My Amber Eyed Monster

I didn’t want to know, but I’d kept count: thirty-four tries. The hateful amber light which should have glowed green still blinked uncooperatively as the computer refused my order to come to life.

I felt beaten and betrayed as if one of my arms had leaped from my body and slapped me before running off with my wife.

In a move born from the marriage of my stung vulnerability and inherent refusal to be dominated by a machine, I found myself standing over the disemboweled hard drive tower which was sprawled across my dinner table like a poor geek’s Frankenstein’s Monster. The caveman inside me marveled at the fragile components, crisply green and silver, exposing themselves as if a potential mate coyly revealing her flesh “accidentally” to catch my attention. I approached it with the same nervous meticulousness of a rookie lover, following step-by-preordained-step, and escaped the encounter similarly, relieved to have made it out alive and strutting like a peacock.