Copywriterman: Do You Copy?

[From May 1999]


It was 20 minutes after 9 when the drug began to take hold. I had arrived at my desk early and feeling sluggish from the previous night's revelry. I had gotten into that black demon coffee earlier than usual and had consumed two maybe three cups before anyone else had showed up.

I had gone too far this time. 

I didnt feel anything after the first cup so I had another. After the second, time began to lose meaning. It could have been an hour later that I came back for another hit or it could have been only moments. I couldnt be sure. What I was sure of was that things were getting weird all around me and I was going to have a hard time keeping it together.

I remember thinking that I felt a bit lightheaded. And suddenly there was a strange buzzing sound above me like the sound of some great beast of a wasp swooping down on me like a helpless grasshopper. I looked up and realized that I could actually hear the florescent bulbs humming above me. This is not good, I thought.

"What's not good?" said Dan, the portly technophile in the next cubicle. Shocked, I whirled around and fixed a terrible glare on the boy. "What are talking about, man?" I said. "You just said This is not good," he smirked. 

Oh god! He could hear what I was thinking or did I say it out loud? I retreated back to my computer screen and attempted to forget about Dan's possible 6th sense as best I could. But things were no better on my screen. It seemed to be undulating to the rhythm of my pulse. Soon the whole room seemed to be keeping the same time. 



Ye Gods! How long could I keep it together? How long would it be before I started parading up and down the isles ranting about Jesus, damnation and dogs and cats living in sin like some crazed evangelist at the end of a two-week-long meth binge?!

The caffeine was right on top of me now. I was at the peak of the trip and I had a 10:00 meeting coming up fast. Maybe I could just sit quietly and ride it out. Yes, surely I could make it. I just needed some time to get it together.

At that moment, as if sent by a cruel and ill-humored god, someone tapped me on the shoulder. I cannot describe to you the FEAR I felt when I spun around and found myself looking up at my boss and his enormous, floating head. All I could see was his huge head. It seemed detached from the body and everything else in the room faded out as he spoke."William, we need to get together about the ad in USA Today," said the disembodied head. I heard myself say something like, "You can never be too sure about those kind things. Best to use dynamite or maybe ammonium nitrate." I had no idea what that meant but I was fairly sure I had just said it to my now-confused boss's floating head. 

"Hahaha!" chuckled the head. Thank God I was always strange enough that such odd behavior would be viewed as a joke that he didnt get or some counter-culture code referring to some obscure movie he had never seen. I was lucky but how long would that last? It was 9:55 and I had 5 minutes to evolve back into my previous upright form. 

Maybe everything would be OK if I just explained myself. Then perhaps I could rest easy. Surely they would understand my low tolerance for caffeine was the cause for this temporary madness and not the result of the abuse of every chemical known to civilized man since 1452.

On second thought, I'd better ride it out. The fiends would never get me. I just had to find a safe place. I thought back to my early school days of "stop drop and roll" and crawled under my desk for refuge. I'd have to ride it out here. "Buy the ticket take the ride," as they say. 

But was I really safe? A pair of large feet came my way and stopped at the entrance to my cube. This could be bad, I thought. Maybe I could leap out and subdue this interloper before anyone was the wiser. I had seem it done in movies. 


Decisions. Decisions. Decisions.