Open Wide!

So I started a blog. I've done things like this before, but this one's different. Just like the others were. At least this time I'm putting it on my own site. They can kick me off LinkedIn, but they can't toss me from my own website. Not yet, at least. I keep busy these days. Working five nights a week at Circle K and spending the rest of the time reading and writing. Of course, I say I spend most of the time reading and writing, but what I really do is avoid writing. But I get three hours of writing done every day, split up between the Twitter, the memoir, and now the blog–which isn't terrible but still doesn't satisfy my inner dictator who says I'm wasting my life when I'm not sticking names on things. I have a birthday this week. A big one, actually. Number 30. Mom got in touch and wanted me to get together with the family. Brother in law got in touch (because my sister told him to) and asked if I wanted to get together to see Dune. My heart sank at the thought of having to see people. Especially to celebrate my birth. So I won't be celebrating my birthday this year. Slide it under the rug. Pretend I was never born. Anyway, I don't deserve to celebrate. I can have birthday parties when I've made something of my life. Anyway, you know how it goes. Spend eight hours a day working as a cashier and you've had enough of humanity. More than enough. People go on about how great it is to have a family and how it's central to their identity and general sense of purpose in life. But a family is just more humanity you have to put up with after going through the torture of work. Anyway, I have work to do at home. I should be writing sixteen hours a day. I don't want to have that interrupted by having to pretend to care how the impatiens are coming along. If you're not a blonde with DDs who wants to swallow my swimmers, why would I endure your presence? Anyway. Circle K isn't bad, as far as shitty jobs go. I'm third shift, which means I don't have to put up with coworkers except for at the beginning and end of my time there. Usually the store's not busy, especially after 2 AM when we stop selling alcohol. You know the old joke about Philosophy majors. They spend their lives asking, "Would you like fries with that?" I don't usually mind making nice with customers. Granted, I experience their existence as a low-grade inconvenience sucking the marrow out of my soul. But most of them are pleasant enough, or at least not terrible. How you doing this evening. Good how are you. Not too bad. Anything else I can get for you. No that's it actually can I get a pack of Newport shorts. Sure thing your total is $10.57. Eleven bucks so your change is 43 cents have a good evening. You too don't work too hard, haha. I'll try not to, haha. Most of the time it's like that. Impersonal, surface level pleasantries. Alienating? Sure, but no more than an evening with Mom and Dad. I always sort of want to say something like, "I'm more than just a chronic underperformer working a dead end job. I have dreams, I have plans, and I'm working on them every day. I think about things, I notice things, I care about things. I'm so much more than this idiot role you see me playing." Can't do that, though. Nobody wants to hear their cashier go on about Heidegger or Houellebecq. Nobody wants to hear their cashier writes poetry. Nobody wants to hear their cashier is a human being. And anyway, it's pitiful. Sure, we all want somebody to see into those hidden parts of us and appreciate us for who we really are. But that's for family and friends, or so they say. At any rate it's not for customers. Maybe if I really wanted people to know me I'd let the family celebrate my birthday. I've always found humanity distasteful. Back in high school I always thought about how I'd like to move into the mountains in Wyoming. Find a nice cave. Live as a hermit. Something where I wouldn't have to go through the unpleasantness of daily encounters with humanity. Aside from not having any idea how to live in the wild, the only thing that keeps me from doing it is my stupid sex drive. Do I really mean that? Hell, I dunno. I have fantasies about love and connection, like anybody else. But mostly I'm vaguely disgusted with people. I daydream about a world where everybody is good looking, everybody has perfect teeth, everybody has good manners, and everybody is always polite. Sometimes I write little love fantasies. I'll write to the point of tears daydreaming about a love without expectations, without contempt, without fear. Where all I'll have to do is wander through green wide fields with you, listen to achingly beautiful music, and write inspired poems praising your perfection. But that's not real life. Real life is work, getting older, paying bills, wishing you never had kids, hating you because you're not as pretty as you once were and because you were never as pretty as I wished you were, wondering where the time went, feeling your mind going, and (finally!) death. Along with a healthy dose of self-contempt. Shame. Anxiety. Bitterness. It takes an incredible amount of courage and goodwill to open yourself up to another person. Most days it's too scary, or too much effort, or you try but you can't find the way. How could someone possibly see everything I am without disgust, or laughter, or (worst of all) pity? They say others will treat you with the same amount of respect you give yourself. Do I respect myself? Sometimes. I don't know what I'm saying. I wish I could write about fascinating things that capture your imagination. Make you fall in love with me. Make you see there's a brilliant and energetic person in here who makes the world turn magical and alive. A person who sees the beauty, wonder, and fascination in all things. The love in all things, or the presence of God they say shines through every leaf in every tree. Not a sparrow falls without his knowing, and all that. And sometimes I see it. Sometimes I feel there's a harmony in the universe, and it's so beautiful it all seems justified. And I'll get tears in my eyes and I'll be grateful for being alive. Would you believe it? That such things can happen? Gratitude, for being alive! Sometimes. But today? Disgust. Contempt. And shame. No. No, I'm lying, actually. What I really am is pissed off. Pissed off that I'm turning 30 and I work in a retail job at a convenience store. Pissed off that I sell my time cheap so I can pretend not to hate every customer who comes in through that front door. Pissed off that nobody in that place gives a damn about me as a human being. Pissed off that I have to spend so much of my mental effort beating back my manager's attempts to get me to work overtime–I'll put in my forty hours a week, but other than that every waking moment will be dedicated to working toward the bright happy day where I never have to see another Circle K again in my life. You'll say I should just get another job. And who knows, maybe I will. But that deep, burning anger won't go away until I'm making a full time income from this writing gig. Anything else is just putting a happy face on being somebody's bitch. You'll say I should quit complaining. And that's fair–most of the time complaining is meaningless noise where people say they don't like something even though they've internally accepted it. Is that what I'm doing? Maybe, but I'm also blogging. And one of these days this blog is going to make me my millions. You'll say I should be grateful I have a job. Well, I'll be a hell of a lot more grateful when I don't need it anymore. You might as well ask a donkey to be grateful that the boss bothered to give it a wagon to lead. You'll say I should be careful and keep my mouth shut because if the wrong person reads this my boss might find out how I really feel about my job. I say the fact that that crosses your mind is one of the biggest reasons I'm pissed off in the first place. You'll say the workers need to organize so they can force a more equitable relationship with capital. Like all Americans, I say I'm not a worker–just a temporarily embarrassed millionaire. Anyway, this blog is not going to be a running commentary of Geof's grievances against his employer. It's going to be a strategy for shilling my books and getting young and attractive women to take their clothes off for me. Because that's what it's all about. Facefucking twenty-year-olds on an assembly line. Now: open wide!