Look at Naked Mole-Rats on Your Lunch Break

"Look at Naked Mole-Rats on Your Lunch Break" by Owen Corrigan

Issue 3.9 | Fiction

Cover Art: L. Erickson

—Yes, I can explain. Yes, the fact that I’m going to explain implies that there is an explanation. Yes, it is a fact. Right now it’s an assertion but… Hello?

Erik hangs up the phone, closes his eyes and counts to five, like they told him to. He inhales slowly. The tips of his ears burn bright, and he feels the flush rising up his neck into his cheeks. He opens his eyes and speedwalks to the bathroom. He needs to get in there before any colleagues see him. Why is your face all red, they’ll ask. What’s wrong, they’ll insist, as they smirk and exchange glances. As if it’s fun. As if they’re funny. As if their commentary on biological responses beyond his control are insightful, when they are merely redundant. He does not know why his body reacts the way it does. He does not know why his colleagues react the way they do.

He looks at his face in the bathroom mirror. Pink and hot and unappealing; makes him seem weak and fearful. (He is fearful, he accepts that, like they told him to.) The door to the men’s room creaks inward slowly—puff of powder white hair through the grille—so he lunges for the cubicle, locks the door behind him with a reassuring thunk. Sitting on the closed toilet lid, he hugs his knees to his chest and listens as the old man outside harrumphs his way around his flies and shirt tails. Uncertain tinkle of piss against the porcelain. Harold. Harold the bastard. That’s how some of the younger colleagues refer to him. What they call banter, jocularity, a play on expectations, given Harold’s completely unbastardlike demeanor. A real gent, that’s how the old dear in the canteen refers to him, though that is an assertion subject to empirical verification for which Erik possesses little direct evidence, having never spoken to him on a non-work matter. Erik can hear him now, still tinkling, mumbling distractedly to himself.

He peeks through the gap between cubicle door and wall and finds he has a good view of Harold in three-quarter profile. The man has a regal bearing, it is true, even when just standing there idly holding his penis. The younger colleagues don’t understand him, don’t understand Harold. Too pompous, they say, overbearing, patronizing. But none of this is true, he thinks, it’s just that Harold is in charge. Harold does not engage in banter. Harold does not enter into redundant commentary on biological responses. Harold is the boss of this directorate, with three other bosses reporting to him. He expatiates at length in meetings, it is true, but always conducts himself with a singularity of purpose regrettably absent elsewhere in the organization.

Harold lifts his left leg a fraction. Erik watches him, uncertain of the intent behind this unexpected maneuver. Then a wet spluttering sound fills the bathroom and echoes off the cold tiles. In the privacy of the cubicle Erik is surprised. He smirks. Harold the bastard is human after all. He likes him a little more now. A lot more. He watches as Harold wrestles with his flies, laboriously. He assumes that, the various physical acts of excretion now having been performed, Harold will return to his workstation. But instead, Harold surprises him a second time. He pivots one hundred and eighty degrees to look at himself in the mirror behind the urinals. His flies are still undone and he’s holding his penis, which he now bounces up and down on the palm of his hand. It appears, from this strained vantage point, thick yet shriveled, like a naked mole-rat. Erik watches the penis bounce up and down. He notes a liquid shining yellow beneath the fluorescent overheads, pooled in Harold’s urethral opening. The penis bounces. He can hear the sound the penis makes as it bounces, a slapping sound with the quality of wetness.

Phslup phslup phslup.

Harold watches his own reflection as the penis bounces a few more times. His face is expressionless. Then he returns the appendage to his trousers, washes his hands and leaves. The bathroom is silent again save for the intermittent flushing of the urinals. Erik leaves the cubicle and washes his own hands. Dirty old goat, he thinks but does not say. (He would never say such a thing.) He wonders what the old dear in the canteen would make of that.

At his computer he googles ‘naked mole-rat,’ intent on researching its average dimensions (8-10cm) and average weight (30g). He remembers the formula for the volume of a cylinder (πr²h) and calculates on his notepad that the diameter of said cylinder must therefore be 2cm and, applying the formula for the circumference of a circle (2πr), further calculates that the circumference of Harold’s penis must therefore be 6cm, if indeed his naked mole-rat comparator is apposite. But this can hardly be true, as it is beneath the normal range for a human adult male and what he witnessed in the bathroom would surely fall into the category of ‘fat chode’ which—

Someone taps him on the shoulder. He spins round in his chair to see Gwilym, his manager, staring down at him with a look of pinched tolerance.

—Planning a nature walk, Erik? he asks.

His eyes flit to the computer monitor which displays an image of a naked mole-rat. He is about to deny that he is planning a nature walk when Gwilym points to the calculations on his notepad.

—And what’s this, doing your math homework?

He inhales, searching for an appropriate means of deflection, but does not have time to speak.

—Can you come with me for a minute, Erik, please?

Gwilym says this in the tone of false bonhomie that signals that he is a professional about to discharge a regrettable but necessary duty. He says this more for the benefit of Erik’s co-workers sitting nearby and for his own, Gwilym’s, than for Erik’s. Gwilym says nothing that is not to his own benefit. Erik has deduced this from long months of close observation. His tone also signals that he is a kind and reasonable person and wishes to be perceived as such. Erik has amassed sufficient data to infer that this is how he wishes to be perceived, but he regrets that he does not have sufficient data to conclude that Gwilym is, in fact, a kind or reasonable person. Lately, Gwilym has taken to intervening in Erik’s daily duties with an increasing frequency that appears, to him, to border on the unreasonable. This, in turn, accounts for the recent development of what Erik has come to recognize in himself as a potential bias. It is not an unconscious bias, as set out to his colleagues in a recent training session. No, this is a non-unconscious bias; it is a bias of which Erik is fully conscious. He has even given a name to it. It is: loathing.

He loathes everything about Gwilym, not confined to his tone or his bearing or his scraggy ginger beard. He loathes his sense of presumption, the ease with which he appears to inhabit the clearly false persona he has confected. Erik is aware of his own thoughts and biases just as he is aware of his co-workers exchanging glances and smirks as he follows Gwilym into the conference room. This room is a rectangular space encompassed by four glass walls which afford a ready view of the occupants to any and all external observers. He knows that body language will be important in the interaction to follow. He is master of himself. He will master himself.

—So where’s the nature walk? says Gwilym, smiling to convey that he is a person light of heart, a person who sees the funny side, a person who is relaxed about the matters over which he must nonetheless deliver chastisement.

This is idiocy, and he will not dignify it with a response. Naked mole-rats are indigenous to the Horn of Africa, and so it would be impossible for him to go on a nature walk to observe them, unless he was planning a very expensive nature walk, which would be more of a nature flight really, to say nothing of the further logistical costs of transport to the natural habitat of the rodent, which he understands to be dry grassland. Everyone knows that. Except Gwilym.

—Erik, we need to talk about your internet habits. Looking up stuff on your lunch hour is fine of course, but it’s only ten past eleven and I fail to see how that vile-looking creature on your screen earlier could bear any relevance to the job that you are paid to do.

Erik has not heard a question so makes no attempt at response. He delivers several more shallow nods in quick succession to show he has understood.

—What were you looking at Erik? says Gwilym in a tone recognizable as exasperation.

—Naked mole-rats.

—But why?

He cannot give the real reason and regrets the lying but understands it to be a necessity and therefore not something over which he can exercise agency. It’s not like he made the rules he has to live by.

—They, um, interest me.

Gwilym’s strained sad smile indicates that this response is not satisfactory, so Erik goes on.

—Did you know that their social structure is akin to ants or termites and that they self-organize into castes of drones and breeders, with only three males allowed to mate with the queen?

—No, Erik, I did not know that, but it is fascinating I am sure.

Erik is apprehensive about attempting a joke, but they have told him that deploying humor is a known means of defusing tense situations, so he decides to try. He looks around him to indicate he is talking about their place of work.

—Yeah, it’s a bit like this place, eh? Ha.

Gwilym puts his pen down and stares at Erik quizzically, his pink mouth working itself up and back into hesitant abortive permutations of non-communication, now forming an O, now a ∩, now a /.

—I’m sorry Erik, but in what way exactly is that behavior comparable to what we do in this organization?

—Well, you know, it’s just a bit like, well, Harold, he’s older, right and he’s like the queen, you know, that everyone must obey? And we’re all the drones in our separate little castes and we, um, have to do her—his—bidding.

Gwilym says nothing. Erik infers that he has not laughed because he has not understood the joke, because he is stupid. So he explains.

—It’s like Harold is the queen, in charge, right, and then the three mini-bosses, you and Jack and Matt, you’re the only ones who get to, you know, sort of, mate with him. Except not literally, of course. I just mean, in the sort of sense of, you know, it’s sort of funny, to think about. Ha.

Gwilym says nothing but taps at the cleft in his chin as he watches Erik a long moment. The treacherous impulse betrays him once again. He could feel it coming on moments ago. There is nothing to be done, so he accepts it. He knows it is going to be a bad one this time. First the prickles up his scalp, then the warm surge on his neck just below his earlobes, then the flush radiating up into his jaw, cheeks, and ears. It is the second time it has happened today, which is always less bad than the first. But he feels it as a sluice gate opening. Unstoppable, unignorable, undeniable. Gwilym’s eyes flicker away from Erik’s eyes and across his face, over and back, indicating that he has noticed. Erik feels the blood pulsating at his temples and underneath the delicate skin above the cheekbones. He feels the ridge of perspiration that has formed on his upper lip, cool in the draught of the office air-con. The longer Gwilym stares, the worse it’s going to be. Gwilym picks up his pen, scribbles on the pad, then snaps it shut with finality.

—I think we’d better leave it there then, Erik. But kindly recall that your job here is to respond to external correspondence on behalf of the organization and to record and analyze trends in that correspondence. You are ready for the 2pm meeting I assume? Erik nods as Gwilym stands and leaves.

Yes, he is ready for the 2pm meeting. He is always ready for the 2pm meeting. He has thought about almost nothing but the 2pm meeting since he woke up on Monday morning. The 2pm meeting recedes from view only temporarily, at precisely 3pm every Thursday when Harold brings it to a close, right after Erik delivers his agenda item, the penultimate item right before Any Other Business. When the meeting ends, Erik will remove himself to the bathroom, sit on the closed toilet lid, and allow the waves of relief to roll down his spine and ripple through his abdomen. He will feel the hairs on his legs stand on end. He will breathe deeply and savor this brief moment of absolute freedom. In the early days, he would weep quietly in the cubicle. Not tears of sadness or despair. Tears of joy. It is the purest joy Erik has ever known, for the 2pm meeting to end. But the joy it brings can never compensate for the dread that must be endured as a necessary precondition of its ending.

For most of the meeting, he is immobile and unhearing. All of his thoughts bend on the necessity of delivering his agenda item. He cannot focus on what the others are saying. He hears them as if they are at either end of a long corridor shouting back and forth, unaccountably delighted, unaccountably at ease. His heart thumps in his chest so loudly that he worries the others will hear the sound and stop the meeting to discover the source. If he has to wait too long to speak, his voice will begin to strain and crack in the moment of delivery. Then people will shift and exchange glances, though he tries to ignore this, as they have told him.

The worst moments of the 2pm meeting come during the antepenultimate item, directly before his. This is when Deirdre must speak. Deirdre is the Head of Accounts. Her name is of Gaelic derivation and means ‘sorrowful one.’ But Deirdre is never sorrowful, and so her name is, in the correct sense, a misnomer. Deirdre is loud. She is insistent. She is garrulous. She is ‘jolly.’ She is a ‘legend.’ She is an ‘institution.’ She is Gwilym’s favorite colleague. She is acting.

Erik can see her acting, but no one else can. Or, if they do, they choose not to observe upon the fact. Why Deirdre’s behaviors elicit tolerance but Erik’s elicit commentary he cannot say. During the antepenultimate item Deirdre will speak and other people will laugh. They will laugh because she will follow certain statements with her own piercing wail of amusement. Often this will rise to an uncontained shriek, and Deirdre will then shake uncontrollably as tears roll down her face, rendering it impossible for her to complete delivery of her item within the timeframe allotted on the agenda. On first witnessing this event, Erik assumed her to be in distress and inquired whether medical assistance should be sought, but this only resulted in more laughter and more shrieking.

This, however, is not the problem with the antepenultimate item. The problem is that Deirdre will forget to deliver all of the information pertinent to her agenda item in the allotted timeframe. Then, as Erik is preparing to speak, breathing two seconds in and two seconds out like they told him to, Deirdre will interject, remembering the forgotten piece of information, cutting across him, interrupting his train of thought, and derailing his carefully prepared script. She will follow this with a piercing wail, as if to distract from her own ineptitude. Often this cycle will repeat. (Erik has long collated data on the meaning content of Deirdre’s various statements and associated wails or shrieks in an attempt to establish illuminating correlations, to no avail.) Last week it happened six times, so that Erik could think of nothing but the impossibility of speaking within the allotted time on the agenda, and of the consequences of his failure to perform one of his contractually mandated tasks. When his moment came, he missed it and sat in unseeing, unhearing, pale-faced silence until Gwilym forcibly shook him by the shoulder, jolting him back to reality. But by then it was too late, the hour had elapsed, and Harold brought the meeting to a close. Harold looked at him then and appeared disappointed, or sad, or angry, or concerned; Erik could not tell.

Today, as a result, he must deliver twice the usual content in the standard period of time. It occurs to him now that if Deirdre’s capacity for bloviation remains unchecked, then the quantum of information he must deliver will inevitably increase to infinity, and he suddenly perceives with a fresh and novel dread an impossible future wherein he is trapped in a single meeting forced to address his colleagues for eternity. At the tea point he considers potential solutions to this problem, but none are socially acceptable. He squeezes his tea bag and drops it in the organic waste bin. At that moment Harold enters, glances at him, and speaks.

—Ah, Erik! Ready for the 2pm meeting?

Erik nods rapidly and attempts a smile but Harold, not looking at him, is busily preparing a cup of coffee. Erik wishes to speak to him. He wishes to tell him that he admires the singularity of purpose with which he approaches the business of the organization. He wishes to suggest that Deirdre’s approach to the 2pm meeting is ultimately suboptimal and inefficient, likely to induce negative effects over the long duration. He wishes to warn him of the inherent difficulties in chairing an eternal meeting. He wishes to observe on Gwilym’s propensity to indulge in displacement activity misaligned to organizational objectives, such as monitoring minutiae of behavior and commenting unfavorably on pictures of wildlife. Instead, he says,

—How do you do it, Harold?

Harold looks back over his shoulder confused, uncertain that he has been addressed.

—What’s that? Oh, I just stir in two spoonfuls of coffee and one of sugar before I add the milk.

—No, I meant. How do you do it? In meetings. You always know just what to say. I wish I could be more like that, more like you. I wish I knew what to say.

Harold turns fully around to regard Erik from beneath bushy eyebrows, jowls sagging on either side of his full face. He frowns as if considering a matter of great import, carefully places the spoon on the counter-top, then looks at Erik very seriously before he speaks.

—I’ll tell you, young man. Every day I stand in front of the mirror, and I look myself in the face, and I remind myself who I am. But not just who I am. Who I think I am. Do that, and you’ll be alright.

With this Harold claps him on the shoulder, smiles tightly and spins around so that some of the coffee in his cup spills over the side and dribbles on the floor, though he doesn’t seem to mind.

In the conference room, they have barely settled when the secretary calls the meeting to order. Gwilym clears his throat, readying himself to deliver the managers’ report, always the first item on the agenda, but before he can do so, Harold raises a silencing hand.

—I think we’ll shake things up a little today, innovation being the mother of progress and all that. Erik, my good man. Why don’t you lead us off with the correspondence report? You’ve got a bit to catch up on.

At this he bangs the table in a manner that seems jovial, though it makes the glasses rock and tinkle in their place. Gwilym, who has opened his mouth to object, shuts it. Erik freezes. This was not in the plan. He has been rehearsing his lines for the last hour at his desk. He knows them by heart. But this was not in the plan. He looks around. Gwilym is stony faced. Deirdre eyes him benignly, with disinterest. Harold leans forward, clasps his hands in front of him, and raises his eyebrows expectantly. Erik stares at the page and begins to recite the lines he has learned. He does not have time to think about them. His voice remains steady. He speaks clearly and not too fast. He speaks with an automaticity that eventually yields to a fluency allowing him to deviate from the script when Harold—curious—interjects with a question on a specific correlation and even when Gwilym—stupid—interjects with an irrelevant query that cannot be answered on the basis of available data.

—What do you mean you can’t answer it? Why not? says Gwilym.

—Because we stopped collecting that piece of data three years ago.

—Who authorized that?

—You did.

At this Deirdre commences shaking and begins to emit a low wail. It ceases when Gwilym shoots her a glance though she continues to shake silently for some time, dabbing at the tears rolling down her cheeks with a handkerchief. Erik concludes his item without further incident.

—Thank you Erik. A model of clarity and precision, as always.

Harold gives him a deep and courteous nod before turning to Gwilym. For a long moment Erik hears nothing, feels nothing, except the strange sensation of absolute freedom at an unaccustomed time of day. The hairs on his legs stand up, before lying down. Then he is free to listen. He has never listened to Gwilym’s managerial report in any previous meeting over all the years he has been in the organization. He has never been able to. He listens. Gwilym’s presentation is elliptical, meandering, digressive, confused. Harold peppers him with questions to secure the information he requires. Erik realizes that one of the conclusions that Gwilym has drawn about the trajectory of future net sales has failed to account for the newest metric added to the system which predicts, as his reports from the last two months have shown, a downward trend in consumer confidence in three of the sub-regions under consideration due to exogenous local factors. For the first time in his life, he raises his hand. Gwilym fixes him with a wide-eyed look of disbelief but does not pause his presentation. Harold raises another silencing hand and says,

—I think Erik has a question for you. Go ahead, Erik.

Erik makes his point. Several people around the table snigger. Deirdre begins to shake again. Gwilym is ashen-faced when Harold terminates his presentation and tells him to come back with revised figures next week. During Deirdre’s segment, Erik finds he can listen carefully. He listens and watches and anticipates the responses of his colleagues. The revelation comes to him slowly, then all at once: Deirdre derives amusement from the juxtaposition of perceived absurdities. The correlation suddenly becomes clear to him, when laughter is expected and when it is not, when Deirdre is most likely to transition from wail to shriek. In the present moment she is relating a story about the Head of Strategic Operations, a large man with a penchant for jelly and ice cream, when, in an exhilarating moment of clarity, Erik finds that he can anticipate the punchline. The Head of Strategic Operations is, indeed, absurd. He laughs, before anyone else does, a single yelp of amusement. He is aware that no one in the room has ever heard this sound before. Deirdre looks at him in surprise, then throws her head back and begins to shriek. Others join in. Gwilym does not.

At 4:53pm, Erik is completing his filing for the day. He always achieves inbox zero, which is a point of pride for him, even though no one else knows this. He is aware that colleagues have for the last twenty minutes or so been whispering about him more than is usual. He is also aware that Gwilym has been absent for approximately the same period of time. He knows where Gwilym is. He can hear his voice. It is raised beyond its normal volume. He could see Gwilym if he were to swivel his office chair ninety degrees to the right and look through the glass walls of the conference room, but he chooses not to do so. Gwilym has been in conference with Harold for these twenty minutes. It is rare for Gwilym to raise his voice to Harold. It is even rarer for Harold to raise his voice to anyone. But he does so now, with loud authority. ‘No,’ he says. ‘No,’ he says again, more emphatically.

Erik looks at his screen as he ticks items off on his To Do list. He is aware that his colleagues have dropped into silence and are sitting more erect than usual, staring at their keyboards. He is unaware, until he feels hot breath on his ear that Gwilym, face redder than his beard, is standing beside him.

—Erik, can you come with me to the conference room, please?

In the conference room, Harold glances briefly at Erik.

—Now, Erik, says Gwilym, can you remind me about the claims you were making earlier concerning the sexual proclivities of the managerial staff in this organization?

Erik blinks rapidly but cannot recall ever having had such a conversation.

—I recall making no such claims.

—Oh, yes you did. You did. When you were telling me about that disgusting animal you were researching when you should have been working.

Erik furrows his brow.

—We discussed the naked mole rat, and their eusocial form of organization, comparable to that of termites or—

—Stop. Yes, you discussed that rat. And then you drew parallels to the relationships between managers in this organization. Now, what did you say?

—I said that the naked mole rat’s eusocial structure is comparable to the structure we have in this organization, in that we have an apex placing Harold at the top, beneath which a select caste of worker drones engages with Harold on a basis closer than that of—

—No, Erik! You did not say that. He’s lying, I told you he lies, says Gwilym looking urgently at Harold.

Harold is not looking at either of them, he is staring at his hands, cupped together on the table.

—Tell him what you said Erik, says Gwilym. Tell him or I will. Okay, fine. You called Harold an old queen and suggested that his all-male team of managers want to have sex with him. Didn’t you?

Erik’s face is blank of emotion. It is usually blank of emotion. He shakes his head slowly and says,

—No. I suggested that the close relations between the managerial caste is comparable to that found in species demonstrating eusociality, of which the mole-rat is the only known mammal to—

Harold brings his palm down hard on the table. The slap echoes off the glass walls of the room. They are silent. Harold looks up at Erik. Doleful. That’s how his eyes appear to Erik.

—Erik, thank you so much for your work today. Now, it’s after 5pm, so you should be on your way home. See you tomorrow. Think no more about this little exchange.

Erik powers down his computer, buttons up his coat, and shoulders his bag, ignoring his colleagues. He will do as Harold bids. He will think no more about their exchange. He ignores the further sound of raised voices from the conference room, which recede into nothingness as he pads down the corridor towards the elevator. On the ground floor, he realizes that recent events may have been a cause of some stress, as he finds he has an overwhelming desire to defecate. He will tell his therapist about this. In the men’s room he finds, to his dismay and amusement, that the sensation was simply trapped gas. He farts loudly and without restraint. Then he barks another single yelp of laughter. He could not say why. After he has washed his hands, he realizes that he has forgotten to urinate. He unzips himself at the urinal, closes his eyes, and listens intently to the steady tinkling sound of liquid against porcelain. When he opens his eyes, he is aware of a person standing beside him, a puff of powder-white hair. Harold is staring into the gutter as he urinates. Then, absently, he murmurs,

—Good job today, Erik. Good job.

—Thank you, Harold. Have a good evening.

Erik hesitates then, as he grips the small zipper between thumb and forefinger and makes ready to pull. He hesitates. Then he swivels on his heel one hundred and eighty degrees and looks at himself in the mirror behind the urinals. His penis is hanging out. He takes his right hand and bounces his penis up and down on it while looking himself in the eye. Through his peripheral vision he can sense that Harold has turned his head to watch him. There is silence, save for the lazy slapping sound of a tubule of flesh on an open human palm. Harold spins on his heel to face the mirror. Their reflected selves make eye contact in the glass. Harold begins to bounce his penis on his palm. And then they bounce, together.

—

Owen Corrigan is an Irish writer living in London. He has written a novel and is working on another. Instagram: @owening_it