10 — Commensurate

My payments have been stuck like a pain in the ass. The thought never leaves. I give my debtors sufficient time but they treat me like shit. Why doesn’t good work get quick money? I put every single stake and effort into my job but what do I receive when I am all done & dusted? An endless wait. I have stopped becoming impatient ever since I started this job of painting houses. You see because painting houses requires absolute stillness, a single stroke misplaced and you get a mess at your hands. But the clients won’t pay up. They simply won’t. For that very reason, I had to stop drinking coffee because when I didn’t drink it my hands got all jittery and coffee wasn’t available all the time, so two plus two must make sense. I also had to abandon masturbation, because that caused excessive shakiness. A single stimulatory thought and I was distracted enough to lose that finishing touch. Painting a wall is like painting a piece of art. It demands precision, effort, and dedication. Sure there are many cheapskate painters running around on their bicycles in our vicinity, two of them even live beside me, but I don’t hold them in great esteem. They do it for the sake of living. I do it because I’ve always wanted to.

Gosh, I really miss drinking tea and masturbating. Not in sequence though. There was a time when my life was at liberty. I had the disposition of doing all that I desired whenever I wished. Now there are strings attached to everything. Some pins prick all around my brain with such concurrence, it forms a concentric vibrance of harshening thoughts, slowly tightening like a rubber band around my mind bit-by-bit. For those around me, life is relatively simple as I see it. I got my wife who speaks of doing heavy household work all day, but when I calculated the dedicated hours she devotes to home-making, I arrived at not more than three. Three, just three hours of productive effort. That’s too little. I spend three hours before I even actually start working. Just planning out how the whole thing ought to be done requires a painstaking effort. As for my parents, they have long retired, don’t do shit except for ranting about how I failed to provide for them more than they’d hoped for. God damn it why do I have to be reminded about the same thing again and again.

That man can fucking pay up whenever he wants, why the fuck does he not pay up. He was supposed to pay up on tenth of this month and it’s already fucking thirteenth and he is making these fucking shit fucking excuses, that motherfucking son of a bitch. He has good money I know for fucking sure, still, he decides to treat those below him like shit. Wish I could teach that son of a bitch a lesson! He doesn’t pick my calls, neither does he stay true to his promises. He knows it’s the painting season and he is taking excessive liberties that a debtor shouldn’t take. And I wouldn’t have been so damn frustrated if it wasn’t for this fucking post-box outside my shit home that doesn’t stay ever ever empty like ever. But it’s been three whole days, and I haven’t received a single letter, I wasn’t supposed to but I usually do. And what is the reason behind this? Have I cut off from the world? This is the painting season!!! People get their walls painted! This month I was supposed to be busy. Above all this man, what is he just twenty-six years old, works in a big-shot office and he’s trying to fuck me over. I called him up the day before yesterday and he said to collect the dues in the evening. When I came in the evening he wasn’t even fucking there. How do I trust a man who doesn’t stay true to his word? What if I borrowed some sum from him and decided to never return it back, not at least for a foreseeable future. How would he have reacted then? He might have gotten a case registered against me then. But what fucks do I have to give? I can’t. I just can’t. My brain is in terrific turmoil right now. Why does the world have to steal from the lowest man the smallest fruits of his labor. Better yet just drown in self-pity of not doing anything, staying unemployed, and being as passive as one can be. At least there would be no hope, no delay, no agonizing anticipation. I can’t even concentrate on my job lately. All this has got to do with this debtor, who has been hanging up on me for the last week or so. I simply could’ve chosen to steal something from his house while painting it, but I didn’t.

Ahhh…..I yearn for the single second when the postman will bring me that envelope of hard cash, and I will hand it over to my mother. And for a single second my mother will appreciate me for the choices that I have made. My father won’t frown harder than he usually does. And my wife…my wife would make an attempt at working not three but maybe four good hours so that our house looks better so that the people around me stop saying that the painter doesn’t have the fucking money to paint his own goddamn house.

But all that will happen only when my debtor will pay me my dues. Else I will have to start painting merely for a living. Misery barely fuels my art. It’s the satisfaction of my means leading to an end that satiates me. I work not just for the man who pays me, but out of respect for my own creative needs. When after a hard day of work, I finally step down the ladder — the big picture comes into play. My sight gets illuminated and I realize that I have outdone myself. That is not the only compensation I desire. It’s something I can’t do without.

Please pay me as soon as you can, my dear debtor. Hold up, the bell has rung, maybe it’s the postman. I hope it is. I really do.