So I realized last week that I’m going to graduate…well, theoretically. The jury’s still out on that one. Being such an extreme badass leaves few opportunities for schoolwork, so I anticipate the next month or so will involve a lot of begging, pleading, and—in the event of an unexpected illness or Legend of Zelda speed-trial tournament—old-fashioned bribery.
But let’s just imagine, hypothetically, that I do graduate in May. I will have earned a Bachelor’s in English from the State University of New York at Buffalo, a piece of paper that I might even frame. Aside from the depressing idea that I only have about a month left to hit on freshman girls before it becomes “creepy,” what’s next? What’s out there in that wide, wild “real world” for a young man that has devoted four years of his life to the least employable field of study known to Western civilization? Is there a place in modern America for neurotic, self-hating misanthropes with little or no math skills, zero connections, and the physical fitness of an abused, feral 14-year-old girl?
The obvious option is grad school and the academia racket. Yeah, that would be nice—stave off reality for a few more years, live in a fantasy world of research and heavy boozing, fulfill the wishes of all those soul-crushing nitwits at my high school graduation party who never failed to follow up the awkward “What’s your major?” small talk with “Oh, so, you’re going into teaching then.” Protest low graduate assistant wages, only to realize that there’s not a soul in the world that gives a shit if I live or die tomorrow. Every couple of months I could publish grandiose, masturbatory diatribes in scholarly journals that no one will read but people like me and the poor undergraduate saps that are using my rancid bullshit to shore up half-baked theses in research papers on Marxist applications of post-Dada, pre-anti-post-structuralist critical theory.
Or I suppose I could become a high school English teacher. I’ve always wanted to test my ability to surreptitiously rub one out at a field hockey pep rally. Sell out. Buy a Prius. Confine my creative and political discourse to watercooler discussions about Barack Obama and The New Yorker caption contest. Get excited about low-interest mortgage rates and new chain restaurants in whatever suburban shithole I decide to crawl back into with my tail between my legs. Wear khaki.
But if I’m going to sell out, why not a new field altogether? I heard real estate is big these days. I know this kid back home who’s got his own business and now he’s planning for a boat (Summer 2007; already dubbed Daddy’s Lil’ Booze Crooze). He always has good coke, so what the hell? I could delve into the exciting world of hair gel, Jimmy Buffet, and—dude, did you hear?—they have these dope new button-down shirts where the shirt is blue, but—dude—the collar and cuffs are white. Shit, I can think up slogans that incorporate my name and vaguely positive-ish attributes: “That’s the Drum Difference” or “Dance to the Beat of a different Drummer—Results” or—the crème de la crème—“Jake Drum: A Drum You Just Can’t Beat!”
I guess I could do the mainstream journalism thing, but that seems like the spiritual equivalent of stealing bait from beartraps. You spend so much of your time delving into people, places, and industries that you almost became, you almost experienced, you almost succeeded in that every day of your life becomes a reminder of your own lost potential. Plus, I’m not a drinking man, and in a gig like that I’d imagine it’s a skill in which you’d prefer to excel.
No; when all’s said and done, I’ll probably have to settle for leading a double-life: failed artist by day, professional malcontent by night. I’ll walk around Allentown on myriad errands, pretending to be “just popping out for a coffee, then it’s right back to the typewriter,” all the while writing vitriolic, fallen idealist screeds for some vaguely countercultural free weekly. I’ll yearn for the day when I can afford enough to fill my cabinets or to move to Brooklyn. I’ll meet my successful friends for drinks on the weekends and engage them in protracted, drunken arguments that serve less to propel the course of human thought than as a vent for my jealousy and hatred of their social position.
Hey, if nothing else, it beats what the rest of you assholes will be doing.
