The Man Who Couldn't Hold a Plastic Cup of Water

After years of spinning like a board game accessory, trying to point the finger at the root of all my mediocrity, the plastic has warped so much that no matter where the momentum ceased I would be indicating myself. The more I thought of this, the more I believed in fate. Perhaps that was another last ditch effort to squeeze my way out of being accountable. These are the thoughts I have on the toilet every morning as I try to read and as Elaine, my girlfriend, does what she can. She needs to use the bathroom, but I get a little joy out of making her find things to do while she waits. This is my prize for winning an argument: I get to use the bathroom first because I need to be into work earlier. I later realized that she let me win that argument as part of a strategy, as she started coming home drunk at 3:15 in the AM after being out with friends... she would say, "Well I don't go to work until later than you..." Yeah, an hour later. So I started reading books I normally wouldn't read one or two chapters per day while she waits outside of the bathroom. She runs around doing random chores; she wants to make it seem as though it made no difference that the bathroom was unavailable for 20, 30, 45 minutes. After 45 minutes she knocks on the door and asks if I'm ok, as though she really thinks something is wrong. That is where it goes too far and I'd rather not think about it. I'd rather avoid letting her further taint that sweet tone she uses, which I sometimes feel is one of the few things we have left going for us.

I careen into the office with my breakfast and lunch leaking into my bag and burrowing into my chest. Everyone moves as though they intend to provide assistance but then they look at each other and ask if I "got everything"... the scene is a sociologist's wet dream. Money is tight so I pack all of my meals. I snatch the last plastic cup and fill it to the brim at the water cooler and take the scenic route to my office. Say hi to Wendall, Steve and Jessica... I look ahead and I am on a collision course with Ravi the Stoner. He gives off a chill vibe from every orifice and appendage, he is approachable and forcefully mysterious, and he does every thing short of offer roll a bone in the parking lot to make sure everyone knows that he blazes in his spare time and potentially before coming to work, which he seems to think makes him edgy. I don't mind talking to him, as long as someone distracts him so I can make a getaway. Then, as I pass Albrecht's office, a stack of manila envelopes reaches it's threshold and lands on my head from a filing shelf. I try to deflect them as a reflex, and my water, only slightly depleted, makes heavy impact with Ravi the Stoner. Ravi the Stoner holds both arms out, looks down and then at me and says "Not cool." He looks as stern as he possibly can, shakes his head... then smiles, as though any tension had mounted that he was going to suddenly seem bothered by something, as though he was capable of disgust. "It's all good bro, I'd rather be a forest ranger too", then he laughed with his tongue out and charges down the hall like he's dribbling a basketball. Launched from my morning haze, the rest of the day passes quickly.

I'm not stupid. I know that I should be suspicious when Elaine comes home an hour or more after all the bars have closed. I've met her friends and hung out with the group. If there wasn't loud music and they all had to actually talk to each other, their outings wouldn't last more than 15 minutes. The bars close around midnight on weekdays, I highly doubt that they are hanging out at a diner or one of their houses laughing over herbal tea, regaling each other with stories about old times hours after closing time. I'm sure they aren't sitting in whoever is designated drunk driver that night's car listening to NPR, bonding over intellectual conversation. However, I have no other evidence and I can't go after her with "Your friends all secretly hate each other too much to hang out anywhere but the bar, where it isn't as obvious that most of them are silently judging each other. You are definitely at some personal trainer's house getting stuffed." I just don't know what else she could be doing. I do know that when she hangs out with her friends, she will sometimes come home and start crying and wrap herself around me, saying how I'm the only stable thing in her life and that I'm the only one who cares, and that some day we will start a family and she doesn't know where she would be without me in her life. I have decided that it is times like these when she is at her most sincere. We would make love to the point of physical and emotional exhaustion and I forget my suspicions.

I sit at my computer with my head in my hand, face too close to the monitor, in a contemplative trance. At least she has a support group. I recently realized that all of my friends moved on to bigger and better things or smaller and worse things. I guess I don't blame them, I can't pay for ski trips and European getaways and I don't compare favorably to a bottle of bottom shelf vodka and prescription pain killers crushed into some baby food, so we all drifted apart. After a depressing phase of trying to hold everyone together, we all just let go and haven't looked back.

The key benefit to this remote civil service job is that I have a set range of responsibilities and I am not even allowed to do anything outside of that range of work. I am a particular link on a chain, it takes years to get to this point and I see no reason other than boredom to leave it. I take a stroll to the bathroom, and I look at my coworkers. The only unmarried one is Ravi the Stoner, and while he is jonesing to hang out, I really don't want to deal with all the facade. I don't want to be that guy who talks about when he used to get high in college, and I don't want to get high. I try to re-evaluate that last statement as I fill a plastic cup of water. On my way back to my office, Jansky pulls out of his cube and his chair collides with my hip, causing no damage except that I spilled my water again. Ravi the Stoner sees from across the sea of cubicles, stuffs his face into his forearm and blurts out an obnoxious and guttural "HA!" and does a socially acceptable version of a pirouette to somewhere out of my field of vision. I pick up and dispose of the cup and get a new one. As soon as I turn away from the water cooler, Jessica brushes against me without looking up from her iPhone, causing me to drop the cup and spill on myself. Ok, that's weird. Of course Ravi the Stoner sees this incident as well and decides to make a game out of it. I pour another cup and walk. Everybody watches me as I walk towards my office... just as the crowd starts to lose interest and disburse, a section of the ceiling falls and knocks the water out of my hand. Everybody who was still watching stare in disbelief. After a moment to collect my thoughts, I run to get another cup. That cup is capsized when the break room door wedge slips. The next cup is claimed when I trip over a lump under the carpet. The following cup endured a fly in my eye and two abruptly opened doors, only to slip from my hand when my funny bone was tapped as I leaned against the wall to escape other possible collisions.

I wasn't very interested at first, but when I kept failing to hold onto cups of water, I became very amused. Through trial and error I discovered that I couldn't finish any with plastic cup filled to the top with water, regardless of location. Cups made of glass and any other material remained unaffected, as did plastic and any drink other than water. I was even able to quickly drink a half a cup of water before anything would happen, but not a full one. I showed this to Elaine rather than try to explain it to her, and she took a great interest in it. I was surprised because this seems like one of those things she would think is really stupid and leave me by myself to enjoy it. I felt very close to her because of this shared interest. After she saw the full extent of the condition, she said she knew someone at Gallatin University who may also be interested. It was one of her friends, she worked in the front office and referred me to one of the scientists at their lab, which was the nearest lab where I could find ideal conditions for experiments to see the true depth of my problem.

Every Wednesday I would leave work early to spend several hours at the lab, as well as some weekend hours. With each session, they would remove the object that caused the previous cup to fall. It was truly phenomenal; papers would blow into my face from afar, lightbulbs would explode, glass would break. One day, when all variables were removed and it seemed that I would be able to finish walking across the room and drink the water, I had a blackout. I had never had anything like that happen before, it was alarming. Elaine encouraged me to continue, she was concerned that if I didn't beat this problem that it would haunt me forever. Her encouragement gave me the strength to continue. I eased back into the experiments, with a few tests taking place in busier rooms until I felt that I could go back into the empty room. This time, there was nothing breakable, the light was from an outside source, and I was assessed to be in perfect health. I filled the cup, entered the room, and closed the new wooden door. I walked around the room, sipping on the water. It took me a full 45 minutes, but I finished the cup of water!

I drove home right away to deliver the good news to Elaine! She was going to be so proud. I burst into our apartment only to find her bent over the couch, loosely connected to a chiseled figure, thrusting with a blank expression on his face. I changed gears and went to defend the second most tarnished honor in the room, but he temporarily incapacitated me with a move he probably learned when he taught Tae Bo back in 2002. I thought I was only down for a second, but it was enough time for him to dress himself and depart. I was completely dissolved, with that horrible image burnt into my head... I ran into the bathroom to throw up. I noticed unfamiliar condom wrappers beneath some debris in the waste basket. How sloppy. As I gathered my thoughts with priority like scrambling for pinata droppings; I realized how easily this was done and that I have nobody to blame but myself.