Letter 06
Letter no.6 is here, responding to the question: “Has A Sin Saved You?”…
Text:
“ Dear you,
I don’t know if you remember me, but I remember you. I’m very good at remembering faces. You asked me once, “have I ever sinned?” Which I thought very strange, considering I’d only ordered a gin and tonic. I only write you now because I think I finally have an answer. To sin is not always to feel guilt. And I did used to feel bad when I hurt people, but we never felt guilty about lying to them.
I used to call people stupid too often and too easily, dropping the adjective into casual conversation like I was the only person in the squad intelligent enough to define what was and wasn’t stupid. Nowadays,
I’ve changed my ways. I had to. A few too many times being proven to be stupid meant I no longer felt capable of defining it in others. It’s strange, isn’t it, that stupid is best seen by those who aren’t it. You’d expect someone who is blonde to be best at identifying blondness in others, the same goes for those who are bleeding, or those who have suffered from tetanus, for they must know the diseases’ symptoms intimately. But not stupidity. For that, you must be the opposite. You must be intelligent?
I lie often, about my intelligence and other things. I ask colleagues, some of them stupid, “you good?” And I don’t want to hear a truthful answer, full of the complexity of their mental state and how they arrived at this weird place. I don’t want to hear another story about the horrible job market and its lack of graduate opportunities. I want to hear the reassuring response of “I’m fine.” So that we are then able to continue finishing up with the mopping. The question mark is only a tail-end to my lie, the curl of my words which includes others in the collusion. I don’t like my colleagues and they don’t like me. It’s good to not like each other in our line of work. It keeps us healthy.
Sometimes, I lie about being too weak to hold the knife. Not many of my female colleagues fall for that one. They know that I must be strong enough to slice skin, how else would I have ended up here. But male colleagues often believe it, offering to do the grizzly part for me. Women are selected for this career out of necessity, but men volunteer out of ego. They think it’s like the 60s, James Bond and Q with their pens that shoot poison darts. Even after their delusions are shattered by the monotonous reality of hacking away, they still insist on wearing their fanciest suits to the office. They must spend a fortune on dry cleaning.
I know a letter like this should be a place for honesty, but I can’t be honest to you about my career. It is a very private industry. Even I didn’t know my interview was an interview until afterwards, when the blood had thoroughly stained my velvet heels. Before this, I was a cleaner of residential houses. I carried my caddy of chemicals from street to street, scrubbing steps and toilets as the rich wives slipped over the bleached floors and insisted on gossiping about the neighbours with me, acting like I only existed
to mirror their responses. Like I didn’t have a brain of my own, begging to be entertained.
I am a still cleaner of sorts, but I don’t have to talk that kind of nonsense these days. I just slice and scrub and check that the new employees aren’t getting green around the gills, and then we can return to the office and wait until we receive another contract. It’s a remote/office hybrid working style. Very fashionable, I’ve been told.
If I have ever sinned, it was during the interview. Behind the Duchess on a gloomy Friday night with my lips soaked in gin. You were inside. I’m sure you remember, but I drank a lot of gin back when I was unemployed, that was why I started it. I must tell you, I was the one to call her stupid. “A stupid bitch” I said.
But I was the stupid one really, of course, because I started the fight, but then, I also won it.
Outside of employment, my actions back then weren’t appropriate, I know that, but with the right people watching, that was what I needed to reach the second round of interviews, and after seeing the body disposal procedure, all I had to do was display my team-building skills. Harder stuff, but I managed. I didn’t call my fellow interviewees stupid, I called them beautiful. I thought our dirty fingernails made us all very beautiful and good. I don’t even feel bad anymore killing. Not ever.
After all, it’s very easy to lie to people. Isn’t it?
Sincerely,
Noone important.”
