Image stolen from flickr user andysternberg.
Tomorrow is Freedom Day. My last day of work. Most people in my work orbit don’t even know. I don’t know how to tell them. I don’t want to have the same conversation over and over. I’m leaving the company. They’ll try to sound out whether I left or got fired. In fact, there is some nuance. I’m getting fired, but I fucking really wanted to get fired. Like when your house burns down but you hated that fucking house anyway, it was the fucking Amityville house with demons crawling out of pools of blood and you hallucinated that every meal was full of maggots, and at least now you can collect insurance. They want to say I’m so sorry; they want to show sympathy for what they think I must be unhappy and scared about. I don’t know any of these people, I realize now. They don’t know me. Because these jobs are like getting paid to slam your dick in a car door over and over and anyone who does them is a fucking idiot. We have such a short life; I have wasted so much of it at this. I am glad to be free and I am sorry you’re still here, saying your work is going great like a battered wife talks about her marriage.
I’m so sorry- what are you gonna do? I’m gonna read great books, I’m gonna learn Spanish and French and heathen Chinese, I’m gonna get my guitar back up to speed and go sit in a coffee shop and have people drop one dollar bills in my case. I’m gonna find something easy to do for money. I’m gonna lift weights six times a week and when I take my shirt off I will look like Ryan Reynolds, albeit with the head of 1978 Harry Dean Stanton pasted on. I’m gonna go with Fake Girlfriend and camp; she knows where every good hot spring is in the American Southwest.
I’m gonna drive across the country. The car will die in Nebraska, miles of cornfields; there are probably not 1979 Mercedes Benz parts available 300 miles outside Omaha but what do I give a fuck; I have nowhere to be. I’ll make a home out of cornstalks and fuck a scarecrow every night. I’ll drive into Mexico. That trip with my buddy El Chuco; long time coming. They say it’s dangerous and I’m sure they’re right but what’s real fucking dangerous is living your whole fucking life without driving to Mexico. Without asking that girl out, without taking the time away from work work work work work. Without living at least a little while in a place where your whole day isn’t all assholes. You become like a housewife with kids– just like she only hears infantile babbling, the long creepy drone of the See and Say drawling “the cow says moo” too slow because the dumb little fucker’s chubby arm can’t pull the string hard enough– just like she only hears kids all day, you only hear cruel mercenary pricks. Work work work with these assholes chiding you and at the end of the day you can’t talk to anyone else; you just want to be left alone and drink.
I don’t even want to go in there today. I want to start being unemployed now. I am sitting in a park in the sunrise with my laptop warming my crotch, words are coming out pretty fast… there is a perfect drop of dew on each blade of green grass and the sun is glancing off a snow capped mountain in the distance like an old Coors can. I don’t want to leave this and go sit in an office with hustle and paperwork and assholes anymore. I’m ready. Maybe I should just stay here. What are they gonna do, fire me?
delicioustacos 
All the time you’ve been out there and you’ve never been to Mexico? One of the times I went out to visit my uncle in LA he took us down to Rosarito Beach for the day; it’s pretty wild. When you get down around San Diego they have these Mexican family crossing signs on the highway. They’re like the Deer crossing signs you see out in the country, only instead of the black outline of a bounding buck it’s a family holding hands and running. When you get around Tijuana you start seeing shanty towns up on the mountains that the highway is carved into: little mud adobes, houses made out of stacked tires with flattened-out coke can roofs. My uncle wouldn’t let us eat anything, he said we’d get food poisoning. He was pretty wary about everything down there, actually, so we didn’t have that much fun. I guess because me and my cousin were just kids. Plus, he’s a goddamn PTSD’d out nut. He flew through Tijuana like he was driving a fucking convoy through Chu Lai or something: “You don’t want to turn off of these main roads, they set up road blocks and abduct people.” Straight to the beach and that was it. He was telling us stories about hitting the bars in Tijuana during the 70’s with a bunch of former Marines, 10 cent shots and you had the run of the place. If nothing else it’s a scenic drive.
Hope your boss doesn’t try to fuck you on your unemployment.
Here you go, start with this:http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/46227.Ask_the_Dust
I like reading your blog. It’s good to know there is an asshole out there whose life is more miserable and empty than mine.
Raw, motivational, somewhat depressing, yet I’d say it’s a top 3 contender. Nice post dude.
Now, “whooo’s coming with meeee maaaan?”
Also, do you plan on stealing anything from your office before you leave? Just curious.
Have a good one.
Godspeed, Tacos. I know you are heading into a phase of your life much better than the last. Just please, remember to write.
Where’s FakeGF’s obligatory barely decipher-able post written like a shitty poem telling you to be brave and go to Mexico?
Was in the same situation back in November. Heard my company was selling and closing my office. I was done by the first of December.
It was great… severance until January, then unemployment, come February still no job. But guess what? Things are still great. Money is low, I got no vehicle (had a company truck), but I took on yoga (talk about a haven of pussy: cougars, young, fairly chubby, skinny, toned pussies… all great and seemingly available), put about 10 lbs of muscle from lifting more, read more, relearned Roland Dyens’ Tango in Skai on the classical guitar. I know one day I’ll get back to work (shiiiiiit, some companies are already making me–shitty– offers) but that will be the day that I’ll be less free and happy. Fuck having 20 gs more a year and more bills and all this shit, when you can be truly happier with less. You have a great talent and the possibility to monetize it, so go forth with that if you never want to work like you did before. One day sooner than later you will have to do something to bring in some cash, little (Bukowski?) or lots, doesn’t matter, might as well do it through your writing.
Hang in the compadre. Write,take that trip down to Mexico, go to yoga, lift weights, go East, have beers and make love in the late am through the early pm, when all the assholes are hating their lives doing whatever it is that you and I used to do a few weeks ago.
#griffithpark
Girls “Hellhole Ratrace”