Escapist drivel

Ever have a moment where you're doing some mundane boring work thing, data entry or making a report or whatever, and it occurs to you that walking out the door is actually an option? You lean back for a moment, feeling the mild discomfort of having sat too long in an office chair. The spreadsheets and emails and expense reports all holding their breath, every footstep and blocked throat sounding more and more like an accusation until you sigh.

Lean in.

Get back to work.

But no matter how hard you concentrate that idea refuses to fade away. It gets louder, distracting you until you're playing bad pop music and running important papers through the shredder just to try and drown it out.

Carla has been 45 since her second year of college, where she gave up youthfulness after waking up dizzy with rohypnol in the trunk of a Pontiac Grand Am with a dead goat for company and the taste of at least a dozen men turning sour in her mouth. She never told anyone what happened, not even the EMT who pried the door open and let Tuesday's sunlight shine on Saturday's tragedy. She told herself what she needed was to leave it all behind her, proceeded to put on a couple hundred pounds to mark the transition, and settled into middle management snug as a casket in concrete.

She flicked imaginary dust off of a ceramic goat figurine and rapped Jack's file on the desk a few times, affecting a professional detachment with movements so routine that Jack wondered what would happen if he were to move the goat. Jack suspected her whole day would grind to a halt. It might even cause a serious medical incident.
“Something funny?” Carla asked in a tone that suggested she thought she was supposed to be defensive.
“No, I just used to have a goat,” Jack lied, “back when I was a kid.”

Carla made one more ritual pass over the goat and showcased her scowling talent. There is a dusty old trophy somewhere, Jack suspected, that stands in mute testimony to her world-class skill. He tried not to stare at the manila folder as she visibly prepared herself for disappointment. Impossibly, the fierce scowl managed to convey complete ennui balanced with burning contempt. Jack knew was not meant for him, but found himself feeling apologetic and insulted just the same.

Like, its a thing you could do. Just put your pen or whatever down and just go find an old shopping cart, fill it with whatever seems useful, and start walking south.

Carla opened up the thin folder and peered over her glasses at the contents, as though to drive home that whatever might be in there was so pathetic that it didn't even warrant clear vision. She licked her finger and began flicking through the few pages. Her scowl deepened at the slight salt-and-vinegar taste of her finger and she sighed. The folder dropped to her desk with a slap.
"You'll have to excuse me," she stated as she levered herself upright. "I need to use the ladies'."


And that concluded your morning.

Throw your cell phone in a beggar's cup. Empty your meager bank accounts. Leave your doors unlocked and tape a scrap of paper to the knob that says:

I DON'T WANT IT ANYMORE

You finish an unproductive day and nobody notices, Gary from accounts payable compliments you on your tie without looking away from the new secretary's pencil skirt, but otherwise you walk to your certified pre-owned economy car feeling like you're going to wake up any minute to an alarm screaming get ready for work. As you turn the key in the ignition that thought hits you again, hard enough that you can't catch your breath.

You could just stop doing this. That is an option, a real one, to walk away from the car right now and before you know it you're walking slowly across the parking lot. The door ajar beeping quieter and less insistent with every step, like an abusive lover slowly realizing that this time you really aren't coming back, that its over, that no amount of insistent noise will change your mind. You leave your tie wrapped around a stop sign. This is an option. This is a thing you really can do.

Just wander across the Mexico border, stop, turn around, and look at all the loan payments and petty responsibilities just sort of bounce off it. Comcast can't upgrade you to Xfinity if they can't find you.

Rob drug dealers. Its dangerous, but not as much as Hollywood would have you think. Drug dealers don't have forensics labs or access to cell phone metadata. They have crazy friends and handguns. If you are careful and nobody knows you its relatively easy to do.
Start hanging out in seedy bars, in border towns where nobody looks twice at an unfamiliar face.
Wait til you see someone who has nice shoes spending a lot of time glad-handing and disappearing.
Follow them outside.
Bonk them with a brick and take whatever they have on them and keep on truckin’.

The place didn't even have a proper name. A sheet of plywood hung where a plate glass window used to be with the word “Cerveza” spray painted with the hours underneath by way of a sign, and the dust and weeds had been cleared from the front sidewalk. So much of a dump that it would have been an exclusive spot back in the states with a three-month waiting list. Sun faded stickers plastered the door with layers of faded branding.

Found myself harvesting nuts on a farm in Brazil with a chest tattoo I don't remember getting and a motorcycle that was mostly made of wire and monkey hide. Laughing with the locals as I filled my basket and thinking about playing cards – real ones, made of cardboard – with the local slackers. Its the perfect pause, a miniature era stretching out in the cracks between normal life.
Then around mid-afternoon someone comes down the orchard lane with a letter from Comcast with 12 forwarding stamps on it
Every time you think you've gotten away, you know?
So I found a group of similar minded escapees and we kon-tiki’d our way across the south pacific, frightened but so very alive. Alive in a way people have tried to express in a thousand ways but never quite expressed.
Washed up half dead somewhere in the Micronesia chain, woke up in a fishing village where I spent the next three months catching fish and teaching the locals how to use excel.

The sunsets were matched only by the sunrise, but I knew that someday Xfinity would come over that boundless horizon.



One day I found Sergio from the raft weaving nets and he told me that his stolen satellite phone has a text from Papa John’s corporate informing him that his old job is being audited and he needs to submit an expense report.

The two of us and Sergio's mute lover, an androgynous former tire sales associate from BJ's who had been hiding out on the island from the Capital One people, came to the aid of several villages and dealt with a bandit problem.

Sergio's lover was killed and whispered her only words in 3 years to him and the two of us took the bandit king's old PT boat and pointed it towards the mountains of Tibet, but at the last moment Sergio tells me that he cannot leave these people.
We parted ways, knowing that we would never see each other again. He gave me a hand-carved box with the Comcast symbol on it and made me you swear never to open it until I find a place "no cable will ever reach."
As I coaxed the battered craft out to sea, I heard the unmistakable sound of corporate helicopters in the distance.

Sergio's on his own, I couldn’t go back.

Three weeks at sea and I still have not seen land, I spent my time reflecting on the great yawning void of the ocean and fishing over the side. The catch had been good and a row of fish hung on a line over a fitful driftwood fire mid-deck.
The still that the bandit king had ordered from Amazon worked equally well for desalination, but the fittings were corroding from salt and wouldn’t last. I’d been drifting for a while to conserve the last of my fuel. I was sunburned, barely staving off dehydration with metal-flavored water, and had eaten nothing but dried fish for days.

But for three glorious weeks I hadn't seen one single vaguebook post.

For the past few days, a sail made of tattered Old Navy sale banners had been growing closer and closer.
When they caught up, I could see that a group of Hawaiians had made a catamaran from mannequins all held together with CAT5 cable. They were roasting kebabs over an overworked server lashed to the mast, with a DishTV dish perched atop. Someone had used a lighter to burn a skull and crossbones on the back of the plastic housing.


For the next year I traveled the seas with the Real Pirate Bay, distributing bandwidth to those crushed by the boot of Comcast, constantly on the run. It was a good life, but Old Navy quality is shit and the catamaran disintegrated in a storm off the coast of Korea and the crew was forced to take refuge on my now-dangerously-overloaded crappy old PT boat.

In the distance, I can see the lights of South Korea glimmering less than 50 miles off. Ikaika, the captain of the RPB, nods quietly as I turn to the north. The landing will be dangerous, and making our way through North Korea will prove to be a profound test of resilience, but at least there won't be any god damn ATM fees or traffic lights.
That’s where I must leave you all, as the DPRK is no place for internet use and the server will be sunk along with my boat to help us remain undetected. Wish us luck, and may your inbox be uncluttered.