There is a variety of people gathered, sitting around a somewhat long, maybe medium-sized wooden table. The room is your average room; one with pasty white walls and a few paintings hanging, well spaced seemingly at random. Everyone sitting around the table is nicely dressed. Some of the men in suits, some in just well ironed slacks and a nicely patterned tie. All of them have very fancy hair styles and only two are wearing glasses, one rather business like, the other with very wide frames that are striped with brown and black. Are you bored yet?

The women are all very good looking, depending on your definition of good or not and if you are in to making that sort of distinction. The point is, all of the women are wearing their cute business-like skirts and their best jewelry. Because that is what makes a woman good looking. Just kidding, they are all attractive in their very own unique way; a way that is making me think how this story would be better told from a woman’s point of view, but you are stuck with me as your narrator. A man.

Don is the name of one of the men. He is in his mid to late twenties and is the one with the large framed glasses. Wait, no. He is the one sitting next to the guy with the long framed glasses. But that guy is not important for now. For now, it is Don who is of the importance. Don is listening to the guy at the end of the table, the only one standing. At least that is what everyone else thinks, and anyone who would be discretely watching who has nothing to do with narrating this story. I know better, because I am your narrator and I have the specially unfortunate privilege of peering into Don’s head, which is currently thinking about how badly he needs to fart. And I know what you’re thinking, reader. “Awh, this is going to just be a stupid story about farts. That’s why he (the narrator, aka me) made it such a big deal about him being of the male sex.” Well, reader, I am happy to inform you that this story is not at all about farts, though it contains one small, fart-based instance.

Don sits, paying attention with only his face to the bald, standing boss man, but in his mind, Don is thinking about his stomach and how it is pushing some sort of natural methane based gassy substance through his bowls and to the gates of his butt crack. It is beginning to send a physical pain to Don’s stomach, so he leans forward, as if he is suddenly experiencing a sharp spike in interest to what his boss is saying. He has absolutely no idea what his boss is saying, and his change in posture only worsens the gassy pain.

A loud, rubbery noise begins to whisper through the room. No one acknowledges it, but most certainly everyone hears it. The noise, however, then grows and is no longer rubbery and no longer a whisper. It is now a shout resounding that of a yelling goat, and everyone sitting around the table, even the guy with wide brimmed glasses is now looking directly at Don, who suddenly feels a thick liquid leak into his underwear. He can feel the red in his face and looks around the table at everyone, stopping to make eye contact with his boss. Completely and utterly ashamed.

“May I please be excused,” Don growls politely, possibly the only time in history someone has successfully achieved such a polite growl.

BUT, Don never actually farted. That part was all a part of his own imagination. He was able to contain his need to fart and then, realizing the absurdity of the situation his mind has just taken him, he lets slip a slight grin that no one seems to notice except for Shayla, who is sitting directly across the table from Don.

Shayla quickly looks back to the head of the table, frustrated that, yet again, she has accidentally made eye contact with Don, who she only knows to refer to as Don because of his name tag that says, “HELLO, MY NAME IS don.” It’s not like she has been staring at Don this entire time, which she is sure he thinks by now, it’s just a matter of sitting directly across from Don. He could be anyone and this same thing would probably happen, thanks to the simple matter of chance. She is not looking into Don’s eyes, she is repeatedly looking ahead of her at nothing in particular only to eventually realize that her eyes are aimed in the direction of Don’s own eyes. And now he’s going to want to come up and talk to Shayla after this meeting, which she has already missed the point of and has given up attempting to piece together.

She looks over at Don and his smirk is no longer there. He is looking ahead at the boss, who she can’t remember the name of. Don is now giving the occasional nod. But, she knows that the nodding is only an act. She looks at him, quickly examining him, his style, his face, his hair and realizes that if she were the kind of girl to intentionally flirt during a business meeting, she would find Don a very welcoming target. And so she imitates Don for the rest of the meeting, occasionally fake head nodding as if to really be getting some good information out of the rest of the meeting. Once, it finally ends, which she knows only due to her boss’ back now being turned and various people scooting their chairs back to stand up, she makes it a point to intentionally make some clearly-not-an-accident eye contact with Don, who is now fully standing up and stretching his hands above his head as if just waking up from a nap. Shayla finds this act very cute. He puts his hands back down and looks around the room, as if wondering what to do next. Boom. He makes eye contact with Shayla and she holds it, making sure not to be the first to look away, or even say something.

“Exciting meeting, huh,” Don says with a sudden sense of confidence. She knows that she and her not-so-subtle-but-still-slightly-subtle eye contact is the source of said confidence.

“I learned absolutely nothing,” she says softly and smiles. “It was about world poverty, right?” she jokes.

“If by poverty you mean boredom, then yes,” he says. He’s not terribly witty, she thinks, but she can tell he has a good heart. It’s his mannerisms and the tone of his voice. His joke was still enough to get a soft chuckle out of her, and the way he holds the door open for her as they continue their conversation to-go means that he is considerate. She’s been with plenty inconsiderate men. A change is needed.

They walk down the street and he eventually walks her all the way home.

“Well, this is me,” she says and motions up the steps.

“Oh, right,” he says caught off guard, but then he quickly regathers his composure. “I didn’t even realize I was walking you home,” he jokes.  ”I had no intentions to walk over to this neighborhood, but I’m sure glad I did. It was really great talking to you.”

She smiles, more brightly than she has since she was a little girl blowing dandelions.

BUT none of this actually happened outside of Shayla’s own head. Don has remained motionless and has hardly even noticed the numerous accidental eye contacts between him and Shayla. She lets out a quiet sigh and turns back to the bald, standing boss at the head of the table.

The bald, standing boss is talking about the corporation that Shayla and Don have just recently been hired on to. The company is not important, but it’s a large corporation so feel free to boo out loud. Go ahead, it’ll start an interesting, not at all hostile conversation with your neighbor. Are you on a subway? A bus? A park bench? A library? Any of those should be a great place for such a conversation.

The bald, standing boss finishes his talk, knowing that only two, maybe three but probably more along the lines of two and a half people listened to any of the words that have been coming out of his mouth for the last half hour. In fact, he didn’t even get to the conclusion that he had written out before hand, because it was completely unnecessary. He probably could have just turned around and walked  out of the room mid sentence and no one would have known any difference. This is completely true and did not just happen in his head (in the contents of the story anyway. So it is just as true as his existence as a fictional character in a fictional story. That clear things up? You’re welcome.) The bald, now walking boss man makes his way to his office where he sits down and stares at the picture of his wife and two little girls on the shelf beside him. They depend on the success of this branch. In many ways, they depend on the success of the meeting he just had, which he knows was a complete failure. He leans back in his chair and thinks about the bottle of scotch he has hidden in the trunk of his car.

Let me just interrupt this story here. I didn’t want this to be a politically charged story about corporate America, but it’s really turning out that way thanks to the damn unnamed bald, now sitting, boss. I would really rather not write a depressing story. Not this time. So let us just either end the story here and save you, the reader, the time it will take to get to the predictable tragic ending, or we can interrupt the story entirely and I will narrate a hypothetical situation in which a fictional character, much different from Don, Shayla, wide brimmed glasses guy, and bald, standing boss, has a strange run in with an actual cyclops, only the cyclops turns out only to be a very tall man who lost his eye at a young age when he fell on a rusty nail.

“Woah,” Jerry thinks as he rounds the corner of the nature trail located in the heart of Seattle, Washington. There is a tall man walking towards him who is wearing a brown shirt that is slightly frayed at the shoulders. The man, as he grows closer is not a man at all, but rather a cyclops.

“Hello,” the cyclops says in a deep, friendly growl – okay, that’s enough paradoxical growls for one narrator. And no one, I’m sure wants to read this story, so I will just end it here. Good night.