Scott Nearing said in the College of Hard Knocks, an expulsion is often a promotion.

When I rusticated myself from Tulane, my career as a writer began.

Likewise, when I got fired for stealing, and we had to move, I got a job as a technical writer, and lifted myself out of hourly manual labor jobs into white-collar, salaried employment. Professional employment. Or what I call paraprofessional employment.

Traditionally, medicine, law, the clergy, or the military are professions.

Artist is almost the opposite of a profession. An artist doesn't behave rationally, in the economic sense. The concept of economic man does not apply to the artist.

Expulsions are promotions. Winners are losers. And losers are winners.

We moved in with Granny Brown, in Uncle Wayne's bedroom. Wayne was living in a doublewide on the lot of Gerald's church, in Callaway, selling real estate. (A church bought the lot and built a church on it. The family call it "Gerald's church.")

I looked for a job.

I wasn't eligible for unemployment because I had been allowed to resign my last position. We weren't eligible for welfare because we did not maintain a separate residence.

Granny fed us out of her social security disability income and trash fish David brought by from shrimping with Cousin Flynn. Ground mullet (whiting), mostly.

The only jobs listed on the microfiche machine at the state employment service were in the extractive industries, and gave you carpal tunnel syndrome: poultry eviscerator and oyster shucker.

I finished writing THE NINTH NOVEL on the dining room table in Granny Brown's kitchen.

I don't remember much about it, except it contained a play, about Jack Neff visiting us in Courtney and telling me I shouldn't be working as a janitor, I should be writing.

He had stopped throwing pots to paint.

He said he figured if he couldn't sell his paintings and he couldn't sell pots, he might as well paint.

When he quit even trying to make a living, Karol took the kids and moved back to Akron and moved in with her parents.

This left Jack free to paint. And fuck coeds.

I didn't tell him he shouldn't be painting, or fucking coeds, he should support his wife and kids. (Jack and Karol had had a daughter, Claire, since we moved out.)

Also, THE NINTH NOVEL was a strange novel, if it contained a play, and the series The First Nine Novels was a strange series of novels, if one of the books was RACE, SEX, AND LIBEL and one of the books was REJECTED POEMS.

And the first one, OVER THE TRANSOM, contained a novella, "Out in the Open," a memoir about how I became a writer, and what I was trying to do, in "Out in the Open," and a dialogue between the hero of the novella and the hero of the memoir, me.

One day there was a new listing on the microfiche machine. Technical writer. Secret clearance, six months experience.

I didn't have a Secret clearance or six months experience, but I asked for a referral and drove over to Fort Walton Beach, for an interview.

I found out at the interview that they wanted someone to write engineering-installation plans, and I had done that, for six months, at GEEIA Region, in Honolulu. So I did have the experience.

And if I had had a Secret clearance, in the past (I had), they could get an interim clearance for me while the FBI did a background check from the time my clearance lapsed until the present.

So technically, I was qualified.

Also, while I hadn't been working as a technical writer, I had written site reports in college, and graduate school, had been a writer-in-residence at Penland School of Handicrafts, and was an experienced novelist and poet.

I would be working for the man who interviewed me. He liked me. He hired me.

Our troubles were over.

I was now a technical writer. With a Secret clearance. I could do contract work for defense contractors. I could be a support person in the military-industrial complex. I could fight Communism at home, as a civilian. I would be serving my country. Keeping America free.

Brenda and I decided to have another baby, so Owen would have a brother or a sister. Brenda went off the pill and got pregnant with Balder.

I had health insurance at work, now.

I was a good provider.

I was gainfully employed. At last.