Head First

Here’s the kind of week it’s been.  Starts with a very early morning meeting, one that requires me to haul my groggy ass out of bed at before 5.  The only positive about that hour of the day is, I don’t need to worry about pole-vaulting over  my morning wood on my way to the crapper.  It’s usually up before I am, but at that hour, it –- and I — are still asleep.

(Think about it.  Under what other ghastly circumstances is it a blessing NOT to sport a hard-on? The doctor’s office?  The locker room?  That depends.  But I digress.)

Worse, I need to get dressed up.  A pressed shirt under a crisp suit.  Socks and shined shoes.  And underwear, ferchrissake!  Savage!

I stumble outside, start the car, and head off for the meeting at a local Marriott.  I have a pretty good idea where it is, but the challenge  is to avoid pimpled hot rodders speeding through the dark, text-messaging obscenities and gossip to their litter mates.  C U Next Tuesday, bitch.

I make it to the Marriott about 5 minutes later than I want, which is 10 minutes after the meeting officially convenes (but it starts late to allow attendees to saturate themselves with seas of caffeine, cholesterol, sodium, and sucrose).   I ask the uniformed factotum behind the desk – a hideous hag whose insincere corporate smile transforms her face into a cracked plate – where the meeting I seek can be found.

“Second floor,” she advises, checking the calendar.  “The Smegma Room, second door on the left.”

I mumble thanks and climb the stairs.  Something isn’t right here.  I sense a vacant vibe, a misplaced priority, a dry heave.  A young Hispanic pushes a vacuum cleaner in the hall.  The meeting room doors are ajar, revealing laundry bundled on stripped tables, chairs stacked, lights too bright (ouch).

I retrace my steps and confront Hazel Witch. “Is there another second floor in this hotel?” I ask.  She looks confused.  “Because there ‘s no meeting going on the one I just went to.”

“That’s the only second floor,” she beams (dully), honest to god.  “Please wait.”  And trundles off to the back room, where I crazily visualize a GPS, or a patented Marriott Find-O-Meter or something.  I’m close: she comes back with this large print-out that evidently lists all the meetings in every Marriott in the southeastern US that day.  She asks me again what meeting I’m looking for.

“Aah!” she bleats.  “You want the Courtyard!”

“There’s a courtyard?  I only saw a parking lot.”  Thinking, how do you get a courtyard on the second floor, anyway?

“No!” she explains.  “The Marriott Courtyard.  This is the Marriott Residence!”

Constipated Christ.  “This seaside berg has two separate Marriotts?  Where’s the other one?”

She gives me directions which I forget even before I get back to the car – I’m good at that; ask Guido – and before it occurs to me I should have asked why she dispatched me to the second floor of HER featherbedding Marriott if the meeting was in some other building miles away.

Which I have trouble finding, of course, and by the time I roll up, park the car, and find out which room I need, I know I’m not going in.  Unlike your average defensive replacement,  I heartily dislike coming in during the late innings.  It’s rude, and I feel obligated not to say anything insulting during the Q&A, which is difficult for me.   My decision is reinforced when I see that the coffee urn outside, in the hallway, surrounded by bagels .  I help myself to one not too badly chewed, then stroll around the personality-free hallway for a moment before oh so coolly wandering out.   I scarf the bagel and finish the coffee on the long slow ride to the office, farting.

I am asked upon arrival how the meeting went.  “It happened,” I reply.  “But I’m glad to be back because I have a ton of crap to complete before the deadline.”  And slither away.

Later, somebody tells me “I look very nice” today.  It doesn’t help.  I take that to mean that I usually look like I report to work after sharing a tent and some King’s Tokay under the Julia Tuttle.  My kind of people, if not my kind of drink.

TGIF.

But I learned something valuable today.  Never start your day before your dick does.