Working on a project that involves the union of the future. Work will be different then as it is different than it was when I had all these jobs.
Spring Forward Fall Back: A work about work
2 days: 2 gas stations: fresh out of high school, washing windshields, adding oil, pumping gas
2 semesters: Michigan State library where a girl named Mickey said, “These are the pants I wore at Woodstock.”
4 months: Kryptonics polyurethane factory in Boulder, where I was a sandblaster & met my first junkie. Would have been second but Gene Morgan of the Air Force & NSA (that I can’t go into) said in Vietnam it made him too sick to get high.
A winter taking care of Granny Rosie, age 94, in Brewer, Maine. She rocked & moaned “I’m no good, I’m no good.” Bonus: showers. We had no hot water.
In Michigan a day or 2 picking apples
or maybe it was the guys I lived with
or maybe we just talked about how to make some money
1 horrible year as a cobbler’s apprentice—something to fall back on, I gritted my teeth & said. When I realized I’d rather pitch a no-hitter on LSD than grind heels, I moved to New York to become a:
Messenger, off & on for a year, through which I:
(a) learned my way around the city; &
(b) met Chuck & Verl of Foto-Ready type shop & eventually became a:
proofreader
copy editor
editor
in the Temple of Unemployment, as Greg Fuchs didn’t quite call it
But not before I’d been a:
Pill dispenser & breakfast preparer for Jimmy Schuyler
Hammer holder & cheerer upper for Ormie, a carpenter with son recently killed in a car wreck a mile down the road from us—we heard the crash on the highway, just as we’d heard him thundering past night after night
Roofer of churches & a house or 2
Deliverer of gay male porn for a women’s trucking company, the best part being my little pink truck with right-hand drive clipping 43 Con Edison & phone company mirrors in my thrilling career down the avenues
Economist in U of North Carolina graduate economics department & ditto at Pace University, where I worked for someone who worked for Lawrence Klein at the Wharton School in Philadelphia the year he won the Nobel Prize. The Phillies were in a pennant race & the first-things-first headline in the local paper read: Phillies Fan Wins Nobel Prize
1 day in 1978 doing inventory at St. Mark’s Books, either so memorably or so forettably that I’m still friends with Bob & Terry
& now
& still
throwing sand at the ocean
Spring Forward Fall Back: A work about work
2 days: 2 gas stations: fresh out of high school, washing windshields, adding oil, pumping gas
2 semesters: Michigan State library where a girl named Mickey said, “These are the pants I wore at Woodstock.”
4 months: Kryptonics polyurethane factory in Boulder, where I was a sandblaster & met my first junkie. Would have been second but Gene Morgan of the Air Force & NSA (that I can’t go into) said in Vietnam it made him too sick to get high.
A winter taking care of Granny Rosie, age 94, in Brewer, Maine. She rocked & moaned “I’m no good, I’m no good.” Bonus: showers. We had no hot water.
In Michigan a day or 2 picking apples
or maybe it was the guys I lived with
or maybe we just talked about how to make some money
1 horrible year as a cobbler’s apprentice—something to fall back on, I gritted my teeth & said. When I realized I’d rather pitch a no-hitter on LSD than grind heels, I moved to New York to become a:
Messenger, off & on for a year, through which I:
(a) learned my way around the city; &
(b) met Chuck & Verl of Foto-Ready type shop & eventually became a:
proofreader
copy editor
editor
in the Temple of Unemployment, as Greg Fuchs didn’t quite call it
But not before I’d been a:
Pill dispenser & breakfast preparer for Jimmy Schuyler
Hammer holder & cheerer upper for Ormie, a carpenter with son recently killed in a car wreck a mile down the road from us—we heard the crash on the highway, just as we’d heard him thundering past night after night
Roofer of churches & a house or 2
Deliverer of gay male porn for a women’s trucking company, the best part being my little pink truck with right-hand drive clipping 43 Con Edison & phone company mirrors in my thrilling career down the avenues
Economist in U of North Carolina graduate economics department & ditto at Pace University, where I worked for someone who worked for Lawrence Klein at the Wharton School in Philadelphia the year he won the Nobel Prize. The Phillies were in a pennant race & the first-things-first headline in the local paper read: Phillies Fan Wins Nobel Prize
1 day in 1978 doing inventory at St. Mark’s Books, either so memorably or so forettably that I’m still friends with Bob & Terry
& now
& still
throwing sand at the ocean