NEEDLING

BACK AT WORK

Bought a brand new computer while I was in Austin. I don’t have the money to pay for it and there was a letter waiting for me from my banker before I got back. As I walked in, there it was underneath my door next to the 2003 tax declaration form and some junk mail. Away for a week and that’s all the mail I receive. Not even a coherent message on my phone. Just some guy saying “hello… hello… anybody there… hello…” and not even a voice I recognized.

After spending more than fourteen hours in and out of planes and airports, I didn’t feel like opening this envelope to read a letter knowing perfectly well what was written on it… more or less. So Saturday morning I went to work and didn’t open it till later, after I had completed my twelve hour shift, gone back home, taken my boots off, and uncorked the wine bottle.

The good news is my “conseiller” has changed. I wore the last one out. A couple summers ago when the bank was pulling some bad stuff on me, and that I’d exploded a few times accusing them of every money-lending crime in the book, each time I’d walk in the bank looking like a mad-man about to pull a gun, I could see the cashiers crunching up trying to hide in between their shoulders blades all looking at me real worried like : who’s he gonna fall on this time… pray it’s not me. And my dear “conseiller,” who’s desk was up front so I could always tell whether he was in or not, the minute he noticed me he’d bury his head in his papers and computer equipment sweating worse than me... All the sudden looking real busy-like though a few seconds before he’d been daydreaming about god knows what an underpaid two year bank clerk daydreams about, probably about his next fifty cent pay raise.

The last time I went in there a month or so ago, I noticed they put one of those little cubicle dividers up… whatever they’re called, the ones they have in all large office space… and you can’t see my ex-conseiller’s desk anymore. Though I doubt it, I’d like to think I had something to do with that.

So… I have a new fellow, a freshman, a rookie… hopefully right out of school and still idealistic and all. Which brings me to an important question: Why does one become a banker? Is there some sort of false idealistic dream-world one might get lost in, that might make one believe one might make the world a better place by becoming a banker? What could bring some beautiful little baby to grow up, love, dream, play in the sandboxes, have a first kiss then another and a few more… a regular man or a regular woman that’s been brought up in more or less normal conditions… how does that pimpled teenager make it to the university to actually take classes and go through to earning a degree TO BECOME A BANKER !!! Something is wrong with our world when some innocent little baby actually grows up and becomes a banker on purpose… (That’s unfair of me. How does one become a hotel clerk? Does one become anything on purpose? Even a feast for maggots? I guess that’s why some want to create – create something, anything, a book, a statue, a company, a family, a mess, a war, whatever – because by doing so we trick ourselves into thinking we’ve done something on purpose, that we’ve decided on something and gone through with it on our own, through some sentient perversity… delusion…)

What I’m really worried about is this: at thirty two years of age, I still got to go and cry my sob stories to get out of a jam. At twenty, it’s alright. You can get away with it. Play the little boy who’s lost and scared of this big bad world. The innocent gullible face works wonders in your late teens, early twenties, but once the thirties have definitely hit home, it’s a whole other story.