Let me get this straight: The Rosenbergs were traitors, becuase they sold secrets to the Russians, America's then-enemy. But Halliburton is doing business with Iran, America's current enemy, and they are "[compliant] with applicable laws and regulations" because they're doing it from the legal loophole of a tax shelter? Someone please explain this to me.

A little over a year ago, my employers at my nearly-full time incredibly cushy freelance job informed me that they had no more money with which to pay me for my services. I panicked, and then decided to see if I could be my own boss while exploiting the fact that I was incredibly nerdy in high school by becoming a private tutor.

Nerdiness, it turns out, is a commodity that some are born with and others have to pay for. Kind of like breasts. Strippers are selling people without firm breasts access to their firm breasts, and I am selling people without a firm understanding of coordinate geometry access to my firm understanding of coordinate geometry. I guess the difference is that strippers don't have to explain their breasts over and over and over in different ways until their clients finally understand them. Also, strippers can take drugs at their job, whereas I try to avoid that, because it scares kids when you open their biology textbooks and say, "Okay, sooooo, your blood is actually made up of different kinds of cells, it's really, really cool, the red ones are shaped like little inner tubes, so the oxygen can ride around on them, and the white ones are the ones that EAT diseases, and the platelets keep you from bleeding to death! Cool, right? Blooooooood. Whoa. Hey, check out this picture. Isn't it weird how that's inside your body? Tiny little cameras, kid. Tiny. Little. Cameras."

One more way that I am like a stripper is that going into this line of work made me instantly thinner and stronger. Not because I writhe my naked body around a pole under flashing lights, but rather because I do not work behind a desk and instead schlep my ass all over New York City on weekday evenings and weekend afternoons.

It was either Rebecca or Karl Marx who pointed out that all labor in a capitalist society is just a different kind of whoring.

But before I embarked on the magical journey that has taken me from the tip of Coney Island to the suburban reaches of Westchester, I had this job, and lost this job. And on the last of day what I sincerely hope was my last job (tutoring somehow seems like more of a gig, and writing is more like a compulsion/pipe dream), I wrote this confession, which has remained sealed--until now.

Well, it's my last day of work here freelancing web content at the education nonprofit. Or, as most people called it, "that job you have at that place," as many of my friends and relatives did not seem to understand the nature of this job. That is okay. I never fully understood the nature of this job.

And now it is my last day of sitting here mostly not working, sending and receiving email in a 5:1 ratio, studying the subway map I pinned to the wall in an ongoing effort to memorize the entire subway system, keeping myself occupied with the thrill making elaborate snacks in the office microwave and managing my meager finances via the internet.

As anyone with a 9-5 job knows, the internet is your best friend. The internet is your connection to the outside world. People ask this all the time, but really, I want to know, what did people do at work before the internet?

I know they didn't work, so what did they do?

I've done a fair amount of internet shopping from this desk, I've bought underwear, swimwear, jewelry, a particular kind of bath gel I favor that can only be obtained in Provincetown, Cape Cod, steeply discounted disposable contact lenses, movie tickets, concert tickets, plane tickets, train tickets and bus tickets. I have researched many things, including: the reason for the rainy spring, the meaning of the word "postmodern," the psychopharmacology of various narcotics, the history of now-defunct punk bands, COINTELPRO, the price of airline tickets to faraway places, the location of antiwar protests, and my own weird medical problems.

I developed a nasty habit of reading transcripts of sitcoms I enjoy, convincing myself I was "saving" time by reading them in about ten minutes instead of watching them for half an hour, and it was "okay" because an amused mind would be a more productive mind.

I've shown up here sleep-deprived and delirious, viciously hung over, depressed, euphoric and everything in between. I admit I have done little to hide these states of mind or keep them from affecting my work. I will say that they have totally affected my work. I would say the window to my optimal work condition, barring sleep deprivation, was very small and occurred for about half of one day of each week. Sleep deprivation, however, was a major factor in my function in this workplace. Drinking until 2 or 3 a.m. two or three nights a week was a major factor in my sleep deprivation.

I've fallen asleep in the anteroom to the Staff bathroom on the surprisingly comfortable vinyl nurses-office couch, but I have always deducted this time spent unconscious from my timesheet.

I've veered off the 100 steps that lead up the steep hill from the subway to this office and fallen asleep on the grass of the park for an hour, only to wake up, climb ten more steps and pass out again, eventually waking up surrounded by people I suspect were not merely "napping."

I suppose I haven't taken this job very seriously. I think that's because I am incapable of taking any job seriously. I find it both sad and amusing that people care at all about what happens in offices, be they the offices of corporations, nonprofits or media outlets. The whole thing seems to me to be a ridiculous sham, the flurry of activity and meaningless exchange of inter-office email. No one wants to be there, but everyone needs the money and the health insurance. It seems unfair to sit in an office eight hours day just for the privilege of having your cavities filled. Doesn't anyone realize practically nothing is ever getting done, and whatever is getting done is completely pointless? Does the world really need another workshop, another report, another book about puppies?

This perfectly nice job for this perfectly nice organization has led me to a major realization: I don't want to have a job.

I mean, no one wants to have a job. I accept that we all have to work. Well, I accept that we all have to eat. What I mean is that I don't want to have an office, a desk, a phone line, a voicemail, an email signature that says my company and fax number. I don't want to have bosses or co-workers or underlings. And I don't want health insurance or a retirement fund badly enough to acquiesce to any of those things. Also, call me crazy, but if you never start having a real job, you will never have to retire. Wanting to retire is like wanting to get released from prison--something that can neatly be avoided by never going there in the first place.

I hate it all. The files, the file cabinets, the emails, the keys to the bathroom, the elevators, the refrigerators with their odd collections of cross-cultural condiments, the birthday cards that get passed around and signed on which you have nothing to say and think silently, "Who the hell is this person?" the feeling even as you leave at 5:00 on Friday afternoon that no matter where you go you will end up back in this place. I hate the fact that 5:00 on Friday is such an exciting time, though it always ends in 9:00 Monday.

But still, I did my best, in my own peculiar way, and I think it was good enough. In any case, it was good enough that no one ever said, as the DMV official on my first road test did, "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

I maintained color-coded to-do lists on legal pads. This is not to say I did everything on these lists, but these lists were maintained. I carefully filed things in manila folders, which I clearly labeled and alphabetized in my file drawer. I sighed heavily and furrowed my brow whenever anyone approached my desk.

I believed in the mission of this organization, and had no desires to destroy it in any way, which, for me, is saying a lot.

True, I did use the digital camera I was issued to take photographs for the promotional purposes of this organization to photograph my friends and myself in various states of inebriation and undress, but I did in fact also shoot, catalog and edit many photos for the promotional purposes of this organization. True, I did take many of these photographs while delirious from sleep deprivation. True, I did show up at the annual major events of this organization while delirious from sleep deprivation. True, while attending the annual major events of this organization I did sleep furtively under furniture I found stacked in corners of the restaurants/public landmarks where these events were occurring.

I think I was a fun and at times reassuring presence to my co-workers. I always shared my snacks, I tried not to leave anything in the office refrigerator for more than a few days, and I never ate anything but hot sauce without asking.

All this and I never even had health insurance.

I was re-reading A Moveable Feast, wondering why I don't live in Paris, and why I have to use so many words in all my sentences, when I came to my favorite part, the part where Hemingway recounts how F. Scott Fitzgerald had some issues about his...size. In the male sense of the word. Zelda had told him he was too small to ever satisfy her, and so he was despondent and appealed to Hemingway for an honest opinion. Because, if I were a man, and I thought my penis was too small, the first person I'd ask to look at it would be my friend the hard-drinking egomaniac bullfighting enthusiast.

But Hemingway, ever tender and caring toward his friend, took Fitzgerald into the bathroom and assured him that his Princeton-educated winkie was just as manly as any other he'd seen. He told him, "You look at yourself from above and you look forshortened." He even cleverly suggested that Zelda was just fucking with him by telling him it was small because Zelda was, well, we all know Zelda was crazy. And then Hemingway offered to take him to the Louvre and show him all the naked people so he could compare. Oh, the kindness of dead famous alcoholic writers.

The Siren Fest was an experience. I can only describe it as Friendster Come Alive. Or perhaps: The High Points of Hipsterism: A Fashion Retrospective. Or: An Opportunity To Get A Sunburn and Wait Half an Hour to Go to the Bathroom (but that's really any music festival, isn't it?). Or: My T-Shirt Is More Ironic Than Your T-Shirt.

And now it was over. We had heard the music of a band we like mercilessly tortured by a bad sound system, dropped at least five bucks on skee-ball, ridden the Wonder Wheel with strangers, and consumed, between the two of us, a spicy Italian sausage, a hot dog, two knishes, an ice cream come, a fried dough, seven or eight Coronas, a three-foot pina colada, a flaskful of bourbon and most of the nug I've taken to affectionately calling "Frankie." We had photographed ourselves with the digital camera and then spent the next ten minutes re-living the last ten minutes. I went swimming and finally conceded that the water at Coney Island is filthy. I climbed out to the middle of one of the jetties and watched the setting sun turn all the entwined swimming couples into Hawaiian postcard silhouettes. Now, it had begun to rain. It was time to go home.

In a kind of Subway Miracle, the G train had replaced the F and therefore was running all the way from Coney Island back to Williamsburg. It was full of other tired, wet people retreating from the low-income neighborhood we invaded for the day and used as our own private amusement park. Though, oddly, this low-income neighborhood is an amusement park. Someday I am sure we will invade it permanently, and drive the low-income people into the sea. Isn't that the ultimate gentrification fantasy?

When the hipster gentrifiers do drive the low-income non-hipsters into the sea, I will have the whole beach to myself. Hipsters don't like swimming. It's hard to swim with ironic detachment. The hipsters lay on the sand like gaunt, beached whales, bored and out of place. As I walked down the hipster-clogged beach on my way to swim in the garbage-strewn ocean, I felt their detached stares. It was a cathartic experience, kind of like walking through the metaphorical high school cafeteria of our generation in my bikini. Luckily, my bikini is very cute and I was very stoned, so that feeling of being watched may have just been my paranoia.

On the G train, I re-lived the entire day in my digital camera. Satisfied that it had been a good day, I opened my copy of Harper's to look appreciatively at the haunting photographs of an abandoned U.S. Government anthrax plant. That was when I consumed the true entertainment of my day, the entertainment that surpassed the so-very-now bands, the stoned sunset swim, the large amounts of junk food, the rides and arcade games.

To my right was a guy with a shaved head and a mean razor burn. He wore adolescent sneakers and an angry expression. To his right was his far more affable shaggy-haired friend. He wore yellow club-kid sunglasses and a fair amount of hair gel. The bald, angry guy was spewing vitriol, and the affable friend was leaning against the window with his eyes closed, vaguely agreeing.

BALD ANGRY GUY: "I just hate how he philosophizes all the time. He thinks he's so deep. And he just gets more and more tattoos. And I don't have anything against tattoos. It's the just way he's so serious about them. Like they all have meaning. You know?"

AFFABLE FRIEND: "Uh-huh."

BAG: "And it's one thing to be that way when you're 23, you know? But I'm like, we're thirty now, okay? You can stop calling yourself a writer, and philosophizing all the time. I mean, have you even read any of his writing?"

AF: "Uh...yeah, I think once."

BAG: "I mean, come on. And he never leaves the apartment. He just smokes weed and calls up girls like Janey Smart* (*not her real name, but rather a rhyming homophone of her real name) and gets them to come over, and look at his tattoos and listen to him philosophize."

AF: "Heh-heh. Yeah?"

BAG: "Yeah. And I'm like, 'So what? So you can get girls like Janey Smart* (*NOT HER REAL NAME) to come over. Big deal. And you've read a lot of books. Wow.' It's shit like that that really pisses me off. It's shit like that. You know?"

AF: "Actually, I haven't seen him in a while."

BAG: "Well he's just getting to be even more like he already was."

AF: "Heh. I always thought he was a pretty cool guy. I always liked him."

BAG: "Oh?oh, yeah. I mean, despite all this negativity, I think, you know, he's a good guy. I mean, actually, I like the guy. I'm just being negative, you know man?"

AF: "I guess."

[Long pause]

BAG: "Hey, what's Amber up to tonight, man?"

AF: "She's going clubbing in Queens with her girlfriends. She's with, like, five of her girlfriends. They get all dressed up and go clubbing, like, in Queens."

BAG: "Amber has five girlfriends? Who are these girls, and why haven't I slept with them yet?"

AF: "Heh. Yeah."

And this whole time I am thinking, who is this guy who sits around his apartment smoking weed, who has read a lot of books, who hasn't given up writing even though he's thirty, whose tattoos have meaning to him, who wants to get girls to come over and philosophize to them? Who is this guy? He sounds potentially cool, if he is not the cheesy, self-important version of all of these things. Excuse me, very bitter, thick-necked man who should wear more deodorant? I would like to meet your friend, this guy that you hate. 'Cause I don't like you, and you don't like him, so, I'm thinkin', you know, your enemies' enemies...

The Mormons were out in full force the other day, trying to convert my gentrifying Italian neighborhood to their weird Jesus cult. I saw them going to work on this large, aged lady who sits outside her house most nice days with an even more aged lady I assume is her mother. The Mormons were trying to get her to take a pamphlet. Apparently if you take a pamphlet, they take one tiny step closer to Heaven. But if you don't take a pamphlet, they remain dangerously close to hell. The large, aged lady was having none of it. "Let's just say we have Jesus in common and leave it at that," she said.

The Mormons looked dejected. Their little black "Church of Latter Day Saints," name tags drooped on their matching white polo shirts. The large, aged lady returned to fanning herself and widened her gaze past the Mormon interlopers to the street she surveys all day long. When I pass by her and wave, she nods, as if to say, "your existence on this street does not please me, young gentrifier, but I register your presence and grudgingly accept it." As I passed by the large, aged lady that day, I not only waved, but grinned widely, as if to say, "Yeah! Fuck those brainwashed freaks who have come from America's heartland to force their weird Jesus cult of diluted beer upon us! They won't get into Heaven by converting the inhabitants of OUR street to their weird Jesus cult!"

On the Autumnal Equinox (which falls this year on September 22) there are exactly twelve hours of daylight and twelve hours of darkness everywhere on Earth. It is in this perfect balance of daylight and darkness that I except to experience a full-on existential crisis, otherwise known as my 25th birthday.

On June 22 (the summer solstice), I noted that the last quarter-year of my first quarter-century was beginning. The ninety-four scientifically defined days of summer are the last ones of my early twenties, my youth and my societally overlooked dementia. After the rapidly approaching Autumnal Equinox/25th Birthday, I expect to find it increasingly difficult to explain my lack of living room, significant other, savings account, health insurance policy, car, book deal, advanced degree or self-control.

Someday, I'm going to die. I'll never be younger than 25 again. On my 25th birthday, I'll have lived 9131 days, and I'm not sure what I've done with them. I think I am supposed to take some consolation in the fact that I can finally rent a car.

With an eye to the quarter-century mark looming at the exact end of Summer 2004 and the mortality looming at some point not long enough after that, I am trying not to waste any time. I am trying to alleviate my exponentially mounting quarter-century angst by riding roller coasters, swimming at subway-accessible beaches, and accepting all invitations to weekend in the Hamptons and Catskills. It is in this flurry of futile angst-staving activity that I have already completed a trifecta of American summer rituals: Baseball, Meat and Movies.

Trifecta #1: Baseball

For my baseball trifecta, I have attended the games of all three local baseball teams. The Yankees, the Mets and the Brooklyn Cyclones. I was born a Met fan, but I realize more and more that I am not so much a Met fan as a 1986 Met fan. The Mets and I had our greatest and purest love eighteen years ago this upcoming fall, and it's been downhill ever since then.

The Yankees, while fun to watch, will always rub me the wrong way, as does any living proof of the evils of capitalism. The mentality of the Yankees and their fans reminds me of the mentality of the Bush family. "Our destiny is dynasty," sayeth the Yankees/Bush family.

"You're just a bunch of beer-swilling coke-sniffing probable date-rapists with more money than the other beer-swilling coke-sniffing probable date-rapists," sayeth I.

That leaves me with the Brooklyn Cyclones, who, luckily, are by far the most entertaining to watch. The players on major league teams must be enormous, because the Brooklyn Cyclones looked so tiny on the field, like Little Leaguers. They also made a lot of mistakes, like Little Leaguers. They overthrew. They ran into avoidable rundowns between third base and home plate. They bobbled grounders. I found their ineptitude comforting.

While the baseball at Keyspan Park was markedly single-A, the fan enthusement tactics were major-league. Multiple mascots danced wildly on the dugouts. Multiple baseball-themed games of three-card monte were played to raucous cheers on the big T.V. T-shirt guns were fired into the crowd, small children competed in thirty-second games with incredibly complex rules and three life-sized hot dogs, titled Ketchup, Mustard and Relish raced from the bullpen to home plate. (Relish won.)

While the fans seemed only mildly interested in the actual baseball, they were fervently interested in the accoutrements of the baseball game. These two tracks of fan interest created the bizarre effect of the loudest cheering occurring while the players warmed up between innings or new pitchers were called from the bullpen. I wondered if the players were ever frustrated by hearing their fans cheer themselves hoarse for a human hot dog named Relish while home runs were greeted with tennis-match tepid applause.

The people I attended the ball game with had a brilliant tradition of visiting the concession stand every other inning, recognizing that the true American pastime is consumption. I participated happily in the ritual. I had beer in a plastic bottle and Carvel ice cream in a plastic batting helmet. I ate peanuts and flung the shells on the ground. When I was thoroughly nauseated, having consumed a hot dog, fries, beer, ice cream, peanuts and my first-ever handful of Crackerjacks, we left the Cyclones (the baseball team) to ride the Cyclone (the roller coaster). Twice.



Trifecta #2: Meat

Long ago, I was a fairly self-righteous vegetarian. I studiously avoided things that I thought might contain chicken stock or gelatin; I felt physical revulsion at the smell of cooking meat. Like many 1990s vegetarians, I've been lapsing steadily for years into depraved carnivorousness.

The reintroduction of animals to my diet has played out like the course of evolution. First, I went to the sea. Then to the land, but only to the flying creatures. Then I ate the smaller mammals, and finally, I began eating the larger ones. As is so often the case with me when it comes to any new substance I can put into my body, I skipped from dabbling, right over moderation, into excess.

My re-embracing of meat followed this pattern. Doubt was quickly obliterated by euphoria.

"What are those little white flecks in salami?" I wondered momentarily. "Who cares? They must be the secret ingredient that makes it so delicious."

"Do they really put lips and eyeballs into hot dogs?" I thought, dimly remembering my skimmings of The Jungle and Fast Food Nation. "Who cares? The Native Americans ate all the parts of an animal to show respect for its spirit!"

I held out on the steak for a long time. I ate some ground beef here and there, but I still had not chewed the intact flesh of the bovine species. Last weekend, while spending the weekend at the family summer home of a good friend, after three meals during which we feasted on salami, ribs, chicken and sausage, I devoured a small piece of steak. Thus, my return to meat was completed, in double trifecta. I have eaten the fowl, the swine and the cow. I have eaten the cold cuts, the processed, cylindrical meat products and the meat still clinging to the bone. I am a savage, bloodthirsty, food chain-topping carnivore. Hear me chew.

Trifecta #3: Movies

I have just completed my Summer Movie Trifecta. I saw Fahrenheit 9/11, Spider-Man 2 and Before Sunset all in three weeks. This combination of controversial leftist documentary, superhero blockbuster and decade-later sequel to an indie chick-flick just about sums up the three fantasies that often dangerously overlap my reality: the deposition of the Evil Administration, the grandiose notion of being a nerd who learns to fly, and my concept of romantic love, which is to walk around a city talking all night, then become enthralled and haunted by this experience for the next decade and write a book about it.

My upcoming trifectas include a second American summer ritual trifecta (see fireworks, cook lobster, perform flip from diving board into swimming pool) my before-25th-birthday trifecta (learn to walk in high heels, learn to drive a stick shift, read and comprehend Ulysses) and for my grand finale, the 25th birthday trifecta itself, which is simple. DO NOT: Pass out, throw up or fall down.