The Curious Affairs Of Atherton Bartelby

“Thank you for your email. Your vacation day on Wednesday has been approved. Please submit the necessary form,” the e-mail in my in-box read.

I dialed Bartholomew’s extension.

“Yesssss?” he answered.

“Why are you forwarding me an e-mail from your boss informing you that your vacation on Wednesday is approved? Are you trying to tell me that I should schedule one, as well?”

“Hmmm. Probably, Sweetie,” he drawled. “I doubt you’ll want to come into work after we paint Waikiki red on All Hallow’s Eve, Darling!”

“What.” I said. “I did Waikiki on All Hallow’s Eve the first year I lived here. And I vowed never to do it again. No.”

“Darling, come on,” he said. “I have never done Waikiki on All Hallow’s Eve, and we have not gone out to the clubs together in forever! Humor me, Sweetie, please?”

I sighed melodramatically. “Ugh. All right, Sweetie. What are you going as?”

“Duh!” he laughed deeply.

“What?! You can’t do that again! You already did that three years ago!”

“Darling, no one saw that except the retards in our office. Now what are you going as?”

“Hmmm…” I thought for a moment. “Hey! Darling, do you still have that pink wig?”

He chuckled knowingly. “Oh, yes, Darling. Oh, yes, I certainly do.”

So I guess I’m going out for Halloween, taking the next day off (already properly approved by my Seattle boss; “Hey. It’s Atherton. Some things have come up personally and I would really like to take Wednesday off. Would that be all right with you? My desk will be cleared of all pending projects by close of business Tuesday.” “Of course! Have fun on Halloween and drink lots of water the next morning! We’ll catch up on Thursday!” I love that my new gay boss “gets it”.), and crashing at Bartholomew’s Tuesday evening.

Anyway. I am dressing up like this:

I intend to mix it up a bit between the “new,” fashionable Gwen and the “old,” SKA Gwen. I’m calling the look, “Gwen Stefani After A Bad Break-Up.” So I am doing the pink wig, a red sleeveless blouse with Curious George and silver glitter typography (Bartholomew’s), black corset (mine, duh), skinny jeans long-cuffed à la Carrie Bradshaw, and six-inch black patent leather Patricia Field platform heels (also, duh, mine; hey, A.V., any bets on whether I’ll break my ankles in them tomorrow night? *wink*). Also, oh my fucking God, it’s been a long time since my college days when I was a snob about make-up and wearing it to seminar classes every day and only buying M.A.C., and can I just say that the women who still pay attention to proper make-up have my props? Because I just spent $50 on cheap make-up this evening that I will only be wearing once: eyelashes; eyelash glue; black black mascara; black eyeliner; blue and white eye shadows; pressed powder base; lipstick and lip liner (scarlet and brick, respectively); nail varnish (deep red); clear lip gloss with silver glitter; body glitter spray that smells like candy canes; and dry body glitter (shade of pink). (I am so going to break out after this; thank fucking Christ for Neutrogena Pore Refining Cleanser, I swear to fucking God.)

Photos of Bartholomew and I in our respective costumes may be posted at a later date should we both deem them appropriate for public consumption.

In other social news, Friday at Bar 35 was fabulous, even though I didn’t think it would be. My free cocktail party that I “won” just for being on the V.I.P. e-mail distribution list, according to their promoter, turned out to be what I expected, i.e., they pay half of up to a $250 tab, top shelf, no other discounts, in their V.I.P. room, limitless attendees. So I’m using it for Blythe’s going-away party. Guest lists are being compiled and invitations are being designed as I type. (All right, not really, but soon, anyway.)

If I die tomorrow night via platform heel trippage, Happy Samhain to all!

We’ll do it all (everything) on our own. We don’t need anything (or anyone). If I lay here (if I just lay here), would you lie with me and just forget the world? I don’t quite know how to say how I feel.

Those three words are said too much; they’re not enough.

If I lay here (if I just lay here), would you lie with me and just forget the world? Forget what we’re told, before we get too old; show me a garden that’s bursting into life. Let’s waste time chasing cars around our heads. I need your grace to remind me to find my own.

If I lay here (if I just lay here), would you lie with me and just forget the world? Forget what we’re told, before we get too old; show me a garden that’s bursting into life. All that I am (all that I ever was) is here in your perfect eyes (they’re all I can see). I don’t know where (confused about how, as well).

Just know that these things will never change for us at all.

If I lay here (if I just lay here), would you lie with me and just forget the world?

Happy Weekend, My Friends.

So I am waiting for an elevator in the lobby of my office building with a (granted) highly socially retarded colleague of mine, when suddenly one elevator’s doors open, the colleague leans against the door frame, pauses, then says to me, “Ladies first, Atherton.”

“Excuse me?!” I gasped incredulously, ignoring the other people walking past us in the lobby corridor. “You know, there are exactly five people of the 85 people who work in our office who know me well enough professionally and personally in order to get away with making a comment like that to me.”

“I’m sor…”

“And you are not one of them! And none of them would have said anything like that to me in the office in the first place because none of them is as socially retarded as you are!”

“I’m really sor…”

“And if you ever make another offensive comment like that to me inside or outside of the office again, I will file a formal harassment report with regional HR in LA faster than you can suck in that huge fucking paunch of yours!”

All this.

And I still walked through the elevator doors first.

The moral of this story? Do not fuck with the fag who’s on Day Three of not smoking, you fuckwitted shit-for-brains assjack.

These images make me smile (from Sunday evening):

Prudence Halliwell Bartelby | Honolulu, Hawai`i

La Casa de Lago Salado Crew: Cordelia, Lawrence, and Atherton | Honolulu, Hawai`i

Atherton and Cordelia | Honolulu, Hawai`i

I have developed a violently intense and irrational hatred of Santa Claus.

He must die.

Oh, I am not referring to the sweet, kind, and gentle fictional figure who lives at the North Pole and makes his way merrily around the world every year on December 25th, chortling happily all the while he bestows wondrous gifts upon good little girls and boys everywhere. Although, actually, now that I mention it, since I’m kind of always Mr. Grouchy Emotionally Depressed In Dire Need Of Four Valium With A Vodka Chaser Grinch around that time of year, anyway, that Santa Claus is welcome to fuck off and bite a bullet, as well.

No, I am referring, instead, to the man who drives the 4:20 route three Ruger bus through Downtown Honolulu every weekday afternoon. Now, he is never driving this particular bus when I get on it, having already invariably endured either a real or imaginary soul-destroying day in the office, smoked two Marlboro Lights while waiting the requisite five-point-eight hours for the 4:20 route three Ruger bus to begin with, and successfully fended off precisely eight requests from Hotel Street Homeless Hobos for cigarettes, a dollar, spare change, breast implants, etc. Usually a quiet Filipino man is driving the bus when I embark on my afternoon excursion, impatiently yet inoffensively shuttling home all of his thankless passengers who are crammed into the bus literally like the sardines in those small tins that my mother used to eat between two saltine crackers when she was having her period (packed in mustard, not oil). But every day, at exactly the mid-point between my Hotel and Bishop Street stop Downtown and my Wanaka and Likini Street stop in Salt Lake, at Mapunapuna, Santa Claus arrives to give Impatient Yet Inoffensive Filipino Driver his afternoon shift break.

I invariably roll my eyes and mutter a protracted, “Fuuuuuck!” under my breath when I see his long white hair and quite impressive paunch board the bus each afternoon, much to the alarm of whomever is sitting beside me, and as if I have forgotten, from the afternoon before, that his appearance would occur again, each afternoon, for the rest of the week.

Being Santa Claus, of course, means he is omnipresent, eternally reappearing to ruin a perfectly pleasant bus ride home.

Why do I loathe him so? Why does his appearance strike hatred and intense homicidal urges into my heart, soul, and mind? Why do I shudder with the irrational urge to violently assault him with the imaginary baseball bat that I carry at all times and for just these types of situations and bludgeon him to death in his driving seat (while the bus is stopped, of course) until he lies, long white hair matted with the dark red of his counterpart’s archetypal holiday suit?

Because I know that his appearance means that, not five minutes later, and not two minutes away from my house, he will stop the bus at the terminus four stops away from my own stop, turn off the engine, unbuckle his seat belt, and bellow disinterestedly to no one in particular, “Gonna be about twenty minutes ’til I leave here,” pick up his tacky afternoon edition of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin (Hawaii’s equivalent to The New York Post, in my not-so-humble opinion), and leave the bus for a break.

Now, I would not harbor irrational hatred of him and homicidal dreams of his eventual death at my own lily-white hands if he were Impatient Yet Inoffensive Filipino Driver taking his own break with a 20-minute stop in the middle of the route. But Santa Claus has just popped out of a DaBus mini-van to relieve another driver, which means that he has already had a “break” of his own, really, and therefore does not deserve another one not five minutes into his shift. And certainly NOT in the middle of a Honolulu rush hour. On DaBus.

No. I hate him and want him dead for far more nefarious and selfish reasons. Because those 20-minute breaks of his make me die a little bit inside. Because they make me think.

Now, most friends who know me know that I think too much already, endlessly going over the events of the day, the week, the month, and the life, inside of my head, at any given moment during any given day. And since I am an excellent multi-tasker, even when blind drunk at one in the morning, fighting the good fight to not fall asleep on the bus / cab / truck ride home, I can think my mind into a frenzy about any given thing / event / person / thought / etc. And so this is why I resent those extra twenty minutes of time spent doing nothing.

On DaBus.

Thinking.

I’ll listen to my “Hurt” by Christina Aguilera, my “I Don’t Feel Like Dancing” by Scissor Sisters, my “The Kill” by 30 Seconds To Mars, and I’ll long for a bus ride in The Other Direction across the island, just so I am able to plug into Bartholomew’s video iPod and lose myself in the latest episode of “Heroes” and not be forced to / inspired to / coerced into thinking about other slightly more important things in my life besides whether or not the Japanese guy who can teleport and time travel makes it to his next destination and succeeds in his next endeavor. Instead, I listen to Aguilera, to the Sisters, to Leto, and think too much about that really big project I have due the next day (and the fact that there is no way I am yet able to acquire legal stock images for it); about moving to Boston (and the fact that although we’ve discussed it, and decided that we’re living together, we still need to discuss the entire situation, and all of its complicated yet still rather marvelous facets, before it happens); and about the fact that I am increasingly tired of this Armani Exchange brown button-down and what the fuck is it still doing on my body?!

I know that I think too much. I know that I’m kind of crazy. I know that I should probably be on heavy doses of anti-depressants and possibly anti-psychotic medications in addition to the Valium that a kind colleague proffers me on a daily basis and the vodka chaser that I purchase for myself every evening. And I know that I should probably stop drinking entirely, even though I most likely won’t, ever, since I don’t drink nearly as much as I drank even a short three months ago.

And this is why I continually think, every day, at around five pee em Hawaii Standard Time, that I want to murder Santa Claus. Make him see the devastation that his “about twenty minutes” breaks wreck upon me. Make him, if only for the moment when I wield the last blow, think what I think. Or, at the very least, deliver his announcement of, “Gonna be about twenty minutes ’til I leave here,” with a bit more…sensitivity. A bit more empathy. A bit more…love.

These aren’t pretty thoughts.

And I’ll never do it, of course. I may be one razor slice vertically up my arm on some nights, but I would never do it. And I would never take another person’s life.

But still.

Santa Claus needs to die.

I just have to find someone to pay who will do it.

If only so that I can have peace.

On my bus ride home.

Without thinking.

At approximately 4:20 on every weekday, sunny, Honolulu afternoon.