Doing a Corporate

Sitting on one of those circular tables crammed in a large windowless warehouse that doubles as a ballroom in a chain hotel off a motorway; helium balloons float overhead, like any of us are ever going to get high. The text photo of a naked arse shows on a fliptop Motorola. New job letter in the post tomorrow. Nothing stuck in the letter box this time. It breaks my life walking treacherous sidewalks all grey with chewing gum to this no man’s job where I’m an empty space. Lives get blown to smithereens every day mine never started. Houses spontaneously combust mine never got built. I darken the doorway of the lady singing with her arse in the air daily with the rota. Midday lunch hour is political we all want it. Concrete pillars drop in my head, dry mint addiction stops me falling in. Briefcase, empty, sliding through my grasp. Messages none, no inane job reply on my Samsung and I have flyered my CV to every online lamppost you can think of. Turn the turnstile clock in to tonight’s end of year corporate gala dinner. Gala. The gala melon, coronation chicken and game bird will have to do the celebrating for me. Boss woman flips open her flip top phone and spurts a deep throat chuckle and I swear a stake could fit in her vocal fold.
-I WANT OUT!
Funny how the words don’t come when you want them.
-Bitter lemon is fine.
-Free food and drink all night fill your boots!
And she’s off doing the conga with her two buttock cheeks swinging like a gammon ham in a sling. And I know that finally when she is forced to the in-tray to deal with some actual pieces of pink flimsy forms she will scoop up her faux leather shoulder bag and exit laughing at us all for butt kissing her for so long. We lick her ass and hold her high when I swear she can’t even write her name. Which is maybe why we do it as no one else wants her job.

-The company must have seen us all coming when they put her in charge of us.
DJ is playing 'Tainted Love' so no one hears my comment as too busy reliving a time they now think they enjoyed in retrospect. Every time we get the stiffy invite from head office, gold embossed, black tie in bold I swear it’s not going to be me with my head in the punch bowl before midnight gargling out expletives. But usually it is, boredom is a powerful motivator for picking a fight with someone twice the size than you.
-Oh boy you had such a when you picked her our manager a laugh
I told you, the punch!
Back slapped by some German from the parent company so hard my dinner nearly shoots through my soft palate.
-You do know she prints out her emails and gets us to reply to them in long hand?
OK it’s too late to try a rational argument now. Herman’s off singing ‘Life is Life’ to a copy typist in a lace bra. And I would hear them laughing and I would carry on till I saw you, struggling with a nervous laugh and I know you are as out of your depth in all of this as me. And we should be the ones who jack it all for the New Year, start up a coffee shop, take up bongo playing and grow hemp in our backyard. But I’ve vomited over my Moss Bros hire and I don’t think you’ll even talk to me now. Besides you’re starting to blur.

Home prices are going up by explosive amounts, our job security is off with a bang so any relationship we could ever have would be doomed I tell you doomed. And it’s not you it’s me. Why do we never talk? Mouth opens, lips move.
-Have you noticed how many girls take up jogging in the New Year?
My ground floor window is a safe distance. We don't have to do this again. I watch reality TV. I live vicariously off the lives of stranger and through the bulk-bought Mumm fog it dawns on me I actually like it that way.