1. Tell those people who are pointing at you to fuck off.
2. Watch them yell at  you. But cover your ears,while you do it.
3. They have left. They gave up on yelling at you. Because it’s too much work to yell. They are too lazy to keep it up.
4. Hhahaahahahahahahah, you laugh. Wait now: you don’t feel lazy. You feel giggly. Exhilarated.
5. You leave the room. It’s empty already. No people. Just remnants of disapproval- Smoke that is clearing.
6. You step out into the day. And it’s a nice day.
   1. Nostril alert. Breathe in. Smell car exhaust mixed with flowers. Hear the birds. Wait. There they are, sparrows–the Everyman bird.They hop, have you noticed? And they are always so relatively close, almost underfoot. So energetic.
   2. Laziness is somewhere on the horizon. You walk forward.
   3. “Hey!” someone yells.
   4. Holy shit, it was the person yelling at you from before, from back at your apartment, for being lazy. They are shocked and appalled to see you so hale and hearty, walking outside. You were supposed to be lazy.
   5. They are yelling at you again, for not sticking with your laziness stance–that you held so doggedly too, just minutes before.
   6. Should you retreat, go back to laziness, even if you really don’t feel it anymore?  
   7. “Wishy-washy,” they call you. “You are not a man of your word. You are not a man.”
   8. Should you cover your ears again? A man would never cover his ears. He would take it. Like a man.
   9. And you are a man–a middle aged one–which you don’t know How to Be (and wouldn’t that be a good How-To, when you Are Not!) because you keep thinking it’s okay to change your mind about things.
   10. Like changing your mind about laziness. You want to be frisky now. You feel so Now, right now.
   11. “Out of my way Nay-sayer,” you tell the person who is screaming at the top of their lungs–you cannot tell at this point if they are a man or woman or child but the screaming is a real, potent and powerful effort at getting you to just fucking behave.

7. But you refuse to.
8. But they keep yelling.
9. And you keep refusing.
10. But they want to line you up against a wall and get you to change your mind.
11. But you refuse to.

1. You will feel the punch.
2. One of your nostrils will trickle with blood.
3. He will be staring at you in a way he’s never stared at you before.
4. He will tell you to get the hell out of his house.
5. You will get the hell out of his house
6. He will forgive you only if you kneel before your mother and beg her forgiveness.

Your mother will tell your father not to make you do that. But your father will insist. You will kneel and ask her forgiveness.

     You will ask.

     She will ask you to stand up. She will hug you. Your father will not.

     All will be well. Because you are a young man.

How to enjoy your torrid affair with the boss, when you already are having a torrid affair with the boss.

But before you weren’t. You were just you. A temp. Data Entry. The lowest of the low. And top it all off, you were almost forty. And worse. You were a man, with a degree in art history.

He’s fifty or was at the time. He was bald and really liked himself and you liked him for it.

So there he was passing you by the front desk where you entered data and he’d stop by and say things like “Boy are you cranking.” And “Have a good night.” and “I’m expecting the VP of sales to come in around noon. Can you show him to the boardroom?”

1. Grab a CEO’s mundane phrases, wrestle them to the ground and kill them and then bring them back to life with your superhero sense of hope.
2. Hope. You’ve heard of hope. That thing with the nostrils at the end of it that sucks in air, attempts to enliven you, with just enough oxygen for your brain to seed thoughts of What-if? And Could it be?
3. Bake hope. At a low temperature. Let it rise and crust. Peek in and observe its crumb. Then for a few seconds, crank up the heat.  Watch the tan spread, the crust harden.
4. Pull it out. Slice into it. Watch the steam rise
5. Enjoy the smell.
6. But don’t taste.
7. Not just yet.

Because you didn’t know where the boardroom was. But you certainly knew where your attention was.

The office manager was tall woman named Rae who looked down at me for being so flirtatious at the CEO. Not “with” the CEO, “at” the CEO

What? I’d say with my eyes. What am I doing wrong?

Her eyes spoke back. Silver gray slits of enmity. She was so frustrated with me she called the Temp Agency and complained.

They called me on my cell phone. I had to explain myself.

I’ve fallen in love, I told them.

With the office manager?

With the CEO.

That was it. I was let go.

I started to grab my things, feeling so light-hearted at being fired, for the very first time, for having a crush. Just a crush. Without eating the bread of hope I’d baked.

I walked into a church that smelled like ass.

I’d smelled worse at other churches.  

Wafers gone bad;  sepulchres soured by petty the squabblings over direship

A vestibule gone to the vaginas.

Religion can kiss my ass

But when my father told me to repent, I did.

He said he would disown me–Which, for a second felt like blessed parole.

But which five minutes later felt like a long, lost Michael Jackson song.

Daddy the Ditty, produced by the gloved one. A sacred song of

Street smarts and guitar riffs–rife with lawsuits and mayhem.

Daddy don’t disown me me. I’ll go to church.

I’ll repent.

But please: first give the altar an enema. Clear it of shenanigans.

Sweeten it with Gummy Bears and Sticky Faggots

I am your Son. I will be saved.

No matter what holy shit abounds.