S1, Account 2: Roy
Here we go again. The annual bullshit dance myself and Alistair have become professional choreographers for — my annual review. We know the intro, the climax, and the exit by heart. But still we dance, dance, dance. He sits across from me, face slightly rounder than last time, skin slightly more flushed (no doubt something to do with the pints he’s just consumed for lunch), and small squirrellish pale green eyes, maybe a little more nervous and furtive than usual. It doesn’t matter. His apparent guilt. The closest thing he possesses to a conscience. He is still going to speak the same words I’ve heard for the past 5 years. I suppose the one thing I respect about him is that he doesn’t even try to remix them anymore. He gave up on that after year 2. No doubt due to his limited intellectual capacity to do anything but let everyone else keep the wheels spinning and take credit for it. Unfortunately we don’t have a copywriter on our team, but I’m sure if we did, he would have romanced me with 5 different professional versions of “Stay in your lane and stop trying to aim high” written by them, and then claimed credit for it. He is a worm who never stops wriggling; wriggling into and out of lies, wriggling into women’s beds, wriggling under his superiors, up their bums and wriggling out with their shit smeared all over him.
He’s the boldest liar I ever knew. I have been applying for promotion for 5 years straight, and each time I am rejected, he points to the choices of the “powers-that-be” having wanted someone with a little more experience, or wanting to employ a family friend. But I found out 3 years ago that he is the deciding vote, always, because he is my team leader and his judgement of my work is used to inform the partners of my potential capability to do the role. I found out this year that on at least 2 occasions the partners voted in majority to promote me, but his report on my work (which is flawless, because I was taught to not just be the best, but be the best twice over as a MINIMUM), caused the promotion to be given to someone else. Fury consumed my heart in that moment and I could’ve smashed every table, every window in my office. But all my life I’ve been taught to swallow my rage like a daily intake of vitamin tablets, so with every silent gulp, I felt the searing heat of anger coat my arteries, my veins, my muscle, my fat, and I let it distil through my body till there was no longer enough left in my fists to engage it in wanton destruction. I closed my eyes and I remembered my father, how he went through so much worse, for longer, how he wasn’t even seen as a human being, how he was ignored, cursed, spat on, beaten, falsely accused, always presumed guilty, denied his rights, and all he could say in response was ultimately “Yes sir, sorry sir, it won’t happen again”. And each day he got up and he still went to work, because he had two boys to raise and exist for. I thought about all the times he could have lost his temper and we might never have seen him again, or he could have come back to us a fractured version of his former self, and I channel his endurance and his will and I uncurl my fist, put my anger in a cast iron cage and I tell it “Not now, not yet, but one day”.
“Why are you still there?” my friends ask me. If only it was as simple as that. My dad is sick, very sick, and my work benefits pay for his private care which enables my wife and I to carrying on working and building for the future we both want. I love my dad so much, and I would do anything for him. I can’t put his care in jeopardy by acting out or unnecessarily disrupting it. And if laying myself on this altar of continual rejection, bodily & mental deconstruction is what I have to do to make his last days as comfortable as possible, I will bear it. He bore so much more for me. He does not have long, but he is as comfortable as he can be. He has an amazing carer (my brother helps out too), he lives with us, and we are going to ease him off well. He is home, just where he belongs, and my eternal love for him, supersedes my present anger. I thank God that I have a wife as understanding as Khadija. She loves my father as much as I do, often spending time with him and the carer when I am away on work trips, to work in shifts to look after him when I can’t be there. God truly blessed me with this woman, and I cannot wait till we build a family of our own.
And so I look at Alistair, looking at me, and I say “Maybe next year then”.
Originally posted: March 29, 2020