THESE MEN.

In their world I am no one. I am a coffee-getter, a phone-answerer, a smiling face, a placating voice. I am a backdrop.

Their world is a world of other men, other powerful men, dressed in pinstripe and pleating, cufflinks and pinky rings. Indiscernible hairstyles, receding hairlines, graying temples. Nondescript faces, interchangeable all of them; white men with sagging jawlines and beady, scrutinizing eyes like those of small animals. There are the requisites which each of them follow with an involuntary precision: shapeless body like a sack of white sugar, side-parted hair that's as silver and untouchable as steel wool, the wire-framed glasses, the ruddy neck scraped clean of any signs of animal.

They sit at the lunch table discussing Big Things: the new merger, the biggest buyer, their perceived power. They sit there like children with their little pint cartons of milk, their midget applesauce, their gourmet salads with pine nuts. They do not eat like men, dress like men, feel like men. Their palms are too soft, their brains too overgrown, their bodies too much like pudding, which sit underneath fabric, enshrouded in power colors, conservative prints; these big caged animals. Neckties like nooses, wristwatches to display ever-escaping Time, buffed, trimmed nails that could hurt no one and nothing. A sadness, an emptiness. A dire unhappiness. A lack of fulfillment, a lack of real power.
Lack.
A void.
These men.
Avoid these men.