The Unlubricated Butt-reaming of My Dreams or: How I Haven't Yet Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Financial Crisis

I know a guy who, when asked how he's doing, often replies "I'm feeling great; things are so bad they can only get better." By that standard, I'm feeling pretty dandy myself these days. Financially, I'm at an all-time low. Despite my new posh address, I'm only one or two poor decisions from skid row or having to borrow money from the kind of people who will maim you without a second thought. On top of that, I've been in the creative poor house for the last six months or so, letting the vast amounts of free time on my hands go wasted and unproductive. What the hell happened?

When I last posted here, I was about to leave a job that I detested. My decision to voluntarily enter unemployment was based on the expectation of at least temporary financial independence in the form of realized equity. I was all set to sell my apartment after moving into far snazzier, rented digs than I had ever dared hope for - on account of my sleeping with a very beautiful woman, no less. Furthermore, I was about to go on an eating and drinking rampage in Italy with said gorgeous lady. Life, in short, looked pretty damn good from my perspective late last summer. It wasn't long, however, before a mysterious force of pain and devastation entered my life via the rectum, if you'll excuse the crude metaphor. Upon closer examination, it turned out to be a global financial crisis of sorts.

Without delving into the finer points of economic theory, we can establish that the Danish housing market made like a lemming and obliviously followed the other markets of the world into the abyss. In the three years I had owned that crib, it had done nothing but soar in value, and then at the most inopportune moment, when I was goddamn good and ready to sell it, it went south; not at nosedive velocity, because that would probably have made me sit up and take notice, but the curve broke, and the apartment steadily became worth less. It took me a couple of months to realize that the official evaluation I was basing my price tag on was a hypothetical number that no longer had much meaning in the very real world of shit I was now inhabiting. When I finally did come to terms with the fact that my profit would not be the massive windfall it had first seemed, I was still constantly one step behind the recession, advertising the damn thing at roughly the price I could have gotten one moth earlier. I ascribe this to the fact that there appeared to be reasonable interest from potential buyers, so the lack of actual offers was no immediate cause for panic. In fact, when someone did step up to the plate, I scornfully rejected an offer I would now kill for. Shortly thereafter, long overdue panic set in as a consequence of a renewed sense of reality and the realization that I was trying to peddle a deceased albatross.

Then in December, one guy made a promising offer that I quickly accepted. There was just the formality of his bank granting him the loan, he said. Days and weeks went by, and no word. In fact, I never heard from that mendacious, backstabbing prick again. After that fiasco, I made the drastic decision to sign with a real estate agent who stands to get an obscene chunk of money if he can find a buyer. To be fair, even at the current, greatly reduced, asking price, it would still leave me with enough dough to make it to the edge of the proverbial woods, if not all the way out. Thus I find myself in financial limbo, worse broke than ever but with the potential to rise well above my most pressing pecuniary woes at any given time.

The level of my brokeness has, of course, in no way been abated by the fact that I have been gainfully employed for only two of the past six months. Around November of last year, when the harsh realities of my situation began to dawn on me, and my hiatus had yet to produce anything worthwhile, I got the opportunity to work for a limited two-month period and jumped at it. Then came January, and the holidays were truly over. I had to do the walk of shame to the unemployment office, hat in hand. In Denmark, qualifying for the state's cash benefits means being chewed up and passed through the digestive system of a highly evolved, cruel beast. I look forward to sharing the details of my welfare experience at a later date, but for now, let's just say that it warms my heart as a libertarian with an intact belief in capitalism and a disdain for social parasites to see that life on the dole is less than glamorous. As someone who is in the belly of the beast, I just feel increasingly like shit.

So, while this is not rock bottom, it's too close for comfort. If I may paraphrase my friend's pessoptimistic (I just invented that word, you're welcome) creed, however, there are two immediate advantages to having your back against the wall: One is that it forces you to look forward, and the other that it greatly reduces the chances of getting stabbed in the back and/or ass-raped. Ironically, lack of foresight and getting stabbed in the back are also two of the main reasons you might end up in that position.

Coming Back to Life

February came and went, as did March through May, which is convincing evidence that time is very much subject to the law of diminishing returns; rather than any tangible achievements, the past four months have mostly yielded dividends of ennui and self-loathing.

On the face of it, things took a turn for the better in March when I got hired as a translator and project manager. Alas, with that paycheck every month comes the expectation that I show up every day and put in a solid 7.4 hours of work. I know, the Danish work week of 37 hours isn’t going to impress anyone stateside or most other places, but it’s a hell of lot more than I used to put in as a free lance, and simply knowing that I am no longer my own master weighs on my soul like a ton of unfiled tax returns. Moreover, I have the distinct feeling that my excitation at the prospect of getting a real job, added to my well-documented gelatinous spine, left me shortchanged when my salary was negotiated. Most importantly, however, the job itself turned out to offer me all the satisfaction of knitting a turd sweater.

As if it’s not bad enough to have an unfulfilling, modestly paying job, I have recently discovered that the upper echelons of the organization are more than happy with my performance and, yes, even my attitude. Why is this bad, you ask? Well, it fills me with self-reproach and jars my already shaky understanding of the world and my place in it. You see, most days I feel I’m fumbling around in the dark, and I hand in my work thinking that, surely, someone will soon discover that a) I don’t know what the hell I’m doing and b) I get very little done. Inexplicably, this has not happened yet.

In fact, there I am a few weeks ago; I’m a couple of months into my five-month contract, convinced that I’m not pulling my weight around there and that my devastating Monday-through-mid-Friday blues is showing like balls on a bushman, and my boss comes up to me and says matter-of-factly that we need to renegotiate my contract, i.e., he wants to keep me permanently. Imagine my horror! Kafkaesque is a word that gets thrown around too much, so let me just say that the situation discombobulated me and threatened to undermine my very sanity. This would not do.

And so, like Bob Seger, I must turn the page. Contrary to conventional financial wisdom, I have announced that I will not be extending my contract. Management received this news with mild disappointment, while my colleagues seemed genuinely sad to hear of my impending departure. There was also a general atmosphere of curiosity and disbelief in the lunch room that day, as if I had dug a tunnel out of the prison that we are all inhabiting. They prompted me with questions about what I was going to do next, which I answered vaguely, since I’m not really sure myself. When I told them that I would certainly be taking a long time off from work altogether, I noticed a flicker of something in their eyes; it wasn’t envy but rather the echo of a repressed yearning, as if their long departed souls briefly remembered what it was like to be alive. It made me feel sad, but it also made me realize that my bid for freedom is about more than my immediate comfort – it is about giving hope to the working stiff and proving that liberty is indeed a basic human right. Okay, maybe not, but my immediate comfort is pretty damn important too.

So, what does the future hold for a kooky old fucker with misanthropy and defeatism as his main stock in trade? I guess we’ll all just have to wait and see.

The Tempestuousness of Temporary Temperance

I’m late with my entry again, and, as irony would have it, this time living clean is to blame. More specifically, I blame it on colossal mood swings and generally feeling all kinds of weird on account of nicotine deficiency. One day, when I was supposed to write this piece, I was so hopped up on caffeine and sugar – the only two drugs left in my arsenal during this exile on dry, tobaccoless ground – that I could only stream of consciousness. And what a stream of steaming piss it was; it read like the deformed literary offspring of an unholy union between the late Dr. Thompson and the even later James Joyce. Here’s a brief example of that sickly prose:

“I am the taxman, goo-goo-g'joob, trapped in a cave, filing my account of a taxing existence in lieu of a tax return on the wall with a chisel and chiselled good looks. The horror, Horowitz! Imaginary Jewish accountant, come to my aid! Take into account that I cannot be counted on. Get me off this train of thought, man! It has no dining car, and I'm pining to dine with an old friend of mine. Step into my minefield and feel my feline lies. I’m liable to do something profoundly crazy, like run a marathon or sodomize a squirrel. Don’t worry: I would never run a marathon (drumroll!). Seriously, I gotta get a grip on myself, collect my thoughts. Now, there’s a wonderful idiom: Hey babe, would you like to go home with me and see my thought collection? No? That’s what I thought. Hee, hee.”

And so on, and so forth. In a different time, another 60,000 words like that might earn me a goddamn Nobel Prize in literature, but all it earned me that day when I had calmed down a little was my own unchecked scorn.

The next day, which was my last chance to write that damn review of 2007 in time, saw me knocked into the fetal position on a couch as my mental pendulum swung dramatically the other way and hit me on the chin with a humdinger of a depression.

This has been my life without alcohol and cigarettes thus far, and I can’t say that I’m very impressed with it. One of the major reasons for boarding the wagon in the first place was to escape the mood yo-yoing that comes with heavy drinking. I'm starting to think that if I can’t do that, I might as well be drunk some of the time.

Even today, as I stand on fairly level ground, mood wise, I’m only just enough together to tell you that I still can’t write that year review. With my nicotine-deprived psyche focused on the suffering of the present, where do I find the capacity for wallowing in the pain of the past? The quasi-psychotic state I predicted in my last entry is indeed upon me, but it isn’t the good kind that possessed Van Gogh to produce greatness on the canvas at the mere price of an ear and a conventional social life. It’s just a drag.

At this point, I doubt I will ever write that lousy review. The farther 2007 slips into oblivion, the more meaningless the whole idea seems. Perhaps, the only merit it ever had was its catchy headline: Year of the Swine: A Look Back in Anguish. The hell with it! And, I guess, the hell with writing anything again until my life has some substance(s). See you in February.

Out of the Gutter and into the Straightjacket

This week and next week, I’m taking a break from the ongoing jeremiad on the subject of my capsizing career in words to bring you an update on current affairs and a review of the year 2007 in pain. Also, in case you were wondering: yes, last week I did neglect my blog-writing duties altogether, the reason being that I spent the whole week either drunk as shit or crippled by hangovers. T’was the season to be jolly after all, but it’s over now and the hell with it.

Speaking of which: I have in the past with some success spent January on the wagon. This year I’m giving it another whirl, and I’m upping the ante by throwing a 20-a-day cigarette habit into the bargain. By discontinuing my filthy, debauching ways for the duration of the year’s first month, I hope to whip my ailing body into shape, reunite long estranged parts of my brain and generally apply myself in a more productive way.

Thus far, six days into the project, I’m still in control. The first couple of days were pie, since I was still disgusted with myself over the sheer amount of poison I have taken recently. Then I started having dreams about drinking beer and smoking cigarettes, while my waking hours were still relatively unhampered by withdrawal symptoms. Over the past day or two, however, my jones for tobacco smoke has grown exponentially. At this point, it’s like carrying a 500-pound maniacal hog on my back that alternates between whispering sweet nothings in my ear and wailing at the top of its capacious lungs. Everyday it gains weight, and its squeal goes up a few decibels. Well damn you, swine! I’ll have you for breakfast yet. I will slice you up and smoke your hams before I let you put a cigarette in my mouth.

I’m starting to get testy. By next week, the arch of my withdrawal should reach its apex, at which point I expect to be nearly psychotic. This will be the perfect mood for reminiscing unfondly about 2007, which, in truth, was exceptionally kind to me. The less said about my fortuity, however, the more entertaining that piece will be. For your pleasure and the safety of my loved ones, then, I shall lock myself in a dark room and commit to hard disk my most disturbing moments in the Year of the Pig.

All I Want for Christmas is a Pair of Decorative Balls

In my lamentations over the various obstacles that beset the path of the righteous writer, I initially forgot to think about the fragility of one’s health – physical and mental. This pitfall was brutally pointed out to me last week when my nads suddenly came under close scrutiny. Without going into details, I can say that certain anomalies necessitated and ultrasound scan and that I had enough time before the test to imagine various scenarios, involving emasculation, chemo therapy and the big dirtnap. In terms of writing, nothing really hampers a man’s creative output like death.

The scan itself, though uncomfortable and demeaning, resulted in an acquittal on all counts. That puts the balls back in my court, as it were; with a clean bill of health, I have one less excuse for idleness. Moreover, a good cancer scare – in fact, any reminder of your own mortality – is wonderful motivation for attempting to rise above mediocrity and make something of oneself while there is still time.

Alas, Christmas is close at hand, and, while I don’t have any last-minute shopping to do or cooking duties, I do have a considerable drinking regimen. I shall be spending Christmas eve with just my parents – a recently retired academic couple with a predilection for fine cuisine and good liquor. Once I’ve taken full advantage of their hospitality and they are nodding off in front of the TV, probably around eight thirty, I am to hit the town with a group of unsavory drunks. The schedule for the days leading up to and including New Year’s looks equally crammed with debauchery. Thus, it seems unlikely that I will write anything of note in the near future.

None the less, I am thankful to be spending another Christmas with my manhood intact. After all, what is a tree without balls to decorate the wood? Happy holidays!

Requiem for My Memory

They say you have to be an avid reader to be a good writer. I like to read, but all the reading in the world does little good if what you read tends to vanish from your brain like a fart in a typhoon. Once, while sorting through old e-mail correspondence, I discovered that I had one year previously read Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. I had no memory of it. I don’t mean that I had forgotten the names of the characters or the subplots or even the theme of the book; I had no memory of ever even picking up the damn thing. Now, while forgetting a Virginia Woolf novel didn’t exactly bring me to tears – in fact I’m hoping I’ll soon lose the memory of To the Lighthouse and eventually of Virginia Woolf’s very existence – the experience did give me pause.

I seem to remember that I once had a pretty good memory, but obviously I can’t be sure. In fact, I may have played an active part in the destruction of it, and not just by constantly bombarding my brain with various nerve poisons over the past two decades. A movie nerd since childhood, I have since high school tried to remember the name of every actor I ever saw. Before the advent of IMDB, my brother and I actually compiled a filmography of all the actors we knew. By the time we gave it up (sometime in our twenties when we finally discovered girls), the list had around 1,700 names on it, and they were all more or less committed to memory. I’ve learned many more since then, and given, say, six hours I could probably mention 2,000 actors. My fear is that I have clogged my brain with this wonderfully useless knowledge. I’m not sure that’s how it works, but something sure has fucked up my cognitive powers.

The funny thing is that we’re not talking about a complete meltdown; at times I will scare myself and everyone around me with the shit I can remember by association. Case in point: While I was writing this, a friend asked me on MSN if I remembered an old computer game with a character who had gigantic testicles and drove them around in a wheel barrel. I instantly remembered the name of the game, “Viz”, and that it had another character called Johnny Fartpants. Why the hell do I remember this when I can’t remember the name of someone I was introduced to one minute ago? Maybe that’s got something to do with the difference between long and short term memory, but why then do I remember Buster Gonads and Johnny Fartpants and not who was king of Denmark a mere two centuries ago or the melting point of nitrogen or most other things I learned in school? Some will say that you remember what’s important to you. These people are, of course, assholes. You can’t tell me it wasn’t important to me to know what was and was not a lyrical poem during my exam in English literature when I came up against fucking Milton. Then there is that most annoying grandmotherish adage, “If it’s important, it will come back to you.” Well, fuck you, grandma! I bet you never found yourself in a dark part of Poland trying to get money from an ATM with an upside-down keypad only to realize that your PIN has long since migrated from your actual memory to your muscle memory.

What is most painful of all is, of course, the loss of great ideas to a shitty memory. I should say of allegedly great ideas, since, ipso facto, you will never know the true quality of a lost idea. I tend to get my best ideas for writing in very inconvenient situations like when I’m trying to go to sleep at night. I have learned that that is one type of situation where sleeping on it is the worst thing you can do. If you’re lucky, you’ll wake up the next morning having forgotten that you even had a good idea. Mostly, however, you will spend that entire day cursing yourself and wracking your brain to no avail. Immediate action is required, and for that reason I have decided to always carry a notepad around with me. What is pathetically obvious is that I will usually forget to bring it.

Work Ain't Gonna Work for Me

“If work is healthy, give it to the sick.” Thus said an otherwise extremely unfunny Danish comedian who once ran for parliament as a joke. The joke was on him when he got elected and damn near became the deciding vote between the two blocks in Danish politics. It scared the shit out of him, and it was a wake-up call for the real politicians that a man running on a platform of promises like “tailwind in the bike lanes” and “larger Christmas presents for everyone” could actually win a seat in our legislature. The Danes’ disgust for politicians was apparent, and democracy was on the ropes.

The comedian in question, although a complete idiot, was a part of a mildly amusing association called the League of Consciously Workshy Elements; and so are you and I. You see, one of the basic tenets of that association is that anyone who doesn’t actively renounce their membership is automatically considered a member. I, for one, have no plans to renounce mine.

The point I’m trying to make is that I’m sick of working for a living. It is generally unpleasant, but, more importantly at this juncture, it is one of the main obstacles in the way of my so-called writing career. First of all, it puts great demands on my time, but, equally importantly, it eats away at my very soul and vacuums out my will to live. Needless to say, maintaining any kind of writing career with no time and a dead spirit is not easy. Something’s gotta give.

Although I am averse to work in general, not just my current job, I should perhaps explain what it is that I do.

I work as a freelance translator, mostly on manuals for everything from ass probes to microwave ovens. In order to do so, I have had to start my own company consisting of just me. In theory, then, I work for me, which means that I have a fool for a boss, a slob for an employee, a drunken board of directors, and a janitor who is permanently on strike. In practice, however, I work for my only regular customer, a translating business situated way out in the sticks. On most days, I bike the 11 kilometers out there, and I would like to add that it rains 124 days a year in this country. I could work from home, of course, if I were willing to shell out a thousand dollars for a software license, but since I don’t see myself doing this shit for very long, I’m not. This has been going on for six months.

To make matters worse, I’ve been foolish enough to take on as a side project the translation of a book my dentist wrote. It is actually more interesting than what I usually do, and I’m able to do it at my own place, but it’s not exactly what I want to come home to after a long day of barely managing not to kill myself. I have to do a good job too; considering his ability to inflict pain on me when we’re on friendly terms, I’m not curious to know what kind of damage he is capable of when he’s pissed off.

What’s a lazy fucker to do? It’ll be another 35 years before I’m eligible for state pension. That seems like a long time to be doing something that makes me want to tear off my own head. Why, oh why wasn’t I born to old money? Why wasn’t I blessed with model looks or a body that would sell? Why didn’t I invent post-it notes, the Internet, or silent Velcro? This loathsome situation is, of course, one more reason to get busy writing or get busy dying. I’m giving serious thought to selling all my earthly possessions and giving it a shot. I wonder what my girlfriend will think of that idea.