Another

Sitting down in his favorite bar, dark, quiet, and only a few other patrons, the executioner ordered his usual.  He needed to get the smell out of his nose and clothes and the only way he had found to do that was by going to the dive where there was much smoking, hardly any talking, and years of human odors piled upon each other until the place took on a dank smell that would only ever be relieved by burning the place down.

Why did he continue moonlighting with this job?  Money, of course, there was good money in state-sanctioned murder, and he was just the person to relieve the state of it.  Well, he and two other men who never talked or acknowledged each other.  The sour, pungent smell of the bar was beginning to work its magic on him, and he noticed he could look at the other customers in the face again.  Bars always have distinctive smells to them depending on what they are used for.  The expensive, high-society ones didn’t have a bad smell to them; they were always pleasant, well-ventilated, and clean.  But you paid an arm and a leg for your watered-down drinks.  No, the cheap ones were the best at getting rid of other odors, supplanting them with their own mix of years of sweat, smoke, puke, and humans.      

“Another,” he ordered and the drink was served with the usual mix of apathy and curiosity.  The amber liquid seared his throat, fogged his sinus cavities with the vapor of cheap alcohol, and produced the requisite wincing that comes with trying to swallow something meant to be used as cleaning fluid.  The rotund bartender never asked him questions, but stood by in case he said anything other than a drink order.  He never did.  A quiet man by nature, it wasn’t in him on the best of days to chat.  He said what needed to be said and that was it.  Maybe that’s why his ex-wife…, well, what good was she anyway?

Impeccably dressed, he didn’t look the look of this bar.  It was the standard suit he wore to his second job, and he hated it.  It felt scratchy and cheap and he didn’t allow it to be in his closet.  He chafed at the collar and he reached up to loosen the tie and top button on his starched shirt.  The release of pressure was welcome, and he closed his eyes and smiled.  The suit was only kept in a box in the trunk of his car and it got cleaned before he needed to go to work, and he paid extra for the pressing.  It simply wouldn’t do to look shabby for the audience and the star. 

“Another,” and the drink magically appeared.  He wondered if the bartender could smell the smell on him, or if because he worked in a place that smelled of everything his olfactory senses were long since damaged beyond repair.  The executioner covertly sniffed the upper arm of his manicured suit coat.  He couldn’t be sure what he smelled; it was either the carbonized remains of the prisoner or dry cleaning fluid.  Did anyone around him know what he did for rent and alimony money?  He surreptitiously looked around and like he, everyone else had their heads down in their drinks, contemplating their own misery and haunted past deeds. 

After a while, the dimly-lit and hazy bar began to clear out and a few of the denizens shuffled toward the door.  It was getting late, but he had nothing to return to.  He had more family in this shack right now than he ever had when he was a member of polite society.  He had to get up later this morning to go to his respectable job, and he didn’t care at that particular moment.  That care would come in about four hours when that evil invention rang with the most annoying sound in the world.

Maybe he should quit this second job, but he dismissed the idea immediately because the money was so good.  The cheap alcohol was making him fuzzy headed and the bar began to be less hideous and the harsh edges began to soften.  It was warm, comforting, and he began to feel at ease.  Even the rank smell was beginning to lull him into contentment.  So what if he got rid of scum for a living?  They deserved it, didn’t they?  And, with the passage of time and alcohol, he couldn’t remember the prisoner’s name anymore.  He knew he had reached the point of the night where he could go home and sleep. 

“Another,” one more couldn’t hurt.  The warm liquid peeled the skin from his throat and he relished the feel of it.  No ice for him to cool the caustic nature of the invitingly amber liquid.  All he could smell now was cigarette and sweat and he knew, just knew, that the last remnants of what’s-his-name were gone from him.

This was a story I wrote for Eng 203 (creative writing).  I ran across it the other day while cleaning out files on my computer and thought I'd put it in my blog.  I've always wondered what the executioners do after an execution.  

  

Where's my game face?

I was watching the news the other night when the sports came on.  There was an interview with a sports player of some sort and rather than tuning out what he was saying, I stopped what I was doing to actually listen to what he was saying.  And, to my surprise, he spoke in nothing but cliches.  (Yes, I know there is supposed to be an accent over the e, but I can type faster without having to stop and put it in).  I can't remember all of the phrases, but here are a few:  "We have to score more points to win" "The other team wanted it more than we did" "We just have to put our heads down and move the ball" "We need to come out fighting and take charge" and, my favorite, "We need to put our game face on and play to win!".  There was not one iota of real answer in anything this young man said.  Now, I'm not sure if that is what is expected of athletes who lose and have to do interviews, but it seemed to me that his answers were trite and he was bored with the whole interview process.  And, what are the fans supposed to get out of this?  If I know these phrases inside and out, what does the serious sports fan think?  Do they get tired of hearing these same phrases every time a game is played?  I believe there are winning ones to, but they fail to come to me just now.  But, those aren't the ones that people care about.  Hey, their team has won, so who really listens to them?  As we go into "Big Game Sunday" this weekend, I am sure I'll have plenty of opportunity to hear all the football cliches there are in existence as I'm sure, even at this very minute, there is a pre-game show on some channel.  But what about the cliches?  Is it that difficult to answer questions without resorting to them?  And, is it just sports people that use them as conversation?

This afternoon, my coworker was talking to me and at one point of the conversation about her mother, she used an entire paragraph of cliches strung together that didn't even make sense.  She ended the conversation with "where the rubber meets the road".  Yes, I've heard this one before and I've often wonder what it actually means.  Unless you are a stunt driver or a speeding maniac, doesn't the rubber always meet the road?  I was so engrossed in thinking about her cliches that I completely missed what she was rambling on about and when she stopped talking I asked her if she knew that she had just completed an entire conversation using mostly cliches.  She looked stunned and said, "so?".  She then pointed out that not ALL of us can be English majors and I think I just got my first lesson in the dangers of letting people know your major.  So, I began to think about my speaking patterns because she wasn't talking anymore, and I was a bit grateful for that.  After 8 hours of listening to the same issue with her, I was ready for a change of topic.  But, I decided that I do use some cliches when speaking, but not in my writings for school.  Why?  Speaking and talking with people can be informal and why is it ok to use them there?  You will be judged if you use bad grammar in informal conversation so why not judged for trite sayings?  If a cliche is understandably forbidden in a paper, why do we allow them in our conversations?  I know why you don't put them in papers, but does every one know that?  I'm guessing there are many, many English teachers that have to correct these insidious phrases because the younglings think they are acceptable form in writing because they use it in conversation AND their favorite sports person uses them too!

I've decided that I'm going to make an effort to not use them in my speaking life as they are beginning to irritate me.  And when I hear them, I almost fixate on them and can't listen to the rest of the sentence.  I guess what stops me is that I end up over-thinking the cliche when I shouldn't.  Where the rubber meets the road.  Why is that significant?  As a commuter to both work and school, there's a lot of rubber meeting the road and all it does is cost me more money for new tires.

I had a very nice surprise occur this week.  In my school email, there was a letter from the Golden Key International Honour Society.  I almost deleted it as junk mail, but then read that it was from UWM.  Seems I've gotten some good grades and they are inviting me to join their Society.  I have never heard of this group before, but they gave me links to the websites and, after reading through both the local and the main site, I decided they were legit.  I'm very flattered, and surprised because I thought I had read that only full-time students get honor recognition, but apparently that's only for the Dean's List.  Part time students can also receive honors, so that was neat to find out.  But, now I feel like there's some kind of pressure on me to keep getting A's, but I'm not sure why this would make any difference.  That's my goal anyway, but it seems like as soon as someone recognizes that, it makes the pressure so much worse.  Maybe it's because I know that if no one is paying attention, I don't have to worry if I fail something.  I hate the fact that I keep thinking I'm going to fail when, in probability  I won't.  I know an A isn't guaranteed, but I'm pretty sure I can hit one of the other letters that isn't a D or an F.  So why do I keep thinking I'm going to fail?  I think I've proven that I can do this, and I'm beginning to think that even though I've repeated all but one class that I did so poorly in, and did very well in repeat, that I still failed my first year of college and I can't get over that. It doesn't matter that it was 27 years ago and no one other than myself cares or remembers, but it is still there.  I see it on my transcript and it strikes a chord so deep in me, that I still, to this day, cringe when I look at my course history.

As the new semester begins to pick up momentum, I am finally, finally recovering from my two month long illness that required two courses of antibiotics and two courses of prednisone.  I had a mish-mash of whopping cough, walking pneumonia, bronchitis, and just for kicks, a sinus infection.  I'm still dealing with the sinus infection and a little bit of lung congestion yet.  I still blame the germy kids at UWM who are not washing their hands and are coughing and sneezing all over the place.   I have never been ill for that long in my life.  I've had my share of colds, bronchitis, sinus infections, flu, strep, and most any other common contagion that plagues the Earth, but I've never been sick for two months straight.  And, with a continually evolving illness that just kept turning into something different.  And, for the first time, I truly felt old and worn out.  I am 45, and some would argue that is not old, but it is middle-aged and I was feeling every bit of it.  In my mind, I feel about 30ish, and I feel that I still have energy levels that a younger person would have.  How else do I pull off full time work, part time school, all the housework, all of the summer yard work (and with two summer classes), all the crap that goes with daily living (car maintenance, grocery shopping, errand running), endless studying, and do all of this on around five hours of sleep a night?  I'm not saying I'm some kind of "super" person, but I do believe that mind-set is important to one's attitude, especially when it comes to "mental age".  This illness started at the beginning of December, and fully manifested within two days after my finals when I stopped obsessing about them.  I knew I had a cough and I was really tired, but with the goal of finals in mind, I had something to concentrate on.  Once that was taken away, the illness took over and three trips to the doctor later I was on a "super" antibiotic because he couldn't believe the first one didn't take care of what was in my lungs.  This was a glimpse of what it must be like to be chronically ill, and I didn't care for it one bit.  As a member of the health care world, I would like to think we cure people, but honestly, it is a waiting game.  I knew I was in some serious issues when the first antibiotic didn't even touch my symptoms and pretty much just pissed off what was already there.  All I can hope for now, is to recover and hope those germy kids at UWM wash their hands more.  I know I will be.