I just came back from work, and have been standing for several minutes on my balcony, savouring the feeling of time passing unnoticed. In front of me, the river’s been flowing angrily on, driven by heavy winds.
Calm.
I spent the afternoon at my desk, working on something – a report, perhaps, or a minor contract. It hardly matters. Although I was sitting there, performing the tasks set in front of me, deriving as I always do a quiet satisfaction from chopping and reordering phrases, from putting this word just here, that one there, unlocking the meaning that had been waiting behind the individual characters, something was just not there. It wasn’t my mind – I’ve been pretty focused this afternoon. It was my sense of self – soul? - just absent, somehow. Which it had been since the social-endurance-test-celebratory-lunch.
We were supposed to be celebrating closing a deal a while back – post about that coming sometime - and as is customary the deal partners had arranged a team lunch, ostensibly to thank us all for our hard work. Actually I’m being unfair, they probably meant it: we’d turned up willing and cheerful over the weekend, had been nice to the bankers and clients, and generally made ourselves useful and available and Got Stuff Done. The problem was that after the flurry, people kept pulling out of the lunch. First, one of the partners flew back to his home office yesterday. Then another one headed off this morning. The mid-level associate had better things to do. The trainee had a disclosure exercise or something. So in the end it was down to one partner, one senior associate, and one me. Lucky me. Lucky them.
It’s not that the company was bad: they are both warm, charming and interesting people. I’m not, but I can smile, nod and listen well enough to fake a couple of the above moderately convincingly. It’s just that there’s three totally different levels, three entirely incompatible ways of looking at the world, trying to find something to talk about – all within the context of work. He is my boss. She is his boss. It’s like a dinner-party version of that Tarantino film where they’re all standing around holding guns at each other’s heads. No-one wants to make a false move, say the wrong thing, because we all need to end this meal with our professional working relationships intact. We’re three different ages. We’re three different people. The only threads of common interest are work (which is pretty tenuous since yes, we’ve got three different perspectives on that too) and the usual yuppie BS-generator stuff – click the button to make a sentence using one or more of the following elements: Restaurants, Shops, House Prices, Holidays, The Weather (optional, depending on the British presence round the table). Nothing that could possibly be contentious. Nothing remotely human. Things looked like they might improve when the partner ordered a bottle of wine – a very good one, as it happens – but we’re all too good at this; our masks barely slipped. Here or there you’d see a glimpse into something real – him telling an indiscreet joke, her remembering when she used to wait tables as a student – but then the sense of amour proprewould kick back in and the conversation would change topics. Have you worked on any interesting deals recently? Really? It would be great to work with you more. There’s this amazing little restaurant in LA. I got this ring in Singapore, do you like it?
There’s no fighting this kind of situation. No rebellion. No flippancy. No imperfection. Just the grinding monotony of safe, safe conversations you’ve had a dozen times before, that get staler each time. The waitress brings the dessert menus. Would you like anything? Just a coffee, she says. Just a coffee, he says. I look at him. I look at her. I look at the waitress. And I order a triple ice cream with chocolate sauce.
Live free or die!
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