The warmth that accompanies the smell of shit, I find myself gasping for air and grabbing at my nostrils with one hand, yet phobic of the new bacteria I acquired at the door on the way in invading my face. I�m gagging as I look into the toilet, liquid bile clogging the lines, forcing its way upward with blood on the surface and traces of string from feminine hygiene products. I am struck by the feeling that this is my life. The bathroom is small, painted wall to wall, ceiling to floor in Navajo red. The walls have never been washed and are splattered with a myriad of colors, combining to make that inevitable muddy shade. There is a carpet of hair, both pubic and otherwise, on the floor. The sink has patterns of rust running under the faucet, leading to a drain that looks like its seen too many gallons of drain-o to shine. The door handle is a scary site, hiding pathogens and the like in its crevices, waiting for my hand to grab at it and become forever infected with the worst strains of diseases. Perhaps the most ironic item in the bathroom is the well-worn mop that looks like its used daily, harboring bacteria of its own, laying in a bucket with illegible writing on the side, filled to the brim with hard water that never held soap, its color is the similar to the walls. The fibers of the mop have seen better days, once bright white in a supermarket or warehouse, now sadly soaking up human excrement in downtown NYC.

So I vomit in the sink. Careful observation has led me to conclude that this is the best place. I remember in the fifth grade I simultaneously excreted every possible fluid and I now panic in remembering carrying my underwear in a trash bag to my mothers BMW, where she sat in the car, popped the trunk and didn�t say a word to me for the next twenty minutes. The situations have their similarities. Then I was sick from eating bad meat in the cafeteria. Now I am sick from eating bad meat under my boss�s desk. Ha ha ha. This is my first time doing something that undermines my morals to keep my job but I�m sure it is not my last. I took this job so I wouldn�t be as servile as say, a waitress or customer service representative, but at least what those people do isn�t illegal, no one would stand up in church to protest the sale of muffins or advice on how to run windows XP. I�m sure you�re saying that being a representative for a major corporation, who�s good name I wouldn�t slander, is as servile as possible, but at twenty two, I had no idea just how true what you�d have said would be.

Shortly after graduating from what is now called one of the �baby ivies�, I took a job from a temp agency. Terrible places that talk down to you, insult your knowledge of the finer things in life. At that age, I�d always claimed to be supporting myself, writing off those checks in the mail as pre-death inheritance. I called myself a writer, though in totality, I had written approximately twenty pages, all unrelated. I worked for a publishing company in Ohio temporarily, during which I helped many an inadequately written book become mainstream. I then worked for an automotive garage keeping books, during which I had affairs with four customers, grounds for being �let go�. Ultimately I was led here, New York New York, gorgeous skyscrapers and taxi cabs.

My parents had been hippies who always told me not to let things own me. I could dazzle friends and business associates alike with my ability to pack everything I owned within hours and go on a business trip without ever needing to return for anything. I grew out of cities, cars, clothes with a rate that most would find alarming.

New York was a boa constrictor. I was engulfed by its power, its insidious nature. It held me like a genuinely original idea or a raccoon to silver, but like all snakes, it had its weapons. Finding a job was easy, finding meaningful relations was not. No matter what region of the country you live in, you have an understanding with it. You know what to expect when you step out that door in the morning. Or at least, I always had. I grew up in Holiday, Florida in a little trailer park. Every morning I knew the neighbors would have their monster truck running, getting ready for work. I would know that my mother would be half naked, smoking pot on the porch. I knew nothing of New York, I didn�t even know what street I was staying on. I knew no one and no one wanted to know me. I could exist like this for years if it weren�t so miserable. Anyway, this is all relative.

How I got into trouble, how I ended up sucking my boss�s dick to be able to sit at that desk for eight more hours, that�s what you want to know. There are rules here about what to wear, who and how you talk� or as my boss puts it �If you�re representing something, say this company for example, You better look FUCKING good. You need to look HOT! You�re selling yourself for the greater good of this company. If you look like you just climbed out of a dumpster or a Goodwill commercial, so do we. Understood?� and I would nod my head until it felt like my head would fall off. There is one rule they never mention, it�s unspoken but well understood. You are never late.

When I woke up, I forgot I had a flight to catch, I was leisurely, took a bath, watched a bit of the Today Show. Then it hit me, California. By the time I was ready to go, what I�d always prided myself on was fiction, I couldn�t pack it all in an hour, I couldn�t even get together enough for a weekend. I was hurried and desperate but far too late. I called my boss. He told me to come in and we�d talk it over. I had been forewarned about him.

So the chatter only lasted twenty minutes before we made a deal. I would sell out and save myself, the job I had embraced as my own and my accumulation of crap that occupied one of the largest apartments in New York. I would be emancipated from a lifetime of searching for another job that so perfectly complemented my new found lifestyle.

So there I was, under the desk just like in the movies. There was something exciting about it but not quite right. I was doing the typical giving head routine when, just like in the movies, his secretary came in and he jolted his knees up, making me squeel. I knew this secretary better than my boss did. She was the one who spread the rumors around the workplace, tapped into his most personal phone calls. I had screwed up a big business deal and now the system was screwing me. While I was tasting pre-ejaculatory fluids, the gorgeous little secretary made herself comfortable with obvious intentions of figuring out who her superior had huddled under his desk. If there�s one thing I knew, my identity was no longer preserved. I was revealed, left to a fate worse than being fired, that of being a known asshole to everyone else and to ones self.

So in nylons with shredded knees, I slid out from under the desk to face the woman who held my fate in her carpal tunnel afflicted arms. She smiled and I smiled back and made my way to this bathroom. I remember reading in a 1994 issue of Women�s World that this was common place and there wasn�t any real reason to be ashamed and thinking that it was disgusting that anyone could degrade themselves as such.

So I brushed my teeth and got into the elevator, where no one talked per usual. Michael Jackson muzak was playing and four businessmen looked at their watches. I took the elevator to the ground floor where I hailed a taxicab and rode by those beautiful skyscrapers that held me like an original idea, a raccoon to silver. I didn�t go back to my apartment. I could always buy more cheap furniture and scandalous clothing so I could look �HOT� in representing computer software. I rode until I reached the airport and I bought a ticket to Holiday, Florida, where I could find something familiar because lets face it, when a boa constrictor is your only friend, no one is around to stop it when it tries to swallow you whole.