked, sharing the intimacy of personal hygiene. It felt like she would have been quiet okay with it.

- Stand in the elevator and watch the floor indicator lights slowly change from floor to floor. If only our office were on the 150th floor and there were no express elevator.
- Listen to the music of an empty conference call the whole day.
- Sit in a big meeting in the very last row, so nobody sees me, yet everyone still knows that I am in the meeting for the whole day.
- Go to a four hour lunch with the boss. The best excuse for not working and still billing.
- I love power outages, the longer the better.
- Repeat a fire drill over and over until the time is right and the day is over.
- Have reorgs with everyone panicking and nobody working.

Can you tell that I desperately need some time off?