I’m a self-aware man. Mostly.
That was largely why the cramping calves, the splitting headache and the cat-shit taste in my mouth could be critiqued and my life/personality/existence could be found lacking as a basis. Obviously, as any self-respecting, self-aware man knows, I was the only one qualified to write that critique of life/personally/existence. I know me better than other people do.
This was the rock-n-roll lifestyle catching up with me. As much fun as last night had been – and the sex had been phenomenal – I was getting older and more out of shape than I am willing to accept, flattering mirror on the dressing table excepted.
Shit! I just called my lifestyle “rock-n-roll.” I must be getting old.
And now we’re off to work. It’s almost noon and about time to walk into the office and check up on the designs for the Sunsilk campaign. If Velcro hasn’t finished with the copy yet, his balls are mine. I don’t know where Sahir got that fuckhead. English/Urdu copy my ass! The man’s ability to string together a sentence rivals a seven year old’s – a seven year old with
Today’s the big day.
Technically, I should also stop fucking women who seem so very charmed by me. Technically.
For a good-looking thirty-something Creative Director with practically unlimited control over one of the largest and most innovative accounts in the country, I’m humble. Humility is relative of course. Some people say I have a God-complex. Just because I respond to the name doesn’t mean I have a complex. Just because I’m being courted by three other agencies at any given point in time doesn’t mean I’m the best. I’m grounded enough to know I’m amongst the best.
The car’s giving me trouble. Motherfucking sarkari car. Middle-class wealth is the lowest sort: wealth without ownership. The giant rented house with the sexy Spanish-tiled roof slanting all around, the 2 cars in the driveway – sarkari and leased. The splits in every room, the fancy kitchen appliances that I don’t use, the LCD TV – a penis-size-compensating 52-inches – all paid for in monthly installments. The bed’s from Tania’s jahez that I claimed off the bitch after the ugly-ass divorce. Never marry your first love.
Haider’s on BBM reminding me about the meeting with Zehra. It’s fucking Tuesday. Another Monday lost. Monday’s need to be banned anyway. And now I have to go suck Zehra’s proverbial cock to make sure my account team doesn’t get screwed for being lazy cunts. It’s not their fault they’re MBAs. She’d probably start crying while I’m blowing her.
Excuse the homoerotic imagery – formative years spent in boys’ dorms tend to bring out the penile infatuation. If you’d encountered me a few years ago, sexual references to goats would not been far from the tongue.
Some Tuesdays are just worse than others. This is one of them. I’ve got work lined up till forever followed by a business dinner, coffee with a potential fuck-buddy and five lines of the Big C with some faces I detest. At least today will end well.
Zehra’s cocksucking goes reasonably. A little flirtation goes a long way towards cooling off a PMS-y woman. All good-looking men should be in client services. The only reason I’m not cleaning up more proverbial cock in this city is the gifted eye I was born with; us artists are a valued lot in the whoredom that is corporate marketing.
Every day you learn something new. Today I learnt that about-to-break-into-tears Brand Managers have their kinks. This one thinks of sex in the office. If I had more time I’d oblige her.
Sarkari car gets me to office. Barely.
Saeed Bhai gets the coffee. The world makes sense again. The second one arrives fifteen minutes later and the day has begun.
Before launching into the ball-busting, ass-whooping, fuck-fest that is my post-lunch meeting with the creative team, I go over the final design. Sucks ass but it’s what the client wants. Zarmina owes me for approving this. The payment will have to wait.
Amma calls. I get some whining about how she hasn’t heard from me in five days. I play the polite son, tell her how busy I’ve been. I think about telling her how much I love and miss her; I almost apologize. Instead, I tell her she needs to stop nagging me. She’ll miss me when I’m gone. She tells me to stop stealing her lines.
At some point, parents stopped teaching their kids to knock.
Velcro walks in with his copy. I approved this man’s hiring and for the life of me can’t remember what his real name is. Unless he’s got five-by-eights of Sahir getting nasty with 37 Pathan men, there’s no way Velcro has a job, let alone one that pays this well.
It’s been 42 minutes in office. Will this day never end?
Seth sahib wants his ego massaged. He needs to add this to Zarmina’s JD. Nobody can pay me enough for a daily dose of this horseshit. That’s my favorite word in the English language. It applies rather aptly to everything in life. Say it with me: horseshit!
Each day is a repeat of the last – at least the ones I can remember. Apparently the blank ones go pretty much the same too. Zarmina comes in around four for our design meeting. The whole agency, probably the entire advertising industry, knows the name of my Flavor of the Month: the girls fucking their way to success.
Thai food makes me sweat. It leaves the shaggy salt’n’pepper mane in clingy strands at the back of my neck. Apparently it’s sexy, at least for the chunky woman I’m seducing at the moment. This is professional though. Her Disgusting Massiveness rests on the Marketing Director’s seat of the largest tea makers in the country. 60 million rupees worth of annual business resides under those folds of flab which I’ve been tasked with wresting free.
Dinner was promising. She seemed charmed enough to have the account wrapped up with some coddling next week – one of the account managers may need to be sacrificed at the altar of her rampaging sexuality. The vino was also a good idea and it’s got me in a good enough place to put up face for the coffee with Naveen.
She talks incessantly but makes up for it by her god-given talent for flashing that cavernous cleavage. Some women just have it. I’d have been thoroughly enjoying it soon enough. Alas.
There’s too many women in my life. There’s too many drugs and too much money – not that there is such a thing as too much of either. There’s too many people I have to please every day. Plastic, artificial, superficial, unfulfilling.
I’m a self-aware man. Mostly.
That floats through my head after the third line of coke. Must be the paranoia kicking in. At least this is the last time.
Home – or House as it were – after a full day of debauchery, professional and otherwise. The ceilings are high – keeps the place cool in the summers – and reaching up is an effort. I hate air-conditioning. The ladder protests each step I wobble up. Metal screeches on black marble as I kick out the ladder and feel rope burn skin.
