So there’s this guy at work who about a year ago I made the mistake of teasing about his hat. I think it was one of those safari hats which I myself am so fond of, but it might have been a cowboy hat or a baseball hat or even a viking helmet, I don’t remember. Specifically, the exchange was:

Me: So what’s with the hat?

Him: I’m not interested in being friends with someone who judges me by my hat.

(And I know, because I put it in an email to Michele right after it happened.)

Anyway, ever since then he has been giving me the silent treatment whenever he comes into the office (where he doesn’t work, but only visits occasionally to pick things up). To a meek and delicate-spirited person such as myself, this is pretty horrible. He always makes a point of saying hello and making polite small-talk with every other person in the office, but he won’t even look me in the eye.

Was it really the hat thing, I wonder? Or is there some ineffable awfulness about me which only he can smell? (If you can smell it too, Reader, I don’t want to hear about it.) It’s doubly odd because prior to the hat comment, we were friends, in an office way. We used to have these pleasant half hour talks whenever he came in, about his family and girlfriend and my school and boyfriend and so on. Then all at once, complete unwillingness to acknowledge me.

At first I tried, like a fawning dog, to change the course of this weirdness by greeting him myself, trying to force him into eye contact, etc., because I can’t stand having anyone dislike me. To quote the immortal Clueless, I was brutally rebuffed. So now I just want revenge. For a year, this guy has been walking into MY space and making me feel like shit whenever he wants to. How can I best kick some respect into his helmeted head? Help me out here.

The past few days have been full of portents. Spiders, blood, and at Wednesday’s poker game I kept winning with the dead man’s hand. Then this morning I came biking toward myself on Hearst, and the biker’s face didn’t resolve itself into a stranger’s until just before the bike passed me. Yet, weirdly, absolutely nothing bad has happened to me so far. Some people might choose to stop believing in omens altogether after such a disappointing failure to signify anything real, but I know better. It might be in ten minutes or it might be ten years from now, but the next time something horrible happens, I will be able to say I saw it coming a mile away.

Thick, kind of crumby, and (judging from the stains on the bag), has strong ties to the oil industry. Makes me sick to my stomach with artificialness. Expensive. Cleverly packaged. Usually surrounded by at least eleven others of the same type. Horribly dense. Bad for children and other living things. And to make it worse, like so many Americans I asked for Gorange juice but all I got was this.

My cowboy boss is deep into Virgil right now. He sidles up to my desk every now and then to discuss it. “See, the bad alliances Virgil is talkin’ about, that’s just common sense at the track. You never team up with someone to buy a horse. You gotta always buy your own horse. And Virgil knew that, that’s what he’s saying. You gotta go your own way.”

Speaking of ridiculous literary parallels, I realized recently that the Lad is Mr. Knightly. He’s honest and sincere and does the right thing because it is the right thing. And I, with this chattery blog, I am Miss Bates.

Today my six-month Pottery Barn checkup came due so I wandered down there for a few minutes. Every half-year or so I need to enter a Pottery Barn (or a Williams Sonoma, or a Crate & Barrel, or almost any store on Union Square) to sneer at the ridiculous merchandise, thereby reminding myself that I don’t really want to live in the rooms displayed in the catalogs, where no one leaves teacups out on the table or owns garbage cans.

“Can I help you?” said the Pottery Barn employee.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m looking for something which is both functionless and exorbitantly expensive.”

“Allow me to recommend the teak cleaning spray,” he said immediately, and my scorn for it wafted me straight out of the store and into my right mind.