Job interviews. I have already said I interview badly. Actually, I’ve had jobs where I had to interview people and, of course, I much prefer that side of the table. I cannot help, when I am petitioning for a job, feeling like a supplicant. It’s not enough that I know that I can do the job. It’s not enough that I know that the company couldn’t hire a better more driven, more conscientous employee. I still feel like I’m begging and it’s that feeling that ruins me and my interview. The entire act of looking for a job is a horrible indignity. So much time spent on polishing my presentation. And so many CVs sent by mail or by email to be, for the most part, ignored. An applicant, even the most qualified, remains a beggar. I cannot, for any length of time, bear the weight of looking for a job.

Missed opportunities and missed potential.

Public transit. It may be environmentally sound but I don’t care. Caught walking behind impassable troupes of weary commuters. As three trains come and go on the other side, waiting for one on my side. Inside the metal box, pushed and touched, and made to bend in unnatural ways. And, when I’m late, always when I’m late, stuck in the dark tunnel with the swarthy travelers canceled from the world. Fat people who stand squarely in the middle of escalators. Meanderers who manage miraculously to block me whenever I attempt to pass.

TV commercials with dead actors. It diminishes me and it diminishes Vincent Price and Frank Sinatra. I’ve instructed everybody that I know that when I’m dead, I don’t want my face on anything. Except maybe money, but only for the irony. Retro cartoon characters resurrected from their celluloid purgatory to sell me crap. Is this to be the legacy of George Jetson? Will corporations defile every grave? And especially commercials before movies. I don’t actually mind the 14 minutes of previews. It’s all the other commercials that drive me nuts and, the most heinous of all, public service announcements. After paying something like $15 for the privilege of sitting there, I don’t want some moron telling me that Barq’s has bite and I certainly don’t want some old guy telling me that smoking is bad and that if you talk to your kids they will listen.

Politicians, garbage removers, and carpet cleaners that call you and leave commercials on your phone. It-was-all-a-dream stories and movies. I always feel manipulated and cheated. Vanilla Sky infuriated me.

Poverty. Poverty demands so much paperwork and creativity. When I have been waiting to buy something cheerful, having to buy insulin instead. Saving up to buy a DVD and when you get home and open it that little plastic black thing in the center is broken so that the DVD always falls off and jiggles in the case. It’s the little things that will kill you. Watching people I know flaunt their fabulous and fantastically insensitive successes.

Meeting a former lover who has since found a new love. Being made a pallbearer. Anybody who really loves you will not make you a pallbearer.

People who take your damp clothes out of the dryer and put them in a heaping pile on top. Even though you’re only five minutes late. When the pizza man delivers the wrong pizza. You’re hungry and you don’t want to wait another hour for a resolution and the right pizza. So you take it. But every mouthful renews your anguish.

Waiting. I hate waiting in line. For subway tickets. For movie tickets. For my passport. For forms for my passport. For information for forms for my passport. For money from the ATM. For a check to come in the mail. Waiting for a phone call from a potential employer. Banks that call you and put you on hold. I always hang up. Waiting for a phone call from a new lover. Waiting for a phone call from an old lover.

Being ignored.

SS