Stretch Jordan and the Sexy T.V. Diaries

    ONE
    
    Papers were laid everywhere on the desk, but the cluttered atmosphere did not at all affect Will Bower’s upbeat mood. Kicked his feet up on the desk and blew rings of a parliament, this was the day it was all to change. Bio-Storage-Com had the previous night over surpassed wal-mart as the largest corporation on earth. Bowers was there from the beginning, watched it slouch in the beginning, a reluctant teenage company with a crazy idea, watched it mature into a multi-national corporation. He owned the crazy idea and was reaping the multi-million dollar pay checks because of it.
    He was the passenger of black limousines that stretched unnoticed in the dark rides home. He could pay gas just to drive around. Any child could color in the lines but the swollen eyes could only perceive that the traffic lights were askew and dripped all around the white lane dividers in an unorganized fashion; Watching the beads of rain blow and run into each other  on the limo window. Most likely the cognac he would sigh to himself, thank god I have a driver he would tell himself for reassurance, a chuckle shuffling his body lightly.
    He was not even required to come in that day but felt obligated to, maybe a promotion was in it for him. About the time he was done planning on where he would invest his soon to be coming larger pay checks a knock came at the door and the CEO of Bio-Storage-Com walked in. With out looking up from his pile of papers in his hand, the CEO placed a manila envelope on the desk and walked out.
    Emile Farther was the brains behind the whole bazzing. Most of the time he was unorganized, unkempt and had terrible posture. At board meetings, Emile was usually the least to speak, had a tiny stutter and had difficulty looking people in the eyes when he spoke to them. When he was supposed to be actively engaged in business banter he would doodle, create tiny cities out of cigarette butts on the table or take his shoe strings out and make shapes out the strings intertwined in his fingers. Hardly imposing and hardly act his position, Will would lightly tease him by calling him Emily. Emile invested all of his money into this corporation in dreams that someone would appreciate his grand crazy idea. Now he felt weighed down by the countless board meetings, and sleepless nights on a phone with P.R. representatives. Out of this blueness, every orange moon, Emile would come to work in his fuzzy pajamas and bare feet. Will would watch him say nothing throughout most of the meeting and in a split second come down like falling anvils on a board member’s idea like he was listening and calculating the whole time. Make the board member stutter, try to recover his or her idea, then slowly fade out into an embarrassed “im just gonna sit here” mode. Emile would then go back to putting strange things in his glass of water and perceive how they would morph around the curves. Being prone to random outbursts, Will would sit and just watch him, and try to predict when he would boil over. Sometimes the microwave setting of Emile’s mind would boil over like the setting was too long, other times the cyclic turning of his synapses would hum away, the light would go off, the beep would occur and nothing would happen.
    Emile tried to keep to himself but the only time that one of his outbursts genuinely comforted, and inspired Will occurred at the Christmas party. Being a large, multi-national company, Bio-Storage-Com could afford lavish parties including free alcohol, and even live DJ’s. It was a breath of fresh air for wide-eyed rookie business interns trying to climb the corporate ladder to totally avoid the sometimes mandatory, definitely awkward, and uncomfortable wool get-togethers.
    Everyone was slightly tipsy, a polite public intoxication hovered in the geometrically dense dance floor. Feeling the get up was a bit too much for an astute corporate atmosphere, most employees stood around, occasionally tapping a toe all with profuse hand shaking and introducing. Emile, however was in the corner of the dance floor flapping his arms fast so that sweat amounted on his brow. Everyone could tell that he could not be intoxicated because however strange and flamboyant his dance appeared to be, he stayed coordinated and did not fall and make a fool out of himself. No one knew what he was on, or what was on the mind of Emile…..the usual, no one batted an eye.
     Will was amongst a flock of Japanese business executives  who were wanting to buy an incredible amount of stock in the company. Will was parading the company around with reports, reports and reports of stock history and stock predictions for the upcoming quarters.
    Emile finished dancing and walked over to Will. Will performed the “kill it, don’t walk over here” signal silently. However, even with the widest eyes and stretched eyebrow expression, Emile walked in between the business executives and let out an uncannily loud
    “Heeeeeeeyyyyyyyyyy”
    Not thinking that the sweaty, appearing to be wasted, skinny man with bad posture who stared at  the ground to be anything like the head CEO of Bio-Storage-Com, the gentlemen quickly threw Emile’s arms off of them and told him to leave the party.
    “No one wants to dance with me, f**k you all”
    Emile continued to dish out obscene sentence fragments as Will grabbed his arm and tried to pull him aside. He quickly bit at Will’s arm and flung himself back. All the blood flowed to his head and his lips flattened. He seemed to grow in height as he let out a solo of hissed syllables, sprayed constantans and Hitleresque hand gestures
    “Love one person and that person will control you, love everyone and then everyone f*****g seems to f*****g control you, one day I will be behind the curtains typing out the controls of a great robot, a great deception, but I will appeal to your f*****g wants, your f*****g desires, appeal to your thanks, your alone wanks, your loves that you thought had sank, and I will run and f*****g run run run and you will never catch up cause I’m sure there are some who share this with me and be masked in a thin anonymity”
    Following, Emile resumed his normal expression, reached below his belt, scratched himself, without looking up he took out a watch from his pocket. The glass was missing to the face of the watch, pocket lint was jammed into the gears, the minute hand was bent perpendicular to the plane. Emile gave out a small content smile while looking at it. He looked up at Will.
    “Gotta go, later man”.
    
    The ten-thirty pm parking lot lights switched on and broke Will’s daydreaming. He put out the cigarette, crammed the manila folder into his briefcase, switched out the light and walked to his car parked in his special marked parking spot.

    TWO
    Just as a mother uses a doorway to measure height, the indentations in the couch showed great paths and progressions of growth over time. Some were sweaty marks, others were honest butt imprints, others included a stint of sitting Indian style, and still some indicated those times when sitting on the arm rest seemed right. The room was militaristically furnished: a couch, a TV, a clean grey carpet, and a panel on the wall containing an assortment of clear tubes. On the door to the room was a dinosaur quality scratch starting with an inky S-T-R-E then apparently the pen busted and smooth wood ravines finished the C-H-J-O-R-D-A-N. This was the room of Stretch Jordan and our man Stretch sat gravity bound to the couch. An array of tubes was pushing all kinds of liquids throughout his body “90 year old death bed” style. As he looked like he had everyone imaginable and unimaginable disease known to man. The light from the television ebbed and rushed as it shaded the curves on his face. The television was at least seven feet high and about fifteen feet wide, and the picture quality was remarkable, ahead of its time, and more progressive than the televisions in most people’s houses. Speakers were stationed in each corner of the room and the definite treble was brilliant and the bass was physical. It was from this vantage point that Stretch Jordan looked out into the “outside world”, images coming and going as if he was watching something from behind glass at the zoo; everything seemed real and imaginable. The TV was alive……Stretch Jordan, judging by his sedated body movements and the movement of his eyelashes seemed dead.
    Stretch Jordan was viewing his favorite- sports shows. His mind’s eye followed the smooth dimples of the golf ball as it exploded of the tee and landed in the rough. His mind’s foot galloped as he was neatly given the ball from the quarterback and rushed into the oncoming traffic of the defensive line. All of the sports was portrayed in the wild, fast paced world of first person viewed action. His moves seemed to be planned out automatically and followed a split second behind; the feeling of driving a car with no hands dangerously fast but never seeming to crash. It was the feeling of riding a bike without hands but never missing a turn, a feeling of sitting back and letting the G-Force caress the egg shaped head and body of the tiny human being transported through space. He felt the tubes on the wall kick slightly as a drop of adrenaline worked through his blood vessels. His pupils dilated and his heart speed up. Suddenly he stole the ball at the opponents free throw line and was booking it back to his own bucket at a fast break. Imagining himself doing a safe lay-up to get the easy two points, a blur came out of his right peripheral vision as the opponent blocked his shot and the other team rebounded. Stretch let out a loud “f**k how did I screw that up”. Loud enough for the referee to notice his swearing.
“Unsportsmanlike-like conduct, technical foul” the referee blew his whistle commandingly.
    Stretch dug his heels into the grey carpet and started to rip out the upholstery of the worn couch. His heart raced as the tubes on the wall kicked a second time and pumped a pink looking substance through Jordan’s veins.
    Back in the game, Stretch’s coach yelled a few choice words than sat his player’s a*s on the bench. Stretch was steaming, furious that it was only eleven minutes into the first quarter and he had already received a technical foul. His heart continued to thump as his knuckles turned pasty white, he chiseled away at the enamel of his teeth. On the bench, he sat forward and put his sweaty head in his hands and started a low guttural growl. Stretch felt a light, accidental kick at the back of his seat. He felt someone lean closer.
    “It’s alright stud, their power-forward and center are very weak, once you get back in you can easily out rebound them in the paint.”
    Stretch looked behind him and took a look at the fan in the front row seats behind the bench. She was blonde, wore a skirt with neon stilettos to accompany them. He turned back around and started to take off his shoes as if he was going to walk back to the locker room fuming with rage. The tubes on the wall kicked a third time and pumped more of the pink liquid into Stretch’s veins.
    The woman bent forward as if she was picking up something from underneath Stretch’s seat but instead placed her hand on his nylon shorts. She worked her hands down into his shorts and began to caress his groin. The tubes on the wall kicked a forth time the feeling of sedation creeped over his body and his heart rate slowed. He laced up his shoes, put his hands over his head, leaned back, and let her finish. He sighed to himself
    “Sometimes it feels alright to be uncontrollably angry if you know that you will be calmed down”
    Stretch viewed it as a vast resource, a rollercoaster that one could ride without ever paying for a ticket or ever waiting in line. Stretch liked the come up; He liked the lethalness that his blood pumping, and muscle reloading made him out to be. Towards the apex of the last hill on the coaster, when Jordan felt the limit of his muscles and physical being becoming taxed he would let go and float down. Because one must climb the highest mountain in order to float down gracefully and the higher one climbed, the more one spent in the air, sedated and the feeling that nothing could ever end.
    “Sometimes it feels alright to be uncontrollably angry if you know that you will be calmed down”

THREE

    The clock beneath the giant television read 11:36 p.m. He had only a couple of minutes before the automated response would occur, pumping a large dose of tranquilizer into his blood streaming, beginning his mandatory sleep period. Wanting to try something new, Stretch began channel surfing before he would inevitably fall asleep. He came across a tapping of a congressional hearing when the remote control slipped out of his sweaty palms. The remote control landed  on the corner, skewering the plastic coverings and exposing the micro-chips that inherited the used-to-be-functioning remote control. Stretch lost it letting out an angry “God f*****g damnit, all I f*****g want to do was to f*****g watch something different before I f*****g fell asleep, I don’t want to watch f*****g government bullshit before I f*****g go to sleep, f**k me!!!!”
    The tubes on the wall kicked so hard you would of thought that the connections could not deal with the pressure. The filtering of the pink liquid began and did not stop.
    Stretch was seated behind the empty podium designated for the speaker of the house in the congressional hearing. God damnit he sighed to himself.
    A yuppy spectacle wearing, pencil pushing, elder woman, one of the representatives from New York, looked up and asked what Stretch what he thought of the budget cuts that they had apparently been working on. Just getting “there” Jordan let out a curt
    “I don’t f*****g know, leave me alone you f*****g b***h, my god damn c**t remote control broke and I am f*****g stuck here”
    A hush fell over the meeting, like opening a beer during a eulogy. The tubes continued to pump the pink liquid into his veins, but Stretch would not take it. He began tearing away the upholstery of the couch.
    The congresswoman from New York stood up and walked towards Stretch and took off his shirt. She took of his pants, made him wet and hard. The rest of the congress members filled out of the room as a solitary single clap echoed throughout the large caverned room. The dull thud kept up as Stretch’s heart rate finally came down.
    I feel used, he thought to himself, wish I could have my own. Nothing is really real. We have all kinds of endorphins racing around our brain, triggering thousands of unique signals. If we don’t get one of the important signals in the various cortex’s of our brain, we overcompensate in another route and the organized highways of our minds then become tangled and the path that you had previously thought led somewhere now leads somewhere else.
    “I am on a highway, driving around the multitude of exits that surround my mind, but I can never find the right exit”
    With that thought Stretch picked up the remote control and threw it at the television, the television went dark except for a flickering error message that read:
    “Television signal error. Representatives and mechanics will be sent shortly”
    The tubes on the wall kicked and Stretch fell asleep.
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    Stretch was awakened by knocks on his door. He sat up and gave them permission to step into his room. Most likely the mechanics he thought to himself. He hoped that they would not charge him too much to repair the television set up.
    “Good morning, umm….ah….Stretch Jordan! My name is Emile Farther, I received error messages from my office this morning and came down with my protégé Will Bowers and a team of repairmen to repair your television, you will be up and running in no time”