Which Is Where We Are Now

I’m hanging out with some young coworkers afterwards. They talk about Brian from church in my childhood days; he’s gone to a really cool development job. He just went to the company and asked for a job and they handed it to him (as opposed to my waiting around for it). I have a pang of jealousy and a well-I-could-be-doing-what-he’s-doing resentment. Then I realize I am shot.

Some of the young women want off from their other jobs.

“Do you know about the 1030?” They ask. “It’s a daycare for kids to go around lunch.”

“Yes.”

“Would you take a shift? You’d like it.” I hesitate.

Not really what I want to be doing, but I’m not doing anything, so…. and it would be fun to hang out with kids. As long as the employer doesn’t think I’m a creep.

At a castle which is a learning institution merged with business workers. The high school gang is here but I eat at a different time than them. I walk back from lunch past a book store. It’s busy with people, sophisticated people. I go in and grab a new yorker financial magazine for some reading. It’s a flimsy little magazine. As I walk away, I realize I didn’t pay for it. I’m not even interested in it, so I go back to return it. I hope I won’t be charged with theft; no one pays any mind. Back in the bookstore there are Christmas candies everywhere and blond children.

I’m at my house. I go over to visit some guy. He’s busy with something so I hang out with his boy and wife. I pay attention to boy. I try to be friendly. It’s a little awkward. The wife tells me what I did that was inappropriate. I correct myself, but it doesn’t help things between the boy and I. The boy is not interested and a little uncomfortable with me. I’m just trying to force it. Back at home I get an email from the guy. I’m shocked to read it.

“Watch out for my wife. If she does anything against you, let me know and I’ll teach her a lesson.” And something about a football game.

Well, frankly, I was pleased with his wife. She corrected me, but that was my own problem. I can’t change my effeminate nature no matter how much I want to. Wow, this guy has major problems if his is in secret at war with his wife. I don’t like him.

I’m at university in a far off town. I’m late for class and I haven’t signed up for any classes. I drop into a class. The classroom seems to be open-air. Just desks seated outside the football field.

I barge into class. After class I tell the instructor, who resembles Philip Seymour Hoffman, that I have an apology to make for my revealing the controversy behind a football player (bribe, grade falsifying?). He tells me I should take it up with the dean. He goes out of his way to mention how busy he is with not only this professorship but another even more prestigious one, then another prestigious adjunct professorship. I swallow real hard. It’s hard to take; here I am still struggling to graduate after all these years.

The professor and I are with the dean, who resembles Holzinger. We sit in a car. I show the dean my note of apology, written on a USPS customs form. I don’t even pay attention to the game, I say. I don’t even care about all this. The less time I spend thinking about this the better.

They don’t care. They are focused on the apology, which is god-awful important for the university to help quell the public controversy. The note is a big scrawl with half the lines crossed out.

The dean says, you had better rewrite that. He ponders the inconvenience of going to the post office to get more paper. I reveal blank forms underneath. I can rewrite it right now.

Dimes wouldn’t been in use if they weren’t generously given as alms during the great depression. A man tells how he just took the clip of his pen, the clip having a dime near its base, tore it off, and made a collection of these torn-off dimes clips for the local union.

I’m driving around the union parking lot looking for a space. There is a fellow union guy or a client in the passenger side. I get trapped for a little by a somewhat young Asian woman when I drive down a dead end of filled spaces.

We walk up to the building. I nonchalantly approach the women (there is a young man and young woman (similar to the one blocking me in the parking lot?) monitoring the entrance here) in the security aperture. She yells at me for a good long couple minutes. There is some mistake. I just wanted to use a room for a meeting and she thinks I requested a spool of printing ink cartridge.

I explain.