2008-03-26 - 2:05 p.m.
I was reading a little while ago. I was reading in the men's room. You know, just reading. A personal essay (the best kind of short reading, I've discovered, better than short stories, better than articles, better than whatever's in your wallet (not much) when you've forgotten to bring something to read) by Diana Joseph in the Fall 2007 issue of the literary journal River Teeth. So I was just reading this essay, sitting there quietly. I had the door closed, of course. And another guy walked in, pissed, washed his hands, and left. But before he left the bathroom, he reached over and flipped off the lights. He didn't know I was in there. That's how quiet I was, reading my literary journal, avoiding my work and job, laughing at a young writer who is having fun with an essay about a creepy art history coworker professor who has sex with college students. And I thought, reading in the dark is very hard. But I could still do it, becuase there's an auxilliary, on-all-the-time, night-light kind of light in the part of the men's room that acts as a foyer. So I showed that guy. Diana Joseph, you been read.
I've drank a cup of coffee today, some seltzer water, and maybe three cups of tea. I have a lot of tea here, at my place of work. I drink a lot of Indian spiced tea. It's got cinnamon and cloves and ground-up brown stuff in it. I like the way it feels in my throat. A little gritty. If tea can have substance, this tea has got it.
I'm getting excited about writing again. I'm working on an essay/chapter/something about my ninth-grade year of high school. That year, they renovated my high school, so grades 9 through 12 had to share the middle school. We went to school from 5:30 to noon. The middle school kids went from 1 to about 5:30. It was a pretty intense time for me because of the following:
1) I was fifteen and a boy who went to a school where cheerleaders wore their skirt-outfits to school on football days
2) I had a house to myself (no car and no real neighbors, but still)
3) I had a decent supply of cigarettes (booze and drugs weren't around just yet)
4) Cable television
5) My dad's lifetime supply of records (Bob Dylan, Motown, the Kingston Trio, old country and western stuff like Hank Williams, the Eagles, Gordon Lightfoot, ELO, Bread)
6) Generally, food in the kitchen
7) A whole mountain behind the house, where no one lived, and where no one could see me.
8) Pornographic magazines
9) A ton of paperbacks
10) A lot of free time.
I'm trying to put all of that together. It's fun so far.
