The Rec. Centre

Chapter 1: About Those Group Meetings…

My surname is Bentley, as in the kind of car I know I’ll never afford. The people here at the recreational centre where I work call me Todd. Said Todd Bentley is 5’5”, 130 lbs., and divorced. Said Todd Bentley was forced into a diabolical scheme hatched by a coworker – tall, sickly thin, awkwardly-proportioned Nadine DuPont. For every time she tells me, “You’re never fully dressed without a smile on!” I take a shot of whiskey once I’m home.

But this evil plot of hers involves the more secretly troubled of our clientele. And I, ‘honored’ with the title of co-coordinator, sit among this group now writing my memoir on the cheap, stained notepad that was sitting under my coffee cup. All while pretending I give a damn about Mrs. Woods, who was sobbing right now because she didn’t know where she was going to hang her Christmas decorations this year to make her family proud of her.

This is the middle of July. She’s talking about Christmas already and I’m worrying about the state of humanity. And I met the Woods – nice people, they were. Not the kind who would swoop down and assault their matriarch if they didn’t like where the little wood-carved Santa or the Styrofoam Frosty the Snowman was hung up. You had to feel bad for her, really. She’d be sort of pretty if she weren’t balding from stress all the time. You could tell she’d never had a job in her life.

From there came the interesting part. After everyone was done sharing their lives openly, they would write their darker secrets, their REAL secrets, on scraps of paper. My job came in now. I collected them. Later, I would read them and post the most ‘meaningful’ ones on the bulletin board at the rec centre’s entrance. They say everyone has their own useless talent. Mine is apparently being able to tell who wrote what. I don’t understand exactly how it works, so don’t ask me, but I can read these little dirty facts and feel them gravitate towards one certain person. The up-and-coming young businessman does marijuana on the job. The gorgeous woman in her revealing outfits started as a little boy tormented by the monotony of suburbia. The metal head kid with anger issues bought meals for the homeless on Christmas.

And I could see through every façade they tried to put by their peers every day. This is the sole talent I have, so it feels like it’s my purpose in life to either expose them for the fakes they are or help them to become comfortable with who they are. The former sounds more fun, I admit.

Right now everyone’s finished writing. I’m putting this down for now to do my whole collecting business I described earlier. I’m leaving to smoke a cigarette despite the commercials on TV. I’m going home and cooking a steak even though I am fully aware of the torture animals at slaughterhouses go through. I’m content with living life as a hypocrite. If I find nicer paper, I’ll even continue talking about my uneventful life. For now, I am, as are all of you, a slave of routine, whom I must follow without question or free thought.