A Novel: The Benched - Book Report/Review Example

May Tom Mota: From Being Fired to Walden to Raging Clown with Fake-Blood Pellet Gun The Benched The woman was in her middle thirties. She was black-haired and beautiful in her brown skin. She sat on a bench in a park. She was deep in thought about her last day at work, when she heard someone beside her, muttering: “Fucking pricks think they can just fire me. Well, hot damn, everyone’s been firing me. My wife fired me for being a husband. Which fired me as a father. What a fiery life I live in.” He was Tom Mota. He couldn’t even remember where he was. He was just walking and talking and stopping to sit or stand, so he could talk some more, whether someone was there to hear him or not. Liza was surprised that Tom was sitting near her. She didn’t even notice him come towards her and sit down beside her. She was also surprised that she got fired at work. She had no inkling that the first to get laid off was her. There were rumors of layoffs. The company wanted to be more efficient and even hired a couple of consultants to streamline the workforce. One of her paranoid officemates, Alma, kept on telling her that they were all doomed to be laid off. Liza didn’t know she was going to be fired at all. She worked hard to get to her managerial position. After ten years in a customer service company, she was laid off after a month of rumors that she slept with Vice President Arthur Parkman, a married man in his early fifties with two kids, 15 and 8. No one would tell her the real problem when she was laid off. But she knew. Tongues wagged and she knew. She was fired because she was brown and a woman. She was also aggressive in being promoted upward. She didn’t even have an affair, although Arthur hit on her many, many times. Tom had bad breath. Food and alcohol combined, plus not taking baths for days, he stunk worse than a skunk. Liza was surprised that she wanted to talk to the skunk man beside him. She said, “Excuse me, are you alright? I mean, of course you’re not. I just got fired too, and the world is just so much darker now.” Tom looked as if he snapped out of a nightmare he liked to be in. “Whu, huh? Oh, you’re there. And you’re? I’m Tom Mota. Unemployed, divorced, a total loser in America’s eyes.” He offered his dirty hand. Liza smiled with sad eyes, took his hand, and said, “I’m Elizabeth Taylor, yup for real, and no relation to that lovely actress. Call me Liza. Unemployed, unmarried, but I should’ve been, if it weren’t for my work. I gave up everything for the benefit of the company. And it sacked me so easily.” They shook hands, looking at each other’s eyes as equals. “Well, you’re prettier than the ole’ Lizzie Taylor herself. Hope that it doesn’t make me a creep. I am still married in my mind. Maybe even in my fucking heart, I still am,” Tom said. Liza’s eyes saddened a bit more, “Well, that’s touching. I’m guessing you lost your family because all you ever did was to take care of the company’s interests, right?” “Ah, we tortured souls. We lost everything, while the company still stands. But you, you’re young and beautiful. You can get over it. You can easily move on. I am old and alone. And I do not want to move on anymore. I just want to stay wherever my feet take me. Walk and walk away. Or maybe shrivel and die. No one cares anyway.” Liza faced Tom more, “Don’t tell me you’re thinking about suicide? I’m not that young, already in my mid-thirties, but yes, I may have something more to look forward to. But you, if you’ve been into, uhm, what work did you have?” “Advertising.” “Advertising. You have experience and contacts. You can still move on.” “But that’s precisely it. I don’t want to move on anymore. I want to move, just walking, but not with a job, not within an office or a cubicle. No, not that again. That is not life. I want life. But I don’t know what kind of life anymore. I’m too old I think. Or maybe too young for this age. Maybe.” Liza wanted to talk more. He was someone she could relate to. She wanted to talk to someone so badly. But for now, she just wanted to listen to him. She felt angry a while ago, but Tom pacified her. She looked at her watch. It was 9:08 in the evening. “I haven’t even had lunch yet, and it’s way past dinner, would you, could you,” Liza was unsure of her invitation. Tom gave her a big smile and said, “With me looking like this? Oh yeah, we can eat at those mobile food stalls. I wouldn’t get so much attention there than in a restaurant.” “Goodness, of course not in a restaurant! You want to get arrested for disturbing people’s sense of scents!” Liza laughed. Tom didn’t. “Okay, I know this great Mexican food stall. You like Mexican? I can eat a burrito and tacos! Enchiladas! Goodbye diets and getting conscious of my body!” “Hmm, well. I’ve never even tasted anything non-American. That is stupid. Mexicans are the first Americans if you think about their Native American lineage. Time is short. I must try something new each day. Today, I will reconnect with real Americans.” “We dine Mexican!” Tom smiled, “We dine American.” They walked for ten minutes saying nothing. At the cashier, Liza said, “I’ll take this one.” “You sure will, you invited me.” Liza laughed. “I did. I’m going to order what I think you’d like.” She ordered burritos and tacos for her and Tom. She also ordered iced tea drinks and enchiladas. The meal looked like it was going to serve five hulking men. Dinner in Flames “I like my food really spicy. I didn’t know until now,” said Tom. “I’m starting to know more about myself than before.” He took some chili pepper and put some into his burrito. Liza nodded, “I guess that’s what is inspiring. When you’ve lost everything, life becomes clearer.” “It did for you? No, not for me. Everything is muddled. More and more. Because the truth just keep on coming up. Sometimes in shreds. Sometimes in waves. I hate it. I love it. Sometimes clarity. Sometimes confusion. More confusion because of clarity.” “I think my life is not clearer in the clearest way, but I am starting to think now for myself,” Liza just put the last of the burrito into her mouth. “Wow, I’m full. We can stay here forever. I know these guys.” She waved at the cooks of the stall and they waved back. “They know you because you’re a paying customer,” Tom eyed them with suspicion. “That too. Come on, they’re nice dudes. Never harassed me at all. It’s good to stay here.” “Nah, let’s go back to the park. It’s much mellower there. You can pick a really lighted spot near the guards if you want to feel safer.” Tom looked like he was spacing out. Liza felt sorry for him. She thought, “Well, these Mexican dudes saw me with him, so if I get killed, someone will tell the police whom I’ve been with. Liza, you’re getting crazy! He is so harmless! Well, not entirely, he looks like he’s going to snap, but not in a violent, psychotic way. At least not now.” She breathed deeply and said, “Let’s go. I’ll just order two burritos and two large drinks to go for our midnight snacks.” She bought more food and left with Tom. “See, this is a good place. Well-lighted. Just a few meters away from guards and people. You’re safe here,” Tom told Liza. “This is why I know you’re harmless. You’re thinking of my safety, like real safety.” “Well, I don’t know about harmless. I sure do look crazy enough to not be harmless.” “That’s true. But are you crazy enough to hurt someone?” “Nope. Maybe a little when I get crazier. Oh what a beautiful starry night.” Tom breathed out as if preparing for a long night: “Since the company terminated me, I was thinking of getting crazy, like for real. Perhaps burn the whole building down. Advertising company is going hot, burning in flames, for real. I mean, hell is right there with its soul-killing cubicles. Yeah, sometimes it brings our minds alive, but only for a short-time. This hell of an office just needs to be literally hell. Okay, nope, I don’t really want to do that. I can’t kill anyone. Fires kill people. I can’t kill any human being. Maybe the company or the spirit of it, I can kill that, but not a real person. But why can’t I kill the company that terminated me just like that? Because the company that people made is no longer a person! I can only pretend that this property, this computer of the company, is part of itself, so I’d like to throw it out and make it feel how I feel! Like trash! But no. I am nothing to the company that was once everything to me. This is sad. I’m finally seeing the truth, but it’s all too late. I lost what really matters for my company, which does not matter, because I don’t matter nothing to it. So yeah, I left the company, though it left me first. I have nothing now. Do I have friends in the office? No, not even. We are just co-workers. We can call each other friends, but no, not really. ‘They never knew me…They never did’ (Ferris 22). We spend the most days and nights of our lives with these co-workers and bosses, and yet, we do not know each other. But you know what, no one knows me because I don’t even know myself! It’s like this dude working for a company, you know, Office Space? Jennifer Aniston and Ron Livingston? Well, no? Okay, anyway, this dude doesn’t want to do anything because I think that he doesn’t know who he is? Not at all! We don’t know who we are anymore because we are always following what others are telling us to do or telling us who we have to be!” “Wow, that’s really deep. That’s hard. I mean, if I don’t know who I am, then I’m just wasting my life over these things I’m doing?” “Exactly! We are slaves! Robots! We don’t own our lives! We don’t own our identities! Who are you Elizabeth Taylor?” “Well, I am, was a manager. I used to have professional goals.” Tom interrupted her, “Professional goals? What the F does that mean? Professional? The profession of whom and for what?” Liza felt distraught all of a sudden, like she had lost her anchor at the beach, now she floated at the sea: “For business. For customers. For my success. You know, the American Dream!” “What the F is American? And why is it connected to a dream? We should own our dreams! It’s supposed to be our dreams! Our ways!” “I understand your frustration.” “See, you’re doing it again! You’re being a manager! You’re managing me and I curse you for that!” “Wha, I’m sorry?” “No! Don’t be sorry! Be yourself! You want to swear and call the cops on me! Do it! You are free! We should be free!” “We can’t just be free. We can’t be,” Liza said. She looked away from Tom. “I remember, when I was six years old, people asked me what I wanted to be when I grow up, and before I could say anything, they said it. A beauty queen! An actress! The queen of a king! They are all obsessed of what I look like in the outside. No one cared who I was inside. But they kept doing that. They kept on hammering me on what I should be. They tell me this and that. As a woman, you behave. You keep your legs closed. As a woman in a corporate world, you act like a man to be given a man’s job, the upper management jobs. Don’t be so brown. Act white. Be white. Your bosses are white men. Be like white men. I was in high school when my mother died. She wanted me to be like the white men in the hotels she cleaned. She told me, ‘Liza, they are rich and powerful. I want you to be like white men.’ She died taking care of these rich and powerful white men. I am a mixed race. I am Native American, Black, and Hispanic. I also have Chinese blood on my father’s side. What does it mean to me to have an American Dream to me? Well, it’s about having a job and getting very good at it, better than men, because otherwise, you stay below the ladder.” Tom said, “I never thought of that. Of how women feel. Of how women in the minorities feel. It must be both terrifying and challenging.” His eyes looked stern, like he found a new sense of respect for Liza. “Well, it’s full of shit. Full of sexual harassment and double standards. But I get by. I have to. I have six siblings. When my mother died, we are seven. I was fourteen, and the rest are all young children. My Aunt Carolina adopted us. Oh how she loved us! But her husband hated us! 7 more mouths to feed, he’d yell every morning, noon, and night. Aunt Carolina would not dare answer back. He hits her. Uncle Lorenzo hits her every time he’s drunk and most of the time, he’s drunk. They only have one child. Plus 7, they have 8. Ten mouths to feed. Aunt Carolina worked day and night to feed all 10 mouths. She died early like my mother too. But by that time, I was working already. I took all my siblings. We lived in a cramped apartment, but it was ours. They have all graduated now. Some in high school. Some in college. They are spread across the world. They are all married with families.” “And you are all alone?” “Yes. I was supposed to get married five years ago. I was engaged to this wonderful athlete. I can’t even attend meetings with the wedding planner. I was in the midst of getting promoted. He. He broke up with me. And married a co-worker, a very good friend, actually.” “Wow, these things happen in real life.” “Yes, he might have married my best friend, if I had one. But I had no best friend. I was married to my work. And it divorced me. I have no one now. I have family, but they are so far away. And I feel like I don’t know them anymore. And that they don’t know me.” “But what if we burn our company’s buildings?” “What?” Liza looked at Tom incredulously. “No, not everything. Maybe the trash can outside? Let’s start with your garbage!” “Why?” “Because fire is rebirth. Fire is being renewed. And our companies are garbage and we were treated like garbage!” “I. I don’t know. But, what time is it? Oh, hmm. Okay, let’s do it. Do you have a lighter?” “Yes, I do.” “Then let’s fire away!” They went to Liza’s building. The alley was empty. They ignited the trash outside. It burst easily into flames. Tom looked at the flames. “It’s like the universe forming.” “Or maybe it’s the universe being destroyed,” said Liza. Tom looked at her. “What’s so bad about destroying the universe?” “That is what my company is called actually. The Universe. Well, The Universe of Life. Pretty cheesy huh? But I like it. This idea of burning down the universe. Free will. Free choices. Yes, I feel like it’s a new start.” Tom nodded. “It’s a new life. We deserve a new life. Our identities had been stolen. We deserve a new life.” He was spacing out and Liza looked at the man who lost everything. Planning for a Clown Attack The fire has died. “So, we go to your company now?” Liza asked. “No, I changed my mind. We will go to the lake. And throw some stones there. And mull over life.” “I see. We’ll go Walden?” “Yes.” They walked silently to the pond at the park. Some lovers were here and there. They chose a bench in front of the pond. Tom said: “To conform is to lose your soul. So I dissented every chance I got and I told them fuck you and eventually they fired me for it, but I thought, Ralph Waldo Emerson would be proud of Tom Mota” (Ferris 343). “Is that what you did? You did not conform? So you actually got yourself fired?” “I did and I didn’t. I liked my work and I hated it. I did not conform, but I also did. I worked there, didn’t I? So I conformed. I did weird emails and antics. But I did my job. I worked to be productive most days. I conformed.” “And you lost yourself in the process?” Tom shook his head gently. “I conformed and I dissented. I lost my soul. I did. What’s the use of dissenting? I’m still part of the system. I failed my wife and kids many times. I missed birthdays and anniversaries because these damn meetings and projects always got in the way of my family life. Work has bad timing. The company wants you to think about what you can do for it, but it does not care about your welfare at all. I left with no feeling of goodbye from my company. I felt as if nothing happened. No one wailed for me. No one felt bad the way I did. My company didn’t give an F. And I knew I was fucked. I gave my life to something that didn’t give an F to my happiness or pain, my life or death. I went to counseling. Okay, a psychiatrist. He hypnotized me because I asked him to. I wanted him to help me feel relaxed because my pain is so deep and so unbearable I was losing my sanity. He hypnotized me. It was good. It was being in nothingness. It’s not even being relaxed. It’s being in the state of nothingness. Was that the state I wanted? The state I needed? I was nothing at work. And I wanted more nothingness after it? But oh how I wanted to be a hypno junkie. But my psychiatrist died. Yup, he had a damn heart attack when I needed him most. I was referred to another psychiatrist who could also do hypnosis, but I wanted none of it anymore. So now, I’m wearing this company shirt for like a month or two. Company loyalty in reverse. I am commemorating the company that screwed me over. I’m just here walking for days. Who’s counting? I’m just walking and walking. Thinking. Could I have done something else to change my destiny? I am all alone. All fucking alone. I deserve this. I deserve to be alone because of the poor choices I made. I want my family back but they hate me. And I can’t live with that. Indifference kills. Hate kills too. So I’m now here with you, my co-unemployed. Here’s what I want to do though. I want to sneak back to my office. Look like a clown. Pretend to shoot everyone with pellets that have fake blood.” “Why?” “You ask a lot of whys.” “Why? You want to scare them off?” “Yes! I want to scare them! I want them to feel what it feels to be dying, so they’d know what matters in life! I want them to realize that to work in a job you hate is a fake life where you draw fake blood!” “Do you think they’ll get that?” “Get what” “Your profound message about the fakeness of life? With a clown costume?” “You can laugh at me. They can laugh at me. The system made me a clown. A joke. We are jokes of humanity if we think we have a good life. Is this a good life? Working day in and day out? Nights even. Weekends even. Taking care of our families. Buying stuff. Is this it? This is life?” “I don’t get it.” “So that’s not a why question, but it’s a why question in a form of statement. You don’t get it because you don’t want to get it.” “No, but I do. I want to get it. I want to get this act, this comedy, which is a tragic comedy of life we have. My mother is a funny woman. Believe me she cracks us up all the time. It’s like she doesn’t even get tired. She has time and energy to make jokes about her work, her deadbeat husband, her kids, her life, everything. She laughs every day with us. But at night, she cries. She cries as she prays. I can hear her. Keeping her sobs in. She is tired to the bone. But she wants to have this facade of happiness. She does not want us to be the one sobbing at night.” “Oh my God, is that what my wife was doing? Sobbing every night for a damn husband who is not a husband and not a father? O my God! I should just shoot myself!” Tom shook his head. “No. That’s not the point. The point is that they hold on. They hold on as much as they can. They can because they know they must. Is their suffering a big waste? Maybe to Walden. Maybe to people who think that the system corrupted her. But what if that is who she is? She wants to sacrifice herself, because she wants to. She wants to because she’s truly happy as a mother.” “You’re mother is a saint. Many mothers are. Many wives are. I can’t say the same for us husbands. We’re trying to catch up. But this damn system just keeps on pulling us back. I want to say sorry to your mother. Can we go to her grave? I will answer your why question now. I want to be sorry for all the men who weren’t there for their women and children. I want to say sorry. We fucked up the system we made. But we’re going to do better. Well, not me. I’m done. Other men will. They will step up to the challenge.” “My mother is buried miles away.” “Okay, so that’s out of the question. I’ll just fly a balloon for her then.” Liza smiled. “You know what I think? I think you’re taking the clown identity too seriously. Balloons? For real?” “Stop disrespecting clowns Liza. I will buy a balloon with or without you.” He started leaving. “Alright. With me! Buy a balloon with me! It’s not like you got money there.” “Excuse me? I am not as penniless as you think I am. I can buy my balloon.” They bought a balloon. It was a big red balloon. They went back to the park. “Here’s the balloon for your mother. May she rest in peace in heaven. May more women have peace on earth, not in death.” “Amen.” Tom let the balloon go and he cried. Liza cried too. “So what’s next?” “Next is being a clown. And shooting people to life.” “Shooting people to life. That’s cool. What’s next?” “I’ll get imprisoned for sure. But at least I killed their sense of complacency.” “And we’ll never see each other again?” “Nope.” “Goodbye then Tom Mota. Thanks for being such a dear clown.” Tom smiled and left without waving goodbye or turning back. He just walked on and on. Works Cited Ferris, Joshua. Then We Came to the End: A Novel. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2007. Kindle. e-book. Office Space. Dir. Mike Judge. Perf. Ron Livingston, Jennifer Aniston, David Herman. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, 1999. Film. Read More