Scandal

It’s 6 am, and thanks to my son climbing into bed in the middle of the night, I’m up now and don’t think I’m getting back to sleep. I also just woke out of an absolute scandal of a dream, so before it turns into a fuzzy memory, I wanted to get it down.

There’s a new job opening at my office. I think she’d be a great fit for it, especially since she’s job hunting too. There’s a policy question of declaring to leadership if you have any past or present relationship with someone being hired. I decide to procrastinate on that until she’s actually hired. And wouldn’t you know it, the very next day I’m at the company lunch and there she is, sitting right there with the new joiners. Fantastic and terrifying in equal measure. Now I actually have to go declare the relationship so I’m not part of her reporting structure. Except once I tell leadership, my wife will find out too, since she knows people in leadership. So the plan becomes: tell my wife first, then the office.

Unfortunately, there’s this guy who joined alongside her, and he saw the two of us playing basketball together (the metaphors my mind comes up with, I kid you not 🙄). Now he’s threatening to take “that basketball” straight to the leadership team. I’m not actually worried overall, but I want to handle this my own way. I tell him he’s imagining things, that the basketball means nothing. He buys it, temporarily, drops the basketball, and walks off. I take the opening and puncture a perfectly good basketball, then start scheming how to dispose of it. Bury it or throw it in the river? I decide rivers are apparently where people always find stray basketballs, so I dig a deep hole in a jungle and bury it instead.

Next time I run into the guy, he’s suspicious because he can’t find the basketball anywhere, and that only convinces him his original theory was right all along. He’s about to go off again, but somehow the office day ends before he can corner anyone, which gives me a brief moment of relief. I realize what I actually have to do is simple enough on paper: call my wife and tell her I have feelings for someone else, call office leadership and tell them about the relationship. But I can’t make myself do either. I’m stuck.

Later that evening I visit my dad, and his caretaker is also there. The same guy happens to be the caretaker also for my dad. He is saying all sorts of things to my dad, and my dad is furious at me. I’m so irritated with that guy at this point I can’t even describe it. Something happens to the caretaker right then, and I decide not to help, and just walk away. I don’t remember exactly what it was, only that I contributed nothing, a silent bystander choosing not to help.

My dad is proving to be completely unmanageable and stubborn, constantly getting up and wandering around, standing on slopes and ledges. I keep telling him to sit down and I just can’t get through to him. For the moment, the office problem is at least behind me. I finally decide to tell my wife. I can see the fury on her face, but she doesn’t say a word.

At this point, all of us, my dad, the kids, my wife, and me, are moving to a new place. It looks like it’s on a hilltop, set up like a thatched hut, owned by someone speaking Russian (even though the only foreign words I actually speak are German). Everyone is miserable there, the climb, the cold, all of it unbearable. I have to attend a conference I’ve been assigned to, and the venue is incredibly fancy. I’m moving between booths and talks, most of it centered on AI, and everyone’s presentations are so good that I feel completely overwhelmed. At the same time, I feel strangely comfortable in that setting, while everyone else at home seems to resent me for being comfortable when they’re clearly not.

I finally decide to tell my office team. I walk in, and everyone’s sitting around eating. Apparently someone brought in sweets, motichoor laddoo. I ask what the occasion is, and someone from leadership says the name of the exact guy who’d been blackmailing me, saying the sweets are because I got re-engaged, and that they’re surprised I didn’t tell them first. I genuinely can’t tell if they already know who it is and are just fishing for information, or if they really have no idea.

That’s when my son kicks me awake. I lie in bed thinking about the dream, about how hard it was to overcome the inertia of just telling my wife, about how the whole situation seemed to rewire my personality, not helping someone in a life-threatening situation. I found myself wondering if I actually have that kind of spite in me, enough to walk away from someone who urgently needs help. All the metaphors my mind cooked up to say all of this.

I need more sleep, but it’s long gone for now. Maybe tonight.