The Deep Whatsis. Peter Mattei

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      hey!?! wtf!

      so i guess we won’t be working together …

      no, wait!!

      change of plans!!!!!

      we WILL be working together!!

      i’m on 8 *cum* c me...........

      She’s on eight? I can only guess that the editorial company is helping us in-house on something and that’s why she’s here for the morning? But the tone of her text, very snarky, who does she think she is?

      This should be easy. By noon she will be gone.

      After concentrating on cardio for five minutes I get a ginger-wheatgrass juice and a green tea infusion and then I head for the showers. The juice girl is incredibly beautiful, she has long skinny arms that look like young birch branches that could wrap around you twice. In the showers, I notice that my cock is a bit harder than it usually is after a workout, I’m feeling pretty horny, I may have mentioned that ever since I began my medications (Adderall, Zoloft, Klonopin, Ativan, occasionally Haldol although I don’t always like to admit that) I’ve had an erection that I can’t get rid of no matter what I do. The only comforting thing about this is that I know my boner has nothing to do with Intern, it’s just a part of me now, like hair, and no amount of sex or masturbation seems to cure it. For no reason I consider hitting on birch-like juice girl but I fear there is a too-high chance she will say yes.

      After my gym time I decide to take the subway to the office just for a change of pace. Usually I call a car service. I live in Brooklyn just off the Williamsburg Bridge, as I may have said earlier, in a loft-like apartment in a brand-new waterfront high-rise called Krave. I usually take a car to work because it’s a bit of a hike up Bedford Avenue to the subway and a car is more comfortable and it’s also in my contract that I have unlimited use of the Dark Car Corporate limo service. But today I felt like being outside, the weather was nice, which felt like more of an excuse than an actual reason, because I didn’t really buy the notion that the weather being nice meant it was a good idea to be outside. It didn’t really matter to me one way or the other what the weather was like; if I felt like being outside, or if I had some reason to go outside, then I would generally engineer a way to be out of doors, it was that simple, the weather had little to do with it, except to be able say to myself, when the question arose in my head, “Why are you taking the subway, Eric?” I would have a ready answer and the answer was the niceness of the weather.

      Two blocks into my eleven-block walk to the L train I realize why it is that I don’t do this very often. A virtual stream of young, fashionable white people, what the savants in our media planning department would refer to demographically as the Creative Class, are rushing toward the train. I don’t hate these professionals, since that would be disingenuous, after all I am one of them. I don’t really have any opinion about them one way or the other. They are a kind of temporary migration, they are the product of certain economic conditions. About halfway to the subway I am feeling exhausted by the tide I am swimming in and so I need a rest; the night before I had ingested eight or nine saffron-infused apple-ginger absinthe, cognac, and vodka cocktails, the name of which I can’t remember, possibly the Caribou Whisperer or the Ragamuffin or the Merkin Sniffer and I’m still feeling somewhat ill. I pop into a coffee place called Silhouette that is frequented for some reason by mixed-race French people from Paris who are living in Brooklyn because the dollar makes it cheap for them, and I order a scat coffee for twenty-six dollars and a bowl of fresh berries for twelve dollars. I’m not in the least bit hungry but somehow the idea of fresh berries seems like a good one, like a smart idea, a smart way to start my morning, even though my morning began hours ago at some sleepless and unremarked moment between night and day. The scat coffee comes first and I take a sip and wonder if it isn’t just burnt Maxwell House. Then a bowl of fresh, locally grown berries arrives and the moment I see them I know I will not be eating them. I sit and look out the window at the pretty little fishies darting up and down the stream on their way to their exciting jobs in the worlds of fashion and art and reality TV and suddenly I don’t feel well. What is it? I ask myself, and I respond by saying “I don’t know, Eric,” out loud. “I don’t know what it is.”

      And I don’t. I’ve been diagnosed before with certain somewhat common illnesses, most of them mental in nature, but that doesn’t explain why I haven’t eaten in almost three days, since the time I met her.

      On the sidewalk outside a young woman in a Ted Lapidus jacket and carrying a Stella by Stella McCartney by Stella M for Talentless by Rich Daddy bag is tying her shih tzu to someone’s bicycle, and now the owner of the bike is coming up to her and saying, like, um, that’s my bike? And this woman is saying she’s just getting a Clover-press coffee to go and she’ll be back in four-point-two minutes, she promises, and suddenly I’m having a full-blown panic attack: the desire to jump in front of a bus is so strong in me I grip my chair and sit there, rigid, and hope it stops. This has happened before so I know what to do, only I don’t have any Klonopin in my Crumpler shoulder bag. After about an hour I decide I’m not going into work today. After another hour I realize I’m not doing anything today. I am aware that I am having one of my episodes, since as I’ve said I’ve had them before, and they always do pass eventually, although this one seems a bit more persistent than the others. My phone has been ringing and buzzing from time to time because I have some important meetings, in fact I was supposed to meet with HR Lady and let two more copywriters go today, and no one knows what has happened to me, I can just imagine the concern growing with each voice mail. But I have the sudden and I realize nonsensical thought that if I answer my mobile device or even check my messages something terrible will happen to me, that all manner of doom will be unleashed upon me, from financial ruin to torture and death, which I am fully aware is silly. There is also the text from Intern that I would rather not see, even to delete it, which may be contributing to my unalterable inability to deal with my unreality.

      At this point the patchouli-scented half-Senegalese woman from behind the counter comes up and asks if there’s anything wrong with my fresh berries because I haven’t touched them and I say, no, they’re absolutely delicious, I just changed my mind, I’m so sorry. I almost add that if I were to leave this place I may run headlong into a truck just to stop it from going on any longer. What from going on any longer? I don’t know, all of it. I want to laugh, and for a brief moment I do. Some people look at me and then they ignore me. After another half hour the episode subsides and I am able to get up and walk back home and play Halo for a few hours. Then I go to sleep without checking my e-mail or returning any calls. It occurs to me that maybe I’m a) experiencing some unexplained resistance to sacking the two copywriters I was supposed to have sacked today, and b) I am semi-falling in love with her, the girl whose name I don’t know, or care to know, which is impossible, but I can deal with all that when the fires die down.