House Cleaning

All reet! All reet!

My warchest is filled with dollar bills wrapped inside scrap paper, stuffed into hand-addressed envelopes, and sent, sight unseen, to a post office box across the country in New York City. This warchest is built upon this trust, and I plan to go out swinging, making proud those who sent each dollar without knowing whether or not I'd keep up my end of the bargain.

I've done my best for those sincere. And fuck everyone else.

I am amazed at how easily former friends can suddenly embody everything I detest. Short-sightedness. Small-town dreaming. Premature breeding. Trend jumping.

Trend jumping. Like cigar smoking. Fucking cigar smoking.

I was recently told that friends from my youth--good friends (best friends, even) at the time--have become cigar smokers. Crimony. It's deplorable.

But, then again, they live in the suburbs. A couple have married; one has a kid. What else is there to do? After beating each other at the latest Nintendo or Sega game, there's not much else to do. So why not start smoking cigars with the boys at the local Bennigans?

It's frightening.

I choke it all back, the aggression of one thousand hungry, mongrel dogs. It's tough work, demanding more discipline than any shit job I've ever had.

"You don't talk much," she noted.

"No. I'm not very chatty." And with that, I replaced the urn of brackish coffee to its hot spot and walked away.

Hour three of eight. An easy day of freelance work. Boring, but easy.

I rely on this job, one day a week, as a means of catching up on my reading. On the way over, before boarding the Jersey-bound PATH at the World Trade Center, I buy a few fluff weeklies--Newsweek, Time, Entertainment Weekly--plus whatever trade rags are current--MacWeek, MacUser, et cetera. I take them to this job, along with the latest laser proofs of Crank, and get some real work done. It's a short trip under the river to Exchange Place, the first stop on the PATH line, and then a 5-block walk to the site. E-Z.

Last week, I billed this company for seven and a half hours. Of that, three were billable by my ad hoc boss; in other words, I only worked for three hours. The other four and a half are considered downtime, a price my client pays to have me "on call." Without me there, a job could face delays while they waited to call in a freelancer. And that, in the hectic world of advertising and print production, could mean the difference between happy clients and sad clients. So, four and a half hours of downtime is a small price.

And hell, they'll bill someone for that time. Someone down the line, without knowing it, will pay my wage. It'll be hidden in the cost of a print job. Maybe the paper will get marked up an extra 3 percent. Or, better yet, mark up the freight--everyone marks up the freight.

Well, bully to you.