“Oh, I can’t possibly imagine that you’d consort with pigs,” chided Thelma the Bartender as she brought over two bottles and two shot glasses.

Over the months that saw Absalom writing at this bar, he’d grown fond of Thelma. She was busty and acerbic and two tax brackets below most of the clientele. More importantly, she was most attentive to Absalom, having memorized his preferred drink-sequence.

Serving the public ain’t easy, and doin’ it well is damn-near impossible.

“Thelma, goddess of libation that you are, how many times do I have to warn you against eavesdroppin’? It’s not becomin’ of a woman like you. If you want to experience a life-changin’ conversation, you mustn’t resort to NSA tactics,” Absalom gave a shot-in-the-dark wink that defied his age, “just ask me out to dinner.”

“Oh yes, ‘dinner,’ that lovely euphemism for those too cowardly to just come out ask for it. Sex. Even if it were my greatest desire to bed you – and believe me, it isn’t – I simply wouldn’t be able to go through with it.”

“And why not?”

“Are you serious?” Following Absalom’s implicit instructions, Thelma set down the two shot glasses. One for a formely-respected, now lying-in-the-gutter-but-lookin’-through-the-smog-hopin’-to-see-a-star Writer. The other for a stoned-on-booze-and-slowly-realizin’-that-my-careerist-aspirations-will-never-get-me-high-off-life Intern. Between them, she placed a bottle of bourbon.

And for Absalom, a fresh bottle of Pepsi.

“By the gods, of course I’m serious! Why wouldn’t you bed me?”

“Mr. Fabliaux-”

“It’s Señor Fabliaux, Thelma, and you know it!”

“Whatever! Even if I wanted to sleep with you, I wouldn’t. And the reason? Your ever-deteriorating old-man body couldn’t handle it! Having sex with me would literally kill you.”

“Ah, but it’d be a most glorious death.”

Welcome to the MONDAY MORNING COMMUTE! First, I give ya’ll a bit of fiction to get the mind warmed up! Then, I run through some of the ways I’ll be entertaining myself over the course of the workweek. After I’ve tired myself out, you hit up the comments section and share your strategies for fending off the Beasts of Boredom!

Yes, it’s basically the Spaceship OL way station.

Okay, let’s rock!

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