Trying To Take My Mind Off You
I watch the machine with pensive eyes.
I don my overalls knowing what to expect
and doubling it.
Should have tripled it.
The small access door opens into a swamp of ink and grease
and rusted screw rests
and dead mice... they should groom snakes in here, I think, serious,
starting to crawl inside among the hanging mess of wires and tubes
and dripping oil.
I hardly fit in.
Luckily I’m not claustrophobic.
Should go on a serious diet
if I’m to keep on playing contortionist.
I lie on my back, feeling something rugged stab me in two places,
will have to do,
I don’t get out again and again in.
I look upwards at the disjointed joint,
your thighs loom above me
ending into that inviting white patch holding everything,
wake up! I hear the scream in my head
groping blindly for a screwdriver,
then a pair of pliers, then a socket wrench...
OK, let her go, I call to my co-worker.
He lets her go, it’s solved.
This was a small preamble, the real job starts now.
I crawl out,
slowly distending the entire set of my crammed and cramped parts
checking carefully that each is still attached and functioning.
Functioning, ha, big word functioning,
functioning at least as good as before.
They do.
Is this is why you finished college,
and university,
and then a bachelor degree in electronics and then a master degree in electronics
and then a master degree in business administration?
screams the red horned one on my right shoulder
piercing my ear with her trident.
You like it,
sings the white winged one on my left shoulder
strumming nonsense on her harp,
I’d rather it was the Rolling Stones.
Shut up! I think both paredrae off, slightly pissed off,
feeling quite godly for a moment.
Where were you with your remarks when I crawled under the machine, huh?
You waited, you didn’t want to soil yourself, huh?
You could have swapped your fancy dresses with an overall too.
She drips, magenta, my co-worker says. He means the machine.
Yes, I saw. Cyan too, I add,
your eye, they are not cyan,
they are blue, a mix of cyan
and sea and sky.
The dripping is fixed. The machine, I mean.
Time for the main bitch. The job at hand, I mean.
Maybe we do first the electrical stuff, suggests my co-worker,
not ready yet to sink in the ineludible shit.
He doesn’t know what ineludible means.
Makes sense - a wire to remove, some wires to shift elsewhere,
a condensator to cut away completely...
Shall I excise her? says my co-worker, cutter in hand.
You don’t excise anything, I say shoving a hammer under his nose,
human, machine, nothing.
It was a joke, he apologizes.
Not even a joke. Meaningless sentence composition, intention clear.
OK, OK, he cuts the leads,
we remove, shift, load a small software patch in the safety controller.
Safe sex, he tries another joke, no “accidents”.
This time I laugh,
the hammer safely stashed away.
Lunch. The pizza is hot, steamy,
even better than the pizza I had with you,
my left hand holding your right hand
my right hand tearing irregular pieces of my pizza and feeding it to you
while your left hand tore pieces of your pizza, feeding it to me.
I prefer your lips, I said,
I prefer your lips, you said,
not because the pizza was so bad.
He takes the longer tube, the female,
I take the shorter tube, the one with a male ending.
We try to fit them together with muscle,
oil, tools, contortions, heat,
finally luck has it and they fit. I am a lake of sweat. So is he.
How many more? I curse.
Enough, he answers
taking the second pair and handing me the short one again.
We know that the next step is crawling again in the ink mud under the machine
so we are not really in a hurry to get to the next step.
Luckily everyone in our company is religious, I venture,
R&D, engineering, sales, support...
This machine works on the combined praying power of all together.
You too? he asks, knowing my heretic head.
When I see it working, I guess I am left with no choice, I retort,
annoyed at his insight,
wishing insightfulness was a word since it seems to me more appropriate.
The tubing is done. The wiring is done.
The programming, measuring, cleaning after is done.
The praying - do I have a choice? - is done.
ON. Blowers, clicks, humming, blinking lights,
no fulmination. Thank God.
Sure, if I prayed it is only natural that I invoke God, no?
The first day, seventeen hours, is over.
We can go to the hotel,
have a shower, down a huge cold beer and talk tired nonsense.
We go to the hotel,
have a shower, down a huge cold beer and talk tired nonsense.
Hey, I’m not... and he says your name.
I guess it just slipped through my defenses. Or maybe through my offences.
Or maybe just through my fences.
He watches me strangely,
I gulp down the rest of the bubbling yellow
and we head to our room. Separate rooms, hey!
I slide in between the cool covers, naked,
your hand awaits me there,
guides mine,
guides me,
gashes deep ruts across my back
as my fists crush your breasts
almost expecting to see milk drops ooze out.
Must have been a dream, I think,
brushing my teeth and pulling the curtains away from a rising sun.
I try to watch the gashes on my back, I can’t,
not with a single mirror in the bathroom.
I pick my bag, tools, ready for a greasy breakfast and a new day of toil.
How the hell do I take my mind off you? I ask of nobody.
Who the hell says I want to take my mind off you? I tell nobody.
My co-worker doesn’t really get the silly smile on my face,
he thinks it has to do with the milk trace on his upper lip.
To a certain extent,
and in a very, very ambagious way,
it has.
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