In spring 2008 I was completely miserable. I was
dating a drippingly gorgeous classy creature from overseas who was as psychotic
as she was stunningly aesthetic. She would hurl domestic bric-a-brac (or rather
just bricks) at me after sex. She accused
me incessantly of infidelity, faked a pregnancy informing me that I would have
to marry her. She rented an apartment in
a beautiful historic house on Moss Ave from a crazy old dotard. Sometime that
spring it got to the point where I told her we weren’t going to have sex
anymore because she would verbally explode afterwards.
Finally I laid down a caveat where whenever she began
Sylvia-Plathing out of control I would leave her apartment and go home without
a word.
My job was no better. While I had an exceptional
rapport with the bulk of the students’ my colleagues continued to carp and
connive (note: it’s not a good idea to work for a University that’s as historically
as culturally internecine as it is nepotistic). I was getting fucked over just
for doing my job and, at the same time, 30 percent of my take-home capital was
going back to pay off loans accrued from attending the same institution where
now worked (the other 70 percent went for Rent and booze).I smiled all the
fucking time but I was miserable as shit at my work. I went from writing 500,000 words a year just
four years prior to writing less than ten thou. Why write when you already have
a gargantuan corpus and you can’t do anything right anyway? Why write when you
can saunter around drunk all the time. Why read when you can click on your
computer and lose yourself in the uninhibited world of imminent splashes of
flesh for hours on end.
The Murphy bed in my apartment broke (take a wild conjecture how) and I pillaged the alleyways behind frat row and found three mattresses which later turned out to be infested with bed bugs. I had pocks all over my body. Some days I would go on a walk with Dallas, the dwarf-sized MFA student who had no arms and scooted around campus in what looked like a miniature shopping cart being escorted with his dog.
Dallas could be kinda a smart-ass, especially when someone was taking a dump in the handicap stall and he would tell them to get the hell out. Still he was always an inspiration. I never heard him bitch about the body he found himself strapped into for a short period of time, and I miss him.
I found Uncle Mike again in early May--the story goes like this: Little David (exhausted as fuck, sick of working extra early morning hours at the university where he graduated from and not getting any sort of pay differential whatsoever other than an "attaboy") works a grueling 8pm-til-5am shift, stays up and writes for five hours, gets a couple of beers in his system to rejuvenate his vitality then at ten he decides to traipse back to the Student center at the university where he graduated from (and is still currently employed) to check his e-mail and make a payment on his forever draining student loan bills. When he arrives at the student center he inadvertently saunters into a janitor whom he doesn't see, or rather, the janitor is windexing the window of the transparent door he is currently walking through and when the janitor (who in all fairness was probably having a hard day too, but who, in all fairness gets paid overtime for his menial labor and did not graduate from/or take out a shit ton of student loans to attend the university where the two of us are now employed).... As I am walking through the door the janitor snaps at me, tells me that I should have seen that he is windexing the door and that I could have used the other door. I politely apologize, tell him that I apologize, tell him that I didn't see him. tell him that I am sorry. The janitor then snaps at me, recycles my apology back into my face like an irascible minor league coach arguing balls and strikes with the home plate umpire before informing me that I should watch where I am going, informing me that this better be the last time I accidentally amble into him.
Something then happens and I snap back. I've always had difficulty snapping. I have always had difficulty allowing the pent-up oppressed emotional magma to erupt through the Vesuvius of my lips. But maybe it was because of lack of daylight or the migraine of the relationship I was in at that time or the feeling of having failed, something welled up inside of me coercing my entire anatomy to transition into a pissed of exclamatory mark. I tell him that I dished out a laboring forty-thousand in arrears and that he just can't go off on alumni's (albeit ones who are broke) like that. I tell him that he needs to treat people with respect and that he is not going to talk like that to students again. The janitor continues to verbally chisel out harangues into my face and the next thing I know I reach out and strip his name tag off his shirt, hurtling it to the ground in disgust before vacating the building only to find myself minutes later bent over smoking cigarettes with the dwarf size MFA student who doesn't have any arms (hands sprout out of his shoulders like butterfly wings) crying, wishing there was a way to, as I did with the flea-infested furniture in my apartment, jettison all the anger and heartache and the hurt swilling below my shoulders like a see through the torso and tummy of a dirty washing machine.
I then walked around in a daze, catching a glimpse of the beautiful soccer mom who I made love to last summer as she idled her minivan at a light en route to picking up her progeny. I see my friend Tracy who was a dear friend of my late fathers and beautiful eye-lidded Karen who works with my mother. I had been up for at least thirty-five hours and was emotionally enervated when eventually I found myself saddled on the door step of the house I had left two years before.
When he answered the door the first word I said to him was Allah-u-Abha.
The most beautiful word I have ever heard.
It has been two years almost to the date when I had
called Uncle Mike on the phone informing him that I was moving out. We hugged
each other with open arms, the poetic prodigal son returning to the steps of
his spiritual spring father.
When I entered his living room the house we had
moved into together it was like nothing had changed. I gave him an hour long backrub
while we caught up. I told him how much I despised my job. I told him how my career as a writer was
going nowhere and how I was always broke. Uncle Mike had aged. His goatee and
hair was completely gray. He had put on maybe fifty pounds. He looked more
frail, his skin the color of type-set braille.
His spirits and laughter had not diminished in the
slightest.
Mike then told me that he had a roommate and that he
was a foster parent with PARC and that Anthony lived upstairs. He called
Anthony down for meds informing him that I was the one who owned the basketball
hoop in the backyard.
I then took Uncle Mike out for dinner at Steak and
Shake and we went on one of our epic long drives. I don’t know if I ever formally apologized
for deserting him. Somehow it didn’t seem to matter. We talked about the local Baha’is and the
crazy times we had when we crashed together. I told him how much I missed his
cooking. Uncle Mike laughed and we had assured me that there hadn’t been any
more bats in the house since I left.
When he arrived back at his place I told him that I
missed his lawn (takes about five hours to mow) and that I would be back the
next day to mow it. Mike asked me to help him up the stairs and then told me to
wait in the kitchen, stating that he had something for me. He clattered around
in the dining room and came out a minute later handing me a wad of keys, telling
me to stop by anytime. That I was always welcomed at the abode I had abandoned.
Even if I wanted to come over and just crash in my bedroom for a couple of
hours.
He told me that I was welcome anytime.
After all this time Frodo finally returned to be with Gandalf once again.
***
Thus the old man and the hippie were united once
again. I still lived in my apartment and
worked at Bradley. During the day when Mike was at work I would walk over to Howard’
End and attack the lawn. I usually saw
Mike once or twice a week and we would always go for a long drive. He was
gaining more weight. He had difficulty walking. A couple of our drives I was
worried he would drive off the road, which one time he did.
Still his spirits were untarnished. The laughter and
banter that has always existed between us had resumed. It felt like old times.
I found my friend again.
One night in early December Mike (perhaps in all his
premonition) insisted on buying 80 dollars worth of groceries for my apartment.
I told him not to. He insisted. I learned a long time ago not to argue with his
requests.
It was a good time. I was (finally) getting my ass
out of debt. I just purchased $600 worth
of Christmas presents including a gift for a childhood friend I had a tiff with an hadn’t
spoken to in over three years. I still
hated my job. Was still treated with disdain from my fellow colleagues. The
lucid December night after Mike randomly purchased two months’ worth of
provisions I arrive into work. As I walked in seated in the entrance to the
building were I have composed hundreds of pages over the last five years
were the Dean
of the department and the hermaphroditic Human resource cunt who had a penis.
They ask if they could speak with me. They hand me a
letter. They call security to have me ushered out of the building, which I
declined, telling them I’m not going to let my students and fellow workers see their
boss like this, telling them that I will go out the back door. A week earlier I
had accumulated the courage to go to Human Resource and point out discrepancies
with pay check.
Now, I was being dismissed on unfounded allegations.
I found
myself outside that night, exiled from the university I attended, the
university that has my name adorned on a plaque in their central hall. The university
I had given my balls to over the years. and had been affiliated with for over a decade.
I found myself all alone
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