Joanna by Patris Gordon

Joanna Patris

Gordon

For Joanna. Thank you...

All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied, transmitted or saved without the written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damage. Printed in the United Kingdom Published by Blank Screen Publishing E-mail: info@blankscreenbooks.co.uk blankscreenbooks.co.uk ALSO BY BLANK SCREEN PUBLISHING Pimp Theory by Patris Gordon Sitting quietly alone in the corner... (An anthology with stories by Martin Friel and others)

Patris Gordon

Chapter 1

ow what the fuck I was doing there nobody knew. But all I knew was that I’d reached a point in my life where money talked and good-looking women walked. Seriously. I mean, it was a diagnosis based on the devolution of yours truly, and the alpha male who wanted to diffuse this stereotypical acknowledgment of being an alpha male. I looked to my right – the art director was a woman; I looked in front of me – the promotions manager was a woman. My supervisor, who lingered somewhere in the background, was (wait for it) a woman. In actual fact, I looked across the whole floor of strange faces, devoid of recognition, and I saw nothing but women. Young women. Younger women and a few maternity bound ladies who were no longer young or desirable, but respectable and maintained a dignity that warranted a second glance. But they were women nonetheless. And while my naïve acceptance of women amounting up to more than 50 per cent of the human race, it was hard to believe I was here, working in a dominated environment of mostly women. That was not the scary part, though. The bit that frightened the life out of me was that I quietly enjoyed it. There was no banter about football or sport in general, or any common consensus-filled chat ending with, “Oooh, I wouldn’t put my cock in that!” here, or any permitted conversations that 3

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usually allowed a masculine growl or two. Unfortunately, not. Of course, not all male banter revolved around football and sex, but at my current workplace, a prerequisite knowledge from fashion styles to the correct insertion method of a tampon appeared duly required. And while I awkwardly felt responsible for accepting such a job at this place, I realised my often hidden feminine traits were profoundly necessary to my role, while any typical male mannerisms needed to be restricted, big time. But again, I was never far from the truth that no matter how androgynous I felt and attempted to behave, I could only relate to these women who I communicated daily with as a male. And that was probably why they liked me – because I resembled the characteristics of someone who didn’t have any balls (metaphorically), but did actually have balls. Ahh, I sighed. My existence really wasn’t that bad, because like most folk I worked for the money and yes, I could think of a million other places I’d rather not be working at. Believe me, I had seen some places, and where I was now wasn’t too bad. It had its crap days like any other job and the good did outweigh the negative. So why was I even moaning about being surrounded by women all day? Most of my male friends would smile excitedly when I told them what work I did and who I usually worked with and around, although I sometimes felt as if I hadn’t achieved a sense of male purpose like they had – standing in their business suits and executive meetings bound to be dominated by white collar dudes. Did I have hang-ups, normally preserved for the random and sparse number of women who worked in male-dominated places? No – well, what was it then, I always asked myself. Well, it was her, wasn’t it? Shit. I hated even admitting it, because it was 4

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wrong for me to acknowledge her as the reason for my despondent appreciation of where I worked, but I knew it was true that she hadn’t made it any easier for me. I was okay with average-looking ladies handing me papers to file, and listening to their rants of domestic bliss or weekend raves or potential holiday sites. But I mean, to put it mildly, or simply, this girl literally stunned me with her beauty when I first saw her and semi-spoke with her. It rekindled something inside me. Something like, knowing I did actually work around some pretty hot talent but I was still in the daily grind, stressing over doing a good job, desperately anxious to relate with my colleagues on gender issues I’d only witnessed second hand from my sibling and mother when they were angry, or through Sunday morning repeats of Hollyoaks. This woman had a look on her face that said it was okay. Okay, for me to be me. ‘Are you Allen Metcalfe?’ Now I almost wished this initial question were said with the smoothest of delivery as a deity can concur and not hesitated in a stuttered form, but I’d be lying. I think I looked at her longer than our society presumed acceptable, but as I just said, her beauty was captivating. Whether it was her red lips, clear and light brown skin, hair well looked-after and mauve in colour, I wasn’t sure but she had me. Within the space of two seconds, her cute stumble of words had taken me to a hedonistic fantasy. Amazingly pretty, I acknowledged her physical features with a raise of an eyebrow. It wasn’t every day I’d be instantly spellbound like this (especially working with so many women) but today was one of those days. Finally, I responded, admittedly quite quickly and said, ‘Yes’ in reply to her question, and my brain allowed me to operate in a way that didn’t overtly display my thoughts, somehow projecting its 5

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occupant as a fully-functional human being. ‘What’s your name?’ I asked, as she handed me a package with my name on it. It was from a client I was working with on a project. I remembered she mumbled something about being sorry she didn’t know who I was and was sorry for the delay in bringing it over. I figured part of her job at the company was to hand out post, albeit apologetically. She said her name: ‘Joanna.’ ‘Thanks, Joanna. Don’t worry about it.’ And like that – she was gone. But the moment left me transfixed. It was a readily accepted moment within me that from meeting someone you liked the look of, you’d perhaps stare and gaze a little bit longer than you should – and they’d leave a dent in your imagination much larger than an ugly person was likely to achieve. Well, unless they were so ultra-shocking and incredibly disgusting they should only appear in the pages of Chat and Pick Me Up magazines. But yep, she’d infiltrated me, and a little too easily. I knew I was a weak-minded man but I’d been working at it, so these thoughts of admiration should have been containable. Again, working around so many women without having a quick wank every other day deserved some recognition, no? Of course, not, but yes, my self-control and flirting abilities were generally impeccably convincing and I was an experienced guy who knew trouble when he spotted it. Perhaps, that was it. She didn’t look like trouble. She had an air of wholesome innocence about her (giving packages is a humble experience, you know) but really, this was probably what I saw: a pretty girl that liked to give, devoid of caution. Only God could have presented a package so near perfect. While my mind wanted to linger on this thought of a magical 6

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first sight, I had bloody work to do and had to focus before my supervisor started speaking too loudly and indirectly about my fragile incompetence of late. I had fucked up a few times. So that’s what I did: I got back to work. However, I could feel a burning sensation on both sides of my face, for what I partly assumed to be paranoia of my conscience. But a lovely double-take of the women around me and I could see my supervisor staring at me, her eyes peaking over her halfrimmed glasses. And the art director. And the promotions manager, too – all staring, gawping, as if I’d eaten a dirty piece of chicken from the floor without blowing it first. Maybe because they knew it was trouble: that moment of provocation where I asked a simple question after responding to her simple question. Maybe they knew what I should I have known but found my behaviour intriguing nonetheless. Or maybe because they knew what men were like when they acted in this alien way and what it meant and why I shouldn’t be doing it now, at work, and in a situation that surely started as it meant to go on: trouble. Surely I hadn’t done anything wrong, so I ignored these women. I knew this was a fundamental reaction to asserting my esteem as high even if I quietly thought they were right. I stared at the unread emails in front of me and decided to reply to the client who’d sent me the package, and let them know that all was well with it, and we could photograph the products contained to help us with their advertorial I’d been working on. I typed a few words but deleted them quickly. My mind was elsewhere. My mind was on her. I had lunch that day by myself in the nearby park and tried to analyse my state of mind. My favourite author Murakami and 7

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his book Norwegian Wood couldn’t even keep my thoughts from exacerbating themselves. A random guy, possibly homeless, began singing in the centre of the park. It was a Rihanna song and he was doing various dance poses as if he were her. I could see people avoiding their gazes with him and doing their best not to encourage him with laughter or a smirk or anything. He almost took me away from my thoughts in a way Murakami hadn’t achieved, but I was still contemplating an imaginary private tussle with Joanna that I thought would become real. It was like I knew it could become real, but did I want it to? I threw my lunch in the bin and watched the dancing man move over to the pigeons nearby that were cooing and wavering around for any waste they could find. He walked over and they flew away, and he waved his arms as if flying and started the Rihanna song again. I got up, knowing I should give my fiancée the daily lunchtime call to see if everything was all right, and if our young children were fine when she dropped them off at school. But I didn’t want to call her. I’d languished away my self-control and knew that what I wanted at that moment wasn’t good for me, at all. Wasn’t it amazing what a smile could do – and who was sending that smile to you? I skated through the park and headed back to the office. On the way back, I walked past several female colleagues and they kindly blanked my nodding head in light of seeing them, but I quickly explained it to myself that maybe they had something, or someone, on their minds, too. Back at the office, I could tell something was up by the herd of women surrounding a young intern’s desk. It was probably wrong of me to be unsympathetic towards this intern, but I had spoken with her numerous times and it was clear she liked me and found 8

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my conversation amusing. But at 19 years old, she had too many emotional issues already, and while I had my fair share of baggage back then, to unveil them within a day or so of meeting a bloke who’d half-consider shagging you, was a hint of reasonable cause for concern. Clearly, there was a lot more going on in her life than I’d like to imagine. My first impressions of her weren’t too dissimilar to Joanna’s: strikingly impressive, long, fair brown skin, good legs and cleavage to match. A serious expression wafted a sexiness upon her and her clothing assemblage made her a reader of every style magazine possible. But watching her now cry – and being surrounded by the women of the office – irked me that her plea for attention was undeserved, whether or not her boyfriend had just dumped her. It was totally unprofessional, but quickly it hit me again: women do things a little differently, and were still allowed to acquire sympathy even if you flirted with every guy you fancied. Yep, I was definitely working in the wrong department. I was the only person not surrounding this girl and that meant I was probably the bad guy, right? Who knew? I looked at my mobile phone and saw a missed call from my fiancée and thought perhaps I was. Then Joanna walked past and sort of smiled. I lit up a smile back but she’d gone. Breaking my thought train, my desk phone rang. I picked it up, unsure. ‘Allen?’ I knew who it was. The client who’d sent me the package. ‘Is that Natalie?’ ‘Who else?’ Her voice was severely irritating and smug like someone who knew they were in charge primarily because they had a large bank account and I was obligated to remember that. ‘Hi, how are you?’ I mustered. 9

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‘Good! Very well, thanks for asking,’ she said. I partly expected she would ask this back to me. ‘I’m calling because...’ My mind drifted to the first and only time that I’d met Natalie. I was with my supervisor and it was apparent there was an undercurrent of bitter familiarity between the four ladies, besides me, that were also present. It was an atmosphere of forced restriction: we’re only working with you because we want to promote our products in your top-selling magazine, and we only want to work with you because you have a lot of money, and are likely to advertise your product again – and again. Natalie’s face was cringeworthy in expression. She was an average-looking girl of around 26, but with an all-compassing broach of seniority that was required to satisfy the firm’s bottom line and maximise any publicity where possible. I didn’t fancy her in the slightest and hearing her voice now made that clearer than ever. ‘...I’m calling because I believe you have the package for the shoot.’ ‘Yes, I do.’ ‘Well, I would have appreciated you letting me know, Allen. We don’t have many of these samples left to get lost in the post or anything.’ ‘Err, it only just arrived,’ I replied, defending myself. ‘No, it didn’t, Allen.’ Crap. As soon as she said that I knew she’d tracked the package to see whether it’d been delivered and signed for. ‘I believe it had been signed for almost two hours ago.’ At this moment, my supervisor came over and hovered over my desk with a frown on her face. Clearly she’d heard some of the conversation. I had to continue. ‘Sorry, Natalie,’ I said, head facing south and avoiding eye 10

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contact with boss lady. ‘I should have let you know the products had arrived much sooner, and confirmed that they’re okay for our shoot. I’m sorry, once again.’ I could swear I heard Natalie making the sound of sucking the air around her, clearly in delight at being victorious and being right to call and flag up her petty thought process and boring persona issues. I wanted to slam down the phone at that moment, but quietly and calmly I maintained myself, said goodbye, will update you soon, and dropped the receiver back to its rightful place, all with a fixed newsreader’s smile on my grill. And believe it or not, my supervisor didn’t say a word. She didn’t care to explain herself, why she needed to stand over my desk or why she walked away, sat at her computer and then put on her tinny acoustic-drowning iPod headphones and then avoid eye contact with me. Fucking strange. I knew then that this was going to be an interesting week, particularly as the intern was now smiling at me and blinking her eyes. I wished she had caught a flash of light in them or something, but her posture suggested otherwise – and for a split second I couldn’t blame her boyfriend for making her cry. I looked away, determined not to be a part of it, and flicked through the latest magazine we’d produced, studying the ‘flannel panel’ or credits of who’d contributed to this month’s issue. I scanned the names eagerly to only find one name of interest. That name, of course, was Joanna.