(no subject)
About a month ago, my Dad called me at work and asked that I come over to “discuss my future and my goals”, and how he and my Mom “might be able to help me out.” No hurry, I can come when it suits me. This "invitation" sort of surprised me, but when I remember that I’ve been out of school for three years and have nothing to show for it but a low paying, but pretty cool job and a nice studio apartment in Temescal, it stands to reason that my parents would want to “have a talk.” “Pretty cool jobs” and “nice apartments” translate to “no social security plan” and “homeless any day now” in parent-speak.
I put off our little confabulation about my future for a few weeks, and my parents didn’t press. I thought that generous of them, and presumed that as far as they’re concerned, I’ll approach them when I have a year-by-year outline of what I’ll be doing up to age 60, complete with financial ventures, figures and projected profit.
Sunday was my Dad’s birthday. He retired this year, is in great standing financially, and can look back on a life of drink, drums and divorces (he was a divorce lawyer). Great, declared I. The plan was to go over for lunch, give him his present, and talk about books and politics and how many brown people our military killed this week. Yes, we did that. It’s an invaluable thing to have such an actively inquisitive and just plain smart elder. Then, without a segue, he dropped the question like a vase full of dog nard:
“Where do you see yourself in six months?”
Wow. You know when you’re just completely stunned and you feel the blood run out of your face? My reaction was sort of like that, only blood started squirting out of my eyeballs and acid started foaming up from under my fingernails. Then when I asked him to repeat the question, my kneecaps cracked open in like four places.
SIX MONTHS?! Well, I plan to be a completely changed man. I’ll be world chess champion and I’ll be married to a beautiful, loving woman with three boobs and beer coming out of her nipples. I’ll have made a fortune by patenting a copy machine that actually works the way it’s supposed to, and I’ll have a team of midgets who mow my huge lawn, clean my mansion and serve my meals.
Six months! What kind of question is that? The man’s a sadist, people!
As you may have presumed, I didn’t have an answer. I was on the spot and my Dad has this mysterious ability of disabling my facetious membrane with his mere presence. So I said something really fucking stupid: “Well, my lease won’t be up until 11 months from now, so whatever I do, I’ll have to be in Oakland.”
My Dad wasn't happy with this answer, and to tell the truth, I can't blame him. But c'mon, is that question really fair?! Either way, "the stare" set in as he watched me struggle to find some answers. The stare is a hell of a thing. It's that parental disapproval thing that we're all wired with in early childhood. My Dad asks me a serious question, and when I don't have a very good answer, he listens with this look on his face that I couldn't delineate if I sat for hours trying; it's that deep-seated. I find myself floundering in my attempt to give him a satisfactory answer with all wits at my disposal. Then, right before I'm about to pull out a couple of razor blades and slit my wrists open just to end my fucking misery, he asks the same question in a more complicated way and it starts all over again. He used this throughout high school with great effect.
Anyway, to paraphrase our infernal discussion, they told me they think I’m floundering and of course I know I am. I told them I don’t know if I’m happy with the prospect of teaching college kids about poetry, knowing full well that 99.9% of them don’t give a shit. I don't knock liberal arts professors, because it's true that they have a fire in the belly and it is actually a lot of hard work. I'm just not entirely sure it's what I want to do with most of my time on this planet.
I think I should do some work now. Mean people are impatiently awaiting my phone calls, which will end in them being disappointed because I won't take lots of money from the non-profit I work for and just give it to them because we're swell people. I feel like this entry is pretty depressing, so here's a limerick to even things up:
Papa Jack's work day; how can he trim it?
When it comes to play, he won't lose a minute.
He thinks all day
of how he'd like to say,
"The world is shit, and we're all stuck in it."