The Hopeless Dream Part 2

It's another typical grey cold morning as you awaken in your non descript semi detached house located in some miserable god forsaken town. You heave your bloated grey carcass out of your sagging bed and shuffle out to the bathroom where you have
a long drawn out piss. As you watch the fetid brown urine splash mostly into the bowl you contemplate the future, now so close. Only a matter of weeks away. You smile and finish up. Not bothering to wash your hands you shuffle back to your bedroom.
7.25am. Time to get ready for work.

You put on your standard garb. The brown trousers with the shiny arse, a white vest, a white shirt, a vee neck brown sweater, brown socks and pull on shoes. You notice a stain of some sort on the leg of your trousers. Must have been last
night's boil in the bag mixture. You take a flannel from the kitchen sink and dab away at it. Most of it comes off. This activity is quite physical for you at this time of the morning and it makes your metabolism kick up a gear, causing a
light sheen of sweat to develop on your forehead and a creeping sour odour to emanate from your armpits. The rash on your inner thighs and bollocks is making itself known so you give this area a good clawing despite being told by your doctor not
to do this. While you’re clawing away at the rash your constantly itchy hole awakens and this gets a good seeing to at the same time. Surely the rash can’t have spread to this area as well?

In the car now driving to the office. The traffic’s quite bad at this time so you spend quite a bit of time not moving. The heater’s turned up full blast and inside the car it’s nice and toasty. Out of boredom you let
out a fart at full force then sit back and savour the sour gas. As you look through the window at the front red brake lights of the car in front you’re taken back to Bangkok and the neon lights of Nana and Soi Cowboy. So full of promise
and potential. A car horn from behind brings you back to the here and now. The cars in front are moving off and you follow suit, thinking to yourself that you only have to put up with a few more weeks of this shit then…. paradise.

You get to the office and heave your bulk out of your small two seater car. You’ve parked quite a bit away so you have to waddle to the main doors through the drizzle. Once inside you notice the damned lift to the 6th floor is out
of order so you have to take the stairs. By the time you enter the office at 9.06am you’re exhausted. You head straight for the reception and flirt with the young secretary while you check the incoming mail. You’re not quite high
enough up the ladder to have it delivered to your desk.

Some drops of salty sweat land on various envelopes, none of which are yours. While you’re wheezing away and checking the mail the secretary stares at the top of your shiny liver spotted head.

She doesn’t realize it but a look of utter disgust mixed with pity comes over her face. Like Thailand. As soon as you look up she snaps into professional robot smiling mode. Like Thailand. You, of course, think it’s personal
and real. Like Thailand. You give her your best smile of the day so far, making your slack bloated greasy face with the huge rubbery lips twist and contort into something more akin to a grimace. You turn around and set sail for the back of the
office where your desk is located. As you stomp off the water in the secretary’s glass ripples and the food in her stomach positively heaves.

You eventually reach your desk and collapse into the worn swivel chair. You take off the overcoat and hook it back over the seat back. Unnoticed by you a waft of odour escapes and works its way to the poor young sod in front of you. He gets
up and goes to the toilet like he’s done at this time almost every weekday since he started, over two years ago. A five minute wait and he comes back. That familiar sour odour tinged with the scent of urine and strong garlic (morning breath)
has disappeared and, thankful for small mercies, he sits back down.

A typically boring day ensues. You shuffle and move piles of paper around your desk, always being sure to look thoughtfully at the computer screen when you think someone further up the ladder than you may approach.

You don’t actually do anything productive today, and haven’t done so for some time. The thing is, if you do put in a shift of honest graft somebody might notice and the next thing you know you will be ‘promoted’
to a higher position with far bigger responsibilities and more hassle. You will get a marginal pay rise at best which will in no way correspond to the increased workload. You’re content where you are. At least you know you could easily
get to the top if you wanted to, and that’s all that matters.

At 3.00pm you assemble down in the car park at the smoking area and puff away with the other non descripts. You try to add to the small talk that’s going around but everything you say and all your viewpoints seem pointless and outdated,
stupid even. This is because you spend all of your spare time on your home computer, on the Thailand chat sites. The people you interact with on these sites talk at a Dick & Jane level at best. As for your ‘conversations’ in
Thailand, you could have a more intellectual conversation with a twelve year old inner city drug runner from Brixton. Come to think of it, you can’t remember when you last had a decent conversation with anyone of even modest intellect,
except for your doctor, and even then all you talk about is the rash on your inner thighs and bollocks, ringworm, piles, incontinence, memory loss, hair loss, deafness, obesity, alcoholism, high blood pressure, smoking, the fungal infection on
your feet, and recently, shaking hands and palpitations

Luckily, the secretary who was flirting with you this morning is also down there with the group, making a big deal of shivering inside her long gray coat as she sucks on a cancer stick. You flounder up to her and, without warning, launch
into a tirade about how good Thailand is compared to the UK, the cheap cost of living, the beautiful women etc etc. Of course, this bimbo does not have the intellect to make such comparisons but that doesn’t stop you. Only a baseball bat
in the face swung by Babe Ruth might just shut you up. The secretary is more interested in flinching away from the miniature spit bombs that are launched from your yeasty fermenting mouth every two seconds or so. Since she started working here
over three years ago she has developed the reflexes of a featherweight boxer.

She longs for the day when she will end up married and sorted with a house and a few credit cards and cash. She knows she has looks but no brains and therefore it’s easier and more secure to marry money rather than work for it. When
the stereotypical couple of screaming demons arrive her position will be even more secure even though her physical attributes slowly but surely head south. The once happy go lucky bloke who married her for her sense of fun and vivaciousness now
has to work twice as hard just to keep their heads above water. Friends will disappear from his life leaving him bored, bitter and lost. He will give up on taking care of his physical self and as the years go by so does his self worth. Eventually
the now bloated constantly nagging bitch will leave the now bloated shell shocked dickhead for another sucker, taking the children and house with her. Now well into his fifties he is forced to take stock and it’s not a pretty sight. No
one here cares or has any sympathy for a broken down loser.
Perhaps its time for a holiday? Where could one go? Where would be a perfect dumping ground for the weak stinking human garbage of modern day living? Where I wonder?

Five to five and its home time. Your haul ass out of there and wobble as fast as you can towards your car. You get in quicker than a car jacker at a set of traffic lights and off you go leaving behind a jet of blue smoke as the 1.1L engine
toils with the 18 plus stone of dead weight that has just assaulted it.

Tonight’s the night you phone the love of your life. Its just a pity she always has her damned stereo turned up so loud and it always sounds like there’s a constant party going on where she lives. How can she expect to study
for her college course with that racket going on? Still, at the end of the day it will be money well spent…

Next time on The Hopeless Dream:
– The telephone call.
– The last day at work.
– The house clearance sale.
– The big move.
– Touchdown.

Stickman's thoughts:

You seem to know this situation so well that it made me wonder if you could be writing……about yourself?!