So what do you do?

I’ll be going to a Democratic event tonight and even the most liberal of women will inevitably ask the same tired question. It’s the question that I absolutely hate … not because I don’t have a good answer.. I have twenty.. but because it assumes the measure of a man can be summed up by his occupation, by the little printed numbers on that piece of paper he receives every two weeks, by the way your mother will react when you tell her he’s a garbage man, by the way your friends will refer to him by his first name and occupation. “Oh Jeff the Banker? Bob the Plumber?” Is the measure of a man how he spends the worst 8 hours of his day, or better yet what is the nature of the question, “So what do you do?”

WHAT DO YOU DO

What do you say when they say “What do you do?” I say I play the blues on my red kazoo. That I teach yoga to yahoos. That I have a ranch in Australia where I breed blue suede kangaroos. I steal women’s shoes and sell them to perverts over an 800 line. I do gardening with lasers. I clean houses with plastic explosives. I’m on welfare. I’m on heroin. I’m on parole. I teach the art of Ninja to ninnies. I’m a professional identity designer. Nothing, I’m rich. Nothing, I’m emotionally crippled. I’m a media mogul who moonlights as a Chippendale dancer. I manufacture ladies lingerie for Frederick’s of Krakow. I play golf with beatniks. I design then live in the cities of the future... which sometimes takes all afternoon. I sell gizmos to gooks. I wholesale freeze-dried mail order brides. I design Boy Kaddafi’s stage outfits and sometimes read him his fan mail. What do I do? Well, I’m waiting for this think tank thing to come through so I can get tanked and think of new ways to screw citizens out of the dollar or two they’d like to use to buy brew but instead goes to you know who. I loot shopping malls in radiation zones. I cruise the art zoos looking for what’s new in mutations. I sell crack at the United Nations. I don’t have just one occupation. I’m an amalgamation, a confederation, a conspiracy and a conglomerate. I do what I have to do because I’m a man... that’s spelled M – A – N. I don’t do anything, I’m just a writer.

Jim Gustafson

from MANIAC MEMORIES, soon to appear from Trembling Pillow Press, 2009