After five months of unemployment and dancing at the edge of
homelessness, I had started to think that no job could be too bad. Then I
landed a gig in the insurance business. In order to survive, I’ve learned to
rely on humor, and I was gonna need a lot of it to pull the gig off. You see, humor is the only thing between me and the dark void; the last thing
keeping me from grabbing a pen and stabbing the idiots around me in the neck on a daily basis. Sadly,
most people at that office didn’t share my sense of humor, and three particular Tuesdays before my time in the insurance business came to an end showed me just
how different our humors were and how much my job sucked.
The first incident came at a time where cops killing unarmed folks and idiots saying All Lives Matter were sitting at the top of the list of things that made me angry. I was sitting there, blood boiling, when an obese lady flew into the office with glee plastered
on her face and screamed “There’s free donuts in the break room!” In her heard, free donuts apparently
deserve the same celebration as the cure for cancer, and as a donut lover, the
news made my day. Ten minutes later, I heard the man who worked behind
me say that he was happy because Tuesday isn’t Monday and that was good enough
for him. I bit my tongue. Hard. That’s when I decided to go to the break room, grab a donut, and try
to choke on it.
The donuts looked sadder than those toys with missing limbs
you spot on dirty puddles on your way to the grocery store on days when you
miss the bus. I grabbed one and prepared a cup of horrible coffee to go with it because, when it comes to suffering, I want it all. With my
donut and shitty coffee in hand, I turned to return to my desk and saw there
were two elderly white ladies looking at the donuts the way dogs in cartoons
look at steaks. They peeled their bovine peepers from the donut box and looked
up at me. Then they smiled that creepy fake smile most office people give each
other regularly and sent me back to my angry place. I looked at them and said in a venomous voice “I have a coffee and a donut; all I
need now is to shoot a few unarmed black folks and I’ll be a real cop.” Okay, it was not a joke, but someone else, someone like me, would have appreciated the humor in that comment. Not them. Their
faces melted. Their smiles withered. Shock left its previous apartment and
moved into their eyes. I left the break room, their traumatized eyes burning
holes in my back.
The following weeks I tried my best to keep my mouth shut,
but silence feeds the existential dread that bubbles at my core, so a few
mornings later, again on a Tuesday, I was cracking a few jokes in order to stay sane. Most of them were so
wrapped in sarcasm that no one even looked at me. My sarcasm in that office was like a wounded bird, flying erratically over every head in that office and generally being ignored or making folks look uncomfortable. I decided to shut up, so I grabbed my phone and
started scrolling through Facebook to kill the tedium and get angry at the
amount of assholes who have internet access. That’s when I saw a GIF of Elmo
sitting on a potty and dancing. The words “Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime”
were above him. The words “That’s why I poop on company time!” were below. I
thought it was hilarious. I stood up, and did a little dance while singing the
song. The look on the faces around me would make anyone think I’d just killed a
baby by smashing its tiny, fragile head against my desk. I sat down and felt
the suckage become a dense, cold tumor in the center of my soul. I don’t trust
people who don’t enjoy a good poop joke.
Then another week rolled around. I was pretending to read an
email while thinking about the last time I went to Portland to hang out with
friends. A joke someone told came to mind and I chuckled. The guy who sits in
front of me asked me what I was thinking about. Then this happened:
Me: “Nothing, man, just remembered a joke.”
Him: “Must be a good one. Tell it.”
Me: “No, I’m not telling this joke at the officee. It’s
really dirty.”
Him: “Come on, man, tell us the joke.”
The quiet woman from New Orleans who sits to my right was
looking at me. She was smiling and nodding.
Me: “No, trust me, this is the most inappropriate, filthy,
absolutely disgusting joke you’ve ever heard. I’m not telling it.”
Lady from New Orleans: “I like my jokes a little red,
Gabino!”
Him: “See? We can handle it. Tell us the joke, man.”
Me: “I really shouldn’t. You can’t imagine…”
Him: “Tell us the damn joke, man!”
Me: “Okay.”
I took a deep breath and told the joke.
Me: “Last night I was going down on my grandma…”
No one chuckled. Two other people were looking at me. The
lady from New Orleans looked like she had two shoes full of maggots.
Me: “…when I tasted horse semen…”
I heard a grunt. I think New Orleans lady gaged. The douche
who had insisted I tell the joke looked three seconds away from crying.
Me: “…and I thought to myself ‘I wonder if that’s how she died.’”
No one laughed. They refused to look at me. For days. Bunch of fucking
soulless bastards. That’s a funny joke right there. Anyway, my job sucked and
I’m done telling jokes on Tuesdays.
