The Slinky Life: Or Why Slinky Will Commit Murder For A Vacation

I realized the other day that when I'm happy, my handwriting is utterly incomprehensible, my thoughts flowing across the page like spilled water. Grief etches hard lines into my writing, rigid and perfectly, utterly legible.

But anyway.

I need a holiday. Stat.

Sunday finds me sitting in the office. There is no air-conditioning. Fucking central air-conditioning. Five hours later I throw in the towel and stagger home under the weight of various files. I stay up till 3 am trying to focus and get the damned shite done. I dream of the movements of boats on water. There's a soundtrack. U2 features heavily.

Monday is a frantic blur of activity, winding down only at 7, when I find that it is going to be a long, long night ahead. I meet SheWhoRunsInStilettos for dinner, and fill her in.

"It's not worth it," she says. I agree. But still.

We talk about the phenomenon of rich men and their marriages. And the concept of fidelity. We talk about the epidemic of marriages. We cannot imagine.

SheWhoRunsInStilettoes: "My mother always told me that it's better to marry someone who loves you more than you love them. Because at the end of the day, love doesn't last anyway."

Slinky: "I suppose it's true. But at least if you love someone at first, you have that to keep you going. Otherwise you'd just settle. And what's the point of that?"

We both agree - we can't go back. We had it, we let it go. Security is well and good, but I'll take screaming dizzy passion any day.

SheWhoRunsInStilettoes also has a really long night ahead. We compare workloads and scare each other. Dear God.

In our respective offices, we do the headless chicken dance, pausing every now and then to breathe and send over emails to each other to keep each other company.

Slinky: "How's the progress? It's going to be such a long night.."

SheWhoRunsInStilettoes: "Yeah, I'm still here. With my heartthrob, Mr. J!"

Slinky: "Damn you, I have no stud to keep me company."

SheWhoRunsInStilettoes: "I can send him your way."

Slinky: "Egads, no thank you. I am underwhelmed by your generosity. I can find my own studs. But they would get in the way of the work. Unless they agreed to sit under my desk. But that could be distracting. I'll stick with what I've got, thanks."

SheWhoRunsInStilettoes: "True. Somehow, men have no sense of their time clocks. As C said to me before, no matter how old a guy is, he'd always want a 20-something year old girl (unless of course, the guy is younger than that lah!)"

Slinky: "Men are much more delusional than women. I think it comes from having their reproductive parts hanging out in front of them. It makes them all silly somehow. The sad truth, of course, is that men age much better than women. And so they can still get younger women even if they age."

SheWhoRunsInStilettoes: "God! I think Mr. J just fell asleep."

Slinky: "Shit, is it 3am and the fax machine is making freaky noises? Who the hell is faxing things to me at 3 in the morning!"

SheWhoRunsInStilettoes: "[names insane client we have both worked for]" We crack up in our respective offices.

Slinky: "Please lah, I am unnerved enough as it is, don't make it worse."

At 3:02 am SheWhoRunsInStilettoes sends me and email titled "The White Flag of Surrender" and says "I give up, I'm going home. Good night."

Slinky is green with jealousy.

Sometime in between all of this, the Space Cadet comes online and I confirm that yes, we are actually the same person in two different bodies. The same damned things happen at the same time to us. It's freaky. She tells me that the other day she drank three bottles of wine and decided around midnight that it would an absolutely brilliant idea to swim in the North Sea, which is about 12 degrees. Her smitten friend dives in to fish her out. Now he's suffering from hypothermia, but she's fine. I think it was the alcohol.

"Men are so weak," she tells me dismissively.

At around 2 am I pad my barefoot way to the pantry. Oooooh, butter cookies! I nick a few. No one will notice. I stick them in the Milo I found. Mmmmmm, chocolately goodness.

At 3 am, more cookies. I heart butter cookies.

3:30 am, I run down for an emergency Djarum infusion.

"Goodnight!" my friendly security guard calls out.
"I'm not going home yet."
"What? You work in the bank? 5th floor?"
"No, 11th."
"Ooooh, I see."

4 am. I contemplate an apple. Too healthy. I pass.

I throw in the towel at 4:30 am. I stay awake long enough to give the cab directions and promptly fall asleep in the backseat like I've been shot. I get shaken awake at 5 am and stagger through my gate, trying to fend off Tesh, who smells of pina colada and is insisting that we play ball NOW. Dogs have no sense of time. I get into my bedroom, which by now is synonymous to Nirvana, and I have enough time to get excited about the fact that I can sleep for about two hours before I have to wake up, then I'm unconscious, makeup and all.

I sleep right through the alarm. Fuck. Luckily the Boy bails me out by an unexpected offer of a lift to work.

I hamster around the office, run off, staggering under files again, to get mauled like a chewtoy. But I get what I want (pretty much, anyway). More Djarum.

Oooh, lunchtime! Proper food for the first time since 7 pm the night before.

Someone tells me, "I think your mascara is smudging pretty badly."
Slinky: "I'm not wearing makeup."

Was shanghaied to monitor an interview (read: interrogation) and am stuck in someone's stuffy little office for the next five hours I sit in an uncomfortable chair typing and fall asleep at least a dozen times without knowing. The world just goes black for a second or two. I later found a line which read: "The DBS accounts were used for YL's business transactions and is also used fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff". When I'm awake I see bright lights. They're pretty. Get increasingly pissed off about the fact that the person I am stuck with does not know how to answer a single bloody question, and insists on repeating EVERY SINGLE GODDAMN QUESTION before taking five minutes to answer it, in a thoroughly uninformative fashion. An example:

"So did Fred have a dog?"
"Did Fred have a dog......?"
"Yes, did Fred have a dog?"
"Aaaaaahhhhhh...." [five minutes pass] "I can’t remember."

Towards the last hour I had to fight my evil left arm which wanted to reach out and choke him to death.

Finally, finally, I get to go home, and The Boy picks me up and gives me the most glorious backrub ever. That, plus two more Djarum, and I don't feel like a mental patient any more. We feed Merlot, and watch Buffy. I am determined to convert him. "You're so beautiful," he tells me, as I try not to snore or drool on him.

I need a holiday, people.