want to be ignored, and the image and context of my bizarre dream jars me. Trust me, there’s such a thing as waking up on the wrong side of the bed.
Bridget turns over and threatens to stir from sleep unless I let Honeyed Cat in right away. I stand, huffing and puffing and full of vinegar and piss, open the sliding glass door a crack, hang my hairy barefoot out to keep Honeyed Cat from wriggling past, and I deliver a swift kick to her brisket. She retreats, hunkers down, and levels me with an evil eye.
So that’s how you want to play, she thinks.
I hiss at her to make myself understood, and then I leave the sliding glass door ajar, but not enough for her to slink through. She’s intent on getting inside. She swipes her paw through the air and tries to finagle her tiny head through the crack to no avail.
“Meow,” she says, “meow.” The rasping recommences. I pick her up and toss her into the utility room. “Scratch all you want in there,” I say.
Bridget won’t tolerate this treatment of her cat. She gets out of bed and lets Honeyed Cat back inside. I swing my arms to hurry the damn thing out of our room.
“First you want out,” I say, at my wit’s end, “and then you want back in. What do I have to do to get some sleep around here?”
The answer I’m looking for from Honeyed Cat comes in the form of a victorious wet lick of her razor-sharp forepaw.
“You can’t treat my cat that way, psycho,” says Bridget. “She’s a confused cat.”
“I’m locking her on the balcony today,” I say. “I’m going to make her diurnal even if it’s the last thing I do.”
“Do you know I have to be up in 30 minutes?” asks Bridget, noticeably disturbed. “Let me sleep!”
8
Forgive me, but my disposition is prone to reflection and melancholy and becoming pointless.
As you already know, I’m not in the throes of contriving a story. What you’re reading is trying to stay formless and free, without limitations and plot. This means the occasional digression.
What I mean to say is, this Sunday I reread what I’ve written up until tater tots, and I was extremely disappointed with everything about my writing, which is mediocre at best, and absolutely uninteresting, and stunningly tiring, and boring, and not at all a reason to write but a reason to change everything about my life and the way I spend my time.
What have I committed myself to in these pages? Another journal? Another attempt at creation? Why, if I’m not a creator? Why, if I’m nothing at all?
What I mean to say is, why write about myself when I’m nobody worth reading about? I’ve failed to live a commendable life. Granted, I’m only 30, but at this juncture I don’t see the new morning. Austin, for a short while, was my new morning, but not even a couple weeks later and I already see only the dead of night.
Dostoevsky wrote:
But anyhow: what can a decent man speak about with the most pleasure?
Answer: about himself.
So then I, too, will speak about myself.
I must not be decent anymore because I find no pleasure in speaking about myself.
What happened between the beginning of this memory and now? Why the change of heart? Why not plod on with conviction? Why let my melancholy get the best of me? Why become indecent?
It’s not complicated. I’m not complicated. I’m aware of my problem.
What I mean to say is, I’m 30 years on earth and have nothing really going for me in terms of security or chance for security. I haven’t invested prudently in Michael’s stock. My resume is without direction, without theme. I’m a factotum and am really at risk of remaining a factotum for the rest of my earthly life.
If you sense that I’m writing with desperation it’s because I am. I’m desperate to say something for the record because my record says nothing about me.
There are times when I throw myself on the queen-size mattress that once upon a time belonged to a girl named Holly, and I stare at the fan and feel withered right on the inside, right where it hurts the most.
For how much longer will writing work its wonders and placate my worries? I don’t think it’s working right now. I’m still up in the air, worried about my future. I’m still weak, concerned, and unable to stand up and be a man.
What do you do for a living? How do you earn your bread?
I can’t answer these questions, especially right now, in my current state of so-called gainful unemployment, these questions loom like a taunt, a whipping. But getting a job is easy enough. All you have to do is hit the streets until it happens. I understand this, and I’m not lazy, and I will get a job.
I will. Just not right this second.
Instead, today I go to HEB and notice for the first time how all the employees wear their nametags on their hearts, and these tags not only tell their names, but they also tell how many years they’ve been employed by HEB. And if they’ve worked at HEB for less than one year, a Lone Star shines solitary in place of a number.
The woman checking us out, on the other hand, has worked at HEB for a whopping sixteen years. I stare at her face and see how professional she is when she scans the juice Bridget is buying.
“Oh,” supplicates Bridget, “I wanted to get cash back. Can I still get cash back?”
The veteran employee smiles at Bridget’s mishap, makes precise keystrokes to reset the transaction, and pronounces, “Swipe your card again, Sweetie.” She bleeds casual professionalism onto her till. I’d even go so far as to say she’s happy with her choices in life.
As Bridget swipes, another HEB employee is about to pass. I know he’s a HEB employee because he wears a solid red long-sleeve dress shirt.
When his heart comes into focus, I ignore his name and see his number: 36 years.
Staggering!
I study the grocery store around me, and I see this monolith, a super manager in his domain. He has a potbelly, gray hair, and a ruddy complexion. 36 years for the same company. Is this a feat I’m capable of, to work for 36 years for the same company?
How about five? Can I work five years for the same company? How about more than three? Is more than three possible?
I’m such a factotum.
But, for some dangerous irrational reason, even this weakness and desperation and melancholy that comes with being a factotum, with wandering from one occupation to another, never staying for too long in one place, like a shark, like some prehistoric organism of the sea, seems preferable to working for 36 years in the same place and becoming a super manager monolith.
It’s harder, it’s less certain, it’s insecure, crazy and highly un-laudable, but this is, to be blunt, who I am. This is how I made my world, and I have to believe I made it this way for a reason, if not, everything I was before, my entire history, would be destroyed, and I don’t believe any part of me should be destroyed. I’ve been decent my entire life. I respect all of me, the whole spectrum, from year 0 to year 30.
Somewhere in there I wanted to become a writer. Somewhere in there I wanted so badly to write for the rest of my life, and although there are many ways to do this without being a factotum – I can go about it smarter, with more perspicuity, a little more sense – I’ve never been one who tries to be smart.
There. I feel better now.
2
Jack Kerouac lived his final days on the west coast of Florida, in St. Petersburg, in a one-story brick house with a two-car garage. The concrete driveway is made uneven by the erratic roots of an old pine.
Honeyed Cat seems to be doing all right after we drugged her with a half dosage of a generic antihistamine. She isn’t sleeping on Bridget’s lap, but she’s groggy and inert.
It’s my idea to find Kerouac’s last house on earth.
I think to do it somewhere on I-95, before detouring toward Alligator Alley.
Although I haven’t read his opus, Kerouac is a legend in my mind. But his single-family house in St Petersburg isn’t much to leave behind. Compared to Hemingway’s House in The Keys, Jack Kerouac’s is second-rat
e. People drive past it every day, and most don’t even know of its significance
How could they if it’s unmarked?
No signage along I-275 leads the way to his house. Even the shop owners in the strip mall across the street have never heard of Jack Kerouac. I walk into a pizza joint that brags of its establishment date, as if its dough were something meaningful, and I ask if they can steer me toward the beatnik’s house. I know it’s somewhere nearby.
“Jack Who?”
That’s the answer I get from the chorus, that and a cancerous guffaw.
Against my better judgment, I try to explain. I say, “Jack Kerouac, the writer. He died in St. Petersburg, in a house right around here. He wrote On the Road.”
“That’s right. I remember someone coming in here asking about this Kerouac guy.”
“Do you know where he lived?” I ask. “I know it’s in this area.”
“Can’t say, but it’s probably right under your nose!” Three cancerous guffaws put the exclamation mark at the end of this joke.
I say, “Okay, thanks anyway.”
No one in the grocery store knows either. You’d think bagboys would read Kerouac. His beat prose seems like it would somehow get on their reading list. But of the three bagboys I speak with, only the scrubbiest one is semi-helpful.
“Look online,” he suggests.
Why didn’t I think of that before? That’s usually the first step I take when attempting to answer a question, I take Bridget’s iPhone and query Google, but for some reason, perhaps more of an inquiry into the proliferation of