I'm thinking about influence and power. Things I shouldn't be thinking about in between answering phones and jotting notes at my desk in the newsroom. I don't know why such thoughts have crept into my head, though I'm pretty sure it has something to do with the sign I'm looking at over in the next cubicle.
It's Larry's sign. He makes a point of keeping it up only at certain times of the day, and for good reason.
DO NOT FEED THE ASSHOLE.
That's all the sign says. He's never been caught with it up, the lucky bastard. His job would be on the line if The Asshole ever saw it.
The Asshole in this case is a mutant. I'm not sure of its history, but at precisely four p.m. each and every weekday afternoon The Asshole arises from his lair near the boardroom. He tromps out to check on how the stories are coming for the next day's paper.
It is five to four. Larry takes the sign down in his cubicle to my right, hides it in his drawer.
The Asshole will be out any minute now and ... oh look, he's out. That's strange. He never comes out this early unless something big is up. And he's heading over this way. I wonder ... ?
Plop!
The Asshole has just walked up alongside the low cubicle wall, and thrown down a stack of papers on my desk. He's wearing his white shirt, conservative blue tie and gray business pants. I notice this because I don't want to watch what he does next; I know what's going to happen. I have seen this all too much before. This time, though, it's happening to me.
Maybe I should say something about The Asshole. He's not like the employees at all, since we all have mouths and faces where they rightly should be. Instead, he's what some of us like to call, well, backward.
Like I said a moment ago, I'm not sure why or how this happened, but The Asshole has an anus where his face should be. And a huge anus it is – a protruding pink hole where his eyes, nose and lips were. Conversely, his face is on his butt in such a way that it look like a tumorous boil has grown there.
It would be comedic, except for the fact that The Asshole is, well, an asshole. Formally, he's known as the news editor.
Anyhow, if you really want to know what he's doing to the sheet of papers he just dropped on my desk, he's now defecating on them. This is apparently legal, now that all the country's labor laws have been struck down as unconstitutional. Thing is, it just makes an awful mess that I'll have to clean up later. And I don't think I have to go into much detail here about the putrid stench. We humans are lucky in that we have the gift of imagination.
The Asshole doesn't take very long to do what he does. For someone ...
Excuse me.
.... something that's very anally retentive, he sure does have a funny way of showing it. That's a blessed relief in most ways. The problem is, he takes a lot longer to do what he does next. Most of the employees call this fucking you up the ass.
Figuratively, of course. Thank God for small miracles.
I watch as The Asshole pulls out a small paper napkin from the pocket of his pants, and wipes his anus with it. Then he gently wipes his forehead, getting small gobs of feces over the mop of white hair that's there.
He turns around to face me, which, under normal circumstances, would be mooning. As he reveals the part in his pants, ripping it open with his hands, I know automatically he's in a really crappy mood. His face is fuming with an angry shade of red. All the while, his anus back up at face level is sputtering out a few loose farts, which really doesn't do much for the air in the newsroom, already stifling hot from a particularly humid spell this summer.
I am acutely aware that all eyes in the newsroom are on me, except Larry. He's whistling silently to himself, banging out a story to deadline.
I feel the slight tingle of fear creep up my spine.
"This story that ran today was complete and utter shit," yells The Asshole in his deep-throated voice. He (maybe I should say it?) is trying to point at me, except his fingers are splayed in the opposite direction.
"It was so dry it felt like I was rubbing my ass with sandpaper," he continues. This elicits a few titters of laughter from within the newsroom.
"Silence!" he turns around and yells, waving his hands around and pushing a few more farts out of his ass in the process. "This is a newsroom, not a freak show! Get on with your work!"
Of course, nobody does. Well, except Larry. That's predictable.
"You sir, will be fired unless I see some much better work from you," says The Asshole, turning to me again. "Nobody buys a goddamn newspaper to read stories about some music star coming to town! You should be covering the government beat just like Larry right beside you. Now there's where the stories are."
He farts to emphasize this, then The Asshole turns to face (well, as best he can) the newsroom.
"Do you hear that?" he cries. "I want more stories about bureaucrats, business, the stock market! This is what I say is news! What is wrong with you people? Get out and get me the goddamn news or I'll fire the whole crew of you!"
With that, he hunches over and starts sulking back towards his lair – a trail of exhaust that smells like leftover pepperoni pizza as he walks by. I breathe a sigh of relief.
It takes only a moment for the other reporters and editors to shift back into high gear. I'm left to wonder what am I to do with the turds, which are strangely watery, like gravy, on my desk.
Larry just looks over at me, then to the shit pile, and back to me.
"Green," he says, fanning his nose. "That's different."
I am now walking on the outside balcony, reveling in our allotted 15-minute lunch break one day later. I don't care about the humidity, which is what’s driving most people to eat indoors. I just don't want to look at The Asshole.
Today he's in the cafeteria eating dollar fries at a special table much lower than any of the others in the cafe. I don't think he likes to eat here, but I think he has certain contractual obligations to bond with his employees given his physical mutation. I really wish the old labor laws would come back, if it would keep him from eating in the café.
Watching him eat is a rather grotesque sight because he really can't use his hands to properly guide the finger food into his mouth. So the little face where his ass should be is smeared with ketchup, vinegar and pieces of fries as he chows down. He takes a swig of cola, most of which dribbles out of his mouth, and tries to muffle a belch with his free hand. His anus tweets out a fart instead.
He sits alone in a far corner of the cafe. I think that's a given.
Someone usually gets hired to help The Asshole eat, which causes us overworked reporters to bitch and moan every time management says they can't afford another scribe. Not surprisingly, The Asshole always treats his help like shit, so they wind up leaving. This is why I think Larry keeps that sign of his up; it's a reminder that feeding The Asshole only makes him angry. He doesn't like to be helped, and doesn't like to be told that he can't, or shouldn't, do something. He also doesn't like his weaknesses exposed. He's quite a selfish little asshole.
I notice my good friend Bob on the balcony and pull up beside him. Bob's on copy desk, but is also forced to write a rather useless column about color coordination. Needless to say, Bob hates his column. He says it's just an excuse to run a picture of a half-naked woman redecorating her home. You know what? I think that he's right. We don't know for sure, but we think The Asshole is behind all of this.
Bob is 46, and is a recent divorcee. His wife was another mutant who had a vagina where her face should be. She left him for a complete asshole, huge surprise.
Anyway, Bob understands what I’m going through at least. He’s a nice guy all around, but I think management worries about him stirring up the shit in the newsroom, so they keep him in a stupid, relatively useless, column-writing job.
"Hey, Mort, is it true that you got shit the other day?"
"Yeah," I say, pulling up a seat. "It's still on my desk if you want to look at it."
"I'm trying to eat here," he says sarcastically, munching on his leafy green garden salad.
I bite my tongue. The shit is still on my desk, and a few staffers are starting to complain about the stench, but I decide that Bob doesn't really want to hear about it. Given how the grapevine works around here, I wouldn't be surprised if he already knows.
I sit with Bob and let him eat in silence for a few minutes, until I hear voices rising in the cafe. I turn my head to quickly glance there, and I see The Asshole having some kind of argument with a woman wearing business attire. He's not facing her; in fact, he's shitting watery poop all over her. She's bawling, and I keep hearing The Asshole repeat one word over and over as he harangues her in the cafe.
"It’s all about circulation!" he says. “Remember that!”
I think fleetingly to myself that, yes, he does need to take a walk for his blood circulation. Maybe he would be less angry. Then it dawns on me: The Asshole is talking about circulation of another kind. You know, newspaper circulation, which, incidentally, has been going through the floor since the Asshole took over..
"C'mon," Bob says, motioning to get up. "Let's take our lunch down into the newsroom. Break's almost done anyway."
We avoid the cafeteria on the way back, choosing to take the outer stairs down to the first floor building entrance.
"I wonder what caused him to become such an asshole," I whisper on my way down.
"I'm sure it was a slow and gradual process," is all Bob says.
I've decided I'm going to kill The Asshole.
Talk around the newsroom is about the lady from the circulation department. She's in hospital after trying to hang herself late yesterday. The rumor is that she and The Asshole were reaching for the same ketchup bottle at the cafe's condiments table, and this infuriated The Asshole. Nobody is allowed to one-up The Asshole, even when it comes to ketchup bottles.
There’s some good news about The Asshole though. Some people are saying that he's suffering from some sort of digestive disorder, which might account for the pile of green shit sitting on my desk.
With that in mind, I went out and bought myself a cyanide pill from the drugstore this morning.
You have to love a country with legalized euthanasia. Even if it treats workers like shit.
As Larry's metronome-like typing quickens beside me, Molly wanders over. Molly is the assignment editor, a pretty powerful woman in the newsroom who has, on occasion, cozied up to The Asshole.
"Mort, when are you going to clean up after yourself?" she says angrily. "You're making the newsroom look like ... you know ... his lair."
"I like having shit on my desk," I say. "It makes me feel like an individual."
Molly just looks at me. I hold my hands in my lap. I expect her to tell me I'm fucked. In much more polite terms, of course.
"Sometimes I really worry about you," she sighs, swatting a fruit fly above my desk. "And you want to know something? You're attracting flies. You're going to have a revolt on your hands if you don't clean that up. And I just might be one leading it."
She walks off and I get to work on the exciting story about the rivet manufacturer that the business editor has assigned me. Courtesy of The Asshole, I figure.
"Well, I guess I'm going to get up and find out who's hoarding all those ketchup bottles from the café," Larry says after a moment as he leaves his chair, adding a fake cough as if his getting up is a big production number. "Might make a good story."
I feel glad when he leaves. All the more time to work on my riveting article.
It isn't long before a fly lands on my desk, or more specifically, on the shit pile on my desk. I alternate between watching the fly dine on a fine log of crap and writing my story.
I am mentally drawing parallels between the two.
***
Newsroom folklore says The Asshole likes his coffee black. So this is why I buy one from the cafeteria a few minutes later. I place the cyanide capsule inside and watch it dissolve.
With a quick breath, I walk into The Asshole's lair. I don’t do this out of fear – though I am very, very afraid – but because the air is so bad in there.
I am surprised to see Larry inside The Asshole's lair. He normally goes to the bathroom to brush his thick, black, wavy hair three times a day. But when I see what Larry is doing on the couch behind The Asshole's desk, my heart nearly stops.
Larry's pants are partially down. His dick is in The Asshole’s anus.
I nearly drop the coffee.
Neither of the two notices me at first, even though they're both facing me. (In The Asshole's case, again, that's figuratively speaking.) Larry is sprawled out on The Asshole's couch, locked in some sort of mental power struggle with The Asshole. The former has his eyes shut, and is rubbing his hands over The Asshole's thick mane of white hair. The Asshole lies face down on the couch.
I think to myself, is this why The Asshole has never shit on Larry?
Larry opens his eyes and notices me. His look is one that combines shock, surprise and perhaps a bit of pain.
"Oh, crap," he says.
The rest all happens in a flash.
He quickly withdraws, zips up, and fumbles his way over the desk. He bolts for the open door, which I have partially blocked, and squeezes past me. As he does, he whispers in my ear, "Word of this to no one, understand?"
He pushes past me and is absorbed back into the open newsroom.
I look at The Asshole and see that he's up and about, feeling around the office like a blind man. He's moving his lips like a confused sphincter muscle, one that doesn't know if it should open or close. No sound is coming out, except for the slight wheeze of air. He's in shock. I can read it all in his open brown eye, bulging right out of the place his ass should be.
He calls Larry's name. I don't answer.
He finally looks my way, and wheels around to point an accusatory finger at me. He says one word in such a bitter, vile, hateful tone that it nearly bowls me over.
"YOU!"
I gently backhand the door to The Asshole's lair with my free hand as he turns around.
"DON'T YOU KNOW HOW TO KNOCK?" he cries, realizing that he's been caught with his figurative pants down.
The door closes. I try to remain in control. My hand is shaking gently, and my heart is pounding deep within my chest.
"Sorry, sir," I warble. "It's ..."
"DON'T YOU EVER DO THAT AGAIN!" yells The Asshole, cutting me off. He face is a deep shade of embarrassed red (now there's a color for Bob's column) and I notice beads of sweat starting to trickle off the lined brow of his wrinkled, aged face. He reaches for his handkerchief in his pocket and clumsily wipes up his forehead. He then dabs his eyes, and blows a little snot from his craggy nose. Then, almost as an afterthought, he wipes his anus.
I try not to retch.
He neatly folds the stained handkerchief in his pocket, and, with calm emissions of air from both ends of his digestive tract, looks at me with a stern frown. It is supposed to be a frown of anger, one that is supposed to command a great deal of respect from me. Instead, it reads like a look of fear. Perhaps even horror.
I know something he doesn't want other people to know. I’ve gained the upper hand.
"Listen, Mr. McManus, no word of what just happened to anyone," I said. "I promise. In fact, I brought you a coffee as an offer of peace. An apology for that other story."
I must have said this genuinely enough, because I could smell the relaxation emanate from The Asshole.
He looks at me sternly, and says quite normally, "No word?"
"No word.”
"Good," he sighs, leaning over his small desk. His hands clasp behind him.
"I know something about you," he adds, a smirk lighting his face. "I'm not sure it's something you'd want spread around the newsroom."
My feelings of euphoria slowly fade away as the Asshole begins to play with a stack of six ketchup bottles neatly lined up on his desk. Clearing the image of dead birds away from my mind's slate, I can't help myself from thinking the bottles are stocked with employees' blood.
"I'm sure you know what I'm talking about," he says. "And, you know, I think Larry might be interested in finding out. After all, he sits right next door to you."
The Asshole smiles a shit-eating grin. A message is implied. Treat Larry well or I'll flame-broil you over an open skillet and devour you.
I try to remind myself of the coffee, my purpose here. But then we’re interrupted by a phone call. One of the other reporters seems to be having trouble out in the field. A mother has watched her five-year-old son get crushed under the wheels of a school bus.
"Did she describe it well enough?" he asks the mystery reporter. "Did you squeeze all details out of her? That's the stuff I care about. That sells."
I nervously mouth We'll talk later, and leave the coffee on his desk.
Before I exit, I pause to take a cursory look around The Asshole's lair to keep from bolting out the door, which would tell The Asshole that I'm now deathly afraid of him. I make a mental note to myself about how the cyan walls clash with the random brown stains upon it.
"How much blood did the photographer get in the picture?" asks The Asshole.
There are various pages of newsprint hanging off the walls, encased in glass. Most of the pages aren't laminated, so they're yellowing.
Yellow journalism, I think. What a waste.
"Just make sure the photographer gets back in time if he thinks it's going to be hard to develop," says The Asshole, his voice rising a notch. "This is front page ... Ethics? Here's ethics for you: maybe we can get more of these accidents to happen if more people know about it. And it'll be good for our circulation. That's ethics."
To me, the one thing of any substance here is the postcard-sized, faded black-and-white photograph in a frame beside the door. In the picture, the much younger Asshole is wearing a pinstripe suit. He actually looks normal; he has his face in its right place. A beautiful man, he was, despite the craggy nose.
Was it indeed a slow and gradual process?
I leave the room afraid. I think it wasn't.
When I get back, Larry has the sign hanging on his cubicle wall. In handwritten scrawl, just above DO NOT FEED THE ASSHOLE is You can fuck with him, but ...
The shit pile is also gone. Maybe Molly has removed it? Or maybe the flies have disposed of it? As I finish up my story, I imagine thousands of flies ripping open a hole in space and time, shoving the shit through the open fissure, never to be seen from again.
I wish events in life could be kind of like that.
Bob and I are at a small casino. I don't know why – maybe it has something to do with the events of this afternoon? – but I have a sudden yen for watching people play games of chance.
We're having copious amounts of alcohol and hot wings at the casino's uncrowded bar after work, right in the center of this gilded palace of sin. There are neon signs above each game. Signs that tell you what you get by stepping right up here and putting your money down. Signs that remind me of an editorially slanted newspaper headline. One promises fortune, the other an enriched understanding of the world.
I determine there are few winners at casinos. And at news stands.
A young woman in a very revealing black skirt is serving us. Our martinis are called Existential Hell, which aren't going down well either on this hot, muggy night. Lots of red peppers are used to flavor the drinks. I wonder if the pepper were the color of an embarrassed red or an angry red.
"Mort, it's too bad I don't smoke," he says, taking a generous gulp of his martini. "If I did, I'd probably bum one off you right now."
I frown.
"Sorry," he says. "Avoid all references to The Asshole. I forgot."
"Soon to be the least of my problems," I say. I tell him about the cyanide and my plot to kill The Asshole. I don't get far before he interrupts with laughter.
"Mort," he snickers. "Virtually everyone in the newsroom has tried to kill The Asshole. Except maybe Molly and Larry, and that guy has his head up his arse to begin with. I could tell you stories about poison-laced laxatives getting slipped into his coffee, razor blades into his food and that'd just be for starters. It never kills him. Never. It only makes him stronger."
"Great," I say, grimacing as I take a swig of my martini. "So I'm screwed either way then. If he's still alive in the morning, he can use something he knows about me to get anything he wants."
"Ah," says Bob, munching on his wing. "Blackmail."
I can hear a klaxon, and the accompanying sound of coins tumbling out of a slot machine to the left of the bar. Someone has just won a shitload of money.
"It's all past bullshit," I say, turning my attention back to Bob.
"So what is it?" he says.
I tell him the story, which I don’t want to repeat here. I think it bears remembering that there’s some stories not worth repeating, something the news media forgets too often. It takes a good twenty minutes or so to tell him what happened to me years ago and, at first, Bob is leaning on the edge of his seat, devouring all the details as I feed them to him. As the minutes pass, however, he starts slumping in a very disinterested fashion. He starts to play with a matchbook towards the end of my spiel.
"Jeeze, why are you even worried about this?" Bob asks after I finish. "You were innocent."
"I do not want something that should be dead and gone, something from my past, dredged up for public consumption," I say, pointing a finger on the table for emphasis. "Especially not by The Asshole."
Bob just looks at me sternly. I suddenly feel a burning desire to get the hell out of the casino.
"You know what Larry does alone with The Asshole?" I ask.
"Do I want to know?" he asks.
I motion to the waitress by waving a $20 bill.
"Actually, you don't," I say. "Not after eating, anyway."
Larry was right. Or maybe I should be more specific: Larry’s sign. DO NOT FEED THE ASSHOLE. What great advice. I wish I’d followed it.
The coffee didn't kill the Asshole, just as Bob said. In fact, it made him pushier than usual.
I'm thinking back to the events of this morning, to the moment I lost control. I knew I was in trouble when the rough draft of that riveting story of mine landed on my desk at quarter to eleven this morning. The story hadn't been published; that much I knew from opening the paper earlier.
A generous helping of The Asshole’s roughage followed the copy thrown onto my desk. The Asshole's shit was no longer green, the color of money. It was a soft brownish red.
It was clear to me that his digestive troubles were over. His shit looked much more potent. Some of it splattered back onto me. I flinched. I'm sure I don't have to explain further.
"I have something to clear out of my system," said The Asshole, pacing around my desk. "And that is that we had to kill this story. It was a piece of shit. What were you thinking when you wrote this?"
"But!" I cried.
"Don't but me, you inconsonant little wench," snarled The Asshole. He turned around and pointed a condescending finger at me. "I'm the only one who is one of those around here! Fix your goddamn story or you know where the door is."
I looked at him, wanting to remind him that he was an Asshole. Not that I really had much of a chance, however. The Asshole turned around and quickly slouched back to his lair.
Larry put his DO NOT FEED THE ASSHOLE sign back up. I turned and went back to work. I really didn't care about the pile of shit on my desk. I felt better knowing it was sitting ...
My thoughts were interrupted by a screaming woman's voice.
"MORT!" yelled Molly as she walked past. "CLEAN THAT SHIT OFF YOUR DESK – NOW!!!! I'M TELLING YOU ONCE THIS TIME."
She walked away, tailing The Asshole to talk about a story, I buried my head in my hands. I felt just like the substance on my desk.
After a moment of controlled self-pity, I looked up and turned to Larry.
"How do you put up with those people?" I asked.
"Not people," said Larry quite rightly. "And it's quite easy once you realize that."
He tapped the You can fuck with him ... part of his sign. With that, I understood everything that had just transpired. It was a game. One that I wasn't terribly interested in playing.
Something terrible happened to me when I woke up this morning. I felt drops of sweat dribbling off my face as I regained consciousness. I thought it might be the humidity. That thought was ixnayed as soon as I looked in the bathroom mirror.
My face looked as though it had been attacked by a bad case of acne overnight. My pores were all puffy, but instead of being filled with white heads, there was a noxious brownish-black substance oozing from them. My pores on my cheeks had started to clump together overnight. My teeth were starting to loosen; a thick brownish ooze pouring out of the gum line.
I’m on the verge of turning into a living, breathing piece of shit.
I’ve since convinced myself that I now have only three options.
1) I can confront The Asshole in the newsroom.
I've gone through all the reasons why I don't want to do this. My mind is made up on this one.
2) I can quit.
I just silently pack up my belongings and leave without leaving so much as a resignation note. No confrontation, no truth revealed, no questions asked. No job, either, which I'm not gung-ho about.
3) I can turn into a piece of shit.
Presumably, following this option means I stop being an everyday, human being. I turn into a tightly packed waste by-product. I lose all of my dignity, if not my integrity.
Which one do I choose?
I work for a pretty big arts magazine now. It comes out once a week, and is written in a much more flowery style than the newspaper. There's no numbers in print, no emphasis on every bottom line as far as I can see. That's what attracted me here. An air-conditioned work environment notwithstanding.
I got lucky and snagged this job within days. And, guess what? My shitty complexion cleared up. Better yet, there's no Asshole running the place.
Sure, I miss Bob a bit, but we've stayed in touch over the past few months. He has told me something very interesting. There's a rumor in the newsroom grapevine about Larry and The Asshole working rather closely on a number of stories. Both of them have spent hours together in The Asshole’s office. They’ve been caught holding hands once. Nobody’s too impressed about it, and the union is hard at work trying to nail Larry on any kind of petty offense they can get their hands on.
I guess I should have chosen option one, after all. I should have fed the newsroom grapevine stories about him and Larry, instead of copping out and feeding him fear. I was afraid that calling him an Asshole would somehow wind up in my expulsion from the newsroom. Maybe I should have worked into the grapevine a golden nugget about what actually happened that day I stepped into his office? Maybe things would have turned in my favor.
But, oh well, this place is pretty far removed from that previous hell. Nothing can happen here. Right?
Something happened this morning. That it happened just before lunch makes it all the more harder to swallow.
It was a speech by a new publisher in the boardroom.
I was preparing for another Asshole in the hours leading up to it in my mind. But now, hours later, I think we're in for something much worse.
"All right all of you," were the new manager’s first words, said to us in a tiny, squeaky little voice. "Things are going to change around here. Not that things were badly run before, but I think things are going to look a heck of a lot better after a week or two. No more fancy-dancy arts stories. We're strictly a business rag now.
"I have a much more focused way of squeezing out the best product possible," he said, adding emphasis to certain words for effect. "I think you, and our readers, will come to like it. As much as our female readership needs to improve, I think we need to see men, more men reading this thing. We need to improve our flaccid circulation across the board. How we do that is simple. I want you all to remember how mighty your pen is ..."
He coughed, embarrassed.
" ... will be in a few weeks. Never lose sight of that. My name is Richard Head, and I have never forgotten. Look where I am now."
Where Mr. Head's face should be, there was a giant phallus sticking upward, covered by a fedora. And a hole was ripped into his pants where his crotch should be. A new head, the one that should be on his neck, had grown there.
As I'm looking at him, just staring right at The Dickhead, one thought was echoing over and over in my head. Try as I might, I just couldn't block it until after the meeting.
It was Molly's voice in my head, making me think about things that I shouldn't be thinking about. I should have been taking notes instead. Or answering phones.
Over and over. She repeated it dozens of times.
Same shit, Mort. Different pile.
