On my thirtieth birthday, I had not yet written the Great American Novel. Had not begun it, really, in any meaningful sense, in any non-conversational Brooklyn rooftop cocktail party hipster evolutionary fitness sense, in any non- bleary Tuesday morning soulworn Microsoft Office hyper-inflationary rent paying
illegitimi non carborundum unappreciated-genius sense. My hairline had begun its long retreat from the temples (wherein the great work stirreth, surely) and the great work was not begun. I was aware, in my vintage necktie, in the subtle rebellion of my dapper sneakers, in the discriminating appointments that personalized my nook of obligation—French movie posters, array of USB-powered novelties, gargantuan synthetic pink Chinatown jewel that bespoke an ironic commitment to feng shui—that my Latin was itself bastardized, that I had never been to China, that my ability to identify Jean-Paul Belmondo as the star of
À bout de souffle did not constitute a deep recognition of the film’s themes, but from this knowledge had failed to profit. As from this frightening truth: that I had grown to loathe my job, and in so doing loathed myself, for, despite all our carefully cultivated preferences, all the subtle modulations of our Friday night raconteurism, the fun-sized rhetorical flourishes of our blogs, and microblogs, these things are equivalent. We are, and forever shall be, our job descriptions.
I was not even in a band.
