My status as a part time contributor to the GNP has recently been the cause of some fiscal anxiety. Unwilling to truly alter my lifestyle or spending habits in any meaningful way, I decided that it was about time I began to seek out additional underemployment.
On Monday morning, after a hard weekend of doing nothing in the countryside, my mother drove me to the train station. We discussed this situation at length, and in the end I determined that while I was open to having another job, in no way was I really willing to apply for this mythical position or seek it out in any fashion.
“I’ll just get another job when someone randomly offers me one.” I may or may not have been quoted as saying.
On Monday evening, I got a phone call from a woman who sounded very old. She said I had sent her my resume (I had?) and she was basically calling to offer me a job in a bakery. Always having desired to work amongst butter vessels, I readily agreed to meet with her the next morning. I met with her at the prescribed time, and promptly offered my services to her. How could I not? She is in her eighties, is supremely glamorous and wise cracking, and has a much storied history which she is only too happy to share with me. Moreover, her partner in the bread making business is a woman who is equally old and fetching, and who I can only deduce is her lesbian lover. The office has framed photos of Clark Gable adorning its bright yellow walls. The woman is kind of like the foul mouthed, alluring grandmother I used to have before she went batshit and died.
Today was my first day of sorting out her messy financial affairs while sprouting the first seeds of a cake eating problem. It was a wonderful day in many ways, including the dramatic firing of an embezzler. The best moment came at the end of the day, however, when I went outside to get on my bike and go home. I had parked my trusty machine in front of the gentleman’s club next door early this morning. I returned to find it just where I had left it. As soon as I approached, the bouncer from the titty bar rushed over to me and cautioned me against parking my bike in this spot in the future.
“Someone was trying to fuck with your bike, but I managed to chase him off.”
I thanked the bouncer profusely for thwarting the thievery, but on closer inspection I saw that my rear tire was completely deflated and the valve was utterly destroyed.
I walked the bike for several miles, and then made an idiot of myself and no doubt delayed the afternoon commutes of many Chicagoans as I cajoled a bus driver into helping me put the bike on the bus’s front rack. Intending to take it directly to my friendly local bike shop, I arrived only to find it closed. Instead I went and ate a delicious and affordable vegetarian bahn mi, extra spicy.
It doesn’t escape my notice that the lifestyle I was angling for all along in New York has pretty much been handed to me on a plate here in Chicago, and I am grateful.
