The Road to Damascus

Road to Damascus
n. a religious conversion; a revelation, especially about one’s self; in other figurative uses, denoting a change in attitude, perspective, or belief.

Hi!

Just got back from NYC. It's a five-hour drive up the East Coast, passing through the Jundland Waste that is Delaware and the farthest-point-from-the-bright-center-of-the-universe that is Jersey. $21 in tolls between here and Mark.

I mean, come on.

Mark, my brother, is living the actor's life: waiting tables, going to auditions, falling in an out of love, staying equal parts inordinately positive and on the verge of falling over. He is such a positive force, so fun to be around. His attitude towards work is incredible: he takes every job he gets, no matter how small, and makes it his own. Whether he's doing construction, washing dishes, acting, or waiting tables, Mark makes himself indispensable; every manager loves him, says "Mark is my guy." It's amazing. I've never been like that. In my other jobs, I always felt hired in spite of myself. Only Apple and this new job have been different, places where I was finally able to sink my teeth in and invest something. I'm getting a good reputation where I'm working now. It's the first time I've pushed myself to work hard, to constantly produce, to stay busy. I get there early, I stay late. It's weird. It's new. I like it.

I'm in kind of a pensive mood tonight. Jess and I were walking up our street after getting home late tonight, and there was a black man across the street talking to a guy on a mo-ped. He saw us, and the biker pointed as us, and the man came over, thanked us for not running away, and proceeded to give us this really intricate story of how he'd served 10-years in Virginia and now was trying to find his way to Damascus, MD. He had papers, highlighted for effect, and amounts written on the back of the page of how much he'd need to get where he was going (Metro, cab, bus).

I opened my wallet, saw $15 in there, and gave it to him. I should have just given him $5, but whatever.

Jessie asked me after if I had smelled the alcohol on his breath, too. Of course I had. I noticed the Nautica shirt, the fact that he was decently well-groomed. That's what got me - it was the contrasts, the desperation and the preparation, the breath and the papers, the absolute plausibility that this man was just trying to make his way somewhere, whether that was Damascus the place or Damascus the bar. I spent a good half-an-hour afterwards annoyed about losing $15. I'm writing this still annoyed. I mean, that's a lot of money. Not as much as one pays in tolls on the road to NYC, but still a lot of money. That's a whole Tricky Fingers CD (now available on iTunes because I rock). It was only a few weeks ago when I had less than $15 in the world, when I myself considered hawking CDs for gas money to get to Alex Bay.

And then it hit me.

I can work for 45 minutes and make that money back. Hell, I can write e-mails to my friends for 45-minutes and make that money back. I've spent nearly that long writing to you. Three weeks ago, $13.90 was all that I had in the world, and now I make that in the time it takes me to eat lunch. I mean, I'm no millionaire, but I also don't have to worry about what happens if I get sick, what happens if I want to get contacts, what happens if I need to pay my rent. This is the first time I've felt like I've got some buffer between myself and the realities of the world that doesn't consist entirely of my father. And dammit, it feels good. It feels really good. I've never felt it before. I want to keep feeling this.

If $15 is the toll I have to pay on the Road to Damascus, then so be it.

Anyways, I have to tell you all about our time in NY! Monday will be a slow day at work. I'll write then. For now, I'm going to forgive myself for being a gullible nice person, and be thankful that I have a job to go to that doesn't involve posing as an ex-con...

Your,
Martin