Work 2

If you've been reading WalkyTalky for a while -- and let's face it, if you've made it this far into this entry you probably have, since new arrivals tend to be looking for something that they immediately realise they aren't going to find by reading blog postings -- you might have noticed that I have a rather complicated relationship with work. I'm not claiming this as a particularly distinctive characteristic. I've known workaholics and I've known committed idlers, but the majority of people are a swirling admixture of both. In different proportions, of course, but also at different levels of emulsification. In my case, it's pretty fucking blobby.

Work is, unquestionably, a curse. At some level it is always driven by the overseer's whip. It is both a product of necessity and a social construct. We work to live; we live to work.

Things were not always this way, but this is the way they are. Like the biological organs that fuckwit anti-evolutionists propose could never have developed by natural selection, work accreted its own scaffolding, and built itself, and then dismantled its supports to the point that it almost seems to have arrived by fiat. It is, in that sense, an Act of God. An Intelligent Design.

(I so hate those fuckers I can barely type... but that isn't the story for today.)

On the other hand, work gives life shape. Usually a pretty crappy shape, but a step up nonetheless from being without form and void. Come here. Do this. Go there. Do that. I have a ten o'clock meeting. A four o'clock seminar. I need that report by tomorrow. This has to be done yesterday. Sorry, I've got to take this call. Can I put you on hold?

I am not, exactly, unhappy with my current employment. It is stressful and time-consuming and difficult and frustrating and sometimes I feel like I want to drive a sharpened pencil through my throat right there in the open plan office, but there are also times when I am actually achieving things, however irrelevant those may be. The people are friendly and -- as I may have mentioned once or twice before -- the commute is unbeatable.

It's also like being on an alien planet.

For instance.

I am 37 years old and this is the first job I've ever had where I feel like a fucking closet case. I have been there for five months and, to the best of my knowledge, three people in the office know that I'm gay. I can't believe I can even put a number on it, let alone that it's that small.

One of those three asked me directly, at a drunken post-work pub outing (an unusual event). The dialogue went something like this:

As you might imagine, there was a lot more to the conversation than that, but not for public consumption. I didn't sleep with him. He's very attractive but he's a work colleague, which can only mean trouble, and also, as far as I know -- which admittedly isn't far -- has a girlfriend. This was in the midst of a lot of other work people, but the music was loud and we were vaguely separated, and I don't think anyone else heard. Certainly, word didn't spread.

This was brought back to me the other night when I went for a meal with some people from the office; six colleagues and me, including both of the others that I know know.

Socialising with workmates is a hit and miss affair and this was a hit and miss evening. We drank, but since we were drinking beer, which I loathe, I drank slowly and then not at all, and ended the night sober. We ate, which took an eternity, in a tasteful but completely deserted Indian restaurant off Brick Lane. I was pathetically hoping to get home in time to watch Desperate Housewives, and declared as much up front, but the whole thing wore on and on and sometimes there's no polite way to leave, so I didn't. (There's a repeat.)

Much of the evening was very pleasant. There was a lot of conversation, not all of it work-related. People were nice to me even when I didn't deserve it. No-one was malicious or offensive. No-one, in case you were wondering, was overtly homophobic. Fun was had.

But.

I gradually found myself feeling more and more alienated from these people. A creature from another world. We had lots of common ground and the idle banter flowed freely over it, but it became apparent to me that they didn't -- and don't -- have the faintest clue who I am.

It also became apparent to me that I don't think I want them to.

Travelling home late that night, in the freezing cold, I was really angry with some of them about things that I can't even describe. Completely unreasonable things. Shivering and despondent, unable to flag down a taxi on Commercial Street, raging, raging against the dying of the light. I suppose it all boiled down to: how fucking slow on the uptake can you be?

I mean, look at me:

Right.

So here we are.

My job is another world, and I seem to be actively trying to keep it apart from myself. Partly this is the nature of the company I work for -- certainly it's not the most cosy and social of environments -- but mostly I think it's just me. I like these people well enough, but I don't want to give them anything more. Work occupies so much of my life and so much of my time that in the end I just want say enough, already. Enough.

Validate me. Make me real. Pay me. Leave me the fuck alone.

Don't ask. Don't tell.

As I said: a complicated relationship.
Posted by matt at January 14, 2005 08:40 PM