Goo Goo's Steel Nipples

Billy's nickname for me is Goo Goo. It evolved from a shortening of my name, backwards. Doug to Geh to Goo to Goo Goo.

He is the only person in the world who calls me this, although people know who he's talking about when he asks, "Where's Goo Goo?"

*

Last night I was getting ready for bed.

"I hope you're not planning on getting into bed with that sweatshirt on."

I wasn't, but I feigned ignorance. "Why not?!?"

"It's terrible!"

The w soils and tears and ruins. From shoes to shirts. The dust and the metal work in conjunction to sully and rend. I've broken glasses and belts and cell phones. And this, not with the stunning speed of the farm, but with a slow, patient, insistence that, given enough time, just about any object will emerge, worn.

*

Inventory is tomorrow, so I'm putting in a six day work week. Financially, it will keep me above water for another week, but in the sense that I'm just barely being saved from drowning. It seems, I suppose, an awful lot of work to do just to scrape by. But that's in the nature of the world, at times.

And this isn't a cop out or quietism.

Or fatalism, for that matter.

Just an acknowledgement that there is a relationship between work and success, but the relationship is tenuous and strange at times. It follows the convolutions and reversals of any relationship: and there is betrayal and bad luck and good fortune here, too.

No mere fatalism, here! But still, I'm thinking of spider webs.

*

I was so drained by the end of the day that I had to wonder: at what point does this make me into someone who'll stab a man just for staring at me funny? That's the way I felt: testy and worthless. A bad combo.

I counted hundreds of bins of brass fittings and some steel nipples. I counted flanges and fuses and p-traps and concentric line kits. I counted five foot pipe in both twenty-six and thirty gauge. Most of the time, I was wishing I was in a cafe, drinking coffee, reading, and watching the rain fall. This wish was dim and ghostlike, and, to an extend, so was I. So when Billy came to mutter if I was ready to hang myself, I could only mutter "Maybe I already have."

But that's a cold, rainy afternoon of ill-fitting work with no immediate prospects. It'll do that to ya! It's a grim enough day so that a river of whiskey wouldn't drown out the sense of unease.

I have, however, found some respite. One: in music, which sounds particularly good these days. Ripping my cd collection has excited my ears and reminded me of what why I used to pursue music with such abandon. And two: cooking. Cooking is meditative for me.

This isn't to say there are other forms of solace: Jess is sick and I'm avoiding her a little, just because I simply can't get sick tonight because I'm going in tomorrow come what may. And the long work week is hard enough to endure while feeling healthy. Not to mention, it would spoil one of the few perks: free pizza on inventory day.

Free pizza! Fate be damned!