Quittin' School and Goin' to Work and Never Goin' Fishin'

I have $550 in my bank account. When I came back from NYC five days ago, I had just over $700. It amazes me how much you can spend in a night on the town, even here in reasonable Madison, Wisconsin. The other night, I hit the Tyme machine on the way to the Hideaway and took out $60, figuring it would get me through most of this week. The next day I reached into my drinking pants, which I found splayed across the dining room table, and inside I discovered a small wad of singles. $4 in total. Where does it go? I vaguely remember stopping at Taco Bell on State Street on the way home.

I only have one Taco Bell order: 2 Nachos, 2 Soft Tacos, a Large Dr. Pepper*: $3.93. So that doesn't explain it. It'll go down as another unsolved case from the boozehound files.

Rent is due the day after tomorrow. That's a check for $230.

That'll take me down to $320 with no source of revenue in the foreseeable future. Kind of exciting. I have to admit it -- I've been spoiled these last few years. Since I moved out of the dorm and went off the University meal plan at the end of sophomore year, my pop has been sending me $600 a month for expenses. For my last five semesters, I also worked about 12 hours a week at the Athletic Ticket Office, which brought in another 200 clams a month. $800 a month in Madison leaves you in a pretty decent place on the economic food chain. I've still managed to bounce checks like a man with two weeks to live, but that was more due to mismanagement and recklessness than it was to poverty.

I'm writing this in my new journal from the Rathskeller in the Memorial Union. If I'm up to it, later I'll swing by Helen C. White (my ID is still valid through tomorrow) and post it to the computer message board. We have two Unions here at UW-Madison, Memorial Union and Union South. Union South is a sterile building with all the charm of an airplane hangar, and there's really no reason to go there except that it has some cool games and a bowling alley. Memorial Union is the one. It's a huge old building with decorated archways and lots of wood everywhere. When you sit here like this, sometimes you can almost feel the ghosts walking by you, accidentally spilling some of their ghost beer on your shoulder.

I'm digging into a fucking incredible burrito from the little Mexican section of the Rathskeller cafeteria. It's too big to eat Burrito-style, so I've massacred it with my plastic knife and fork, and I'm basically eating it like a salad. It's so good I want to cry. I've got a beer here, my second, and it's 4:30 pm. As I survey the room, I'd say 75% of the kids in here are drinking. Knocking 'em back at 4:30 on a Tuesday afternoon; what better time or cause is there than that? Second semester doesn't start for another three weeks, and most of the continuing students are home with their parents for the holidays.

The smart ones are here at the Union with me.

The juke box here in the Rat is a weird mix of classic songs from the 60's and 70's and newly-minted-classic songs from the last five years or so. Right now Public Enemy's "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos" is playing. Good song, one that almost demands to be sung along with. There are two light-skinned African-American dudes standing right next to the jukebox. One of them is lip-synching the entire song to his buddy, and he's absolutely got it nailed. He hasn't missed a word, and he's gesturing emphatically as if he himself wrote the lyrics this morning. His buddy is bobbing his head unenthusiastically in support, and looking a bit embarrassed.

I guess a non-working stiff like me with $320 to his name should be out pounding the prairie pavement or at least making some phone calls, but to be honest I just haven't had it in me yet. It's been around 15 degrees outside the last couple of days and I've been all too happy to sleep in my warm closet until noon, eat some cereal, and then head out around 2 o'clock to do nothing in particular. Today nothing is sitting in the Rat alone, working on a crossword** in a Daily Cardinal from last semester.

Now "Mandinka" by Sinead O'Connor is playing. Another good song. Taking me back at least three years with that one. Before she was the huge, fake-tear-crying-in-the-video star she is today.

I haven't been completely inactive on the job front. I'm currently sitting on two leads. They both have their downsides, though, and I guess that's why I'm still sitting on 'em.

The first lead is a phone number for Tom Oates, the sports editor at the Wisconsin State Journal. I got the number from a kid named John Lesniak who sat next to me in my feature writing class. John Lesniak is one funny bastard. At least three times during that semester, he had me biting my cheek to prevent a guffaw that would have incriminated us both in front of a classroom of 20. John's been working at the State Journal all through college. He's pretty much got a job there locked up if he wants it. I ran into him at a bar, I believe it was the Church Key, about a month before graduation. We promised to stay in touch and he gave me Oates's number and said something about putting in a good word for me. So what's the problem?

1) Is it wrong to follow up on a friend's drunken offer of career assistance?

2) I am terrified to work at a real newspaper. It's what I went to school for, sure, but I've never actually done it. My only experience in actual journalism was when I interned out at WKOW-TV, working on the evening news. My ex-GF had hooked me up with that opportunity, and I fucked it up badly. One day I just stopped going, never called anybody, never saw any of them again. I wasn't ever really comfortable out there -- real newspeople scare the crap out of me.

So that situation is a little dicey. I feel like they'd never hire me, and if they did, they'd regret it. The other opportunity is unappealing for different reasons. It comes from my high school and now post-college buddy Max, who's been slinging hash and cleaning dishes at the UW hospital food service department for the last six months in order to establish residency for Law School. He's given me the number of one Verna Richardson, who's the hiring manager at the hospital. I think I could pretty much definitely get this job. But Max has not painted a pretty picture of the work itself. It's one thing to take a job doing gruesome physical labor when you have Law School waiting for you at the end of the rainbow. It's another thing altogether when you're entering the Real World for the first time and you know in your heart you should probably be looking for something better. Or at least something that could lead to something better.

So I have these two phone numbers staring back at me from my journal. I meant to call Oates this morning, but I chickened out. I've sort of promised myself that I won't call the hospital until I at least explore the one Actual Journalism Job Opportunity that's come my way. I don't want to fall into the trap of taking a shit job just because it's there -- the next time I look up it'll be the year 2000 and I'll still be putting together pre-cooked meals for people with double hernias.

However, I am gonna need some money at some point.

Maybe this career stuff is hard for me because I've never envisioned any of it. I've never thought, someday I could be X if I'm willing to start out as Y and put in the work to become Z first. I've never even thought about becoming X. My dreams never involve a job. For instance, if you asked me right now what I want out of life, I'd give you this naive hippie answer:

I want to live in a house somewhere, a Big Pink type house, with all my friends and our girls. I want to grill outside through November, and I want to wear flannel shirts when it gets cool. I want to sit in a room by myself writing stories for about two hours a day, and I want to sit in another room writing stories with my friends for two hours a day. Once every week or so, but not at a specific time, I want us alI to read our stories to each other. I want these stories to be good, probably better than they would ever actually be, but I want them to be amateurish enough to ensure they'd never find a market. I want to toss 165 gram frisbees outside when it's warm enough. I want there to be sex, but not bullshit commune everybody's-fucking-everybody sex, where you walk in on your buddy Nate giving it to your girl and you're not supposed to get upset. I'm far too sensitive for that; this will be one woman to a man and vice versa. I want there to be schedule for chores that has some structure to it, but I also want some flexibility. For instance, if Tuesday is my day on dishes and Thursday is your day on laundry, and the Knicks are playing on TV Tuesday night, I want to be able to switch with you if you're OK with it. I don't want to have to scratch our names off the bulletin board or anything, I just want to be able to arrange it verbally. I want a basement with a ping pong table and I want a porch with a swing. I want to open our house to our friends and their friends when they're in town. I don't want to have to check in with anybody about anything, ever. If I want to take a nap at 3 o'clock on a Monday afternoon, I don't want anybody else judging me about it. I don't want to worry about nice clothes or fancy cars or any of that, I really don't. As for money, I want there to be enough to buy beer and food and pay the cable and electric and phone bills, and I want some left over after that.

But that's all long-term. Right now that fucking Nirvana song is playing for the third time today, and I think that's my cue to go get my third beer. It's 5:17 pm, I'm 22 years old, and I have $320 burning a hole in my pocket.

Tomorrow I'll pick up the phone.

* OK, sometimes I'll sub a Bean Burrito for one of the Soft Tacos, but they're both 59 cents, so the price would still be $3.93 if I went that route on Saturday night.

** I don't know how they pulled it off, but The Daily Cardinal, one of our student papers, has obtained the rights to old NYT crossword puzzles, which now appear in the Cardinal every day.

No money, no job, no rent. Hey, I'm back to normal.

Well, I'm back from NYC, I do believe I've had enough. This was a really strange trip home for me. For the last four Christmases, it was just a quick visit to NYC between semesters. I always knew I had another term waiting for me when I got back to Madison. Stuff was in progress. But this time I'm back to (theoretically) start my career. As what, I don't know. I have a journalism degree from a major university. That and a quarter will get you a game of skee-ball.

When I was home, I had the awkward conversation with my parents about money. It seems I've bled them dry over the past four and a half years, and now they're cutting me off. It actually was fine, I was the one who brought it up. I said, "Pop, thanks for everything you've done for me, from here on out I won't need any money from you." He sighed, and then he said, "That's good, because we have nothing left to give you." That made me feel sad for my parents, like I had broken them financially. But it felt good to be on my own a week out of college, like I was coming out of the gate swinging, ready to pull my own weight. It seemed right. No matter that I have no job and no prospects. I'll figure that out.

Getting cut off made me feel like a man. The last time I talked about becoming a man was in July of last year, when I was one month shy of my 21st birthday. Clyde and I were drinking on the porch at Mifflin Street, and I was lamenting the fact that I couldn't get into bars. We hatched a plan to drive to Canada that night, where the drinking age is 19. My theory was that as you cross the border into Canada, you become a man. You've earned the trust and respect of a nation, even if it's not your own. I began calling Canada "Manada" and I was pulsating with excitement to go. But then we got tired and passed out. When I woke up the next morning, I was still an innocent American boy, nestled securely in my bunk bed, trapped in a land that refused to open its bars to me.

That was a year and a half ago. In that year and a half, almost everybody I know has moved forward in life except me. Here's a quick list:

-Clyde Bowren: in the middle of his second year of law school here in Madison.

-Max Armbruster: accepted into UW law school, working for a year here in Madison to establish Wisconsin residency, so he can save beaucoup tuition money. He's working a crap-ass job in the food service department of the University Hospital, but it's all part of a larger plan, you know?

-Milo Vladek: my roommate; in the middle of his first year of Med School here at Madison.

-DB Everett: graduated with me last week, kind of in the same boat as me in terms of looking for a job. But he's got his shit together and I'm sure he'll end up going to law school or something.

-Joe Wladislaw: has one more semester to go to finish his mechanical engineering degree, and he's already interviewed at a bunch of places. In six months, he'll be taking home $35 or 40 K a year, easy.

-Bob Jefferson: same as Joe.

-Vic Franco: same as Joe and Bob, but he has two semesters left because he co-oped for two semesters.

So now when we all go out drinking, there's a note of desperation in it for me. They're all still on their educational path to success, I'm a working stiff. Or not even.

Christmas itself was fine. My sis got me a little journal to write in, I'm pretty excited about that. One of my goals is to write in that thing every day.

But first, I gotta say, I am excited about being an adult. I can do whatever the hell I please, and I owe no explanation to anybody for it. So far, what's pleased me is drinking almost every night. To the point of drunkenness every other night.

Yesterday I went over to Clyde's apartment at about 2 pm. It was an unseasonably mild day, it may have hit 35 degrees or so. But it was rainy and dark and overall a great day to sit inside watching movies and getting drunk. So Clyde and his brother and Vic and I watched Barfly and got drunk.

Barfly is an excellent movie, I can't believe I never saw it before. Mickey Rourke is hilarious. The main character is a poet who pretty much drinks his life away day after day in L.A. bars. After the movie, a drunk Clyde couldn't stop repeating this one line, "Endurance is more important than truth." We kept drinking in an attempt to prove the movie right.

But eventually my endurance ran out and I headed home. I got back to my apartment (which I share with Milo, Joe, Bob, Vic, and another dude named Vernon Pinkley) around 9, and Max was over, looking to see if anybody wanted to go out drinking. I was pretty tired, but the movie had inspired something in me, so I thought I'd weigh my options.

"We just saw Barfly," I said. "Have you ever seen it?"

"Yeah, it's not bad," Max said. "Have you ever read Bukowski?"

I hadn't even heard of him, nor did I know what Max was talking about.

"Is he related to Frank Brickowski?" I asked sarcastically.

"No, he's the writer who the movie's based on," Max said. "You should read his stuff. Very honest. He really lives like that."

I was in no mood for an education, so I excused myself and went upstairs.

When I got up to my room, which is actually just a closet with a bed in it, I opened up my new journal and decided I was going to write something. The first page was an inscription from my sister, so I opened it to the second page, which was nice and clean and ready for me to throw down some brilliant words on it. But nothing came. So I turned the page back to the inscription and read it again.

"To Hans

X-Mas 91

for your first sportswriting assigments and other demented things from the never-never land in your fine little brain

love you doll!

xx ya sistah"

That's what it said. It made me feel special, like I was destined for something. I decided that if I couldn't just start spitting out an award-winning story right there, at least I could jot down a few practical thoughts to help me in these first few weeks of manhood. Here's what I wrote:

GOALS:

1. Go to the library and learn all about cars. If I don't have a job, or if my job is easy, this is the moment in my life to catch up on all sorts of things that I've always wanted to do. To educate myself where others have failed to educate me. And the first thing I want to know about is cars. How they work, how to fix them, all that shit.

2. Write in the journal every day. Who knows, I may never have this much time or freedom again.

3. Find a university job so I can have access to the gym and play hoops.

4. Look for a journalism job?

5.

At this point, I ran out of ideas. I left it off there and ran downstairs to see if Max was still around, and if he still wanted to go out. He was, and he did.

"How about the Hideaway?" I asked. The Pinckney Street Hideaway was a little bar tucked over by the State Capitol Building. You could get $3 pitchers of Leinenkugel’s there on weeknights, and on weekends they were still only $4.

"Sounds good," he said. And I agreed. It did sound good.

I woke up this morning in a pool of sweat, not remembering much from after we got to the bar. But something tells me it was worth it.

Without Honors

Well, it's official, I am a college graduate.

This is the fourth graduation of my life.

Graduation One, 5th grade: I was the best student in my class. My pop bought me a $75 polyester suit from Mays' department store just for the occasion. Looking back, I bet my mom put him up to that.

Graduation Two, 8th grade: I was just happy that it was over. Don't even really remember the ceremony.

Graduation Three, High School: this was the one I remember best. Lots of friends around, a real feeling of accomplishment in the air, along with a weird sense that things were about to change forever. For me, the thing I remember best was the fear that I wouldn't get called to the stage for my fake diploma because I had failed too many classes. My stomach was turning all day. Especially after my girlfriend's essay was chosen by Mr. McCourt as some super-outstanding work of literature and she got to read it at the ceremony in front of 2000 people or whatever it was. If my name had not been called after that, I think I would have died on the spot. Or just excused myself and never come back, never spoken to any of my friends again. But it all worked out.

And now Graduation Four, College. Again I took it down to the wire. I signed up for a mid-level Geology class this semester and I blew it off nearly every single time it met. I don't know what I was thinking. I guess I took the class because I had an intro level Geology course sophomore year and I dug it. Got an A, read some awesome papers by Stephen Jay Gould, figured maybe Geology was my bag. It turned out not to be, and I really had trouble concentrating this semester. It was a weird six months, you know?

So I pretty much got destroyed by this class because I didn't go. And I was actually worried that I might fail. If I failed, I was graduationally fucked on two different levels: one, I needed the class for my science requirement, and two, I needed the three credits to meet the minimum of 120 overall needed to graduate.

It was touch and go. Adding to the stress was the fact that my whole fractured family was coming out here for my graduation. Mom, Pop, Sis. We haven't all spent a night together under one roof since maybe 1978. Until now. And here I was faced with another potential no-name-call graduation.

I knew they were posting our grades outside the classroom on Monday afternoon, so I hopped on my moped and rode out into the 22 degree day, over to Weeks Hall on Dayton Street. It's only about three blocks from my apartment but I'd rather be frozen solid on the moped for two minutes than frozen solid on foot for ten. These are the lessons learned over 4 and half years in Madison, Wisconsin. I got to Weeks and walked over to where the grades were posted, and I found my social security number on the list. I got a fucking "D" in geology. My first collegiate "D" in my very last course. So my final tally is: 120 credits, 360 grade points. A "B" student on the damn nose.

Then as soon as I managed to exhale and convince myself that I was going to graduate (does a "D" count as a passing grade? my roommate Milo tells me he "thinks it does"), yesterday the kin arrived and brought three suitcases full of familial tension with them. It's been really nice seeing them but to be honest there've already been like twenty-six awkward conversational lulls since they showed up. Still, they deserve to be here so they can see what happened to the $50,000 they laid out over the last four years.

And the ceremony this afternoon was painless. Luckily, my man DB and I got to sit together with the rest of the journalism grads, and we cracked jokes to each other throughout the whole boring thing. Jeff Greenfield gave a speech. Not a bad speech, but for a school this size you'd think they could pull a bigger name. DB had his red cloth on, God Bless Him. Graduating with Honors. Me, Graduating with Relief. Is there a cloth for that?

But we both got our names called and we stopped right in front of Donna Shalala for three seconds and did our stupid little Magic-Bird fist slap maneuver for the entire Field House to see. That was fun. The best moment of the day came when they read out the name "John Belushi" among the graduates.

Tomorrow I'm heading back to NYC with the whole family for Christmas, and I'll be without computer access that whole time (six days). Then I'm coming back here and I guess in the first few days of the New Year I'll decide what I'm going to do with my life.

Should I already have a job?