With A Clear View Of The Rockies

I moved to Denver last month, and from the moment when the decision was made I began to suspect I was actually moving to this city because there was no true reason for it. Aside from the few friends already living here, I had nothing but blankness and void going for me in Colorado. 

Now I have a life, maybe. I ride my bike twenty minutes down the 17th Ave Parkway to the school where I work every morning, each mile feeling better than the last. The air is cold and active. The cars are voluminous but respectful, and they drive defensively and cautiously when passing me. After school is over my eyes are tired from so many interactions with children who hear but only sometimes listen, speak but only sometimes communicate. I bike home and it's warmer, and I don't have to wear my hat or gloves. I see friends at night, cook, read, carouse, converse, seek warmth and give it back. Maybe I came to Denver so I could do this every day. 

I don't write enough anymore. I don't read enough either. I have far less time to myself nowadays than I've ever had. Sometimes I think this is sad; other times I think it's a relief. 

Lament for a Sputtering, Wheezing, Bedridden Health Bill

1

Here is my simple man's understanding of why it is a good idea to have a public, or government, health care option:

If you get sick you have to have insurance in order to get treated by a physician. Right now the only way to get insurance is to pay unreasonable amounts of money to private businesspeople who then pay a portion of that to doctors. If these businesspeople were not businesspeople at all but government-run organizations, then the cost that people would have to pay for medical care would be much less. Doctors wouldn't have to depend on insurance companies to give them business; after all this is the reason doctors tolerate, and in some cases value private insurers--because they guarantee that the doctor will see a certain amount of these insured patients. At the same time doctors risk losing money, since the government probably isn't going to pay as much for the service. All in all doctors would make a bit less, insurance companies would make a lot less, and the general public would pay a lot less and become healthier due to the new prevalence of affordable care.

I can come up with a few legitimate reasons why someone wouldn't support a public option. A) You believe that doctors deserve more for their invaluable services. After all, they spent most or all of a decade getting trained over the course of ridiculously late and long hours at hospitals in dangerous neighborhoods. Plus, they already are making way less than they used to (because of the rise of insurance companies, malpractice suits, and government-established organizations like Medicaid). B) You believe that since the educated, prosperous class in our society has come up with this system of ailing the sick, ensuring our welfare, and protecting our rights, these people thus are justified in benefiting financially. Wealthy people are wealthy not because they're greedy but because they put in the time and the work, and they deserve to be paid. C) You just don't trust the government to impose a plan that is fair.

2

When Barack Obama started to run for president I liked him for lots of reasons. One of those reasons was that he said by establishing a government-run health insurance program he was going to topple the private insurance companies that are making it so expensive to get medical care. He said that to me one cold morning in a Manchester, NH theater while I stood up, clapped and cried with the rest of them. Eventually he beat Hillary and ran against John McCain, and the contest devolved into what we were all used to--democrat versus republican. A lot of people at this point liked Obama because he was Not Republican. I liked that aspect of his candidacy but I also liked how he tended to think really hard before answering questions, how he had a good idea of what people in his country were actually like--not just people from small towns or those who had blue collars or those who owned ranches, but people from the inner city, people whose skin color was something other than white, people who were born after the Vietnam War--and how he preached working hard and engaging in public service and practicing altruism, just like every teacher I've ever had encouraged as well.

I was and am a registered democrat but this time around I was well enough informed that I could vote for the candidate rather than the party. After Obama was elected everyone was saying that we were about the embark upon some unprecedented progress in government policymaking, since we had a democratic president, a democratic congress, a democratic-leaning country. But now that we have this president who wants to serve the whole public, under- and overprivileged alike, whose concept of "fair" is in pretty decent alignment with our prescribed American ideals... and now that he's trying to push this beautifully sensible and socially sound public option, our democratic congress is about to slash and burn the whole deal.

I think we really need to think about this. Is it possible that politicians, democratic or republican or federalist or whig or whatever, run for office not under an ideology or a rationale, but under specific opinions on specific issues? Or worse, do they run under the banner of just a certain type/region/demographic of consituents, or a certain set of corporate/independent sponsors? When we vote are we voting for favorable types of policy decisions, or are we voting for a certain group of people? Like when democratic Montanans voted for Max Baucus, did they think they were voting for democratic ideals, or did they know they were voting for whatever special interests for which Baucus is readily paying political dividends?

The more this health care bill dies at the hands of who I once naively dreamed to be the good guys on Capitol Hill, the more I believe that those of us who turned 18 and chose not to register with a political party when filling out voting forms were right. Maybe you've voted democratic every election since Wilson's, but you're an independent because you know that the blanket ideological tenets that the two parties supposedly indoctrinate might not be particularly relevant at any given time. This is the way I'm beginning to think we as voters need to think about it. Historically the democrats are supposed to be about big government and the republicans small, but looking at what this congress is about to do, or not do, I don't see how one could identify all these lawmakers as members of only two different teams. Furthermore, I can't help but wonder if it's ever been the way it says it is on paper.

Detention

Scene takes place in a small, congested office with no windows. SECRETARY 1 types on her computer at her wooden desk, and across from her SECRETARY 2 does the same thing at another desk. The room is almost a corridor because it is connected to two other offices, and has a third door that people can use to enter the main hallway. An American flag hangs from a black wire flagstick which is mounted on the wall above Secretary 1. The fluorescent lighting makes the room unusually bright. MR. CURRY stands hunched over examining papers near Secretary 1.

Enter CHIVES from the hallway door. He is visibly nervous; he looks around at the two secretaries and then at Mr. Curry, unsure of whom he should address first.

MR. CURRY: Are you looking for someone.

CHIVES: Um. I-- I don't know. I just got this.

He offers a piece of paper to Mr. Curry, who takes it brusquely and skims it. While Mr. Curry reads the paper without expression, Chives mostly looks down at the ground and picks skin off his cuticles idly. After a moment he takes a quick glance at Secretary 1 and smiles sheepishly. Secretary 1 looks back down at her computer.

MR. CURRY: Okay. Come with me.

Mr. Curry leads Chives through the office, avoiding the cluster of desks, into one of the connecting rooms. He does not close the door. This office is more spacious and has a window with a view of the front lawn of the high school. It is sunny outside and a man is mowing the grass.

MR. CURRY: So it says here you were disrupting Mrs. Sugar's class.

They are both standing in front of Mr. Curry's desk; Chives puts one hand on the arm of a chair for support--he seems to want to sit down--but Mr. Curry remains standing and uses his height and girth to his advantage. He sets a steady, severe glare upon Chives. Chives is obviously uncomfortable with the eye contact and looks to the side.

CHIVES: Yes.

MR. CURRY: Why were you disrupting Mrs. Sugar's class.

Just as before, Mr. Curry's question is more of an edgy, aggressive statement.

CHIVES: I-- I wasn't really. I mean I was. But I was just whispering--

MR. CURRY: It says here you were disrupting class. I don't think Mrs. Sugar would have sent you here if you weren't being a nuisance.

CHIVES: I guess it, it wasn't the first time. I shouldn't have been talking when she was talking.

MR. CURRY: Okay. Now we're getting somewhere. So more than once you were having your own conversations while she was trying to teach a class?

CHIVES: Yes.

MR. CURRY: Why.

CHIVES: I, I don't know. It was stupid of me.

Mr. Curry takes his eyes off Chives and reexamines the paper. He takes out a pen and writes something down.

MR. CURRY: You're going to have to spend some time after school with me. What you need to do now is sign here and then go back to class and talk to Mrs. Sugar about this when the bell rings.

He proffers the paper back to Chives and hands him the pen. Before Chives can sign the paper, Mr. Curry leaves the room. Chives reads the paper and signs it, then looks out the window. He rubs his hands together as if they are cold, while waiting for Mr. Curry to return.

MR. CURRY: (overheard from the other office) Do they have permission to be there?... Okay... Okay, why don't you send them to me...

Mr. Curry comes back into the room and confronts Chives.

MR. CURRY: Okay, are we clear on what you're going to do next?

CHIVES: I'm going back to class and talking to Mrs. Sugar about it. Then I'm going to detention?

MR. CURRY: That's right. After school, today. Do you know where detention is? Okay. Goodbye.

Chives hands the paper and pen back to Mr. Curry and leaves the room. Mr. Curry takes the paper and puts it aside on the desk, atop a stack of at least twenty others. Then, with unexpected and intimidating speed for a large man, he marches back into the first office.

A Separate Peace

List of characters:
MR. TARRAGON, 29
CARAWAY, 15
PEPPER, 15
SAGE, 15

The scene is a high school classroom in which the students' desks are situated in the shape of a horseshoe around the perimeter of the room. Mr. Tarragon stands on the desk-less side, speaking to his class. One wall of the room is all windows, but the view is pretty bleak--you can only see another wing of the building from here, and a small, grassy courtyard with no one walking inside of it. There is a blackboard behind Mr. Tarragon that has a few irrelevant things written on it; mostly it's covered in erasure marks and stray chalk scribbles.

MR. TARRAGON: So let’s try this. I want you, in your groups, to describe the relationship between Gene and Phineas, but in a creative way. It’s a complicated relationship; arguably it is the only important relationship in the whole book. It makes the book. Mr. Tarragon walks to the blackboard, picks up a piece of chalk and writes, in a vacant spot, “Gene/Phineas Relationship.” So what you’re going to do is draw a scale in your notebook. You know the sign for libra? The zodiac sign?

CLASS: Yes.

MR. TARRAGON: Okay, so maybe your scale looks like this. (He draws it.) This one’s pretty lopsided; one of the characters is clearly ahead in the balance of power. Who knows what I mean by balance of power? (Three or four hands go up; Mr. Tarragon points to one.) Caraway?

CARAWAY: Like when one character is stronger than the other, like, if one makes all the decisions and the other just tags along?

MR. TARRAGON: Okay, that’s pretty good. When I say balance of power I’m talking about the dynamic in their relationship. Does one person have more of the power? For example the balance of power between myself and Mr. Curry is skewed heavily in my favor. (Several students laugh.) I would be on the heavy end of the scale because of my superior intelligence, my decision making skills and my brute strength, whereas Mr. Curry would be way up here because he isn’t all that bright and he would rather I make the decisions for him. Um, well anyway. Or, see, maybe Gene and Phineas are on an even keel, and the scale looks like this. (He draws it.) But the thing is I don’t want you to just draw the scale to show me the balance of power. I want you to explain why one character is more powerful than the other. If you’ve got Phineas all the way up here on the scale and Gene down here, weighing him down, then I want you to explain to me why it’s like this. If I’m going to really argue that I have more power in my relationship with Mr. Curry, I should give you an example, like when I, I don’t know, like when I called him up and told him we were going bowling so get ready whether you like it or not! (The class laughs again.) Hah, okay? Does everyone see what I mean?

Many students nod yes.

MR. TARRAGON: I’m going to hear from every group, all right? Remember, the best way to defend your answers is to give examples from the story. Okay? Go ahead, get started.

PEPPER (to SAGE): Did you read?

SAGE: (nods)

PEPPER: I didn’t read.

SAGE: You didn’t really need to, nothing really happens. Gene goes to visit Phineas in the hospital or whatever and Phineas is happy to see him and he doesn’t know that Gene knocked him out of the tree on purpose.

PEPPER: Oh yeah, I remember that. Did you do the math homework yet?

SAGE: I did some of it. It’s hard, it’s all about some shit we haven’t even done in class yet. I’m probably not going to do the rest. As long as I’ve got something on the paper he won’t care.

PEPPER: Yeah just like write the question and do the first step and he won’t even look at it. Unnghhh. I don’t want to go to practice today. My legs are still sore from those sprints. Maybe it’ll rain.

SAGE: Yeah.

PEPPER: If it rains we should go to the Big Shake. I think Poppy said she would go, and other people too.

SAGE: I think it’s going to rain. Look at it outside.

PEPPER: Coach is so dumb. I hate doing sprints.

SAGE: We should just scrimmage. We’d get better if we could play more. He’s a drill sergeant.

PEPPER: I was about to quit yesterday when he was like okay get on the line girls. Like, again? We just sprinted like all practice.

SAGE: Yeah.

PEPPER: This book is boring. I mean it’s okay, it’s better than like, Romeo and Juliet, you can actually understand what’s going on. But it’s, umm, nothing really happens in it. Like, who cares about these kids, they just like run around and jump in the river. Are they going to go to war already? Haha.

SAGE: Yeah.

PEPPER: Like, I guess it’s pretty sad that they have to go to war when they turn 17 or whatever. But umm I don’t know, I don’t really feel like reading about it. Do you think if we all just skipped practice and went to the Big Shake he’d kill us? What could he do?

SAGE: He’d be pissed. Ummm. I don’t know. We should all just not go.

PEPPER: What’s he going to do? He can’t bench us all if nobody’s there in the first place. I don’t care, I’m just going to skip. It’s not even fun, you know? I’d rather do what I want to do. Oh. Umm. So umm yeah about the relationship between Gene and Phineas.

Mr. Tarragon approaches their desks, walking slowly and saying nothing, but you can tell he is curious about what Sage and Pepper have been discussing. He smiles and hovers next to Pepper’s desk. He looks down at her notebook, which is blank.

MR. TARRAGON: So what do you guys think about these two kids, Gene and Phineas?

Pepper blushes and turns to Sage.

SAGE: Well, um, they are pretty good friends… there’s definitely a good balance of power because they are best friends.

MR. TARRAGON: Okay, okay, so do you think they’re equal in each other’s eyes? I mean, for example, do you think they are both in absolute control of the relationship? Or maybe one of them is more of the boss, and the other is the follower? What do you think?

SAGE: Yeah well I guess Phineas is kind of the boss because he’s always telling Gene what to do like with the suicide club and that ball game they play.

MR. TARRAGON: Okay, that’s good. Pepper, what do you think?

PEPPER: Yeah, like, Phineas is really loud and bossy and is always making jokes, and Gene is the quiet one who just wants Phineas to like him. Maybe? I don’t know…

MR. TARRAGON: No, no, that’s very good. Okay so now do you guys understand what I want you to do with the scale? Imagine the two of them are on the scale and—

PEPPER: Yeah, we know. Yeah. (She picks up her pen and starts writing something. They both shift around in their seats, Pepper swinging her body so it is facing Sage.)

MR. TARRAGON: Okay, good. So draw your own scale and I’d like to see what you guys come up with. (He walks away.)

Wearing Out My Welcome At The Crossroads

It's been a while since I used this blog for that good old fashioned self-indulgence that most blogmen and -women establish as the foundation of their little slice of internet real estate. Which is to say I haven't really shown you IGAB's natural voice in a long while. What better time to start than when you're holed up in your parents' lake house, jobless, floundering and having come down with a cold so uncommon that you're having trouble reading even the most morose of paperback books without laughing simply because the page is covered in your own snot?

In terms of strength and destruction, this cold wreaks havoc at a level somewhere between the NY Blizzard of '93 and the '97 Everglades Brushfires (pretty high on a spectrum bounded at the top by Hurricane Katrina and the Influenza Epidemic of 1917, and at the bottom by Michael Jordan's fairly ridiculous ingrown toenail injuries back in the late '90s). It's been three days and my cough sounds like a gunshot in close quarters. While I hack away the cat cowers in a corner of the laundry room, thinking that this is surely the end. My throat feels chafed and burnt as though I've only been swallowing rocks and sandpaper. I've tried all kinds of tactics to combat the ailment--I've tried the Rip Van Winkle (excessive sleep), the Alice In Wonderland Frat Pledge (excessive tea), the early 2000s Graduation Song On Repeat (overdose on vitamin C), the Winnie The Pooh (pour honey down your throat), the Prefontaine (ignore the sickness and go running around the lake) and the Dead Sea Morning Ritual (gargle hot salt water)--but it's becoming more and more clear that only Time will cure me.

Meanwhile I continue to busy myself sending out cover letters that never get read, making follow-up phone calls that get answered tersely, politely and uneventfully, practicing the piano with a level of focus that baffles my parents and the neighbors, eating the food in my parents' refrigerator and plotting my next move (often simultaneously), which will happen soon and will definitely be to either New York, Chicago, Denver, Portland OR, Portland ME, San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles, Raleigh/Durham, Atlanta, Boston, Austin, Philadelphia, Seattle, San Diego, or another US city where they might need a high school or middle school English teacher. Of course most public school teaching job search websites are looking pretty bare these days. Indicative of the nationwide education slump was this listing, found this morning on schoolspring.com:

********, Texas: High School Janitor, full-time. DO NOT APPLY

Which was weird, you know, but I figure at least they have the decency to tell you you have no chance of getting the job before you take the time to send in all the paperwork.

I'm not entirely sure why lots of people are ashamed to be living with their parents in times of transition or turmoil; even I feel the stigma of such a life situation when I tell old friends what I'm presently up to. But truly I am happy to be here and really have no qualms or misgivings about it. My parents are loving people who respect my need for privacy, my decisions and my lifestyle, which differs from theirs. We're similar in that we are all subdued, thoughtful and outdoorsy, and we function well as a family of two grown-ups and one maybe-grown-up. When it's time to take off, I'll be more than a little sad.

The Fixer

Excerpt from THE FIXER by Bernard Malamud:


"Do you know any French, Yakov Shepsovitch?" Bibikov asked.

"Not that I can think of, your honor."

"The French have a saying, 'The more it changes, the more it remains the same.' You must admit there may be a certain truth to that, especially with reference to what we call 'society.' In effect it has not changed in its essentials from what it was in the dim past, even though we tend loosely to think of civilization as progress. I frankly no longer believe in that concept. I respect man for what he has to go through in life, and sometimes for how he does it, but he has changed little since he began to pretend he was civilized, and the same thing may be said about our society. That is how I feel, but having made that confession let me say, as you may have guessed, that I am somewhat of a meliorist. That is to say, I act as an optimist because I find I cannot act at all, as a pessimist. One often feels helpless in the face of the confusion of these times, such a mass of apparently uncontrollable events and experiences to live through, attempt to understand, and if at all possible, give order to; but one must not withdraw from the task if he has some small thing to offer--he does so at the risk of diminishing his own humanity."

Evergreens

(Ultimately this is not a true story)

*

IT was around the time when I still didn’t have my driver’s license that I was trying to get a job, any job, so I could be busy during the summer time rather than sitting at home and languishing in my bed and feeling like a complete loser. My friends were all mowing lawns and serving ice cream by day, guzzling beer and making out behind closed closet doors by night. I wasn't getting any of that. I needed a job. The one I had my eye on was the cart boy position at a local prestigious golf course. Three of my best friends were cart boys. Supposedly they made hundreds of dollars in tips each day just by cleaning old rich guys' clubs and engaging in small talk with them for like three minutes while the men babbled on about their near chip-in on fourteen, their drive on six, their long, long putt on seven. And when they weren't working my buddies got to play for free, as often as they wanted.

They had taken me out a couple times—they were permitted to treat a guest to a free round once and only once, but we stretched it—and we gambled on the game, they with their tip money, I with the money leftover from my bar-mitzvah, that I had kept in a dark corner of my underwear cabinet. Most of the bar-mitzvah money had gone into the bank where it was collecting something called interest, but I had managed to covertly salvage a small percentage of it to feed my golf gambling habit. I was a good golfer but my friends were better, and what's more, they were better at arranging matches that would benefit them, whereas I was just so eager to play that I didn't give much thought to what the match would be. Knowing that unless I played the round of my life I would be four, five strokes worse than them, I still would volunteer to take them on straight up. Then I'd lose ten bucks after double-or-nothing on the back nine, and that was how I figured my summer would go: working towards broke but having fun doing it.

If only I could get a job. Then my friends wouldn’t have to sneak me on the course, since I had long worn out my one-time guest privilege. Then I could lose money I had made that day, rather than the exhaust the stash of bills I had stowed away.

See, it didn't help that I failed my driver's test that first time. The fact that I couldn't legally drive to my potential place of work was a real obstacle. My mom and I had driven to the test site certain that I would pass. I had been a nervous wreck but I knew that as long as I just functioned like I normally did I would be fine. My mom got out of the car and wished me luck, and there were a few seconds when I was in the driver's seat alone, brooding, sweating, listening to that last chorus of a Ricky Martin song that I secretly liked. I was planning on turning it off as soon as the guy giving the test got into the car, to show him that I didn't listen to music when I drove. He was going to sit down and I was going to reach over and shake his hand and welcome him into my dad's old Pontiac and thank him for administering this test.

But when he did get into the car all my plans fizzled. I said hello and he grunted. He was an obese, leather-faced sociopath who was just not in the mood. I shut off the music and froze, obediently awaiting his commands. "Drive," he said, as if he was hijacking the car rather than giving me my license. I put it in drive and stepped on the pedal and nothing happened. "Whoops!" I said. "Forgot to turn the key!" Put it back in park and turned on the ignition. Utter silence from the passenger's side, when at that point a nice laugh to help me recall our humanity would have gone a long way. Threw it back into drive and pulled out into traffic.

"Forgot to signal. Didn't check your mirror."

Believe it or not the rest of the test went pretty well, that is until I turned too sharply to the left into oncoming traffic as we made our way down the home stretch. After screaming at me, genuine fear in his eyes, the guy would tell me I was actually on my way to a passing score until this last false move. On the ride home I made my mom drive even though ever since I had gotten my permit it was the other way around—she hated to drive. I was too flustered to drive safely, I said. We rescheduled for the next available test slot, which was six months later. The worst part was having to tell all my friends about it when I got back to school. They all had figured me for a sure pass, optimistic that I would become their newest chauffeur.

We were all pretty let down, but I knew I could drive and so did my parents. I continued to practice with them in the passenger’s seat, reminding me to take it slow or not to tailgate. They even let me drive short distances by myself, like down the hill to pick up milk, or up the road to return a mixing bowl to somebody. On these occasions I rolled down all the windows and stuck my head out the moon roof and shouted along with the lyrics.

*

One place I did not drive was to my girlfriend's house. "We'll drive you," my parents would say. Whatever. At that age our parents were very watchful, almost omnipresent when it came to romantic relationships. My girlfriend and I weren't allowed to be in her bedroom with the door closed, nor were we allowed to be in the house without anyone else home. Likewise, I needed an escort to go over there. And in my house the rules were identical, the only difference being that my parents had the audacity to actually enter my room when we were in there. We would keep the door open a crack just so my parents could look from afar and see that it wasn't closed, so there wouldn't be a big fuss. Then we would pull each other onto my bed and do everything that two frisky sixteen year-olds could do to each other without removing any clothing. My dad once walked in to see it and awkwardly staggered out, panicky and just generally unsure of things.

Later he spoke to me about it. I don't think, he said, you two should be spending so much time lying on top of each other necking. "What do you mean?" I said. I really didn't know what necking was.

My girlfriend had a babysitting job, which kept her busy during the summer days. I, in turn, was occupied at the golf course. I figured that I would get a job in no time if I stole enough rounds on their course. At night we all got together at the houses at which no parents had been seen for months. Indeed, friends of mine were rumored to live in these places, though I was only familiar with the basements and back yards, where they would keep the keg. At these parties my role was mainly to get ridiculed by my friends for still not having a driver’s license, even though hardly any of them had one either. I was glad to have a girlfriend at these things because I could only take so much of standing around in a huddle, everyone's beer in one hand in the middle like a big, circular game of the hokey-pokey. Put your beer hand in, put your beer hand out/Put your beer hand in, and you shake it all about!

I didn't even drink. My girlfriend didn't either, though unlike me she said she had tried it once. It tastes like piss, she said. We sucked face savagely behind the house until the skin around our lips was chafed. It got boring fast. At some point we got brave and did things that I had only heard the obnoxious guys bragging about. After we finished I would find myself more verbally inept than I had ever thought possible. We would smile at each other in ways that we thought suggested love. We figured it was only polite to keep looking at one another after somebody tried to go down on the other, so intense, inescapable staring contests would arise every couple of minutes.

Because nobody responsible had a driver's license, we all slept over. I'd wake up at sunrise and go walking down county roads, enveloped in evergreen. I'd come back and raid the pantry and try not to step in beer. Eventually other people would wake up and I could convince an upperclassman to give me a ride home after everyone threw away two or three Solo cups, played a few games of Madden and called it a cleanup.

*

I got the call one afternoon when, ironically, I was nowhere near the golf course, but practicing driving with my dad. It was the head pro, asking me whether or not I wanted to come and talk with him about working. "Don't talk on the phone while you drive," my dad snapped in the background. I pulled over to the side of the road. When I told him what the pro had called about, my dad got excited.

"All right, let's get over there!" he exclaimed, imploring me to hit the gas. Though this meeting would be different, I couldn't help finding comparisons with the first time my dad, the pro and I were all in the same room. It had been in the spring, when dad had ordered me into the car one Saturday morning so that we might drive to the course and formally ask for a job. That whole ride had been silent. I was playing different scenarios through in my head. I ask if there are any jobs available, pro sneers at me, tells me to get the hell out. Or, I ask if there are any jobs available, pro laughs and tells me I owe him a grand sum of money for playing so many free rounds under his nose. Or, I go in there asking for the pro but the pro isn't there and a bunch of desk clerks and/or my own friends, not-so-hard at work, all laugh at me for daring to come in here and beg for a job. When we had gotten there my dad quickly shuffled into the back of the pro shop to look at new putters and striped polo shirts that would look goofy on him. The pro was there, and I had no choice but to go up to him and ask the question. He smiled back, showing me his infamous left fang. It was already going better than I had imagined. "Maybe," he had said. "Maybe in a couple weeks. I'll call you."

And now he had called. And now we were driving there again, this time not just chasing after the dream but hot on the trail. I broke the speed limit and my dad didn't say anything. We barreled down a back road, the shortcut to the golf course, the Mamas and the Papas crooning, "Monday, Monday." When we came upon a Jeep Wrangler going an ungodly twenty miles per hour I maneuvered right up so I could see the dust on his back bumper. That was when the Wrangler stopped moving, and a tall, slick-looking individual climbed, with lackadaisical grandeur, out of the driver's side door and made his way over to me.

I recognized him to be the proprietor of a local bar who also happened to be a state policeman. He had a hot dog stand at the golf course at which my employment was imminent. Luckily, in his plaid mountain-man flannel shirt and torn up jeans he looked about as off-duty as a cop could get. I rolled down the window. The cop peered in and saw my dad, who was slouched down like a teenager so he could see out of my window back at the cop. The cop and my dad were both smiling, which was misleading, because I knew neither of them were very happy.

"Scuse me son? You normally get this close to the car in fronta you?"

Immediately I knew he hadn't recognized me from the course. He knew my friends but he didn’t know me. This was all that mattered, and I could breathe easy. In a body that, when in doubt, reverted to extreme nervousness, I was bewildered by how uncharacteristically calm I felt at the moment.

"Well I'm still learning. I've just got my permit."

I reached into my pocket, wanting to show the papers that proved I was but a poor novice. Before I could do so, my dad began issuing apologies. The guy was no match for our collective ability to play the amiable, innocent no-nothing. He was perpetually angry and hated by everyone who knew him. His hideous, mustachioed wife worked as a substitute teacher in our school. A few of my African-American friends told me he was an unabashed racist who didn't allow his darker employees to hold jobs any higher up than busboy.

After a brief lecture, he got back into his car and drove extra slowly. Starting the car back up, it occurred to me that we were both obviously headed to the same place. I had to reroute and, when we finally arrived at the course, park as far away from that Wrangler as possible.

Circumventing the hot dog stand, I walked the long way to the pro shop, around the cart barn and past the driving range, while I sent my dad in the opposite direction, to the putting green, where he could practice his game but not go near the clubhouse until I had secured the job. En route I encountered one of my friends, who already knew what was up.

"Heard you're meeting with the pro about a job. Congrats, my man! Now we can play a dollar-a-hole without having to sneak you on."

Five steps from the pro shop door the off-duty cop burst out of the bathroom and nearly collided with me. "Oh, sorry! Didn't see you there, buddy!" He looked me in the eyes and grinned gregariously, the way all upstanding citizens act towards people they haven't met yet.

*

It was the same house we always had parties at, that of a close friend, located a few miles outside of town, halfway to the next. The sky blue paint was peeling in so many places that the house almost looked polka-dotted. There was a driveway that circled around the front lawn and led to the front door, which nobody used, probably not even during the day when there was no teenage madness going on around back, in the basement. The driveway was filled with cars, as were both shoulders of the county road for a quarter of a mile.

One of those cars was the Pontiac. I had finally gotten my license, and it had only taken until mid-July, nine months after I had turned sixteen. The test had been completely unremarkable. Only thing I'd done wrong was stop at an intersection where there was no stop sign. The lady who gave the test—and I had been relieved that it was a lady, who had returned my greeting and with a welcome cordiality asked how I was doing—said I shouldn't have stopped, to which I replied that I was just being careful.

She retorted, "Yeah except what if there was a car behind you didn't know you was stoppin?"

But I had detected her staged sternness. I knew she had confidence in me, and that I had passed. When she gave me the verdict I had been looking for, I thanked her repeatedly and reached for her hand, which she shook, not without a skeptical roll of the eyelids. "You have a good day!" I shouted. She fled the car, dodging my mom on the way out. I was so gleeful that I drove back under the speed limit the whole way.

We were in the basement discussing the day's golf round, the keg almost kicked but still fairly early, on account of the party having attracted an impressive contingent of underclassmen from one of the neighboring towns. Our foursome had played two dollars a hole over three rounds of nine, and I had lost $46. The big winner had won 70-something. Each night I told myself not that I needed to stop making these silly bets but that I just needed to work a little harder on my game. Whenever I told my girlfriend that I'd lost—I never told her precisely how much—she laughed, in anticipation of my good humor about the whole thing. When I told her about it I was always smiling, not ashamed or mad, not even embarrassed. Just laid back with a hint of self-deprecation.

"You should keep betting," she said sarcastically.

My girlfriend was really good at finding empty rooms and isolated places. That night she took me by the wrist and led me into some kind of shack or tool shed out behind the house, past where groups of emo kids were kicking the hacky-sack. When we were in the dark she leaned in and looked at me good and long before she breathed vapor into me and kissed me, softer than usual, but also more aggressively. With her unruly hands she removed my clothes with staggering efficiency. I knew what was happening but wouldn't believe it until the deed was done.

Nearby, one of my friends vomited in the high grass until he got lost and fell asleep. They found him a little while later and slapped him in the face until he came to and started drinking again.

Inside, another one of my friends took a ninth grader from the other school district into a bathroom and locked the door. It's unclear what they did before he realized that she was unconscious. My girlfriend and I finished in the shed just in time to see the ambulances arrive. We ran up to the road where a few people had carried her into the back of the vehicle. For a July night it was blustery and cool, and they had wrapped a blanket with our high school's name and football mascot on it around her bare body.

The next day when I went to work at the golf course I talked for a long time with her father, who worked there too. It wasn’t so much that we had a conversation about the party and the role his daughter played in it, but that he talked things through with himself and I was there to listen. I admired his positive attitude about the whole thing. "Hopefully this'll be the first and last time she gets her liver pumped," he told me, both of us sitting in adjacent golf carts, feet up on the steering wheels, waiting for guys who probably wouldn't show up for their tee times in this rain.