It was around the time I had my first real job. At least that's what I thought it was. A real job. I had a desk with a computer on it. And a telephone. I had business cards. In the morning, Monday through Friday, I drove across the city, parked in an underground garage, bantered with the parking attendant, waited for the elevator, complained about how slow it was and rode to the fifth floor where I knew my desk was waiting for me like a loyal dog.
For a while, I loved the job. It made me feel like I had somewhere important to be, and then after being in that important place for nine hours, it felt okay to come home and recover from a long day of doing critical and exhausting things at the office with a pizza and a bad movie.
Working made me feel better about not working.
That's the advantage of working. It makes you feel less guilty about throwing your time over a cliff and murdering it.
I was feeling good. Strong. Purposeful. Adult. I even had the Sunday Times delivered to my apartment.
promotion
I made a big deal about how much I loved to drink my coffee and read the Sunday Times. I told people, anyone who would listen, about my morning routine. I'd just throw it in for no real reason.
"How are you?" someone would ask.
"Oh, I'm great," I'd say. "On Sundays I sit and read the Sunday paper and drink my coffee."
I imagined getting a puppy so that it could crawl around on the bed with me while I read the paper. On television people were always reading the paper with their puppies.
Maybe I'd find a girlfriend too. She'd wear one of my shirts and the sleeves would be too long. She'd have her cute little glasses on her nose, her hair in a messy nest on top of her head, a pencil holding it up and she'd be lost in some fascinating article about air pollution while she absent-mindedly stroked the puppy's head.
"Would you like some more coffee?" she'd ask.
"I'd love some, darling." And without even looking up from her article on how sick our water is making us, she'd pour me a perfect piping cup.
I could see the steam rising.
I felt like a real man. A guy with a job. I felt in control. I had business cards. I was so in control that one Sunday,
How much more manly could I be?
after deriving enormous pleasure and satisfaction from reading the Sunday Times, I got out of bed, took a shower and shaved a goatee. How much more manly could I be?
God, I was happy.
Thus, my goatee period began.
A few days in, returning from lunch, I got into the elevator at the same time as a beautiful woman. At the time I called beautiful women "girls."
"Dude, I met a really hot girl." That's what I'd tell my friends.
This particular girl was really hot.
We were standing there in silence the way you do when you're on an elevator with a stranger, pretending that the other person doesn't exist, pretending to, say, convert nautical miles to millimeters. As the elevator creaked along I suddenly found the courage to talk to the hot girl. Maybe it was the goatee, maybe it was the business cards in my briefcase. Maybe it was because I had a briefcase. Whatever it was, I turned and said, "You know, on Sundays, I sit in bed and read the paper. Drink coffee. Enjoy the day."
