A typical sort of evening

 

He awoke to a feeling of dislocation. Some mornings he felt as if his life couldn't possibly be his life. It was scientifically and rationally questionable, but when have human beings ever been rational? He brushed his teeth, shoddily and then swished around some mouth wash while not looking at himself in the mirror. He spat into the sink, ran the water quickly and looked up at his reflection.
What the hell happened to you? he thought.

He was working downtown at a school, assisting the kids with reading. The other day a kid had said to him, "I'm not going to call you Mr. anymore. You have to earn that. I'm just going to call you Smith."

That night, he sat with his friend in the corner of a bar, drinking a dark craft beer that cost eight dollars and tasted like figs.

"The worst part about the school system is that they've taken away corporal punishment. You could just knock some sense into a child if they sassed you."

"Did you feel sassed? Is the word that you're looking for sassed? I feel like you could have done better. Disrespected maybe?"

"That might be better, yes."

"You're saying essentially that you'd like to back to a time when people were basically silverback gorillas? That that was a better time to be alive?"

"Maybe just back to a time when you could rap someone on the knuckles for being a blockhead. And you'd use the word, "blockhead." Not like these kids today who are muttering that they don't give a fuck when you're actually standing there having a conversation with them, but they kind of mumble it, and you have to decide whether you're going to call them out on it, call every kid in the classroom who is mumbling fuck this and fuck that in nearly every corner of the classroom."

"Didn't Giuliani solve the crime problem in New York this way? Don't leave a window cracked or someone will steal the car?"

"Something like that. Leave a broken and the next thing you know the kids will be stealing the Statue of Liberty or something. Damn kids. So what you're saying is that I should confront them for saying fuck."

"No. I said Giuliani used it to stop crime. This isn't crime it's a classroom."

"He did it personally, Giuliani. You know. people always complained about his handling of Katrina, but he really could put in a nice piece of glass."

"I don't know that it was actually him."

"Aw. This is me making my disappointed face."

"What are you going to do about those children?" 

"Should I wow them with my knowledge. Fuck is actually a word of German derivation that means to strike with some amount of force. There is nothing these kids love more than a word etymology session."

"Who can blame them?"

"Not me. I was the same way at 14."

They drink their beers and scan the room. He wipes the condensation ring off the table with the edge of his sweatshirt, an old habit from growing up in a house where everything was made from authentic hardwood.

"How is your job?" his friend asked.

"It feels beneath me."

"It feels beneath you? You realize you have a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, right?  You should be paying these people for the privilege or writing something on your resume. Do you think the bards of old?"

"Bards of old?"

"Yes, the singers in olden times who used to spread the news and Homeric tales of wonder to the gathered peoples."

"Did they use a harp or  a mandolin?"

"Don't try to get me caught up in semantics. Do you think these guys went to a school and got a degree in songsmithing?"

"Songsmithing."

"Yes. The writing and crafting of songs. It's in the OED page 946."

"That's not even remotely accurate."

"These guys went around from kingdom to kingdom and sang for their bread. They didn't apprentice with other bards and critique one another's songs. Oh, I think your pitch was a bit off there, maybe try strumming the harp for half a beat longer. No."

He walked home on streets covered in light--lights from store windows, from taxis, from the street lights overhead. His whole world was swathed in light. At times, when his creative energy would sap, he would start grasping at straws looking for a reason that he felt his life slipping through his fingers like water from a creek. Perhaps it was because their was too much artificial light. He'd read studies about people going crazy when they were exposed to too much light over a long period of time. What he needed to do was see if the could apply for a fellowship on a submarine. Maybe taking a trip underneath the seas to somewhere dark would rekindle his imagination and allow him to write a novel that would change the face of American literature. He doubted it though. Mostly, if he was on a submarine he figured he would eat bag after bag of tortilla chips and stare out the window at the darkness, hoping for something to appear to distract him from the boredom of being on a submarine.

He lived in a small apartment with two cats, who's names were Humprhy and Bogart though sometimes he wished he'd named something better like Jingles and Mr. Kitty. The cats were his deepest and most intimate friends with whom he shared all of his secrets. In this way his life resembled a Murukami novel, though he hoped it wasn't as poorly written.

Sometimes he'd go next door if he heard the television on and knock on his neighbor's door. They'd slept together for a few months before she lost interest in him, citing his lack of motivation, chivalry, and the fact that he was a teeth grinder--a sound which annoyed her immensely. He thought that fault should have been forgivable. This particular evening, a cold and clear evening, grey outlines of clouds visible above fire escapes, one or two very bright stars, a stray cat mewling in the alley at a trash can--he knocked expectantly.