The sensitive soul to tears, etc.

Three hours a day perusing the job listings on craigslist can make a person in a delicate frame of mind eager to play the slitting wrists game. The hundreds of postings ought to make me feel that there’s a world of employment at my fingertips, but instead, each ad is a reproof: look how woefully unsuited Left Hook is to all and sundry work situations! There’s some kind of membrane between the working life and the unemployed life, and I have no idea how to pierce it.

Yesterday to combat the usual post-craigslist funk, I dragged myself to the gym. I ran three miles and lifted the fuck out of some weights. Afterwards, on the way to the taco stand, a Hasidic man in a minivan pulled over and said, “I just have to tell you, I like your hairstyle.”

Reader, I was puzzled. You see, after showering, when my hair is “doing its homework”–the top part tied up in a knot–it’s not particularly attractive. I shrugged and said thank you, made it to the taco stand, and waited outside for my food. The air was breezy and mild and delicious. I was staring up at the sky when a woman walked up to me, removed her headphones, and said, “You’re so beautiful!”

Reader, I was puzzled. I’ve got dark circles under my eyes from chronic lack of sleep, and a dozen incipient zits thanks to the moon and her tides. So I looked at her like she was crazy–and maybe she was a little crazy. She said, “Oh, I’m not gay or nothing! It’s just that you look so beautiful, and I have a twenty-three-year-old son…” I told her he was a little young for me. She kept staring at my face and said, “My mother was blonde, too.” Which is funny for the obvious reason.

After she walked away I went back to what I’d been doing: watching a flock of thirty or forty pigeons flying around in the sky. They flew in unison, or something close to it–always a few stragglers, and the whole flock expanding and contracting, dilating and drawing together as if held together by a force with no fixed center. Each time they banked at a certain angle, their bodies caught the sunset sun and they glowed orange against the blue sky. Then they changed direction and their bodies became drab once more. Reader, I was not puzzled. I think I could have watched them flying like that forever.

But my food was ready and so I took it home and gobbled it down. I had to book to get into the city to meet a friend for coffee. On the way to the L train, puzzling over the random compliments I’d received, I saw a dog being walked by a couple about a half a block ahead. The dog, a small black and white spaniel, saw me, too–or maybe scented me is a better way of putting it.

That dog wanted it some Left Hook, and stat! It kept turning around and straining at the end of its leash. Whatever the frequency of attraction I’d inadvertantly tuned into, it crossed religious and gender and now species lines. Finally the dog had to be dragged away, tripping over its own feet, its head still turned in my direction.

If only that goddamn dog were hiring.

by Left Hook | 21 June 2007 | personal hells | Comments