"Ballad of a Thin Man" • Bob Dylan (by Sheldon Birnie)

Where does the paranoia come from? When did my life begin to unfurl?

Hard to say. It has always been there, that sense that things are off. That there were forces at play that I couldn’t quite grasp. That foundation is inherent to anyone walking this earth with their eyes open, friend. If you’re not paranoid, you’re not paying attention.

My dad used to love putting old records on when he was drinking. So, most Friday nights, as Saturdays were reserved for Hockey Night in Canada. He’d play the Stones, Beatles, CCR and Steely Dan. But he loved Bob Dylan the most. He’d sing along to Ballad of a Thin Man if he’d had enough Crown and Coke. 

You know something is happening, he’d sing, holding the remote control like a microphone, pointing at me with a finger from the hand that gripped his tumbler. But you don’t know what it is. Do you, Mr. Jones?

By the 90s, everyone knew the system was fucked and that the rise of computers was only gonna make it worse. How else can you account for those goofy English fuckers Radiohead becoming the biggest rock band in the world? They weren’t far off with that Paranoid Android shit. Not far off at all.

Even the nightly news back then was enough to drive anyone paying attention off the deep end. Oka. Unabomber. Oklahoma City. Gustafsen Lake. Y2-motherfucking-K. 9/11. Shit. If only them computers had all fucked off that New Year’s Eve, eh, maybe we woulda come out the better for it. Guess we’ll never know now. We’re in too deep. Way too fuckin deep now, bud.

But that’s all neither here nor there. For me, where all this shit hit the fan was only a few years ago and a big old mess of a situation at work.

See, I’m a bylaw enforcement officer. Was a bylaw enforcement officer, rather, until somewhat recently. Look, I know it: nobody likes a bylaw enforcement officer. But just think of where we’d be without them. 

Anyhow, a number of years ago, they cleaned house on our department. The city admin did, that is. See, a bunch of my colleagues had been caught in a bit of a dogfucking sting. It was all in the news, all these guys going for groceries, mowing their lawn, going for four hour lunches, all while Joe and Jane Citizen sat around waiting on whatever step in their home renovation project or new build to clear inspection before they could move onto the next step. Shit was backed up bad, buddy. Real bad.

Now, I’ll admit: things had gotten out of control. And the city was right to go scorched earth on the department. For what it’s worth, I was the only inspector who wasn’t given the axe. That’s because I kept my head down and did my goddamn job. 

But all those guys who got the axe, they didn’t know what was up. They figured I was a fuckin rat. That I’d snitched. Things started to get ugly. Threatening texts and voicemails. Watch your back, rat. Phone calls in the middle of the night. Dog shit smeared on the windshield of the work trucks. Emails with photos of the outside of my house. Watch your back, fuckin rat.

I started losing sleep. I started self-medicating to make up for the sleep, but it only made things worse. So I self-medicated even more, walking through each day in a daze, jumping at shadows. Barking at the kids for nothing, just shit kids do every day, because they’re kids. 

Eventually, things eased off. They hired more inspectors, and I helped train ‘em. But then, something totally fucked up happened. A total freak coincidence, I’m coming to believe. What else could it be? But at the time, it all seemed connected. All seemed part of some long con against me. Like the walls were closing in and everything that was already bad went worse somehow. Still kinda does, to be frank.

See, they hired a new supervisor at work, a total prick who immediately made going to work a total drag. This guy, he never said as much, he never had to, but he seen me as a threat. As a rat in the walls. And as if that weren’t enough, the real kicker? 

This new motherfucker had the exact same name as me: Bobby fuckin Jones. 

Sheldon Birnie is a writer, dad, and beerleague hockey player living in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. He is the author of the collections Where the Pavement Turns to Sand and More Strange Visions (forthcoming), both from Malarkey Books.