/lit/ - Literature

ITT: Books about having regrets when getting old. While I'm slowly becoming of age, I'd like to read about the things people wished they've done as they've grown old of age.

I can't decide whether or not to be a misogynist. Any book recommendations to help make my mind?

She flinched again, her smile becoming taut on Warren's computer screen. "Warren, I understand you're a bit more shy or quiet than other at-home-advisors, but that's okay. I'm a bit of a shy girl myself—well, except on the weekends!"

Warren stared at his keyboard; at his swollen knuckles and his bitten nails. His fingers trembled and felt distractingly itchy from the winter dryness that had invaded his small, dusty bedroom. He smelled vodka mixed with hardened plaque on his breath.

A knot grew in his throat.

Despite the long silence the team manager valiantly held her bubbliness in her smile and in her tone but not in her demoralized baby-blues.

"Anyway, these numbers need to be addressed. Especially since you were doing so well this first quarter. Remember, we want a quick call filled with assuredness, professionalism, fun, and empathy. Remember what empathy means?"

Warren bristled. "Yes."

"So? What does it mean?"

"Understanding how the customer feels. Understanding their emotions."

"Exactly. Just like your training explained, knowing and understanding how the customer feels is important in a service call. Knowing and feeling their frustration with their product can lead to…"

Warren imagined a pig when he looked at them. As Whatever-her-name droned on—the familiar rhythm of that patronizing corporate jargon turning into white noise—he conjured up all these people-pigs in his booze-pickled brain. Mind you, it resided in everyone he worked with, everyone he knew, and not just this modern company moll of a manager. All those faces he eyed in the webcam windows during virtual team meetings; gazes colored a hoary and spotted hue that reminded one of molded Jewish rye. Pigs. Sus domesticus. He used the identifier not wholly as a derogatory, but rather to compare their contentment and their agreeableness.

They lived satisfied wallowing amongst the frigid mud and the hot, revolting stink. They had slop for plumping and a weathered but suitable shed for slumber. They turned to tumescent technocrat employers for more feed, and the pork donned their brands like holy vestments; their votive prayers squealed dutifully. When the time came they allowed themselves to be poked and pumped by their handler's priapisms brimming with a viscous liquid nonsense. There were slogans; Chinese made baubles and t-shirts and internet contests; advertisements and free tickets to listen to sonorous pleas for more of the nonsense filling their rectums and when that finished they were sewn up tight. Then all that corpulence would give out, their fat hearts would become diastolic, and their snouts would vomit slurries of all that nothing—that cultural ejaculate devoid of spermatozoa—and only a fool would stick around and listen to their death-squeals.

And Warren knew he suffered life as a fool. A very tired fool living amongst the pigs and thus no better than them.

"...and that's why we always try to have empathy. Isn't that right, Warren?"

>>20097140
This is entirely correct and I'm tired of pretending it's not.