Just Another Day at the Office

Susan, like always, beat me to the office.  It never seems to bother her that she beats the boss every day.  She deserves a raise.

I settle down in my chair after grabbing my cup of coffee from the break room, of course started by Susan as soon as she got in, and just enjoy the aroma.  Then, it happens, the real start of my day.

"..That's when I found out she had been cheating on me.  It was with an old coworker.  Apparently they had been... screwing.. God, just thinking about it makes me want to vomit... they had been doing it since I worked with him.  That was twelve years ago.  Twelve years of the two of them fucking... The two of them doing it behind my back... like... how did I not know?  How?  Just... I don't know how I was so stupid...."

"Before I got busted with all that coke, I mean, I was on my way up to being a big time executive.  Who gives a fuck if I was snorting coke like it was candy.  I mean, who gives a fuck?  I was fucking productive, man.  I tell you, I could work circles around every other fucking clown in that office, but no... no, I get fired.  I get fired because they found some white powder in my office.  Fuck them, man.  Fuck them in their assholes."

"I don't really know how to say it... I mean, I know he and I had an agreement.  I know we were supposed to do it together, but... I just couldn't... and I just... watched.  I didn't know what else to do.  I just watched, and cried.  I don't know what is worse, that it was the first time I saw a boy touch himself and it brought me to tears or if it seemed to make him more excited... Am I always going to cry when I see a guy touch themselves?  Do you think I'm a lesbian?"

I go into the break room for a refill on my cup of coffee, but I notice the back door is propped open by a little block of wood.  I walk to the door, open it, and find Susan taking a puff of a cigarette.

"Mind if I take a drag of that, Susie?"

"I didn't know you smoked."

"Yeah... You're right.  I guess today wouldn't be a good day to start, either."  I used my foot to put the block of wood back against the door frame before gently resting the door against it.

"My wife tells me I just make bad choices.  I mean, no fucking way, right?  It isn't my fault if I blow ten grand at the poker table. I mean, fuck, I could be on a winning streak and then, bam, wrong bet.  Shit, that's all down to luck.  It isn't a bad choice, it just means my lucky day hasn't struck yet."

"He touched me in my private parts.  That's what mommy told me to tell the police officer.  That's what I told the police officer."

"I blame it all on my mom.  She is the one who didn't teach me how hard life would be.  She let me have my favorite blankie in bed with me until I was 12!  It is her fault!  It is all her fault!"

"...I don't really know how to come to terms with it.  Every time I close my eyes, I see his hands wrapped so tightly around my wrists that my hands are going numb.  I can see outside my body, and I see my mouth screaming, but no sound is coming out.  I see his grin as he... I just..."

"Look, doc.  Are you a Doctor?  Did you earn that PhD?  Look, I don't belong here.  I don't have a problem.  It is just the fucking courts.  They ordered this shit.  If it weren't for them, I wouldn't be sitting here right now."

"I just pray every day and hope things get better, but nothing is changing.  My prayers just aren't getting answered, but maybe that just means that God's plan for me is to suffer like this.  Maybe God just wants me to suffer for all the sins I've committed in the past.  Maybe that is why he isn't answering my prayers."

"I bet you just doodle all day long in that notebook of yours.  Seeing patients day in and day out, have that little notepad out pretending to be jotting down bullshit about your patients."

As they say this, I am just doodling.  It is the fifteenth time this patient has been in here and it is the fifteenth hour he has spent accusing me of doodling in my notebook.  It is now the eighth time I've actually doodled in my notebook.

"I... I know I am so quiet.... my wife tells me all the time that I need to talk to her, just talk... but... I don't even like to order food at the fast food drive through.  She says that our sex life is boring and she wants to spice things up by wearing sexy lingerie.  I don't know how to tell her that I want to be the one wearing it...."

"Well, that ends our session.  If you see Susan at the.."

"Yeah, yeah.  I fucking know.  Susan.  Front counter.  Next appointment."

I close my notebook.

"Have a good day."

I pour out the remaining bit of coffee into the break room's sink, watch the black liquid form a small puddle near the drain, refusing to join the rest, and then twist the knob to force the water to wash the puddle away.

Just another day at the office.





Written by Dustin S. Stover

Irrationally Fearful

This is quite personal for me and, as such, I'm going to get quite personal.

I will preface this for those who do not know - I am married to a Brazilian woman.  One who has not yet received her green card, but will legally hold it in the near future.

Now, before Donald Trump was elected, she could buy a plane ticket and get special permission to fly back to Brazil to visit family and then come back here.  This, the United States of America, is where she will be living her life for the foreseeable future, as she has absolutely no plans of moving to any other country - I, on the other hand, will be working diligently to convince her to move with me to some other undetermined European country.  That is irrelevant.

My wife has not seen her daughter in over a year, a sacrifice my wife made to come here because she could make more money cleaning houses than she could working in her home country, money she could then take back with her to create a better life for her and her daughter.  We met and fell in love, got married, and now we're working towards getting her daughter here.  That, however, requires time.

A couple months ago my wife booked a plane, immigration lawyer stating that there should be very minimal problems - a few questions when she arrived back here in the States and she'd be on her way as they would have no reason to deport her.

Now, all that changed.  With Donald Trump's recent ban on immigrants from the seven Muslim majority countries, and even though my wife is not affiliated at all with those countries, our immigration lawyer has advised her to cancel her flight entirely.  This is not done for fear that she'd be confused to be a Muslim, or from the Middle East.  No, this is because now there is a stigma drawn on every single immigrant in this country.

So now you may be saying, "but Dustin, your wife worked here illegally.  She didn't pay taxes!  Shame on her!"  Maybe you're saying to yourself, "this country has too many people in it already!  She doesn't belong here, she should go back to her own country!"

Yeah, I'm not going to change your mind on that.  If those are the way you feel then next time someone offers you 20 bucks to drive them some place turn the money down, or 50 dollars to turn a wrench, 100 dollars for a sucky-sucky job - turn them all down.  Guess what, you've worked illegally, too.  We all have.

As for her being from another country, if you go back two, three, four generations then your family was from somewhere else, too.  Maybe it was a bit longer than that, but go back far enough and not even Native Americans are native to this country.  Get the fuck over it.

The point is that when you place a ban on people coming into this country, you're not preventing the bad people from coming into this country.  Sure, an ISIS operator could be sneaking in with those Syrian refugees, but statistically it isn't happening.  Those rapists you're so worried about from Mexico?  Yeah, statistically, more rapes happen by legal citizens in such a large amount that it isn't even worth bringing up foreigners as a whole as rapists by comparison.

The same logic that the gun-toting conservatives use with the whole banning guns won't get guns off the street is the exact same logic that can be applied to banning immigrants.  So long as it is easier for immigrants to make more money here than in other countries then they will be finding a means to cross that border.  So long as we continue to bomb countries in the Middle East, we will have terrorists - unless, of course, we kill every other country.

All these bans do is encourage more problems, not less.  Now those refugees who desperately need help are going to see that we're closing our doors to them, the most powerful country in the world, and they are going to grow bitter from that.  A country in which has more guns than any other country.  A country which has 11.1 MILLION people who have a concealed carry permit alone.  A country who has a police force so well equipped that it would rival the military of the countries on the ban list.  This is, by definition, irrational fear.

And because of this fear, this irrational fear, my wife now has to go even longer without seeing her daughter.  We were officially told my the immigration lawyer that it would be a bad idea for my wife to go back to Brazil to visit her family (note: the lawyer did not tell her not to go, but rather just that it will be very ill advised to go).  That is simply not a risk my wife or I am willing to take.  This is just my wife, though.  The immigrants all throughout this country are in the same position, whether they are refugees or otherwise.

Now I will ask you, if you're so willing to force someone to go a year without seeing their children, when will you go a year without seeing yours?

-Dustin Stover

Politics and the Curse of Conformity

I've been trying to get my mind on writing.  Well, that is to say, writing about something other than the political atmosphere.  Even the short stories I attempt to write in my spare time end up being about a compulsive liar who bullies his way into getting everything that he wants.

That is to say, all of my writing has been ruined with this smear of crud so thick that it is impossible to see through, and so hardened from the sheer amount compressed on the window that it can't be chipped away at, either.

So, I suppose, I'm just going to write about it.

I'm not upset at Donald Trump being elected.  I had assumed he had a relatively fair shot at it, even if I tried to avoid the thought.  I've not been a Democrat nor Republican ever in my life, but it is easy to see how voting in a Republican takes steps back away from the things that enhance human life - that is to say, science, distribution of wealth, and civil liberties.

I often times neglect just how religious over half of this country is.  I suppose that being an atheist and having to separate myself from the masses in regards to religion has that effect on me.  I understand how harshly I get judged for just that singular belief when everyone around me believes so readily in something that has absolutely no evidence.

And I suppose that is the thing about it all.  The people who voted in this bully as President of the United States of America are very readily available to believe things with no grounds of fact or evidence.  A person who says he a wholesome Christian man can get away with also saying that he grabs women by the pussy, could shoot a man in the street and get away with it, and also convince the masses that conflicts of interest won't be an issue because his sons will be running his businesses.

It is also easy to forget that the President of the United States of America is, in fact, just another fallible human being who is subject to the same mistakes and complications of everyone else's life - all while making choices that impact the entire future of a country.

The problem, of course, with Trump is not that he is human, but he has surrounded himself with people who are paid to agree with his ego.  No matter how wrong he is on a subject, someone is standing there to tell him that he is right.

I fully understand people's concerns about the future for the average American.  I fully understand that the amount of support that Donald Trump was awarded was because of his rhetoric about the average American making a living doing manufacturing jobs and the jobs that evaporated up as the country scrambles to make jobs for those people in other fields, and generally failing.

Those same people have told me that they are going to be watching Trump closely to make sure he does what he says he is going to do, but when the only evidence of his doing what he is saying he is doing is his word on the topic, well, again, it boils down to that word I've yet to mention in this post - faith.  Faith, by definition, is the believing of something without evidence.

Now we've got an entire presidential campaign that was run on faith.  The difference between this and every other presidential candidate of the past decades is that we don't know the history of the candidate in politics.  We knew how Hillary Clinton was going to run the country because she has history in politics.  Even Obama, with a relatively short stint in professional politics, displayed signs of how he would be President.  Now we have someone who has run businesses with the entire basis of his actions being guided by self interest - how to make more money for his businesses.  Faith is, of course, required to believe he will act in the interest of the masses as opposed to himself as he sits behind that big desk in the oval office.

Every President of my lifetime has done some horrible things - from Clinton's agreement to let jobs go over seas (or his getting a blow job by an intern but I fail to see how doing that with a consenting woman is any worse than forcibly grabbing a pussy), Bush's campaign to collect every piece of data on the Americans he guided, and Obama's drone strikes in the Middle East.

I find myself struggling to support any President as a whole, but all have done really great things as well for huge groups of people - Clinton's economy was the strongest I've seen it in my life time for the average person.  Bush helped with the AIDS relief in Africa.  Obama by legalizing gay marriage, finally giving those people a right that they have deserved their entire lives, but never been granted previously.

It is easy to say, "I'm a Democrat" or "I'm a Republican," but that is just the first step in being blind to the bad side of the party you follow and ignore the good of the opposing side.

When Obama was nominated as Democrat for the election in 2008 I said some things that I still stick to - the best hope was for him to do exactly as he said he was going to do in four years, then they needed to elect a neutral party for the following four years.  That didn't happen and now we are faced to deal with the consequences of that not happening.  Again, no one wins.

There is also a piece of evidence in all this that is staring everyone in the face, but overlooked quite readily.  When was the last time the Democratic or Republican party has served longer than eight years?  That in itself should be telling you that this system of election isn't working for the people.  If the Republicans were better than the Democrats, they'd win far more frequently.  If the Democrats were better than the Republicans then they'd win far more frequently.  Neither party is doing a good job, they are just doing a good thing here and there to keep their supporters firmly in place.

-Dustin S. Stover

So, This is How Stories get Made

For some of us, the darkness of night falls and we get lost.  We become terrified of the things in which we cannot see, the things we must see within ourselves, and especially the things we hear that we'd otherwise be too distracted to notice any other time.

This is what it is like when we first begin to research ourselves.  You know that fear of the doctor the very first time you get tested for sexually transmitted infections?  That's what it feels like every day you decide to introspectively look into yourself, as if what you will find out is something you never wanted to know.

I suppose, then, that is why so few people ever actually take the time in doing so.  It is far easier to go the rest of your life without that dreaded doctor's visit, but the only way to know for certain that you're not contaminating someone else is to either not have sex at all or go for the check up.

Sure, having that cotton swab shoved down your dick hole hurts the first couple times, but you probably thought that it was just going to be a matter of shooting your piss into a cup anyway.  And yeah, while you're looking back on all those slutty fun times you had you are probably sweating bullets - that one time the condom ripped, the girl's name you forgot to get because you were too drunk to care and the headache you had upon waking up to her naked body didn't invoke the kind of emotions that rendered those words upon the tongue.  Maybe she had already escaped out the door before you awake to the blade of the sun in your eyes.

Coming out of the other side to find out that you're clean, though, proves that those experiences are stories worthy of the scar from where that one girl stabbed you in the side because she thought you were kinkier than you really were, and of course you went with it all because she was climaxing a great deal more than you thought she was capable of, just like how the knife went a bit deeper than she anticipated.  Still, the scar is a permanent visual tell of a tale worth telling - at least to those worth telling it to.

Realizing that it all interlinks is the first step, of course.  It could happen at your favorite restaurant.  Maybe it is your favorite restaurant because it became your escape from the passing of a family member that particularly struck a deep and sensitive kind of pain, and it was the first experience with such things.  One minute you're tasting the delights of some oriental food, the next your sifting through the darkness of your mind to remember, oh yes, the whole reason you stepped foot into this place is because your sister passed away from a car accident.  You had no taste for Chinese food before that, but it was different, looked quiet, and was secluded away from everyone you knew who would be talking to you about it to look like the perfect place.  Without a care of the wasted money spent, you ordered a random menu item and now, years later, you've come to love the place as a kind of extra appendage that has become more functional than the originals.

It is terrifying to see those connections, though.  They can paint the ugliest of pictures.  Perhaps they paint the most beautiful, but we seldom know until we roll up our sleeves and trudge through the dark, scary, mucky swamp of why we are the way we are.  It can, for some pretty obvious reasons, lead to a craze, but to put it into perspective, how is it any crazier than spending a hundred dollars on a pair of pants simply because a law states that we need clothes in order to be decent and you've decided that spending extra money on something to cover your legs, ass and genitals makes you somehow different than a person who spends twenty on something that, inherently, does the same thing.

-Dustin S. Stover

Kindle: Happiness in a Void of Darkness
Nook:   Happiness in a Void of Darkness

Displaying Love Accordingly

How does a couple overcome differences in showing love?

For the sake of saving time, I won't go into detail about the languages of love - for more research in the area do a quick google search of the five languages of love.  It is pretty self explanatory.

So what happens when the two people in a relationship have different languages they speak?  First, of course, is that if you display love by giving gifts and your spouse needs physical touch as their form of love then the spouse may well not ever feel that you don't display that you love them.  It could even push the loved one so far as to feel unloved.

The easiest way to bridge this gap is to, of course, listen - the most vital part of a relationship is communication, the two way communication - but listening isn't enough as it also requires action to change the way you display your love.

This brings about an important question - why shouldn't the loved one change the way they feel loved.  After all, if you're buying gifts for them then it is their responsibility to understand that is how you show you love them.

But, by default, love is to appreciate the other person as much as, or more, than yourself.  Therefore, in order to show that kind of respect and appreciation it is the one displaying the love's responsibility to ensure that the loved one feels loved.

Of course this goes deep because sometimes it is so against our nature.  Maybe you struggle being physical and that is the way your loved one desires to be shown love.  Maybe you can't afford that beautiful necklace, but that is what she wants.

As with all things worth doing, they are worth putting in an effort for.  A lot of this - financial situations aside - just requires thought and consideration before making an action.  Ask yourself before making the action, "what would my loved one want?"  "would they prefer this fancy meal or would they rather take a long walk holding hands under the stars?"

This obviously has to work on a two way street, as well.  What good is a relationship where only one person is displaying the love?

-Dustin S. Stover

Kindle: Happiness in a Void of Darkness
Nook:   Happiness in a Void of Darkness

Being Afraid of Love

Love is arguably one of the most dangerous things a person can do.  True love, that is to truly say that another person is equal or more valuable than yourself and to value your time with that person more than anything else.  To feel as though no amount of time is going to be enough time with that person.

So naturally, there are people who fear that kind of feeling.  They may not ever know that feeling for whatever reason - which, I used to believe that everyone knew this feeling at least once in their life but have recently met an individual who seems to have never grasped that emotion.  It has piqued my interest as I've begun to try to understand why.

See, most people fall in love when they are young, before they ever know who they are or what they want out of a partner.  This leads to the obvious inevitability of forcing a relationship to work, or making more sacrifices and compromises than would ever truly be healthy, or to the ending of a relationship and the forcing of self discovery.

To never fall in love, though.  How does one slip through that grasp?

The best answer I can come up with is the inability to love.  There are several reasons behind this, though.

Let us start off with the superficial reasoning - abuse of substances.  Without going into the various theories of why people become addicted to substances I will simply say that when someone abuses substances it blocks their ability to care for other people in any substantial way.  It is like wearing a mask to hide from all the real emotions one might feel if that mask is removed.

As I'm thinking about people who abuse substances I am also confronted with a correlation - those with the second reasoning, at least those in which I have personal experiences with, also suffer from substance abuse.

Which leads me into the second reason - selfishness.  People who focus in on themselves as the only thing, or major thing, that matters cannot possibly see an equality of value in someone else.

This naturally leads into more questions - questions that I will explore at a later point in time.

For now, feel free to share your experiences of someone being incapable of loving, whether it be you or someone you know.

-Dustin S. Stover

If you enjoy my writing and would like to see me continue doing so, please click the ad on my page or purchase my short stories linked below.

Kindle Version: Happiness in a Void of Darkness
Nook Version:   Happiness in a Void of Darkness

Compromise

I've been told my countless people, and even believed myself, that compromise was the most necessary part of a relationship - well, that and communication.  What if, however, that is wrong?

I am going to step away from relationships and go to work for a moment.  We all work and we all do things in our job that compromise our work, whether it be wearing personal protective equipment that we find to be unnecessary and make our jobs variably more difficult or if it is forcing us to work a schedule that conflicts with our natural sleep cycle.  We can all relate to that feeling of compromise for a paycheck.

The problem with compromising for a paycheck is that it almost exclusively leads to resentment for the work we do.  Maybe you love everything about your job other than that one person you have to work with every Wednesday - you're going to hate going into work every Wednesday.

How does this relate back to relationships?  Well, it is quite simple.  In order for the vast majority of us to alleviate that feeling of loneliness by being with someone else, we must compromise.  Sometimes it is something minor like not going to that one restaurant you love because your spouse hates it.  Maybe it is something more major like being forced to give up your favorite hobby.  Anyway you look at this, it has a similar affect as those compromises for a paycheck.

In order for us to get laid we have to compromise with the one we love, but is that really the best solution?

One day is going to come when you're, again, going to that horrible Chinese restaurant - you hate Chinese in this case - to please your spouse once again and all you can think is, "why the fuck am I always giving up going to that Italian restaurant so they can have their Chinese.  I mean, I'm going to have the shits tomorrow and the worst that will happen to them at the Italian restaurant is they dislike their food as much as I'm going to dislike mine tonight.  How can they not see my sacrifice?"

An easy remedy for this goes back to something I touched upon at the beginning of this blog - communication.  Talk it out and hopefully a resolution can be had, but what if it can't?  For this mental exercise we will assume talking has already happened and nothing has changed.

See, at this point every reader is thinking, "I KNOW!  RIGHT!  I HATE that Chinese place!"  Or just pretend you're saying that.

By the time the dinner is over, even if you don't notice it, your mood towards your loved one has grown more distant.  Hardly the healthy outcome.  Maybe it is such a small disconnect that you two still go home and practice your sexual fantasies on one another, or maybe when they roll over and try to put you in the mood - possibly even as a thank you for appreciating them for that horrendous Chinese food - you simply can't partake.  "Not tonight, honey.  I've got a headache," you'll say before rolling over and focusing on just how much you hate Chinese food as your stomach is growling with even more discontent than your brain is telling you to feel.

There is a multitude of compromises made every day in a relationship from small to large, but perhaps the easiest solution for the atrocious Chinese food is for you both to go to different restaurants and take it home to eat together at the kitchen table.  Bam, no compromises made and everyone goes to bed with a happy tummy.

Other situations are not nearly as simplistic.  I will take on the hobby aspect of this.  Maybe you love wood working, but your love hates the smell and is a much more modern house decorator.  The chairs you've made throughout your life, the desks, coffee table, and tv stand all need to be thrown out and sold because, well, your love hates them and wants that smooth black and metal finished product to match the robot feel of the living room and kitchen.

This can obviously upset even the most stable of people.  You can try talking this one out, maybe you take one room and decorate it with your hard work, maybe you take the whole house and they hate it, or you sell all your hard work on craigslist for pennies on the time you spent making it and you get sent into a deep, dark depression feeling like the things you value most in life are meaningless to the one you love.

Any of the options above are a really tough spot to be in since it will most certainly render a split in the two involved.  Suddenly it becomes a matter of forcing things that should never be forced.  Perhaps, then, the better option is to just find someone who appreciates the time and effort you put into it - maybe that is one of the things they even love about you and they wish to become very active in creating those amazing pieces of art.

Maybe the two of you can outgrow that outdated wood look and move into modern sculpturing to decorate your living quarters.

Compromise is a very tricky thing in a relationship.  Once you start compromise it is very hard to see where it will end.  A little bit here and there is alright, but when does too much become a breaking point and can no longer bridge that gap?  That, my dear reader, is up to you to decide.

-Dustin S. Stover

As always, you can find my collection of short stories for sale on Kindle and Nook at the following links:

Kindle: Happiness in a Void of Darkness
Nook:   Happiness in a Void of Darkness