Worked a long shift at Black Sheets, which continues to be just an ordinary office job. Not sure what I expected, but the magazine is all about sex sex always sex, and the office is inside an enormous party house, where framed pictures on the wall often include penises, and there’s a Playboy Mansion’s worth of sex furniture in the basement, and not often but occasionally someone’s naked in the hall or on the sofa.
I’m never in the hall, though, unless I’m headed to the toilet, and never on the sofa at all. None of the fun stuff happens in the office. It’s just office work, same as any other office — the phone rings, I answer it; the mail comes, I open it; a subscriber moves or renews their subscription, I update the records.
From Pathetic Life #12
Tuesday, May 9, 1995
It’s boring, because office work is boring, but Bill continues to be easy to get along with, occasionally funny, and his boss-instructions are always perfectly reasonable. He hasn’t asked me to make coffee or change the cat’s litter or anything.
Oh, and there’s another guy working in the office, Steve, and he’s funny and cynical, too.
Maybe in the back of my mind I’d imagined that working in the smut business would get me laid, but it’s just a decent part-time job. No throbbing fringe benefits, but it beats working at Macy’s.
♦ ♦ ♦
After work, I came home, brought the diary up to day, and cussed at the loud neighbors upstairs. Read some zines, while listening to the Giants get slaughtered by Colorado, as if I care. Talked to Pike about the rent. He’s hoping to pay me back within a few days. I’m hoping for that, too.
♦ ♦ ♦
A couple of jerkoffs down the street are arguing, loud and rude. One guy a few doors to the south is screaming at another guy a few doors to the north, who’s screaming back at him. Our apartment is smack in the middle between them, so we get it all in stereo.
They’ve been calling each other n-word this and n-word that, shouting their insults at the same time, so each probably can’t even hear what the other is screaming.
“They sound like a couple of n-words to me,” Pike said, though he didn’t say n-word. And in their own words, I guess that’s what they are. I’d have to peek out the window to see if either of them are black, and I ain’t doing that, but they don’t sound particularly black. Just angry. Just a couple of jerkoffs, and in this neighborhood, jerkoffs come in every color.
This is an entry retyped from an on-paper zine I wrote many years ago, called Pathetic Life. The opinions stated were my opinions then, but might not be my opinions now. Also, I said and did some disgusting things, so parental guidance is advised.
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