Friday, July 11, 2014

7/10/2014- Rubber Band Rejection

I DO have to work my part time job this morning but that doesn't make the fact that Thelma the cat woke me up mad early by licking the blinds like some sort of weird fetishist in my bedroom any more tolerable. Effing cat.

So yesterday this is how my day went:

8:00 am- Stopped into my neighborhood bagel shop to get a coffee and got stuck behind a sweaty, shirtless man in bike shorts buying lottery tickets. I mean he was going for broke with one lottery ticket after another after another after another. I suppose if one finds oneself in a bagel shop of a Thursday morning not wearing a shirt, one has reached a type of nadir that only winning the lottery would cure. All or nothing.

8:30 am -- Arrived at my parents' house to meet my dad's "car window guy" and to make sure everything went smoothly. My grandparents were home but my grandfather's every morning consists of getting my grandmother ready for every thing. I was unaware that "car window guys" operated like cable guys and only give arrival times in three hour increments, but they do. (Seriously? How many appointments can they have?) I killed some time on my laptop doing, what else? Applying for jobs. The car window guy arrived at 10, made a ton of old timey jokes (think "Take my wife...please!") and was gone by 10:30. I spent about an hour chatting with my grandfather about the World Cup and planning some far away future trip to Honduras with him to Puerto Cortes. We realized it was my grandmother's birthday and smiled quietly to each other and to her over her cereal bowl, all of us knowing nothing about what she did or didn't understand. All this goodbye without going away...

11:00 am-- I arrived back at my apartment to get ready for an evening in the city. I checked my email and found a rejection letter from a job I had interviewed for last week that I really, really, really wanted. The disappointment was palpable and made worse by the fact that the woman who sent the email didn't even bother to change the position's title in her blatantly form letter. It said how regretful they were that they could not offer me a position for which I did not apply. I did interview there but for something entirely different. I suppose I could have silver lined it by disassociating myself and laughing at how I am like a rejection superhero (Gets rejected from phantom applications! Can be rejected in a single bound! Marvel at the otherworldly decibels of rejection she can withstand!) Instead I closed my computer and cried for an hour. I suppose I could be the kind of person who handles rejection badly but I have developed a rubber band elasticity when it comes to "It's not you, it's me." I get the worthless, useless feelings out in the immediate aftermath and then it gets added to my rejection file cabinet, along with the dead case files that I take a peek through every so often (usually during slow days or other rejections.) But this one hurt. It really did.
In the middle of all that, I got a random text from Jason with a joke about a Rick Steves' impersonation that we first talked about in Spain last year. So I did one of the best things to do which was to stop crying and start laughing. I went to the mirror and stared out of my swollen my eyes and said goodbye to that opportunity and I feel remarkably over it. Rubber Band Rejection.

3:00 pm -- Got in my car and drove to the city. It was an uneventful ride, scored by Arcade Fire and my singing along. I say uneventful but only because it has become de rigeur for me to almost die a few times, driving on the scenic Southern State Parkway, a place that has modeled itself after Mad Max, Beyond Thunderdome. Or NASCAR. One of them. I was very nearly side swiped by a blue van filled with passengers bound for the airport. I know this because the advertisement on the back of the van said "Airport Shuttle" and asked if I liked his driving. I didn't.

4:30 pm -- I parked by my sister Lorraine's apartment and walked to the subway which takes approximately 90 minutes. In yesterday's heat, it took 2 hours. I got on the subway and unwittingly sat across from a woman who looked like a female Drew Carey. She was having heroin nods and lit up a cigarette right there on the subway just like it was 1962. I transferred trains.

5:15 pm -- A beautiful man boarded the subway car and we made eye contact a hundred times over the course of the ride. He was 6 feet tall with golden brown hair and smooth, tan skin. He wore a watch (how quaint) and carried a gym bag. We smiled a few times and he got out at 34th street, only to get right back on. I felt a little buzzed. We both got out at that eternal confluence of sweaty humanity, Union Square. He floated ahead of me and looked back twice. Then he saw a man he recognized and proceeded to slam his gym bag into his butt and the spell was broken by blatant bro-hood. Meh. It was nice while it lasted.

5:45 pm -- I arrived at Tortaria early, before my friends. I decided to get in out of the oppressive heat of Union Square and have me a nice cold margarita. It was perfectly dark and cool and smelled of garlic and avocados. The bartender gave me what can most accurately be described as a "margarita slushy". The consistency took nothing away from it's flavor (and effect). The place was half full will a mix of students and tourists and happy hour seekers. My friends arrived and sitting for a delicious dinner over margarita slushies with two dear friends should be prescribed by medical professionals to heal all that ails you. We were sitting next to a group of four men in business casual wear. If pressed, I'd have to say they were all born in the 90s and I remembered suddenly how young the world became while I was off somewhere, getting old.

7:00 pm-- We walked to the multiplex at Union Square, a place where I spent a good chunk of my 20s. My sister Lorraine was waiting there for us because we had tickets to see Rifftrax's version of Sharknado. It turned out to be everything I dreamed it would be. My stomach and my face ached when it was all over from laughing so much. It felt so good to be reminded that that, however rare, is still a possibility.

10:00 pm -- I rode the subway home with Lorraine which is always one of my favorite things to do. Her move to London seems to be solidifying more and more each day so I'm doing my best to hang on to every moment I get now.

11:00 pm-- I drove home in the hopes that it would only take me exactly as long as it was designed to. Unfortunately, there was a horrible accident on, where else? The Southern State Parkway so there was traffic. When it is that late at night, when you are in a sea of gridlocked drivers, most too tired to even be annoyed and when you have spent the day talking and crying and laughing, the best thing to do is to sing loudly along to Rufus Wainwright. Trust me on that.

And that was my day. Not a hallmark or an event I'll remember, unprompted in 40 years, but one I'd like to.

Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Isn't it ironic? Actually, I'm not sure.

Time was I could channel my freakouts loudly on paper to my journal. No longer, my friends. No longer. I've sat staring at computer screens begging for the muse to poke me in my ear or pick little ticks out of my hair or something else annoying enough to make me write about how I'm slowly freaking out about the (mostly) jobless nature of my existence. But nein. Nada. Zip.

So here's something that just happened at the library that amused me. We are having a program called "Become an Optimist". I'm well aware of the notion that I could greatly benefit from attending the program but I'm working and it is completely full and there is a waiting list. Anycrap, a patron called about an hour before the program was scheduled to begin and asked if she could attend. When I told her it was full she said "I just never expected the program to be successful, so I never called."

The most ironic people alive will just never understand the joy they give the world.