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.