Larry Benjamin. Wordsmith. Writer. Author.

Photo by Yoal Desurmont on Unsplash Diana Prince-King @TAFKAP: I just gave the officers the headshots we had taken last week. *sigh* Brooklyn Sudano @Brooklyn NY Let me guess, they now want you to Photoshop them into their vision of their perfect selves? Diana Prince-King @TAFKAP Yep. Brett wants me to give him more hair. Nigel Gale @MannequinMan If he wants more hair, let him get it the old-fashioned way! Prometheus @Theus Let him join The Hair Club For Men ! Diana Prince-King @TAFKAP Wait is that was a thing? Nigel Gale @MannequinMan Back in the day—it was. Brooklyn Sudano @Brooklyn NY Sy Sperling was not only the president, he was also a client! BTW, it still exists. Diana Prince-King @TAFKAP Ahem. TWO says the photos don’t do her blue eyes justice. Prometheus @Theus #WhitePeopleProblems Nigel Gale @MannequinMan You went there! Brooklyn Sudano @Brooklyn NY Well somebody had to. Diana Prince-King @TAFKAP ...

“ Ask them?” I whispered fiercely. “No! You ask.” Elvis practically whistled out of the side of his mouth. “But you brought it up—” “You agreed.” The vet, who was the sort of woman who’d drunk Brandy Alexanders in her youth, and then later in life, divorced and resettled, had adopted a pair of Lhasa Apso pups and named them Brandy and Alexander, cleared her throat. Now, she asked, “Is there something else?” Our dog, who just gotten a series of vaccinations trembled on the stainless steel table, her big brown eyes pleading for escape. She’d only been with us two weeks and didn’t fully trust us it seemed. At this moment, I can’t say I trusted us either. “Um…yes…can you look at her um…her privates?” “You mean her vulva?” The vet tech, young, blonde, perky with bright compassion, asked briskly. If not for her love of animals, she’d have been a stewardess: bubbly, unflappable, unmoored. “Yes!” She rolled our dog onto her back and we all peered at her...

It was my birthday. Actually, my birthday had been three weeks earlier, but Ivy, who was responsible for my birthday celebration, had forgotten, thus my actual birthday slipped by unnoticed. Until today, anyway. We would be going to lunch at 500 Below , she informed us—a chic new eatery which reached new heights on the Richter Scale of pretension and snobbery. Imagine the St Regis recast in black rubber, copperplate and plastic. They did not take reservations, but when you arrived for lunch at 11:45, the maître d’, would look down from his unreasonable height, over his glasses and down his beaked nose, and peck a message of unwelcome out of your flesh: “Unfortunately, there’ll be a wait of at least forty-five minutes. You can wait in the bar.” He would say this in a tone that was both haughty and mournful; he would say this despite the fact that you could see the restaurant was empty. The other thing about the restaurant was it was “calorie-wise”—every item on the menu wa...

Nigel Gale @MannequinMan Have you seen ernest!’s column today? Barbara @Harvard06 No, not before my morning tea! Prometheus Jones @Theus I just read it. You may want to read it on an empty stomach Just Plain Terry (JPT) @FierceQueen Honestly, ernest! is always seeing racists under the bed. Prometheus Jones @Theus Well, in his defense, when your only tool is a hammer, everything tends to look like a nail. Barbara @Harvard06 Well, for someone with a degree in journalism, he doesn’t follow any of the rules of impartiality. ernest! had gone to the same Ivy League institution as Barbara the first, but he’d managed to circumvent accusations of privilege and access by casting his undergraduate years not as a stroll through hallowed, ivy-covered halls, but rather as an unavoidable incarceration in a PWI—Predominately White Institution. Barbara wore her Harvard degree like a gold star; ernest! wore his like a Purple Heart. ernest!’s eponymous biweekly b...

The Global Director of HR’s webcast was scheduled for 9 AM EST which meant I actually needed to be in the office on time.  I arrived in the office, with two minutes to spare, to witness Ivy skipping down the hall and trilling, “I’m happy, happy, happy!”  TWO and the other two Cerberus stared after her in dismay. “Look,” Ivy called over her shoulder, “I’m exhibiting brand behavior!” “Do you suppose she’s gone off her meds?” Barbara the first asked with concern. “Either that or she’s taken an overdose,” Diana answered. It was a widely held supposition within our department that Ivy was on some sort of prescription mood altering drug.  The supposition was held despite an overwhelming absence of hard evidence.  Still, we clung to our collective belief much as one clings to the supposition that one’s overweight coworker must eat ravenously despite the fact that one has never seen her or him consume more calories than those contained in the occasional si...

“Churl! You—are—late!” Terry announced as I stepped off the elevator. Now you may have noticed by now that I am almost always late.  Normally any statement of the obvious does not warrant my attention, but coming from Terry who was too keen, too creatively sarcastic to use the obvious as a conversational gambit, I turned around and raised an eyebrow.  “For?” “The Lizzie Borden webcast?” he stated more question than answer, raising an eyebrow to match mine. “Shit! Why aren’t you on it?” He pointed to the discreet earplug jammed into his head and mouthed, “I am.  Your battleaxes are logged in from the conference room.” Then he shouted at my hastily retreating back, “It’s just starting.  Technical difficulties, you know, caused a delay.”  I could feel the eye roll. I pushed into the room and no one looked up, damning testimony to the accepted fact of my habitual lateness.  Lizzie Borden’s voice boomed from the speakerphone....

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the flashing blue of the Jabber message window. I felt —like the cold hand of death grasping your shoulder—rather than saw the dreaded name. Brett Buttler: Are you there? Theus Jones: I’m here Brett Buttler: Did you get my email? Theus jones: No. Brett Buttler: I sent it last night at 10. Theus Jones: I was offline. Brett Buttler: Offline? Theus Jones: Did you need something? Brett Buttler: Read my email. Set up a call for 9:30. Ping me with the call-in info. Theus Jones: ‘K Ten minutes later I’d read his emails—the first of which contained few words and little information and the second of which contained many more words and no information—assembled my team: Nigel, Diana, and Barbara the first whom I’d gotten out of bed—and dialed into the conference call where we waited fifteen minutes for Brett to join. “How can he be late for his own call?” Barbara the first asked.  We could hear her f...