Bleach and Cortado

There is a special kind of silence that only appears after you’ve said exactly what no one wanted to hear. It’s a chemical one, like the smell of freshly scrubbed floors.

I’m sitting in the corner of the coffee shop, looking at the brown film on the surface of the cup. On the other side of the window, people hurry past in a haze of mediocre compromises and polite lies.

At home there’s a bottle of bleach under the sink. I like the idea that there are liquids that can remove everything organic, everything that can rot or smell. Sometimes I look at the people I work with, like Peter and Karen and their small, pathetic dreams, and I feel a pull toward being that white liquid. I don’t just want to correct them. I want to etch away their soft lies until all that’s left is a clean, sterile surface.

They say the truth will set you free. They forget to mention that freedom tastes like cold ash, and that it’s best enjoyed alone.

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Bleach and Cortado

I’ve heard people say that honesty is a gift, but they don’t want it. Not really. And when you’re the one giving it, it’s an extraction paid with silence.

At work, I didn’t have to point out the work was shoddy. I didn’t have to say anything. It was irrelevant to me. Looking back—if I’m being as honest as I claim to be—I think I actually said it because I hated the people involved. Not the people even, just their smugness. I saw the project lead—Peter—looking at the team lead—Karen—with a kind of soft reverence, and I felt a physical spike of nausea. I picked the best—or worst—timing, when everyone was present, executives, consultants, leads and developers. What offended me most was the nonchalant description of a project that was doomed to fail. I needed to see them flinch. I needed to prove that the floor they were standing on was thin.

After the presentation, Karen looked nervously over the room. I stood up. “This doesn’t work,” I said. She flinched. “The system isn’t close to being operative after a year of work, and you want to spend another six months building the basics?” Total silence. Peter formed an O with his lips. His glasses pushing against his curled hair. “We’re depending on more funding. That’s money down the drain.” It was a stupid thing to say. My job was on the line here too. Karen looked deflated as she sat down. She didn’t even begin to protest.

The meeting ended shortly after. Peter took me aside, in the corridor next to the grey steel elevators, and hissed at me. “Do you realize what you’ve done?” I nodded.

The project was terminated not long after. Not because of what I said. It was already dead. Just pointed it out. But being right is a curse. I was shuffled around. Then pushed out.

I remember my mother calling me a half-broken robot, but that’s a lie. She actually called me cruel. I just changed the word in my head because a machine can’t help what it does. A machine just does as it’s instructed.

When I was thirteen, a girl tried to tell me she liked me. I didn’t like the way she looked. Too fat and freckled. “Hell no,” I said. My friends laughed. The skinny one who wanted to play the bass, Tommy, the guy who had a t-shirt under a denim jacket and long black hair, even the nerdy kid—Jago—with the thick glasses. His laugh was like a moose–huuh huuh huuh. And in that moment, when I saw the hurt look on her face, I did regret it. She ran away, crying. I stood there, frozen, redness growing on my face. Then I too joined in the laugh, but it was fake.

I’m thirty-four, and I’ve built a life out of refusing to be the fool. I changed careers and met with a new group of people, creatives. They have an existing culture of patting each other on the back and lifting up mediocrity. If they lived on the royalties, they wouldn’t be starving artists. They’d be dead. They don’t sell because they’re mediocre. When I said this, publicly, the group chats stopped buzzing. That’s a clean way of saying I was blocked. I told you I filtered them out, but the truth is I spent three hours last night looking at their blocked messages through a fake account, trying to see if they looked relieved that I wasn’t there.

The woman in the coffee shop didn’t just lean into her friend’s hand. She looked at me. For a second, our eyes met, and I saw her recognize me. The rebel. The truth-seeker. She saw a man sitting alone with a cold latte—no, not latte, obviously not—a cortado, double. He was sitting alone, drinking it slowly.

My apartment is silent. I eat standing up. Sitting at the table is for people with someone to talk to. Even if it’s not physical. Even if it’s just online.

I tell myself I’m pure, no—clean. It’s my favorite word. It sounds like something that has been bleached until there’s nothing left to rot. But you only bleach things that are covered in something foul.

And I think about my former colleagues.
One of them could accept any form of verbal abuse, as long as the room applauded.
The other thought he understood everything, right up until the moment he didn’t.
And I think: I’m glad I’m not them. At least I have that.

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