Which Is Where We Are Now

I’m in college taking a losy-goosey class on websites. The technology and students are both so green that students just do anything — kind of fumbling around, but not necessarily lazy — and that’s fine. There is an aspect of student government involved; they have some students from my team pose for a cardboard cutout poster to represent something to the students.

It’s the next morning. I’m busy with little things to get ready for school and I’m late. When I get to school I realize I’ve forgotten my books. I’ve also forgot something of Brian’s. Rather, Brian forgot something and I feel responsible for helping him with it. I don’t want to go back and bother with it. “Can I manage without going back just today?” I wonder.

The Asian in our team committed suicide. So, there are more important things than stupid school. I’m early to school. I have gobs of time before class. I’m still deciding whether I have to go back. Meanwhile, I dispose of the guy’s clothes (or my clothes). I throw them on the concrete floor. This classroom resembles a home depot garden center.
Oh wait, they even have a yellow dispensery for clothes. Good, I can put them there. They’ve put an out of order sign on the cardboard cutout and blackened out the Asian

Back in my dorm room, I see they’ve rewritten the html text. It was a big book even before the revision. They’ve added a couple sections on evolution. This is the school’s paltry attempt to address the existential crisis brought on by the suicide. Lame. They are ought give it up and honestly take up spirituality to and completely face the chasm along with the studentry.

Perhaps I do go back. But then, I don’t get the books there anyway or the books don’t amount to much — one of them is for American History (I’m reading Zinn at the moment) .

I’m getting ideas to do things. They are represented as flowers and clothing. I worry about being tied up in them.

I have a knife and cut myself out of them. I see that I have the right to be free and to have an inexhaustible supply of flowers and thread.

I’m hanging around. This nice druggy guy comes by. We drive around a little bit. He asks borrow my car, cell, and some money. He’s just going to take a nap then return them to me. I agree. I take a nap. After I wake up he hasn’t returned with it.

I want to call him but I don’t have my cell phone. That’s when I start getting suspicious. It’s been a while and he’s not back and I have no way of getting in touch with him.

So, I file the police report. I met a woman on the way out. We talk. I’d like to be lovely with her. Then I realize I don’t have a lot of things she’d expect me to have. Then I realize I never would have meet her if I hadn’t been in my situation. At some point we are hanging out in the back of a moving flatbed pickup. She helps explain to new cartography in which earth no longer seems round and explains how atoms become capsulized. I can see what we are talking about scribbled in the air as we discuss it.

I’m at my parents’ home. I bump into Mom; she asks if I’m going to do a specific thing. I’m embarrassed because I don’t have my car to do it. The same embarrassing situation happens with Dad and Brian. It’s getting to he point I’ll need to confess. Then I hear my guitar.

It’s the guy. I go and get my guitar from him. Then he gives me my car keys. Then I go to my room and see my cash on the floor. It’s all returned to me.

We get in the car to drive him home.

“First,” I tell him, “we have to go to the police station to take back the stolen car report.”

“So, you filled a stolen car report on me?”

“Yes… How how does that make you feel?”

“I thought we were buddies.”

“Well I trusted you until I realized I didn’t know how to get in touch with you.”

Then I realized I could have called my own phone to talk to him. Well, it’s going to be hard to have him think well of me 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.