June 2013
It was a hot summer night and Simon was walking in long slow circles. He had lost count of how many laps he had made around the park. He wasn't even sure why he was still doing it. It was Relay for Life and he was a four year cancer survivor. He got the invitation in the mail and filled it out and showed up for something to do.
It was a Friday night and he was depressed. He had had a bit of a rough day at work, dealing with people who made stupid decisions. Stupid decisions that essentially obviated all of the work he had done in the past month. Not only was all of his work now useless they had gone with what was by any objective measure a worse design. It was worse from a user perspective, it was worse from a system perspective, and it was far far worse from a maintenance perspective. The only person it was better for was the next executive who insisted on the changes so that he could claim it was his and not the former administration. The new executive was like a dog marking his territory, peeing all over it.
Simon had left work after the meeting. He had done his 50 hours that week and had no other meetings. He left work in a bit of snarl and went to a local sports bar. He pulled up a seat at the bar and ordered a Yuengling and a reuben. Life was pretty sweet until his 6 month pregnant ex-wife walked in with her boyfriend. She was a hot a piece of ass, even pregnant. She had put on a bit of weight with some of it in a perfectly round baby bump but from Simon's perspective, most of it went to her tits swelling them from D's to DDD's. Large breasts that now seemed to have constantly erect nipples. She was beauty and perfection, and had refused him sex ever since they found out he had cancer. She had left him 3 months ago, right after she found out she was pregnant.
They exchanged pleasantries, the highs and how are you's, but it just made Simon feel like shit. As his ex walked away Simon pushed away the remains of his sandwich, it had lost its taste. He ordered another beer and started to watch the baseball game on TV.
The game had fallen into a classic pitchers duel. The score was tied at zero into the ninth inning. One pitcher had walked a player and the other allowed a hit. Relief pitchers came in in the sixth and like the starters they were on fire. The game was about to go into extra innings when *the* commercial came on.
It was a commercial for vitamins. It was a reputable company with a normal product targeting men, not fly by night penis pills but there was a lot of imagery. Imagery that triggered panic attacks in Simon. Simon had testicular cancer, and as a result was overly protective of his remaining nut. When ever someone said, "I'ld give my left nut to...", he would die a little bit inside. Certain imagery would send him into panic attacks and when the commercial ended with the phallic trophy flanked by two golf balls he lost it. Simon threw $50 on the bar and ran out.
After fifteen minutes of tetris to calm his nerves he started to drive around, looking for something to do. He didn't want to go back to his empty house and he didn't want to be around people. That was when he remembered he signed up as a survivor for Relay for Life.
Simon was walking in circles. The walkers had thinned out to one or two people per team, walking in pairs. There were the occasional stragglers by themselves but for the most part he was alone with his thoughts. He was trying not to think. His goal was complete physical exhaustion. His knees ached and his lung burned. A couple more laps he thought, then a quick drive home and I'll sleep the sleep of the dead.
As he came around the back end of the course which ran near the baseball field, he thought he heard something coming out of the darkness. He took a step off the path and headed out across a field that was dimly lit by the lights for the race. He heard the sound more clearly. It was a woman crying, it was coming from one of the dugouts. The dugout had its back to the relay so the inside was completely dark. He walked as quietly as he could and he saw a pair of pink sneakers attached to chubby ankles poking out of the shadows on one side. He circled to the other side, out of sight of anyone who might be in the dugout. Just as he rounded the corner he coughed and watched the feet disappear into the darkness. He sat down on the bench and stared out at the field.
He knew there was a woman in there with him. He could smell her almond scented perfume and could hear a soft weeping. He was pretty sure though that she didn't know that he knew she was there. He sat there for a few minutes and let his eyes try to adjust to the dark. He finally looked over to her and could see that she was staring at him, but not much else.
"How long have you known I was here?" She asked.
"I followed the sound of the crying."
"Oh" She said mortified.
"I didn't say anything because I knew if you wanted to talk you would."
Five long minutes passed until she asked, "What team are you with?"
"None of them."
"Caregiver?"
"Survivor." He said.
"Will anyone come looking for you?" She asked.
"No." Simon replied, feeling suddenly very alone.
