you make me feel (revised)

Some humans were eating lunch.

Overby came in and sat down at a table that seemed to be designed for seventh graders.

It was the corporate model of the picnic table. Some genius must have said: Make it formica instead of redwood.

The constant knee-knocking and the way it forced grown men and women to uncomfortably insert their bodies in the space between the banquette part of the table and the tabletop, which were fused at the ends, rendered the table purgatorial.

Also, the seating banquette was too low, so many people had to stretch their legs out at an uncomfortable angle below the lunchroom table.

Humiliation was built into that table.

This put many people in bitchy moods and at loggerheads, and they didn't even know why.

They didn't realize that part of their physical culture (to speak anthropologically) was turning them into little bitches.

Overby straddled the long white vaguely speckled bench of the lunchroom picnic table and looked at his coworkers.

Cheryl-Lee said to another woman who hates her, "I just want to know when he's gonna make an honest whore of me" and giggled.

Everybody wonders how Cheryl-Lee stays upright. She doesn't have hangovers. She has hang-ons. Her desk could be the most successful DUI checkpoint in town if the cops set up there.

"The girl most likely to need a kickstand," somebody thought.

Nobody cared about the married guy she was fucking, and certainly nobody cared about her.

Admittedly, many of the people seated at this table were one badass Christmas party away from fucking each other, and that goes for the girls with the girls or some of the guys with the guys.

But no one was having any of it today or most days.

They knew how butt-ugly most of each other's souls were. Or just boring. Or both.

Rick said something and then held out an imaginary microphone to Jerry, who said "Fuck off, I'm trying to eat here. You're a walking SNL skit."

"A bad SNL skit."

Rick did this all the fucking time. Fake microphone schtick.

Everybody hated Rick, and several individuals seated at this table had fantasized about killing Rick in a way they had seen in one of the Saw movies or in Hostel.

One woman fantasized about it everyday. And she was fantasizing about it right now.

This world is full of the unrealized.

Often, these fantasists imagined speaking the line "Where's your microphone now, bitch?" as they revved up the chainsaw or tightened the testicle-crushers.

Overby rested his left hand on the lunch table with humiliation built into it.

"Mouth breather."

Somebody said that without any passion, a garden-variety insult, then took a bite of food.

"Who are you talking to?"

"Shit, I don't know."

Overby wasn't eating so it was strange he had sat down.

Overby said "I had a weird dream last night. It's still fucking with my head."

"Oh, I'm sorry. The Oprah couch is currently being used by Tom Cruise."

"Fuck off."

Rick Who Everybody Hates held out his imaginary microphone as a "Go ahead" while he stirred applesauce in an astronautish container. But he didn't say anything. He was "toning it down."

New Age Sandra said, "Dreams are like light in the wind."

A young woman stuck her finger into her mouth in an anorexic self-gagging pose.

Another man with grey hair said "Oh god."

It was a tough table.

"Tell us your dream," Sandra said in her motherly way. Her motherly way that makes everybody hate her even more than they already do.

"Well, I was pregnant."

Several genuine laughs and one fart greeted this announcement.

"Dude, are you gonna make me lose my lunch?"

"It's probably because of that story on t.v. about that man who gave birth in Hawaii. Did you watch that? Then go to bed?"

"What man in Hawaii?" said Overby.

Sandra said. "Go on. I'm listening."

Listening was mostly what Sandra did. Another reason people hated her.

"How much do you charge by the hour? I could use one of those!" This was Cheryl-Lee Who Everybody Also Hates.

Sluts are fine but sluts who talk too much about their slutting are like a walking nursing home.

It's as though a nursing home just grew legs and just started walking around town complaining, saying things like "I'm hungry" or "I'm thirsty" or "I'm gonna die soon, I don't wanna" or "His wife knows and doesn't care."

"Nor do we," her coworkers kept trying to tell her, but she was on psycho autopilot.

"I bet she has a cock-rest worn into her chin just like a spoonrest," someone evil thought and laughed in his head.

"The doctors knew I was going to give birth to this baby, and told me not to worry because it would probably be born dead. Stillborn. And then a doctor handed me the ultrasound."

Rick Who Everybody Hates shook his head fast like a dog that has just gotten out of the bathing tub it hates.

Cheryl-Lee laughed like a hyena on crack.

Sandra said, "This was an important dream I think."

"I think so too," said Overby.

A couple lines were fired back and forth about the economy, rabbits and a cyst on an ovary, and then mostly silence.

"Did you carry to full term?" Passed Over Paul asked with a gentle smile.

Passed Over Paul had missed out on ten different promotions he thought he should have had.

He didn't know his coworkers called him this. He was passed over for gossip too.

"Yeah. I remember spending a lot of time by myself. Getting bedrest. Taking vitamins. I was preparing myself for the death of my unborn child."

"Oh. My. Fucking. God. Unborn child."

"Hush. It's a dream."

"What you all talking about?" the temp kid said from across the room like the idiot he was.

Everybody said "Fuck off!" at once and he went to the Coke machine and fed a dollar into the duck-ass thingie which takes your money.

Tears thickened his eyes but because his back was to all of them they didn't see them. He was as sensitive as Virginia Woolf and had about the same ability to cope.

Cheryl-Lee Who Everybody Also Hates hoped she didn't fuck the temp. Too soon anyway.

Even sluts should show some discretion she thought. And then she thought about toffee and a guy in prison she used to fuck. She wondered if he was getting out soon so she could fuck him again. The temp sorta looked like he could be his son.

"And one day I delivered the baby. It came out my butt."

Somebody spit their grape juice back into their gay plastic styrofoam cup.

"Ruuuuuude."

"I'm sorry."

"That's disgusting."

"Well so is what he just said!"

"How? Giving birth to babies is bad?"

"I don't know nuthin 'bout birthing no babies, Miss Scarlet!"

"She was an atheist. Or a communist. Or both. I forget."

"Who?"

"She was an intellectual fighting the power and everybody thinks she's Dumb Mammy."

"Who?"

"The black Mammy from Gone with the Wind!

"Oh."

Nobody said anything then but just stared. At Overby.

A few were smiling in that fake way therapists probably smile at serial killers.

New Age Sandra really only wanted to be a forty-eight year old cashier in a New Age crystal shop.

Her astral sincerity was an albatross around her neck. She hadn't gotten laid in more than ten years.

"Dead?" There was actually worry and empathy in the man's query even though he was an asshole.

"I mean, was the baby born dead?"

"Yes. At first. It was grey and pasty and I thought it might be a prank, like a doll or something. It looked like that baby on that old Ally McBeal show. That Japanese baby or whatever it was. But stillborn."

"The Okeefenokee Baby."

"Dumbass. That's not what it was called!"

His coworkers were still weirded out. Overby was usually pretty normal. If quiet. Could this happen to anybody? Was he going to bring a gun to work next week and start screaming about his anal baby?

"And then the weirdest thing happened. I saw this movement beneath the baby's closed eyelids and then I saw its chest go up and down. I realized it was alive. The doctors had all been wrong."

"Were you happy it lived?" Sandra asked in a therapist voice she had learned from television.

"Oh yes! I suddenly felt myself changing over. I realized I was going to be a mother now, and it felt spiritual. Like a religion or something. I was going to call the doctors to tell them they were wrong, but then I thought why bother."

"Hell to the yes!" a young man said. Then did a South park voice and joke. He was a human non-sequitur.

"I was so happy. I felt so fulfilled."

Overby got up from the table and walked out of the room.

Nobody said bye. You didn't have to "bye" Overby.

"I don't want any baby. In real life or dreams," Cheryl-Lee Who Everybody Also Hates said.

Somebody thought about fucking her but then using that thought-erasing stick in Men in Black.

He wondered if he could do it so he wouldn't have to hear her talk later.

He decided it was unlikely.