Darrell Vickers – Farting Through Nylon – Chapter Four: Oishii Oishii
When I finally did get to the office, good old Dorothy was whistling a merry tune and banging away on her computer like there was no tomorrow. She looked so calm and at peace and happy. I, on the other hand, looked like a fugitive from an off-Broadway revival of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. She greeted me like she had heavily makeup-ed men explode through her front door wearing pajama bottoms with a tie and no jacket every day.
“Well, hey there. Comin’ from a party?”
“Am I fired yet? ‘Cause by this afternoon, I’ll have a really good excuse.”
“No, of course not, sweetie. Have a sugar cookie.”
She held up a basket of tasty delights. Dorothy always had treats for the employees in various jars and baskets in front of her. It seemed like she was on a one-woman crusade to even out all the bad shit going on in the world by being indefatigably kind and pleasant.
“Baked ‘em myself. You’re not allergic to love, are you? Cause I put a big spoonful in each and every one.”
Gosh, I adored that woman. You know, in that way you adore a woman but you’re not even thinking about porking her because she’s just so nice. It’s a very rare kind of love but I had it for Dorothy. It was tough chewing with my heavily fisted lips and gums but I did it for her and “mmmm”-ed and smiled through the agony.
She handed me a ton of office supplies and another cookie and led me down the long hallway to my cubicle. At least I thought it was going to be a cubicle. Does anyone actually have an office anymore? I believe they’re considered far too humanizing to risk in today’s criminally insatiable, soul threshing corporate world.
As we rounded a corner, I could hear a vacuum cleaner. “Funny that they’d have the janitorial staff cleaning during the day,” I thought to myself, but I had more important things to attend to. The cookie had made my mouth start to bleed and the blood was mixing with the powdered sugar and the makeup. I was looking more and more like a drooling vampire with every chew. Time to be as charming and insouciant as possible.
“You may have wondered why I’m wearing pajama bottoms instead of pants.”
“Oh not at all, honey pie. You’re young and you’ve been to college. You know way more about the world of fashion than I ever will. Your office is right here.”
Office? Did I hear the word “office”?
“If you don’t like it, please don’t say anything. It would break poor Harvey’s heart.”
Dorothy flung open the door to a room so large; you’d expect to see Rupert Murdoch cooking children in it. This was my office? It had a massive, beautiful desk just like Harvey’s. It had a saltwater fish tank just like Harvey’s. It had an unbelievable view of the city just like Harvey’s. In fact, he was the one doing the vacuuming! My boss was actually cleaning the carpet for me. The carpet in the kind of office most people don’t see unless they’re incredibly rich and have just been arrested. Harvey didn’t look at all happy. I braced myself for whatever bad news or firing was about to come my way.
“I’m absolutely devastated that I didn’t get this finished before you arrived. I so wanted it to look perfect for you on your first day. Hey, nice pants.”
“I hear they’re the latest fashion. What will these adorable young people think of next?” Dorothy threw in.
“Say, why don’t you go have a mug of Joe while I finish up in here? There are still some vases I haven’t dusted.”
“Honestly sir, it’s magnificent. Please don’t go to this kind of trouble on my account. I’m unbelievably humbled by your concern.”
Harve looked around and tut-tutted. “I came in here this morning and I just didn’t think the cleaning staff had done a good enough job. You deserve better. A lot better. Are you sure I can’t just give your desk the once over? I’ve been wanting to try out these polish wipes.”
He held up this little package of cleaning towels like he was a freckle-faced kid holding up a bag of Twizzlers.
“Pledge makes ‘em. Saves all that spraying and shit.”
“Please, sir. No more. It’s absolutely perfect.”
Harvey looked at my face. Was I still bleeding?
“Hey, that allergy medicine must be working. Your nose looks a lot straighter than it did yesterday.”
“God bless all our doctors, for they do ‘His’ healing work here on Earth,” added Dorothy bowing her head. Then she twirled around and skittered out of the office. “I’ll leave you two men alone to discuss all those men things I don’t understand.”
She popped her head back in for one second. “Don’t forget, I need his measurements so I can knit him a sweater.”
She gave me a big wink and disappeared. Harvey reached into his pocket and pulled out a measuring tape and a notepad.
“Arm.”
I held out my arm as Harvey measured it and wrote a number down in his little book.
“I shall speak to them though,” he grumbled, putting down 15 ½ inches beside the word “Neck”.
“Who?”
“The cleaning staff. You’re going to have a decent place to work in, if I have to get up every morning at 4 to polish your goddamn desk myself.”
“It’s gorgeous, really. I thought I was going to be working in a cubicle or something.”
Having finished with the neck and arms, Harvey wrapped the tape measure around my chest and took down a number. Probably not a very impressive one. It had been awhile since I’d been able to work out, what with my busy schedule and all.
“Cubicles? Cubicles are for jerk-offs and retarded, toilet-licking assholes like me. I’m going to have a big flat-screen put up on that wall, if that’s okay?”
I didn’t want to bring things back to my tardiness, but I thought I should at least address it. It seemed like the businessy thing to do.
“Listen, I’m sorry about being so late.”
Harvey waved his beefy hand in a dismissive way as he wrote another unflattering number down next to “Waist”.
“Late, schmate. You’re here now. That’s all that matters. Seeing your young face walk through that door has turned my day from a steaming frog turd into a Caesar Salad with big juicy shrimp.” His ebullient mood was 
broken by a thought.
“Say, you’re not allergic to wool, are you? I’d hate for that nose of yours to flair up again.”
“No. I can sniff wool all day long…if I have to.”
“Excellent! Excellent! (beat) Now the job. Would you like to hear about the job? Unless you want to settle in first. Have some coffee. Watch a game or something in my office? I could get us some beers.”
“I’m completely rarin’ to go, shuir. Just let me know what the job is, or who I 
need to kill and I’ll do it.”
Harvey began to tear up.
“I don’t fucking deserve you, Zack. I must have a lucky star jammed up my ass or something. I must have sucked a leprechaun’s cock in another life to have a treasure like you workin’ for me.”
I didn’t quite know how to respond.
“Ah, thanks,” was my brilliant, bordering on poetic rejoinder. I usually require several weeks of intense preparation, if I have to come up with something spontaneous and quote worthy.
Harvey pulled himself out of the sentimental pool and dried off his emotions. He pointed at a thick book on my desk. Did I mention how big my new mahogany desk was? And that is was made out of mahogany? How fucking cool was that?!
“That’s your book of contacts. I don’t deal with anyone else but the people in this book. Cause, they are the best and I only deal with the best people. Got that?”
“Got it!” I said, sounding as competent and reliable as a man can while wearing pajama bottoms and no shirt.
Harvey paused.
“Hmmmmm. She wants me to get your inseam number…Just in case she makes you some, ah, pants…”
“32!” I offered very quickly. I mean, I liked the guy, but not that much. He wrote it down equally quickly and then swallowed up the room with another one of his smiles.
“So, you just make the calls, get the sales and rack up those commissions.”
He had a voice that could have called Heidi’s goats in off the mountain. But, I didn’t let that distract me from looking like an uber-executive of the future.
“I’m absolutely ready to make you proud, Harve! So, what am I selling?”
Harvey smiled patiently. “It’s all in the book. Knock ‘em dead, kid. Like there’s any goddamn chance a guy as sharp as you wouldn’t. And thank you sooo, sooo much.”
With that, Harvey grabbed me and gave me one of those creepy, kissy things that Russians give to each other at airports and walked out of the office. But not before plucking the hankie out of his breast pocket and wiping a thumb print off a picture frame. “Those damn janitors,” he muttered and was gone. Seriously? Were all bosses like this guy?
I was stunned and amazed. I sat there for a couple of minutes, just taking it all in. The plush carpet. The space. The view. Did I mention how cool my desk was? It was like I was going to wake up any moment and find out I’d smoked the last of my pot and none of this was real. Like that one time where I was making mad, passionate love to Amy Rossom and when I woke up, I had to burn my pillow.
But this was real. Fine Corinthian leather covering my big fucking executive chair, real. It was so finely balanced that it was completely silent and unwobbly as I spun around, taking in all that was mine. And I spun and I spun. Oh, where are you now father of mine? Wait till you see the shit that I got goin’ on!
The phone rang. Holy fuck! What should I do? I stared at it for a second like it was that button on the Twilight Zone that, if you gave it a push someone would die, but it was nobody you knew? Cautiously, I picked up the receiver. This was my first official, job-related activity. It was time to bring my “A” game.
“Ah, Harvey Zeigler Industries,” I officiously declared into the mic.
“Hey! It’s me, Harvey!”
Phew!
“Not that it’s any of my business at all, but you might want to touch up your cheek rouge. It’s a little smudgy.”
For the next hour or so, I made a few calls and actually made some sales. This wasn’t bad at all. I just dialed one of the numbers in the book, read my little speech and “Bingo!” (if that’s not too archaic a term) I sold something. In fact, I sold a lot of somethings. I was on a roll. I may have been wearing pajamas, but I was kicking ass!
After a number of very successful sales pitches, I decided to stretch the old legs and do a little reconnaissance. Scope out the competition. Things sure seemed to be happy and humming. You’d hardly know people in other parts of the country were gnawing the lichen off trees for sustenance after their factory closed and all their jobs were shipped overseas by patriotic American corporations. Business at Zielgler Industries was brisk. Life appeared to be taking a definite upswing for the Zackmeister. I wondered if I still had Rebecca’s phone number. Oooh that young, velvety skin. Those perfect, perky chest popsicles. No, they require a better euphemism than that. Something more respectful. Something with “angel” in it. Angel pudding? Puddings? Her perfect, perky angel pudding knockers (okay, I’ll work on it when I’m not quite as hungover). And I could afford her now. Fuck you and your super-hard-to-glue-to-a-statue underwear, Izzy. Though, I still sort of liked her.
Angel Puddings
Even the bathrooms in this place were amazing. It wasn’t like one of those bars you go into which is all oak and brass and then you go into the john and it looks like prisoners of war wouldn’t want to shit in there. This room-de-bowls was capital “A” awesome.
I’m talking marble counters surrounding marble sinks. Brass fittings. Big fluffy cloth towels in big fluffy piles and a wicker basket to throw them in. Toilets that were more comfortable than the couch in my apartment. There were also skin lotions. I have no fucking idea what you do with them, but I was really down with the fact that they were right there , all lined up in those little mini-bottles. There was also aftershave. Then some other stuff you’d think only chicks would smear on their faces. It was an ornate, luxurious palace that you took a crap in. And I gave it one of my best.
As I looked in the mirror at what used to be my face, I thought I might as well wash off the remaining makeup. I was bent over an ultra-deluxe sink, abluting, when Randy swaggered in like a world-class douchebag who was on a mission to prove to everyone he met what a world-class douchebag he was.
He was about six-foot-two and GQ-cover handsome. My first thought was, “Wow, this guy is one handsome world-class douchbag.” I wasn’t wrong.
He squirted a little aftershave into his palms, slapped it on his chin as manly as he could and then he spoke.
“You new here, too?”
“Yeah. The name’s Zack.”
“Randy. Dartmouth.”
Ah, that explains it.
“Williams.”
Randy considered this.
“Nice little liberal arts college, I suppose. I didn’t know they were hiring non-Ivy Leaguers in here.”
This was my first day so I thought I’d play nice. I just kept quiet and washed my bruises and cuts. He stared at me intently or was it condescendingly? With Ran’ it was always very hard to tell.
“I also didn’t think they had that many fags over at Williams. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a dick smoker…You know, besides the obvious.”
He looked down at my pajamas. “What the fuck are you dressed up as? Christ, did you come directly here from an all-night ass orgy?”
Shit! Now I was going to have to respond. Not because there’s anything wrong with being gay, if you’re gay. But I wasn’t. And Randy was precisely the kind of fucker who would make your life a gay living hell if he thought you were of the softer persuasion. I had to get this settled now or I was going to have Judy Garland impersonators serenade me on my birthday, have pink carnations delivered to my office and be called a “dick smoker” by everyone I met. Plus, I was never going to get a second look from any of the office babes. The time to nip this in the no-way-I’m-gay bud was right now.
“Hey man, I’m straight,” I barked with a little extra dash of gruff masculinity. Then, I brushed the last of the rouge off my left cheek. “As a matter of fact, I got laid by a limo driver’s sister last night…sort of.”
“Rebecca?”
I continued to play it cool and completely un-gay but I was a little rattled. Randy continued to pepper the conversation with disturbing revelations.
“That’s not really his sister, you know. He just says that cause it makes the sex hotter.”
Guys like Randy were precisely why I didn’t go to Dartmouth. The school is chock full of dickweeds like him. Ran’ was obviously a fraternity fellow. All that fratboy ass-paddling and other unnatural games of the Greeks would turn anyone into a maladjusted humanoid mutant.
I can remember taking the tour. There was this one building on the ivy-drenched grounds that had two doors and one of them had been sealed shut since the Second World War or something. The tour guide just laughed a bucket and told us how absolutely rich it was that the first-year students often went up to the wrong door and couldn’t get it to open. Hardy-fucking-har. We were also informed of a quaint initiation ritual where the frosh have to run around the campus three times while assholes throw beer on them. I thought it was sporting of the guides to regale the prospective freshman (and their parents) with tales of the humiliation and abuse they were going to be subjected to, should they decide to drop the 48 thou-a-year to go there. In the end, I decided I’d rather eat finishing nails and pressboard until I started shitting dollhouses than go to Dartmouth.
But I digress.
I tried to subtly steer the conversation away from me being gay (‘cause I’m really not) and the prostitutes we both knew. After all, I was a serious career man now.
“So, what do you make of Harvey? Seems like a terrific guy.”
Randy squirted some lotion shit into his palm and started to finger it through his hair like he was in a Sebastian Shaper ad. “He seems okay, I guess. But he could be fucking Nosferatu for all I care. I’ve made six bills in commission this morning, already.”
Wow, and I thought I was doing well. Of course, I was half naked and lying robbed in a dumpster while he was making the first calls of the morning.
“So how hard are you finding it?”
“Easy as robbin’ a blind man. I phone some asshole in that book he gave us and ask them if they want to buy some crap-shit, pour on the Dartmouth charm and they say yes. Kachingggg!”
Randy was definitely the kind of fucktard that people kill horribly at the end of action movies to gigantic audience applause. I was so right not to go to that school.
A young guy came into the bathroom, half tripping on the tile. Another new hire? His name was Brian. He was a little on the pudgy side and his clothes didn’t seem fit him quite right. No matter how he dressed, as long as I knew him, he always looked the same. Totally and utterly unremarkable. I soon found out why.
Randy nodded at the guy. He was way too much of a snot to shake the guy’s hand and besides, his palms were all moisturize-y.
“Randy. Dartmouth.”
“Zack. Williams.” I only spoke up because I didn’t want the guy thinking I was a classmate of jerk-off-face’s.
He looked at us for a second and then said, in a totally unremarkable voice, “Hey. I’m Brian. Amherst.”
Randy and I spoke as one, “I’m sorry to hear that.”
Randy may have been a complete dick and scumbag but he was right about one thing. Selling this stuff was a breeze. The customers actually seemed pleased to hear from me and anxious to buy our company’s products. Harvey was obviously an incredibly well-respected manufacturer. I’d be there on the phone and they’d be eating out of my hand. That’s when I’d start thinking about eating out of Rebecca’s…no! I had to keep my mind on the job. There would be plenty of time for that.
I was just finishing yet another order when “She” walked into my office. Perfect timing. Perfect girl. I put on my best FM disc jockey voice as I closed another deal. “Yes sir. We’ll get that order out to you as soon as possible. And remember, when you’re buying Ziegler, you’re buying the best.” I smiled big time into the phone, hung up the receiver and then oh-so-casually, half-not-interested, turned to the goddess standing in front my desk. Smoooooooth!
Alchemy was like the latest I-phone of women. You thought the last one was really, really great, cause it was. But, then when the new model comes out, you think, what a bunch of shit the last model was. How could I have ever been happy with that Eastern European car of a phone? I felt that way about all other women as I gazed upon young Alchemy’s comely visage and wrinkleless dress. Oh yes. She also had hair. Lots of it and all in the right place. Everything about her was in the right place. Especially her being in front of my desk.
“Nice office,” the first words she ever spoke to me in that voice that could’ve melted cobalt steel. I drank in her skin. It looked so wondrous and inviting that I wanted to chain myself to her leg. I bathed my eyes in her shapely physique. I had a boner you could jack up a car with. I remained seated.
“Hi. Zack, Williams.”
“Alchemy, Princeton. So, you’re the dick smoker?”
Shit! You see? I fucking told you. That Ivy League asshole! Fuck to go along with shit!
Landing this Posturepedic Princess was going to be nigh on impossible to begin with, but now it was going to be harder than cheering for the Red Sox. I made an immediate stab at rebutting Randy’s preposterous claim.
“No! Did Randy say something? I was late for work and bruised. It’s a long… What an asshole.”
She nodded in agreement. “He went to Dartmouth.”
Alchemy was one of those buttoned-down girls who managed straight A’s while still having time to feed the poor and raise millions to cure the hottest new diseases. If you walked into her dorm room after seven o’clock in the morning, you could bounce a quarter on her bed…which is the only thing she had bouncing on her bed during her entire four years of college. Alchemy was an untouched forest. An unplowed field. An un-sneezed on Sizzler salad bar. Oh, how I wanted her. Right now. Right on my Pledge-polish-wiped mahogany desk. I longed to hear her oh-so-pleasurous moans in perfect rhythm with the saltwater-tank bubbly thing. But first I needed to impress upon her that I was in no way gay or a dick smoker.
“Can I offer you a latte or something?”
Shit. Do lattes sound too gay? Perhaps I should have offered her a Slim Jim and some Wild Turkey.
I’m not even really a latte fan but about a half an hour before she floated into my office, a couple of mover guys carried in this huge, copper, restaurant quality cappuccino maker and put it on my credenza. Harvey’s accompanying note was really quite touching.
Alchemy shook her perfect head and her hair bounced around like a shampoo commercial. “No thanks. I was just checking out my competition during my morning three-minute R&R break.”
I could see that the only way to impress a woman of this extraordinary caliber was to lie.
“Oh really? Maybe I’ll come by your office during my once daily, one-and-a-half-minute R&R break.”
I don’t think she believed me but she was out of the office in a flash. What a dumkopf! I should have lied about needing CPR or said that my underwear was full of deluxe Belgian chocolate. Something, anything just to keep her there. Sigh.
My first day had been long and painful and humiliating but also very ruminative. This work thing, even when you’re making 800 bucks a day plus commission, plus a free lunch to die for and all the complimentary cappuccinos and lattes you can swig… it can still really tire you out. I felt like a rug that had been beaten by Romanian women. Every fiber of my body was yelling, “Get some sleep you fucking dishtowel.” I planned to take that advice.
Harvey had dropped a little more cash in my palm as I was leaving, so I dropped by my local liquor store for a few necessities to tied me over till the morning. Nothing too exotic. Couple of cans of stuff you heat up and eat, a box of cereal and a six pack. I dropped my provisions on the counter and reached into my wallet. Shit. I looked at the Korean woman awaiting payment.
“Listen, I just came from work and I haven’t had time to go to the bank… Do you have change for a thousand dollar bill?”
Man, Korean women can be so mean.
=DV=
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Darrell Vickers started out as one half of Toronto area band, Nobby Clegg. CFNY fans may remember the cheery song “Me Dad” which still gets airplay. From there, he valiantly ventured to L.A. and eventually became head writer for The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Since then, he’s created numerous sitcoms and animation shows in Canada and the U.S. He still writes music and has an internet band called Death of the Author Brigade (members in Croatia, Canada and the U.S.) Mr. Vickers also had a private music mailing-list where he features new and pre-loved music. Anyone who would like to be added to his daily mailing list, just write him at Radiovickers1@gmail.com
Segarini: Don't Believe a Word I Say 
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