Agitarius | Day 47
Acquiesce, Acquiesce, And Ascend
Thursday, March 14th (Moon in Domino to Virgil, 9:32 a.m.)
As the moon reaches its peak of waxing through Vaguus, a reflective inward gaze and caulking of both hull and helm will give way to confrontation. Today you will face the tip of the rapier not once, but twice, and the necessity to tamp down strangulation impulses will grow with each feint. With the sun still looming large over the horizon, pull out of your small driveway to take Nestor’s Junior to school, then stop abruptly directly in front of A.Y. or R.D.’s house to avoid colliding with a slate gray sedan that will swerve into your path, blocking the continuance of your travel. Acquiesce when the driver of the car—a lead case agent from the Bureau of Youth Engagement (BYE)—insists on taking you aside to discuss the well-being of your “son” on the sidewalk. Aquiesce when two other agents insist on taking Nestor’s Junior to the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street for a private conversation about you. Tamp down the urge to raise your voice when the agent asks you about the “refusal to recognize” Nestor’s Junior’s “preferred palate”. Tamp down the urge to steal the imaginary gun the unarmed state agent keeps gesturing toward with a rearward bend of his elbow and a slight twist of his hips as you become more animated at his escalating level of provocation: “Why did [Nestor’s Junior] eat coleslaw for breakfast when his preferred protein is bacon?” (“My girlfriend gave it to him because I was sleeping.”); “Why was [Nestor’s Junior] fed”—looking through a quarter-inch thick dossier—“peanut butter sandwiches? And spaghetti? For two. Whole. Days recently?” (“He was with his father. He didn’t know any better.”); “Who didn’t know any better—his father or [your ‘son’]?” (“Neither.”); “So, you are not his father?” (“No.”); “Why do you make him wear”—looking through his dossier—“dinosaur T-shirts? And sneakers? When his intended cultural identity is South American?” (“Argentinian.”). Elbow back, hips pivoting, the agent will reach for an imaginary gun. “Excuse me, sir?” (“South America is a continent, not a culture, and they probably have dinosaur T-shirts there, too.”); “So, these Argentinians we hear of are the folks who clothe and feed him, correct?” (“He eats dinner with them after school, and they gave him some clothes as gifts.”). Real hand on imaginary gun on real hip, holding up the dossier as a shield: “But the child lives with your girlfriend”—leafing through the dossier—“…and you?” (“They live with me.”). The lead case agent will take his hand away from his spectral side-iron, click open a pen, and make a note on one of the pages of the dossier. As he scribbles away, do your very best to tamp down the urge to commit imaginary felony assault with the agent’s figment firearm against A.Y. or R.D., who will be standing less than fifteen feet away in his driveway pretending to pore over the nuances of installing a brand new Liberty Walk wide body kit onto his Mustang, but is obviously live-texting the scene unfolding before him to someone—probably Taffy, who is probably semi-live texting your girlfriend, who left for work early today to make up for all the lost time of the last few days. But let the better you resurface to take the controls for a moment to avoid an imaginary standoff that would result in you being late for the real meeting with your actual boss. The agents will let you and Nestor’s Junior resume your travel, but not without leaving you with an ambiguous warning of “continued monitoring”, a list of dietary and cultural prioritization requirements you will be expected to fulfill for Nestor’s Junior, and a snide comment that it “seems like [your ‘son’] spends a lot of time with people other than his family.” Encourage the agent to study his dossier more thoroughly, where he will likely find the court’s agreement that spending more time with his family is not in the best interest of Nestor’s Junior. The second slash of the cutlass will halt you, dumbfounded and dead in your tracks, at work, where the meeting with your boss will not go remotely as planned. You will go into the meeting armed with a bandolier of well-meaning and honest explanations and apologies regarding the miscommunications that resulted from your illness, and the disrespectful—albeit comical—selfie you took at his desk. You will leave the meeting with none of those shells ever having been chambered, but, instead, with an OAR signed by not only your boss, but the marketing director and the Human Resources manager, who will have surprised you by also attending the meeting. The OAR—an Observable Achievement Request—will firmly put you into a period of professional probation for 90 days, whereupon you will be expected to show “observable achievement” in the “amelioration of ongoing vocational retrogression”. Acquiesce to the request, return to your desk, and commence your observational period of productive ascension. Decline the invitation to join E.A. or S.L. for lunch, despite her disarming smile and worried eyes offering an indubitable opportunity to disencumber yourself from the weight of a most unusual morning. Instead, walk quietly and expressionlessly out of the building, get in your car, and drive across the parking lot and down a hill to an empty, rarely used overflow parking lot. Position the car nose-in at the furthest corner underneath the shade of a large evergreen with wide, low-slung branches, and spend the thirty minutes of your now-carefully monitored break screaming as hard as you can—further escalating each storm of vociferation, challenging yourself to find the event horizon of total vocal destruction—and punching and shaking the steering wheel, slowing only when, in a flicker of clarity, you consider that the airbag might detonate in your face. When you arrive home in the evening, it will be late—you will have worked late so as to be observed by your boss and the Human Resources manager, who both worked late, and you will leave only after they leave—and the house will be quiet and still. Your girlfriend will be in the guest bedroom with her throw pillows in the throes of an exceptionally animated conversation with Taffy, no doubt. Walk into Nestor’s Junior’s room, where he will already be asleep, his soft breathing competing only with the whisper of air passing through the tines of the air register in the floor. In the blade of hallway light cutting through the door cracked open behind you as you stand over the boy in the bed, unfold the list of dietary and cultural prioritization requirements the BYE agent served you with. Consider the detail of the directive and the referenced instances of parental inequity. Ask yourself where it all came from, and who called out the dogs, and to what purpose. Obviously it is the school, but who would have the audacity to interject the threat of criminal child abuse between a “father”, a “son”, and agents of the state? Of course, it will be either the principal, or Ms. H___k—probably both in collusion against you—but how could they have interpreted such a complaint so as to rebuke your parental authority with such irrevocable malice? Slip back out into the hallway, turn off the light, and as you slowly close the door—leaving it open just a crack so the ambient glow from the bathroom night light can trickle in—look at the small figure bundled under the colorful buggy-eyed frog comforter. Ask yourself if the true enemy is your “son”. The number of links in each of the chains that bind you are 9 (“points of passage” from your OAR) and 4 (dietary and cultural prioritization directives and addendums from the BYE).