Dancing with Mediocrity
By James Oyedijo

I watch too much TV. I watch way too much TV. It’s gotten to the point where I feel like I’m the only person that really exists and all humanity are just entertaining characters in my head – crazy. I got this shitty job. I can’t complain because it took about six months to find it. The sad thing it isn’t even a real job. I do legal temp work. It is the worst job you could ever have. Now I know what it is like to be an escort or a fireman. You can be laying down wasting your life watching Maury Povich, and right when you are about to find out the paternity test result…”ring, ring – Hello Femi, this is Claudine from Supreme Legal, I want to know if you could…” Next thing I know I’m on the L train on my way to a dehumanizing assignment, like some well trained monkey trying to get a banana for riding a tricycle – damn. I’m a loser. Who cares? In a few months I’ll have enough money to move out of my parents’ house and then I’ll be able to get back to being myself.

I’m actually on the train coming back from my job. I hate it. It’s ten degrees below zero, and I have to wear dress slacks. I don’t give a fuck about what I wear to work. Today I didn’t even take a bath. Even worse, I’ve been wearing the same outfit to work for the past week. Why should I wear anything different? I do the same thing everyday. “Hey Femi, when you have the time, could you read through these 17, 000 emails and check for the names Bernstein, Meyers, Rhodes, and Collins? After that, could you flag the emails that deal with copyright infringement? Super! If you could have that done by noon that would be awesome.” I hate when people boss me around and then use some fake word like “super” or “awesome”, like we’re buddies or something. I think the other temp at the office is a prostitute. I’m serious, I really think she is. She has to be about 50 because she has gray hair, but she wears the tightest jeans and she has a real big ass. It isn’t the kind of big ass a 50 year old woman would have either. It’s definite stripper booty. The crazy thing is that she wears these tight ass jeans with bulky grandma sweaters that say shit like, “I love ice cream” or have Santa Claus shouting “ho, ho, ho.” I can’t stand hearing her voice. She has the most obnoxious lisp and she speaks slowly, plus she has the thickest New York accent. I was listening to her conversation today and I think she was talking to her pimp. She said, “Atlantic City is going to be real good, I can go to the casino and find a lot of work and thy're so many motels out there…” Can you imagine hearing her saying that with her slow talking, obnoxious lisp and accent – YUCK!

I already said this, but it is really fucking cold outside. Cold weather puts me in the worst moods. So I’m sitting on the train, dirty, in dress slacks, wearing a huge red down coat with a belt and snorkel, depressed. A woman starts walking down the aisle of the subway. For some reason we make eye contact “Erika,” I say to the woman, “Femi, how are you,” she replies. She looks at me and her smile turns into a puzzled smirk. Then the bitch says “alrighty see ya.” I can’t believe that I just saw Erika. The last time I saw her, we were standing in front of her house trying to figure out how we were going to buy liquor. That was seven years ago. Damn, she looked good too. Not good in a “she looks so beautiful” way, good in a “she spends a lot of money for her clothes” way. She saw me like this, looking like a dirty office clerk in a red goose down jacket with a belt and snorkel. Wow, she won.

I went out with Erika in high school. Well we didn’t even have much of a relationship. I probably just kissed her and felt her up a few times in between classes and after school. That isn’t the point. I dumped her and now she won. The bitch won. She was wack though, one of those people that gets depressed because she can’t find anything she likes in a boutique. Plus she made people pronounce her name in such an asinine way. If you met her she would tell you “My name is `Ur-ree-kah’ not `Erika’.” She was so annoying. We broke up one night when we were watching the Oscars. She was so corny she actually did that fashion police shit and explained why everybody’s dress was horrible. After that I had to dump her. I said some bullshit like “you don’t like me, you just like my doggystyle” and that was it. We talked a little after that. Like the time we were trying to get some liquor because she was depressed about something. Every time we spoke it was on my terms, I decided when and if we communicated. I was the man! She’s been waiting seven years for this, to see me and completely blow me off.

The worst thing about this was that she was wearing Gucci Rush. Damn, I love that shit. An ex-girlfriend of mine used to wear it. She was very sexy. Sexy Sharon – that’s what I called her. When I smell Rush the beat to Ochie Wally starts playing in my head and I envision a tall voluptuous woman with a huge afro, dressed in a fig leaf, feeding me grapes. Erika probably noticed my reaction to her scent and thought I was in love with her or something. That ex-girlfriend who wore Rush, she was the best, like I said real attractive and she was smart - smarter than me at least. We could talk for hours and she never bored me. She was one of those rare smart, attractive women that would fuck with a slightly funny guy with no job or ambition. I guess she likes to laugh. We broke up though, I can’t tell you why, but we did. I think she is going out with some urban professional cool guy now. You know the type of guy with a cool job, like a writer or an advertising executive or some cool shit like that. He’s the kind of bastard that dresses like he could host TRL and fetishizes over hip hop and jazz. The punk probably has turntables and keeps a copy of the Zagat guide in his Blackberry – asshole. I really don’t know anything about him; I don’t even know the hopelessly cool jerk’s name. We agreed that in order for us to be friends, we could not tell one another about our love lives, funny, she is the only one with something to tell. She doesn’t know this, but I’ve seen him before. Two weeks ago I saw her holding hands with some guy on the Lower East Side. He was wearing a fedora, a tweed blazer, some Paper Denim & Cloth jeans, and he was holding a man purse. I think that they had just left a bar and she was probably drunk enough to have sex with that sucker. I hid in a pizza shop so she wouldn’t see me. I was so disgusted. Why is the rebound guy always so much different from you?

Back to the bitch, I’m walking home and she is walking ahead of me. I forgot that we walk the exact same route home. I think she lives two blocks away from me. She is wearing this suede coat with fur around the collar. It is long coat but it really hugs her body, it’s a real nice coat. She let her hair grow; it is coming out of her knitted hat and it is a little past shoulders. She is wearing these tight jeans and high heel boots that are making her legs look amazing. Erika looked like one of those women on Girlfriends. I start thinking, maybe I should catch up to her, tell her that I was glad to see her, joke about the shit I have on and ask her out for drinks or something. I mean, she had to have changed since high school. I’m sure she doesn’t care about my outfit. I start to walk faster; I’m trying to catch up to her. She is fully aware that I am behind her and starts walking incredibly fast – she is almost jogging. FUCK!