use pills to take care of that.”
Jack left the General’s office a little deflated .
Billy said sheepishly, “Sounds like you guys are getting along swimmingly.”
“I guess he makes a good point once in a while.”
“A good point about what?”
Jack sighed. “No offense but it’s personal. I’d rather not talk about it.”
Billy didn’t seem to mind his evasiveness. He was probably just glad he didn’t hate him anymore.
Jack figured he could half ass his biography and then get to work on the artifacts. He sat at his desk and started typing:
After graduate school I was in for a reality check. Job hunting didn’t go as planned. I guess I wasn’t surprised by how it turned out. There was always a part of me that understood that good things could be taken from me at will by some sort of hateful unseen force. It happened with my family and it happened with Nick, it even happened to my high school popularity. I always lost no matter how far ahead I got.
It turned out that the ticket I got for pissing outside a bar way back when I was eighteen years old had followed me into adulthood and it spelled doom for any kind of career that might require me to pass a background check.
I guess it’s not ok to assault a cop with urine.
I felt the injustice of it profoundly. It was just one night of drinking and acting stupid, yet it ruined my chances for a real career. It was a familiar injustice but I have to admit I didn’t see that one coming.
I tried to have the ticket expunged from my record but that shit’s just not as easy as you might think. It didn’t matter one bit to the judge that that simple ticket had ruined my future. I heard that judge died of an overdose of painkillers last year and I’m a little ashamed to admit that I thought he deserved it and I hoped it was agonizing, although since it was a painkiller OD it was probably bliss.
Maybe I shouldn’t have written that last part.
You have to understand that I had spent the past eight years in college laying the groundwork for a good life and it turned out that it was a wasted effort because that judge was apathetic to my plight. It would have taken several precious minutes out of his day to help me out and he just couldn’t spare the time.
So I took some entry level positions as a team lead or as a supervisor and bounced from one terrible opportunity to the next. I don’t think I’ve ever held a job for more than six months before it just makes me sick to my stomach and I feel the urge to run away. And that’s exactly what I’ve always done; leave one shitty job for a different shitty job hoping that the new one won’t completely suck.
I daydream ed about getting noticed by a think tank that required my specific skill set or a hospital willing to overlook my ‘pissing on a cop’ transgression. But they were fantasies that would never come to fruition. Only a desperate man can indulge in such desperate fantasies.
Eight fucking years of higher learning all gone to waste; I should have expected as much.
Jack entered the log and sighed heavily.
Although this new job wasn’t exactly perfect it was precisely the type of thing he’d always secretly hoped for. He’d often indulged in the fantasy that one day he’d be discovered or sought out for something better. And here he was, the main character of the weirdest show on earth. Then the nagging doubts kicked in. What if this was too good to be true? What if it was an elaborate hoax or it turned out to be illegal? What if it all just evaporated like all of his hopes and dreams seemed to do. He’d do whatever it took to hold on to it. He had to this time. At twenty nine his window of opportunity was shrinking fast.
He let Billy escort him to the cafeteria for a quick bite of breakfast. The aromas wafting down the corridors grew more delicious the closer they got. He grabbed a bagel and a fistful of bacon. Billy ate an English muffin in one almighty bite.
Jack noticed, not for
Jack left the General’s office a little deflated .
Billy said sheepishly, “Sounds like you guys are getting along swimmingly.”
“I guess he makes a good point once in a while.”
“A good point about what?”
Jack sighed. “No offense but it’s personal. I’d rather not talk about it.”
Billy didn’t seem to mind his evasiveness. He was probably just glad he didn’t hate him anymore.
Jack figured he could half ass his biography and then get to work on the artifacts. He sat at his desk and started typing:
After graduate school I was in for a reality check. Job hunting didn’t go as planned. I guess I wasn’t surprised by how it turned out. There was always a part of me that understood that good things could be taken from me at will by some sort of hateful unseen force. It happened with my family and it happened with Nick, it even happened to my high school popularity. I always lost no matter how far ahead I got.
It turned out that the ticket I got for pissing outside a bar way back when I was eighteen years old had followed me into adulthood and it spelled doom for any kind of career that might require me to pass a background check.
I guess it’s not ok to assault a cop with urine.
I felt the injustice of it profoundly. It was just one night of drinking and acting stupid, yet it ruined my chances for a real career. It was a familiar injustice but I have to admit I didn’t see that one coming.
I tried to have the ticket expunged from my record but that shit’s just not as easy as you might think. It didn’t matter one bit to the judge that that simple ticket had ruined my future. I heard that judge died of an overdose of painkillers last year and I’m a little ashamed to admit that I thought he deserved it and I hoped it was agonizing, although since it was a painkiller OD it was probably bliss.
Maybe I shouldn’t have written that last part.
You have to understand that I had spent the past eight years in college laying the groundwork for a good life and it turned out that it was a wasted effort because that judge was apathetic to my plight. It would have taken several precious minutes out of his day to help me out and he just couldn’t spare the time.
So I took some entry level positions as a team lead or as a supervisor and bounced from one terrible opportunity to the next. I don’t think I’ve ever held a job for more than six months before it just makes me sick to my stomach and I feel the urge to run away. And that’s exactly what I’ve always done; leave one shitty job for a different shitty job hoping that the new one won’t completely suck.
I daydream ed about getting noticed by a think tank that required my specific skill set or a hospital willing to overlook my ‘pissing on a cop’ transgression. But they were fantasies that would never come to fruition. Only a desperate man can indulge in such desperate fantasies.
Eight fucking years of higher learning all gone to waste; I should have expected as much.
Jack entered the log and sighed heavily.
Although this new job wasn’t exactly perfect it was precisely the type of thing he’d always secretly hoped for. He’d often indulged in the fantasy that one day he’d be discovered or sought out for something better. And here he was, the main character of the weirdest show on earth. Then the nagging doubts kicked in. What if this was too good to be true? What if it was an elaborate hoax or it turned out to be illegal? What if it all just evaporated like all of his hopes and dreams seemed to do. He’d do whatever it took to hold on to it. He had to this time. At twenty nine his window of opportunity was shrinking fast.
He let Billy escort him to the cafeteria for a quick bite of breakfast. The aromas wafting down the corridors grew more delicious the closer they got. He grabbed a bagel and a fistful of bacon. Billy ate an English muffin in one almighty bite.
Jack noticed, not for
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