Kitty's Outburst

Kitty

Fuck off.

Two simple words. Two simple words, open to so much and yet so little interpretation. If you said this to a mate, in a manor uncharged with any malice, anger, or frustration, it’d probably be in response to a joke, perceived as mere banter. However, Kitty had just said these two words to her boss. She had also definitely charged this particular fuck off with a fair amount of malice, anger, and of course, frustration.

The how-to-get-fired-hat trick. Nice work Kits.

She recalled the series of events leading to this accidental outburst.

Kitty had just experienced a royal bollocking from her manager for misspelling the word ‘yoghurt’ in her slideshow pitch they were presenting to their potential new client. And, in fairness, what corporate dairy giant wants to collaborate with a market research agency incapable of spelling ‘yoghurt’. She sort of deserved the bollocking from Shelley. It was a near justified bollocking. But no, this wasn’t what sparked the outburst; that came when her boss boss walked past and witnessed the bollocking, and decided to chirp in :

‘It’s not her fault Shelley… she can’t see what she’s typing with that fringe in her eyes!’

The outburst bursted out with such burst that Kitty was almost certainly in line for a sacking. Her boss’ reaction was more shock than anger. He stuttered, before awkwardly pretending to take a phone call. Shelley gasped, but she always did have a flair for melodrama. That’s probably why she was so good at pitching to new clients, her over-personable tone the reason their presentation had landed the deal, despite Kitty’s typo. That and her incredible ass. Kitty dreamt of having a bum like that, but wasn’t wasting her weekends and evenings in the gym just to be gawked at by a pair of dairy retailers in grey suits. What a gawkey world she lived in.

Her boss didn’t say anything to her, come end of day. Kitty assumed he was busy, or just terrified of conflict, like so many joke tellers really were. She managed to escape the office without a second round of bollocking.

Dinner was on her mind, Nim’s Noodles in particular. She had never actually got to taste their noodles the first time she went, thanks to Lukas, despite it being the most raved about spot for Asian food in the local area.

Asian, hmm. Is that a generalisation? I mean, the food itself is definitely rooted in Asian culture, but Asia is so vast, so diverse. Then again, they don’t specify what type of noodles they’re serving, so I guess the label of Asian is fine for now. It’s not an Indian place, I know that. I guess it’s fusion. Asian fusion. Fasian. Fasian, but cooked by a work force of ethnically ambiguous caucasians ’n' asians. Ha.

Kitty had a strange feeling it wasn’t just the Fasian noodles prompting the spontaneous desire to go to Nim’s, but ignored it, and told herself it was.

The food was tasty. The MSG, the salt, soy, siracha, sesame, starch, slime, all well balanced. The table behind her were laughing along to some anecdote about a missing wing mirror, narrated by a posh-voiced girl in her twenties. Kitty found her voice annoying, but not unbearable. At least she had something to listen to. A table of students diagonally in front, all boasting fancy trainers, were giggling too, though presumably not at the same thing; they looked a little out of earshot for that. Kitty tried to tune into their conversation, and block the posh-voiced girl out. She failed, and upon realising the fancy trainer students were speaking Mandarin, zoned back into the story about the wing mirror.

“and it was in the car boot all along!”

This narrative climax seemed to have sent the table behind into hysterics, as they were clapping and guffawing like it was their last opportunity to experience humour.

That’s the fucking punchline?

Kitty felt simultaneous pangs of irritation and jealousy. She couldn’t remember the last time she herself had guffawed.

She gazed around the room again, trying not to catch any other tables’ eyes. Suddenly she felt very alone.

She suddenly longed for some company.

Or some laughter. Laughter would be nice.

After such a cataclysmically woeful end to her working day, a friend to compare fortune cookie horoscopes with would’ve been appreciated, and Kitty didn’t feel like eating alone today. Maybe that’s why she’d chosen the exact same food place as the last time she felt a little excitement in her life. Maybe her outburst today was a method of creating her own excitement? Or, maybe it wasn’t. Maybe she was overthinking? She looked across the restaurant to the door, in hope someone she knew would strut in and hug her, tell her she wasn’t alone, make her smile, and laugh, and guffaw- but nobody did.

Kitty put her headphones in ears, and pressed play on a playlist labelled ‘sad.’ There was something quite cathartic about wallowing in your own loneliness, she decided. Only in small doses of course, otherwise there’d be no novelty to the sadness. No novelty to the tears that would pour out of her eyes, later that evening perhaps? She hoped so; an emotional release was always nice, and blue days were essential in seeing other days as yellow. It was just a shame the number of blue days had been creeping up of late, and the yellow days dimmer.

She decided the day that sadness, or loneliness, or just general hopelessness, lost its novelty and became normality, would be the day she would make a change. And not just a haircut level change, but a career-switching or fuck-off travelling level change, a start exercising and meditating and shagging more guys level of change, a do-something-fulfilling type of change, a reconnect with old friends type change, or all of these at once. Glancing one final time at the door where nobody stood, Kitty’s eyes began to well up.

Fucking Radiohead. Better get home now before the flood comes.

She almost made it home before the ending of ‘Green Plastic Trees’, but not quite, and her tears now fell thick and fast, converging above her lips with the diluted snot that trickled from her nose. The napkin she wiped her face with couldn’t have known what liquid was what, she thought, but it did a serviceable job at making her look less publicly distraught. Not that Kitty had never had felt any shame in crying; it kept her sane, focussed, and reminded her she could feel. Perhaps that was why so many boys refused to cry, she pondered. Maybe that was the historical root of sexism? Employing emotional self-repression to concentrate on general oppression?

Christ. Thom Yorke’s wails really are depressing aren’t they. Beautiful, but depressing.

When home, Kitty removed her headphones, and connected her phone to the speaker instead. ‘A Day In the Life’ by The Beatles was playing, and sentimental echoes began to rebound against her bedroom walls, then reverberated through the thin plaster into her housemates’ rooms. Kitty decided this wasn’t quite the tearjerker she needed, and thought Norah Jones might be able to rinse her ducts of their final droplets. If Norah couldn’t, then she was probably done with crying for today. ‘Wintertime’ began to play. The mournful piano licks began to gently broadcast through the flat. A part of Kitty wanted Ola the room next door to hear. Maybe she’d sense that Kitty was feeling blue, and come in and give her a hug. A hug wouldn’t completely stop the blue, but it would bring her a bit closer to yellow.

A dark green, maybe.