THE DESK
I laughed so hard this morning I nearly fell out of the shower. Simone had come into the bathroom and without preamble she said “I’d like you to tidy up your study today. I want Princess to clean it tomorrow. It’s disgusting”
Steadying myself, I said “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You cant just tidy a study. It’d take weeks”
Princess was already under dire warning not to touch anything in my study, on pain of death. Many years ago I discovered that she had an ugly habit of picking up the first loose piece of paper in sight, taking the first book in sight, opening that to any random page, and slipping the paper in there. I think scientists refer to that as a double-blind experiment. Finding that precious piece of paper, while a client is waiting on the phone, can be a heart-stopping experience. So I told her that she could dust the wood, provided that it was visible without touching anything. Otherwise, not. Of course, no wood was ever visible. And vacuuming the carpet was fine as long as she didn’t knock over any of the piles of files on the floor.
I used to have a partner who was notorious for the state of his office – in fact, now that I think about it there were two partners like that, but this anecdote is only about the one: he made my office look tidy. He seldom went on holiday but one year he took a three-week break. His long-suffering secretary waited till his plane was off the ground. Then she moved in with painters and decorators, filed all his loose papers, sorted the files into filing cabinets, and “straightened his office out”, as she foolishly put it.
When he got back he walked into his office, then staggered back out into the corridor. I wasn’t there so this is hearsay but I believe it. He looked as if some medieval knight had run him through with a broadsword. He leaned against the opposite wall. He drew breath with difficulty. Of speech, there was none. His hands trembled. Eventually a whisper, like a dry wind over parched earth, issued feebly from his lips:
“What – where - where is Estate Smith”? He was talking about a file, of course. Clearly it had been on his mind as he drove in to office and he had expected to dive right into it when he crossed the threshold. But alas, Estate Smith was no longer a living, breathing thing: it was just a file full of badly sorted papers, buried in a nondescript filing cabinet, floating somewhere in the universe.
He was a strong, brilliant lawyer, known and respected far and wide. His name, as they say, preceded him. But not that day. That day he was just a feeble old man whose life hung by a thread.
I was too young and foolish to know his pain then but today as an old lawyer myself, I can still feel the reverberations of it.
Estate Smith was eventually found by his (long-suffering, as I said) secretary of course (that’s what secretaries are for, no?) and she gently nursed him back to health over the course of the ensuing months, and he determinedly set about the task of fucking up his office to the point where he could work in it again, but it was a close thing.
What I’m trying to stress here is, NEVER MESS WITH SOMEONE ELSE’S OFFICE OR STUDY.
I have known and lived by this rule since I was a child. I was raised in a family of academics. Everybody had a room with a desk. Every desk was sacrosanct. My mother used to tell a story that when I was a toddler and my dad was doing his thesis, I would lie on the floor outside his closed study door and cry, but I was not allowed in. There are certain things that you just don’t do, dammit!
Unfortunately I have to confess that in my own student years I abused that rule. I made a long tape recording (remember those?) of myself typing, then I got my girlfriend into the room, played back the recording, and played with her. Usually, students of that era would have had their orgasms to the sound of Led Zeppelin or such-like in the background: we had ours to the sound of a Rexel portable typewriter. That’s how serious our house was.
The normal routine (on other nights) was that we would have supper together, then dad would retire to his study to read his medical journals and my brother and I would retire to our rooms to study and at midnight we would all meet at the fridge. I have very fond memories of those meetings. We would all be tired by then, everyone’s guard would be down, and for the first time in twenty-four hours we would just relax and talk shit for a while. It was really good quality time.
But the desk – ah, the desk! It was the pivot, the centre of your life. Everything turned on it. Even when my dad was old and retired, he would go to his desk at night to read the Tanach (bible). He would fall asleep at it. He didn’t slump over it, as people normally do if they fall asleep at a desk: he would fall asleep sitting upright, and just stay like that, till mom came to take him to bed – then he would follow her, meek as a lamb and probably in a half-asleep state.
And all of these desks were an unholy mess. And they had to be. They say an untidy desk is the sign of a tidy mind. I’ll buy that. And now Simone wants Princess to tidy my desk.
Ha! She can tidy my desk when I’m dead.
PS: a STUDY is NOT A MAN-CAVE. Man caves are for dof guys with big muscles driving 4X4 trucks carrying side arms!
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©Harry Friedland
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