APOLOGIA

Dear—

Well, no, not that dear. I don’t want you harboring delusions about me. So, greetings:

I’m sending you this epistolatory apology because I can’t stand the thought of groveling in person before you while you regard me from your exalted height, deciding whether my apology is adequate. I honestly can’t stand the idea that I have to apologize at all. But I know that in order to keep my position, menial as it is, I’m obligated to afuckingpologize. Thus, this apologia.

I’m sorry. I’m really, really, really, REALLY sorry. Okay? 

I mean, Jesus H. Christ, how sorry does a person have to be before you condescend to forgive? A jillion sorries aren’t going to make you like me any better, which is the only reason I’d apologize at all—so you’ll like me. The conviction that you don’t like me is weirdly painful to me—weird considering how much I don’t like you. But beggars can’t be choosers.

Why am I even a beggar, can you tell me that? Why is it I'm a beggar and you're not? We’re basically the same, under the skin, if you don’t count the fact that your skin is a lot better tanned and oiled than mine—but that’s because you’re not a beggar. Seriously, we’re both just bags of water held together with gristle and muscle and a bunch of things I don’t know the name of…

Oh, wait. So, is it that you do know the names of everything inside our bodies? That you know the names and purposes of everything in the world because you attended the University of whatever, Megalomania? Pardonnez-moi, I didn’t mean to imply that there’s anything wrong with being highly educated. I’m fully fuckdoodling aware of the significance of those letters on your door plaque. They mean that I have to apologize, while you, in your alternate universe of significant letters, do not.

So, as you see, I am apologizing. Abjectly. On my knees if necessary—although, what constitutes ‘necessary?’ Necessary for what? To regain my MENIAL, as I have already described it, position in your life? I’m not actually seeing how you will manage without me. You don’t even know where the coffee shop is, the one I bring you a double latte from every morning with sugar-in-the-raw and an almond croissant. Imagine yourself having to wait patiently in line, like all the other menials of the ordinary world, while valuable time runs wasted through its hourglass. And while you’re imagining, imagine me sitting at your desk languidly turning over manuscripts and very important documents while massaging my unshod feet on the sheepskin mat beneath the desk. Your desk. Got it?

But I digress. I’m apologizing. Profusely. Inordinately. For what crime was it again? I do realize an apology isn’t worth much if the penitent doesn’t know what s/he is apologizing for. Let me think back. It seems to me that you took offense—quite rightful offense!—at something you thought you overheard me saying to someone while answering your phone (which you pay me to answer). You strode over to me after I hung up, and you seized me by the upper arm. Ooh, I could have reported you for harassment right then! And you gave me a look that burned through my eyeballs—do you even know you have that look? The rest of us do. And you said, or snarled, “Did I overhear you telling a client I was out licking a duck’s butt?”

Actually, you did overhear that. That’s correct. I was extremely annoyed with you. You can be extremely annoying, you know that? Although perhaps you don’t know, since you never have to apologize. Apologies are nature’s way of teaching us our annoyingness. Anyway, you told me you’d had enough of me and I should just disappear from your life, or so I took you to mean. Then you turned your back and made it clear you weren’t interested in hearing my explanation. Which I had one of. I tried to tell you it wasn’t an important client, or even an unimportant one; it was only that “friend” you’re always bringing around. Anyway, your “friend” laughed. You’d be surprised how many people laugh behind your back.

Why am I telling you this? I don’t want to hurt your feelings—if such a thing is possible. I value your feelings. I think about them more than I do my own. To put it another way, my feelings appear to be terminally dependent on yours. If you feel bad, I feel worse. I may as well tell you I’m feeling like an uninflated basket-fucking-ball right now, and this letter is making me feel even worse. That’s partly because I know I won’t send it.

Why not, you ask? First, I’m not that kind of person—unlike you, who are. The kind of person that gets their jollies from making other people feel small. I am the kind of person who always tries to make people feel better about worries that may be perturbing them, which is why I said that thing about you out licking a duck’s butt. I was only trying to reassure your “friend”—by the introduction of a little lighthearted joshing—that there need be no worries about me. About me and you. About, I mean, any suspected involvement that exceeds the boundaries of employer/employee. I know your “friend” has had speculations. Notions. The vivid image of you licking a duck’s butt should dispel any…

Oh crap, I haven’t the patience for this. Ultimately, I’ll have to recopy the whole thing; there are smears on the paper, and you’d probably think they were from tears wiped away furiously by an ink-stained forearm. That’s how you think—that everything is about you. The fact that it’s true, that everything is, doesn’t make it any easier for me, menial that I am. But then I remember that I’m not going to send it. This letter. This pathetically rumpled piece of wide-lined yellow legal-pad paper. I’m just writing so I’ll blow off steam; then I’ll burn it.

Burn it?! If I burn it, you’ll never get it. Then you’ll never know my sufferings. You won’t know how my entire inner life is a landscape of you. I want you to feel the agony of a body containing an entire other person, a person who never stops expanding. What is this expansion? It’s my picture of your magnificence. You are magnificent, as you’d be the first to agree. But you only see your own vision of your magnificence, you don’t see mine. Mine is more magnificent than yours. 

I think you would be surprised to know that your magnificence burns in my heart, my hands, my blood, my loins, to the point where if I can’t find water I will carbonize. You have taken over my powers of rational thought and made me not even miss them. I don’t want rational thought. I want you to scorch and sear me—and that’s what I should be apologizing for. 

I’m sorry that your touch thrills. Maybe you don’t know it does, since you rarely touch anybody. But you have touched me—touched my upper arm, for instance, with vise-like fingers. And that’s not the only time. You may have forgotten how you once stood behind my chair, bending over me to see the screen, and your hand touched my neck on its way to pointing out some error I’d made. An accident? Ha! Hands don’t touch people’s necks by accident. In fact, I’m pretty sure your hands don’t do anything by accident. I apologize for that. My neck shouldn’t have been there.

Anyway, no, I won’t send this letter. I may go so far as to stuff it in an envelope (they are in your desk) and stamp it (likewise), even carry it about with me for a few days, or months, but I won’t send it. I’m sure you would fire me, and that’s not the kind of fire I need from you. I’m trying very hard to keep in my mind the picture of you licking a duck’s butt, in hopes that I can finally laugh you off. And of course it isn’t working. If you were licking a duck’s butt, you would do it with such élan that soon everyone would be out licking them too. We all want to be you.

However, “be” you isn’t quite “have” you. I don’t know how many of us would in reality like to “have” you. Most people would recoil in defense and say, “Nice, but uh-uh, no no no. Too high-octane for this old Prius.” They know what a handful you’d be. I know, too, but you see, there’s nothing else in my hands. Only you.

It occurred to me that I could drop this letter next to the trash basket, as though I had intended to dispose of it. You might find it by accident. But now that I’ve said it, I can’t very well do it. What do I do, then? Send it to your “friend?” Ha ha ha. No, there is nothing I can do. Burn the incriminatory letter, then come back to work and make a decent, sincere apology. Not on my knees, no drama please. Go to the coffee shop and bring you a double latte with sugar-in-the-raw and an almond croissant. Sit meekly at my desk and await your orders. And hope—though hope is the placebo of have-nots—that you some day will look my way and see your magnificence reflected in me.

Yours truly, truly—XXXXXXXXXXXX

P.S. Please ignore the rant at the start of this letter, and only pay attention to the end. Like, the last sentence. I’d meant the beginning to be the end, but it wasn’t; it was just the beginning.