Monday won't come soon enough

Back before I moved from Colorado I was convicted of a DUI. Over the course of my state-sanctioned rehabilitation I told the support group that 'you're my only friends.' I said it halfheartedly and one guy seriously believed me. I believed his belief; it was stronger than my belief in myself. At that time my family consisted of a cohort of graduate students struggling through a tough program, finding jobs, finding love, marrying, and moving on. I had been there 4 years, completed my comprehensive exams, and watched my close friends and professors fade into their busy schedules.

I moved to Muncie. Alone, hating my job, my students hating me, I began to play this game. Somewhere along the line the job ended. I ended it early. I gave up on writing a dissertation, thumbed my nose at academia and moved back home.

Home is where you hang your hat.

I live on the cusp of poverty, and I give all my kind words to an itinerant group of online students at the university of phoenix. The pay is paltry. It lacks benefits. I enjoy their stories and I share mine. I call the job 'occupational therapy,' owing to the subject matter. Every day feels like practice for a job interview. 'How do we balance task and social communication?' I say in a thousand different ways. Some students are widowers. Others await their husband's return from Afghanistan. So many soldiers, so many military wives. Godly and good people. I feel foolish teaching them, knowing that my beliefs are antithetical to their own. It will show up as organizational communication on their transcript. I soak myself in beer, and I attempt to make 'funnies.' I teach and I learn.

The last couple of weeks had me moving, meeting my neighbors' new friend, flirting, fighting, drinking, and saying some pretty mean 'truths' in all their faces. I've watched the sun come up every night this weekend. Brief images of lucidity are burned in my mind. Speaking with my life-long friend's girlfriend as moans leak out from behind a closed door. A veiled comment about revenge sex. Being a curious bystander to my life out of control. I keep speaking to them about 'our solar system' and how the new planet is upsetting the balance. I scream at them because the walls and the floors are thin, and I can't help but be part of a situation to which I wasn't invited. I press my friends' 'buttons.' My friend chokes me and kisses the girl that I thought liked me. I feel used. Thumping of shoes stomping overhead, giggles coming from a bed full of naked bodies, and me retaining my sanity by pretending that I'm talking to people who aren't there. Practicing my 'I hate you; you're trash; go away.' Trying to convince myself that I have a hold on my life, a life that is careening out of my control. I scrub years of black hair care products from an old tub. The toilet clogs on rumors alone. Biracial children play outside on an old coal bin. I look outside a world apart.

The highs and lows that I've felt are intoxicating. Having romantic interests built on false promises taken away. Watching this romantic love interest get naked and head into a darkened room with other men. Seething with anger. Doting and kneeling next to a girl puffing her cigarette, indifferent. Finding myself disgusted by a woman to whom I was sold and who I've progressively alienated by my whirlwind of emotions and odd humor. Throwing my money at a stripper who is missing a hand, smiling uncontrollably at a moment in my life that is stranger than make-believe. Repeating like a broken record that I'm happy. I watched a white man pay for a black man to have sex with his girlfriend. I watched us watch the act. I cheered the guy on. It was swingers night at PTs. I was, once again, trying to upset my friend. I pushed. I pushed. In the middle of a strip club, I danced. I motion to the women around me to come dance. Nobody is dancing but me and the strippers. He blew up. I didn't know what I was doing. We talked. He hugged me. I went to bed and awoke to a locked door behind which are simple possessions: a coat, a hat, and some gloves. I placed a five on my face and laid across the stage as the stripper with a stump for a hand picked it off with her crotch. It wasn't for me. It was a show, a show for a woman who entered my life by way of my neighbors, who entered my life by way of my friends, who was sitting with a friend of ours, the same friend who choked me the night before. I gave up on that situation, but I couldn't help but put on a performance of indifference, of suave, macho indifference. I dance, leave a trail of singles on stage for the stripper with a stump for a hand. I feel a bond with her through her deformity. I stare and I smile. She smiles at the money falling out of my hand. "In God we trust" the money says as it floats to the stage floor. I trust that what I'm doing is sending a message. 'I'm better than you.' I want my actions to say to the woman sitting with my friend. It's all a show. I'm with a stripper on a stage.

I can't hide from this situation. I can't park my car down the street, dim the lights, and avoid contact with these people. They stomp overhead. I leave messages trying to extract my belongings from behind a locked door. Subtly, I'm being held at arm's length, forced to watch a life that I wish I could have occur without me. I'm jealous, possessive, obsessive, and I find solace in writing things, imagining myself someone else. I pretend that I'm back on stage, speaking to the crowd, being adored, walking through a forest of mirrors. The sounds leak through the floor. I roll in bed. I play the music loud. I scream at the walls and convince myself that I'm OK and it's they who are going to get burned, they who have upset a balance, they who have me as a contrapuntal contraption, screaming my jokes, drinking their beer, buying more, fading in and out of consciousness, fading in and out of relevance. I sit on the floor as the party goes on, and I begin telling myself that 'It's not me. It's all in my head.' I believe as much but it's bigger than me.

I was so used to living alone. I was so used to not caring about the sounds leaking through the floor. I live in a house that is not my own, I rent from a life-long friend who seeks to control his world and by extension mine. He works with the unfortunate, the poor who become victims of drug abuse, who get processed by a system that turns people into numbers and feelings into psychology. I work with people. I work with ideas. I play my Renaissance humanism card; it's dog-eared and fading with overuse like a teamster's union card.

I can't wait for Monday. I can't wait to hear your voices. But we're all just pixels and voices to each other, and I'll take these pixels over the fleshy reality that I've been struggling through of late. I don't have friends. I have a friend through whom I have made other friends. I feel like I'm kept around for the sake of his menagerie, and I hate this sense that my life is not my own. They won't even call me by my name. 'Jay,' they say. It's Jason. She sarcastically corrects herself. 'Jason,' she says slowly with a mischievous grin. I say nothing. I fade away. I interject stupid philosophy, book learning that nobody wants to hear. I'm obsolete. I'm an oddity. I'm a curio to my worldly friends. My nose in a book, theirs in a travel guide to Cuba. I've lived so long alone that I convince myself that they're trash, that they're not worth my time. If they won't go away I will.

Monday won't come soon enough.