A Post-Industrial Suicide

 A Post-Industrial Suicide

            The present doesn’t exist. This statement is one that seems to be an annoying continuation of postmodernism, made by a man who feels that he has a divine right,  if not cosmic duty, to question everything. Which, of course, it is. However, it is also a statement rooted in –capital T- Truth. It takes your brain about 13 milliseconds to process visual information. This seems insubstantial, and for most practical purposes, it is. However, because of this delay we are always experiencing a version of the past, with the future always passively stretching out in front us. So, in a very real way, the present does not exist, at least so far as human perceptions are concerned. This raises a slew of philosophical problems and questions. But, you are not here to read the vague and poorly thought out philosophical ponderings of a bargain bin Foucault. Rather, you are here to listen to a poorly conceived story, written by a David Foster Wallace wanna-be. Therefore, we might as well get this over with…

            The present doesn’t exist. This reality seems especially true when you live a life of boredom. The type of life where everything seems to be distorted by a grey and oppressive film.  The type of life where the only notable anecdotes come through in small personal tragedies, in which you wish for a real tragedy in order to break the monotony of existence. The type of life that cannot be called, in any meaningful way, living. No man exemplified this type of life like Patrick Sherrill.

            Patrick Sherrill lived in a small non-distinct one-story house on the outskirts of Edmond, Oklahoma; which was already a small and non-distinct place in its own right. The roof of Patrick’s house was lightly dusted with snow, despite the fact that it was August. A ‘freak snap’ as the vanilla radio voice would say on his ride to work. His house had only four rooms of any meaning. A kitchen that was in a perpetual state of disrepair that immediately signifies a lonely single man, sink full of dirty dishes and all. A living room that held an old faded leather couch that Patrick had inherited from his parents, an old black and white TV, a plywood coffee table, bare, save an overflowing ashtray; and inconspicuous in the corner there was a gun cabinet. His house also held a bathroom, which was clean, and a bedroom - the most literal interpretation of the word, as it was a room with a bed in it and nothing else.

            Patrick woke up a bit later than he normally did. But, not late enough to justify any change in his normal schedule.  Just late enough as so he could not enjoy the normal luxury of time when preparing to leave the house.

            He stared at the ceiling for around ten minutes, thinking about nothing in particular. Then Patrick got up, undressed, and got in the shower. It was cold. After sufficiently cleaning himself, he dried off and realized that he needed to put his towel into a washing machine. Of course, he knew he would not actually put the towel into the washing machine, he simply knew he needed to.  His uniform, though unnecessary for his particular position, was spotless and perfect. He put it on with particular care.

            Patrick then moved into the kitchen and poured himself a bowl of cereal. Letting the cereal sit, he went to make a pot of coffee. By the time this was completed, the milk had thoroughly soaked into his corn flakes making them a nondescript textureless calorie sludge that Patrick consumed joylessly and in silence. He was able to hear every small sound of his mastication.

            After doing all of these basic tasks, Patrick went outside to start his car. When he did this he was hit with the shock of the cold. So, he went back inside and put on a green jacket which said “Vietnam Veteran” on the right pocket. Returning outside, Patrick used a credit card to clear the ice off his windshield. Then, after a prolonged debate with his car on whether or not its engine would start. Patrick drove to work, at the post office.

            On his way to work Patrick madly flipped through the radio stations in an attempt to find something palatable. In this search he landed on a station playing monotonous pop music. As he drove Patrick’s mind began to drift. He remembered the jungle. He remembered the colorful birds, which surrounded him in the trees, and served to help him keep his sanity in the ever-green expanse. There was nothing more beautiful than seeing red after having seen only green for days.

            As Patrick drove he saw nothing but grey. The only thing to break this was the occasional chain restaurant, which only provided a different type of grey.  Once he got to the post office, Patrick found his usual space filled with a big, selfish yellow SUV. So he found a different space around back. 

            When Patrick was young he had always wanted to be a postman. The dream of getting to walk around and deliver important information to people. A freeing job that did not stuff you into a factory. So when he got back from the jungle, Patrick immediately applied to the local post office. That was 1975. Patrick got hired into the position of mail sorter. It was a boring job at times, but at least he got to move around the post office sorting the letters into bins so they could reach their final destination. Sometimes, even, there was excitement, with the occasional letter to Germany or Japan.  Two years later they rolled out the zip mail transit machines. And thusly, Patrick’s job title became ZMT operator. Nine years later and Patrick’s job title was left unchanged.

            Patrick walked into the post office, clocked in, sat down at his ZMT, and begun to work. 

The ZMT was a draconic looking machine that required twelve people working in unison to run. The machine could do up to sixty letters a minute, and at the Edmond post office, they ran it at sixty letters a minute. Not a small feet. First of all, there is the unison that was required, each person was reliant on the others for the machine to work at max efficacy. If one person messed up, the entire team messed up. This created an enormous social pressure to perform at your highest. And to perform at your highest you needed an ungodly amount of speed and reflexes. One had to block out the outside world and only focus on their work if the team was too work at maximum efficiency. Not working at maximum efficiency was a sure way to get fired.

            As Patrick worked he began to imagine himself becoming a part of the machine. His skin turned the rusted grey of the keyboard. His eyes became the bright yellow of the machine’s blinking lights.

            The ZMT increased the efficiency of the post office by threefold. It worked faster and required less men. The inventor of the machine, an unpleasant short man, received awards from the postal service for making the post profitable for the first time in decades. The ironic thing about the ZMT is the people who were forced to learn to use it. Most people who worked at the post office went there because they did not want to work at the local factory, though a factory job would have paid better. So when the ZMT rolled in and industrialized the post it reversed the only reason to work at the post.

            The machine had become an extension of Patrick, and he an extension of it.

            During the first years of the ZMT’s use it gained a great deal of national attention. First, for increasing the efficiency of the post office astronomically. Later, for making men go insane. In 1979, a man named John Berkowitz was sent to Bellevue after having a schizophrenic attack while working at the Queens post office. The combination of being highly repetitive without any real sign of accomplishment made John question the purpose of what he was doing. He began to imagine that the machine was made by the devil, and it's only purpose was to collect souls. By working at it he was giving his soul to the machine with his own labor. His theories were confirmed in his own mind when one of the other guys working at the ZMT dropped dead from a heart attack mid-shift.

            When Patrick’s shift was over, he continued to mindlessly work for another half hour.  He only stopped working when a supervisor shook his shoulders and told him to go home.  Patrick got up, clocked out, and walked to his car. When he started his car it produced a strange burning rubber smell.

            Again, he searched the radio stations, landing on a folk rock station that was playing a Bob Dylan song that he knew but could not remember the title of. This bothered him. Then the radio put on the song “Nothing” by the Fugs. The lyrics were strange, repetitive, jarring, and somehow soothing. Even though the song had no musical merits, it managed to get stuck in Patrick’s head.

            As he drove, he saw the sunset. It was particularly vibrant, lighting up the sky in electric yellow and neon orange. This reminded him of the one time he saw napalm in use. It was just after his company got out of the jungle, finding a clearing. His lieutenant called in a napalm strike on the jungle, out of spite rather than any military necessity. The jungle burned so bright that you could not look at it without hurting your eyes. It was beautiful in a primal way. As it burned one of his buddies, Curt, hummed a children’s lullaby. A strange chicken smell perforated the air.

            When Patrick got home he, almost instinctively, turned on the TV. In Patrick’s house the TV was almost always on, it was his fireplace. After taking off his uniform, Patrick cooked a pot of mac and cheese. Sitting on the couch, he ate the entire batch straight from the pot. As he ate, he watched an episode of “Crime Story.” Once the episode was over Patrick placed the pot in the sink. Considered finally doing the dishes and sat back down to watch more TV instead.

            At around ten, Patrick decided to complete his daily required hygiene before going to bed. He brushed his teeth, took his pills,  shaved. All the while, under his breath, he was singing the song he heard on the radio.

“Sunday nothing

Monday nothing

Tuesday and Wednesday nothing

Thursday, for a change

A little more nothing

Friday once more nothing”

            The beat of the song carried him from his bathroom to the bedroom. He tucked in and fell asleep, instantly. Over the course of the night, the temperature and humidity of Edmond rose to the highs that can only truly be experienced in August. As he slowly took off his blankets, Patrick dreamed back to the war. He was walking in the jungle until they came across a platoon of Vietcong. In the dream, the enemy soldiers did not attack: they just stood there. His lieutenant ordered Patrick to shoot them. So one by one, Patrick lifted his M-16 and shot each soldier. They were clean kills, one shot to the head for each. At first, Patrick kept his distance, carefully aiming from a few yards away. But, after five or so, he got lazy, putting the barrel of his rife against their foreheads. All the while, his enemy did not move. They stood still, looking off at no particular thing, holding a blank, almost sad, expression on their face. As Patrick shot them, he was sprayed with more and more blood. By the tenth cow, Patrick was completely red.

            The following morning was much the same as the day before. Except, when Patrick left for work the gun cabinet was left wide open. This was particularly unusual as Patrick had always been careful to make sure it was shut and locked.