Wednesday, 27 March 2024 16:17

Maybe Monday

688
Maybe Monday

     Managers are mystics. Must be because they’re always telling the people who work for them about their fucking vision. Their fucking vision for the company, that is. Their fucking vision for the company always a trigger for what they call revised practices. A catchy little phrase meaning whatever your job was before, you’ve now got to do a shedload more of it. Only what you’re now doing a shedload more of isn’t called what it used to be called prior to their fucking vision for the company, no. Now it’s called something else. Something a lot fancier, though the truth is it doesn’t pay any better, it’s just a lot more of the same old, same old: that’s more, more, fucking more.

     With so much more to do it’s no wonder I feel fucking battered at the end of every workday: hollowed out, a ghost of myself - except on Friday night when I hit Broad Street. 

     ALL DRINKS ½ PRICE B411 say the signs outside the clubs but that’s not what draws me in, a half-priced drink or two, not what stops me feeling fucking battered, no way, no how. No, movement is what does it, movement what counts: I’m talking head, body, hands, feet, I’m talking dipping, swirling, turning, I’m talking, fast, slow, on the beat, off it, I’m talking being inside every move and at the same time watching myself from the outside - none of which has anything to do with half-price drinks.

     Some tunes are old favourites. Some are brand new. To me it makes no never mind: simply, the tunes come at me, and I move: I move and the dark moves with me, holds me in its arms, is a mirror reflection of me.

     Only it’s not only me, no. It’s all of us. All of us move to the music. All of us are pierced by it. All of us are impaled by its foreverness, yes. Though I always go alone, I’m packed in with the rest, a seething mass, love what I feel for every one of us because of this shared thing we’re doing in the strobe-lit dark which, till they kill the tunes and turf us out, helps me escape the management visionaries and their more, more, fucking more, gets them out of my head and from under my skin, fucking saves me, yes, at least for a little while.

     Saves me for a little while and makes me sad at the same time, I should say. Makes me sad because by saving me for a little while it lets me carry on with the more, more, fucking more. Makes me sad because I can’t help thinking that if at work enough of us moved together like we’re moving now, maybe managers couldn’t keep battering us with their fucking vision for the company. Why, I think, as I move to the music, I ought to try talking to the people I work with again. Why, I think, maybe Monday, I will, maybe Monday I will.   

Read 688 times Last modified on Friday, 29 March 2024 10:14
Wayne Dean-Richards

Wayne Dean-Richards’ short fiction has appeared in many UK and US magazines and anthologies, and Money & Blood has just been published by Culture Matters.

Latest from Wayne Dean-Richards