Monday Morning

I’m sitting here. It’s still Monday morning, just barely, I’ve done sixty-five push-ups, one hundred and five crunch’s, and like, twenty barbell curls. I’ve meditated a half hour, checked email; nothing in the in-box. I hovered over the website that is supposed to be publishing my short story. It’s not up yet. I got on craigslist and checked out used cars, actually Corvette’s which is the best thing in the world to do if you are out of work. Then I watched porn, engaged in porn? What ever. I think this is the second best thing to do when you are out of work and totally broke. It’s better than drinking. I used to drink when I was out of work and it might be said that I was out of work because of the way I drank. Drinking and work or drinking and being out of work became a cycle. It took me a long time to notice that I hate laying brick. Although for the longest time I didn’t know I had a beef with brick. The suddenly I came to the realization that the best part of being a bricklayer wasn’t laying brick and concrete blocks, it wasn’t laying stone or glass block, it has nothing to do with the perceived artistry of hand labor. What I like about bricklaying is that you are out of work a lot. I love the idea of having a job without actually working. It’s not like I got paid for being out of work or that I’d ever made any fat money from the trade, but I got to the place where I could live as a bricklayer working maybe nine or ten months a year. I always loved snow days in school, and the idea carried over to bricklaying. We can’t work in the rain, or when it freezes, which back East, pretty much meant from October to April. Then too there are strikes, lock-outs, recessions, and other so called acts of god. For a burgeoning alcoholic this is the kind of job to have. The trick, if it’s a trick, is to balance spending to unemployment. In the eighties I could live alone, pay rent and stay drunk on unemployment. Back then I had a truck, a motorcycle, and got laid regular. I was living a working class dream. Know thy self, baby.

George Bush has relieved me of any pretext of employment or safety net, I sit here after my busy morning, with the wonder of a new day. I’ve got friends, employed friends, who do more things in one day than I do in an out of work month. The old timers, old bricklayers that is, used to say, “It’s hard to know when to quit when you’re doing nothing.” It’s hard to know when I’ve started too. I sit in this working man palace, a king of all I survey, the control of the kingdom at my fingertips. And this computing thing on my lap. Most likely the laptop is radiating something cancerous to my gonads but what do I care, I’ve spawned. Besides that, I’m positive that there is a micro-chip in the computer on my lap that sends a frequency to my pecker making my most prized possession shrivel like salting a snail. (I’m sure of it. If you don’t believe me, come and check for yourself.)

So I’ve chained myself to this thing in the hopes that something great will materialize. I keep the key close by. I stare out of the windows and welcome the cool sunlight as it animates my empire. Up on Fillmore all manner of motored vehicles run through the stop signs, I marvel and am disappointed that more accidents don’t happen here. Grove Street is a-growl with half full tour busses vomiting diesel fumes plodding up to Alamo Square where world travelers take pictures of old houses. “Which house is the Full House house?” I tell them in all honestly that I don’t know. I don’t tell them that I haven’t had a tv since ’94 because American tourists, already a bit jumpy with self inflicted culture shock, have wild opinions about the humans living here, the orgy loving, butt fucking, dope smoking, godless, degenerate, naked, weirdo’s living on an active earthquake fault. My people. I figure, why give the americans more ammo? I might show them a brick planter box I built but when you start down that trail you again set yourself up as a nut.

There is a guy who works less than me but has a nasty little dog he walks in Alamo Square. He talks to every goddamn tourist every goddamn day and as he talks his dog snarls and nips on the end of it’s leash. He’s the lurking San Francisco ‘character,’ with a dog. And it’s sort of fucked that he’s set himself up as the spokesman for everything San Franciscan. Of course I hate him and his rotten little dog. I should hate him because he’s a fraud but I might hate him because he’s found a niche which brings him attention. People actually listen to this nut, they take pictures of him and his mutt that are now in photo albums in Japan, and Iceland and Argentina, and god only knows where else. I don’t know how long they retain his council but I’ve seen plenty of them in nodding assent. Go figure.

I’ve been working on my shtick. I have been prancing around my apartment lately almost buck naked save the oversized rosary and the Jolly Rodger waving from a two foot long flagpole protruding out of my ass, though slightly more uncomfortable then wearing the rosary I’m getting the hang of clenching the flagpole for extended periods. Pretty soon I’ll be able to shag my hairy ass up the hill without the thing slipping out. What with all of the out of work competition these days it’s becoming ever more difficult to have a working personality.