Diary

Thursday, February 17 (cont'd)

I woke up Wednesday with the writing roaring in my head.

I sprang to the easel.

I don't have to go to work.

Or rather, this is my work.

I made a pot of coffee and wrote for awhile.

I didn't have to drive through Southport in a pea-soup fog. I didn't have to try to shut my own writing off when I got to work.

DRAGGING UP is about combining writing, work, and family. With a year of my retirement in there.

Brenda walked by my door when she got up, and said, "Michael Jackson is in the hospital."

"Ought to hold a virgil," I said.

Later, after she got her coffee, she said, "As the first day of your retirement, your assignment is...," and asked me to take a box to the UPS outlet, to return it, and to sort out a pile of mismatched socks and throw out the culls, give the pairs to the Goodwill store.

"Whiskey tango foxtrot, Chief," I said, as if I was saying, "Roger. Message received and understood."

What the fuck?

Half of what I was told to do at work, I thought Whiskey tango foxtrot, Chief.

It either didn't make a dab of sense or I didn't want to do it.

Flora:

Jack is taking a year of his retirement and we can no longer afford a maid. He's going to be the houseperson in the home. So please don't come after this week.
Thank you for all your help.

Brenda

Q: Let me get the sequence straight.

1. You sold a book. BUKOWSKI NEVER DID THIS.
2. You got invited to a book fair. booksALIVE 2005!
3. You started writing a book, GUY LIT, about promoting BUKOWSKI NEVER DID THIS and writing GUY LIT.
4. You asked Brenda for permission to quit your job and write full-time. To give you, or let you give yourself, an LDA grant. Last ditch attempt.
5. She agreed, but asked you not to piss and moan about how underrated--how fucked-over--you were by industry insiders. By ticketpunchers and apparatchiks.
6. You decided that was good advice, snapped off GUY LIT, and began writing DRAGGING UP.
7. You quit your job.

A: That's correct.

1. I cannibalized GUY LIT, salvaging parts for DRAGGING UP.
2. The old rollback got the maid. Collateral damage.
3. I maintained a voluminous correspondence, with colleagues. And readers. Replying to reader comment in the book.
4. I call the he or she reader it.
5. I do chores around the house. Run errands. I don't have any more time to write, but I have more time to putter around. Writing in my head. This is very revivifying. I needed it. You can only "forsake advancement, fight burnout" for so long, before it grinds you down. Like the nutmeg grinding the nutmeg grater down by the constant attrition of the wood, that is, the nutmeg.
6. I am concentrating on the work, not worrying about the outcome.
7. I am as happy as a dead pig in the sunshine. This is bound to have a positive influence on my work.

Q: How did quitting go?

A: The hard part was discussing it with Brenda. Quitting was easy, after that.

My bossman was a friend. She hired me, she supervised my work.

But I was between her and her boss. Her boss kept getting on her, about me.

I wasn't what they were looking for.

I wasn't aggressive enough, or detail-oriented enough.

My mind wandered. My heart wasn't in the work. I had an annuity.

She had known me for 35 years. Knew my work history.

I thought I could compartmentalize what I was doing, multi-task, be professional, but the outfit I was working for was not professional. They were not only unprofessional, they were disrespectful. They were tattletales and snoops. It was like being in high school. It was like Election. I just didn't like the way they talked to me.

Q: Did you give notice?

A: I was between grants. I didn't have any work in process to turn over to anyone. I quit effective immediately.

Q: You were negotiating the terms of your separation.

A: That's right.

No separation pay, no unemployment.

They fuck you at the drive-through, as Joe Pesci says.

I have no complaints. I went into it with my eyes wide open.

They sent me to Atlanta for a training seminar.

They probably feel like I let them down. I cost them money.

I will have to work again, when my grant runs out.

It will be with some cheapjack, chickenshit outfit.

I'll have to go to the end of the line and work my way back up.

But look at the ones at the top. Look what they had to do to get there, to stay there, is that anything you'd want to do with your life.

This was my life.

If I have to eat shit again, I will.

But I don't have to.

Ha ha, it is to laugh. You eat shit.

Q: You're like the grasshopper fiddling while the ants work.

A: Maybe.