Unqualified to Live

Dear Reader,

I have come to the realization, perhaps later than others, that I am not qualified to be alive. Yes, it's job searching time, and I am two barrel clicks away from kiss kiss bang.

I can feel my sperm count getting lower from the impotence of unemployment. That shrieking sound you hear are my dreams boiling off in the jobless sun. Soon I will be curled up on the couch, my toes poking through the holes in a moth-ridden afghan, wondering whether to bid higher or lower on the dinette set on "The Price is Right." And then it will be too late. Martin will have gone, leaving nothing but a dried skin on the cushions before he slithers, broken, into nothingness.

Okay, so I'm depressed. And use descriptive adjectives. And am still unqualified to be alive.

I have $81.99 left in the world, with about five times that amount coming in bills. If you think it unbecoming for a man to discuss his finances, let me be the first to heartily admit that I am nothing resembling a man. A man can pay for himself. A man works hard, never complains, bears the labors of the day with skin that crackles and hands like sandpaper. A man never has to talk about money - his gait speaks to his situation. You can see the money in his walk, his saunter, his loping trudge. You can see his money in the smiles on the faces of those around him. He is no liability, no expense to them. Rather, he is the groundwork on which they walk, the planks that stand unbending beneath their high-heeled shoes and sharp edges. My father is a man. My brother is a man. I am nothing resembling a man. Not yet. Not anymore. I don't know when I will be again, or even if I ever did.

It is an awful, awful feeling.

I know I'm not the only one who has struggled in DC. Most of the people I talked to who tried to find jobs in DC lamented how much like Hell's Table the job market can be. So much fruit, ready to be picked, and ten times as many hungry hands, each tearing and clawing for a trickle of syrup under their fingernails. I don't know how I'm going to stand out here. I realized that I am only qualified for film work. None of my other qualifications stand up to the heat of cover letters. And, fuck me, everyone wants to be a film guy. Maybe I can get a job in Hell's kitchen, washing the dishes of the damned (or maybe start a rock band of the same name).

I mean, I'm not entirely worthless, right? I didn't just move to Alexandria and realize, oh Jesus, I'm actually nobody after all. This storm was coming whether or not I was in Pittsburgh. Maybe it's a cruel curse that all of my ideas and contacts and connections and securities and assets and investments are in Pittsburgh, the communities and little rivers and rivulets that I could tap for ideas and sustaining words. I have about four good ideas for film projects and all of them take place in Pittsburgh, making the pursuit of them somehow a negation of my new life here.

The one project that I really want to do involves examining the issue of the exodus of youth from Pittsburgh. In my own small circle I can name you 12 fascinating stories of people who have either chosen to stay and make a difference or leave and forge a different path. I feel that stylistically I could create a film that people my age would actually watch and respond to, one that they could feel and not just hear. I wish I could get up the cahones to write the grant application. I know who I would send it to. Dad has connections at the Heinz Endowments. I could ask Carl Kurlander and Deb Acklin to be on the review committee. I could in five swipes of my pen put this thing into action, and yet I do nothing.

Sometimes I wish I could buy a big eraser, blot myself out, and draw me again.

Anyways, I'm rambling now. At least I'm still good at that. Rambling is easy for words. They were meant to do it. I am not a rambler. I need some arrows along the way, at least once in awhile.

yours as long as she feeds me,
m