It’s nothing new but it’s something I’ll get used to
The sky today, bulging at the seams. All billowy and white, fecundated with the material which will have northeasterners talking derisively under their collective breath, mumbling small curse words. Damn snow, you will hear someone saying later. It’s only a while longer then, before it hits. In the meanwhile, I am being one omnipresent motherfucker today, Map Questing all new locations around town which no one has ever heard of before, visiting places called Lear Drive and Automation Lane (I am not kidding about this, either: hey, where do you work? Automation Lane. Somehow, I can’t think of anything more hilarious). You discover the small nooks around town you never even realized existed, an office park squished into every location imaginable, named after the thing it has replaced.

The place I will be working for would like me to take a drug test. It’s nothing personal, they tell me, just standard procedure. What this requires is picking up the paperwork and then going to the analysis lab, which I arrive at just before lunch. There is a big sign on the desk saying, No admittance after 11:30 am. “Can you fit me in?” I ask an older woman at the desk, who looks like she doesn’t need this right about now. She fumbles with the paperwork, checking things over. “Can you give me a half a cup of urine if I asked you right now?” she needs to know. “Uh, well, yeah—I can certainly try,” I tell her. This is not reassuring, however. She becomes short with me. “No, that’s not what I’m asking you,” she says in small words. “Can you positively give me a half cup of urine, or if you’re thinking about it you’re going to have to come back in an hour, after lunch.” I feel a small school child, being yelled at like this. Trying not to laugh, in the most sincere tone I can muster, I tell her that I can in fact produce a vial for her, which then produces the pangs of self-doubt that has me wondering what will happen if I can’t. Will she beat me with a ruler? Give me detention? She leads me back into the receptionist cubicle, where she instructs me to take off my hat and coat, and asks if I have anything in there. A small vial of pee maybe, to mask the fact that I am actually a crystal meth-smoking maniac and have been out on a bender all night, tearing up the town. You immediately feel the part of the criminal element in this situation. “No, I don’t have anything in there,” I tell her. She sends me in to the bathroom, where I fill the cup plentifully, which she makes no mention of upon returning. A gold star for peeing, I was hoping for. A smiley face sticker. I sign the requisite paper work and am then set free into the afternoon. “Have a nice day,” she tells me, cheering up a little before lunch. “You, too,” I tell her. “Thanks for getting me in.”

Operating in the real world, with its minute everyday degradations, is a weird place to be. Somehow, I feel absolved most of the time, just totally aloof in the small corner of the universe which I happen to occupy. But on occasion, just by matter of circumstance, you find it sucking you in, and subverting even the best of your intentions. Oh, well: I guess it’s something I’m going to have to get used to. Looking up in the sky, though, you can’t help but hope for some kind of celestial event. Or something to send the earth spiraling off its axis and into the blinding sun, which would bring about the great ice-age thaw we’ve all been waiting for. Or even less childishly, a snow day.