Falling Apart Slowly

Wednesday it was my ankle. Now, it's my shoulder. I wish I had a good reason for the pain it's in. I wish I could say that I was walking by the Sixth Ave. and Fourth St. courts and joined in a pick-up basketball game with some people.

I wish I could say that I was running down the court and caught a pass in the key and attempted a layup. And that this woman came up to defend me and rather than get the ball, she hooked my right arm after the ball left my hand and pulled it down with all her force, thus dislocating it from the socket. Of course the basket would have been good, the crowd would have cheered after I got up, and I would have sunk the free throw.

I can't say that.

I dislocated my shoulder sleeping. Yes, sleeping. I woke up this morning and it was sore. I've experienced this before, as my shoulder has been out of whack for years, having become susceptible somehow to such injury. I don't think it was the Tae Bo I did for a few months four years ago. I'm hoping that it is actually the 15 years of softball I played.

Anyway, the pain increased as the day went on, making it difficult to operate the mouse at the job. The dislocated aspect of my injury became evident every once in a while when I would simply rest my arms on my sides and I would feel it moving. But I managed. It'll be better soon. Tomorrow. If I can figure out how to sleep safely.

If only there wasn't a fly in my room. This fucking thing. I saw it last night and couldn't kill it. I could only hope it wouldn't land in my mouth. I don't think it did. I hope it didn't. It was flying around this morning, so when it landed on my printer, I grabbed my Verizon bill to jump at the chance to end its life. I managed to get a leg and some innards, figuring I was successful. I never was able to locate the carcass, but I figured it was dead. After all, there were guts and stuff on my printer. It's not.

Jeff Goldblum keeps popping into my head. I hate flies much less than spiders, but nevertheless, the damn thing shouldn't be in here.  So I made it through the day at the job. I am going in at the end of next week at some point to meet a guy from the corporate headquarters. The woman who interviewed me reiterated the fact that I am one of the stronger candidates, and she said that she noticed my ability to tweak the sentences and make the stories punchier, which is something they're looking for. That was a nice compliment. It's technology, and you can only do so much with it. But I am very interested in the challenge of having to do so. We'll see what happens. I have to put it out of my mind until then. But lunchtime was even interesting.

I first went into a huge deli that had way too many food choices. If I'm overwhelmed in a grocery store, imagine me standing in the middle of a deli with two different tables of food, a huge soup bar, a counter for custom sandwiches. It was too much. But what made it worse was that there was a bit of a situation going on at the front. It seemed as though one of the employees had just accused one of the patrons of stealing a soda. She claimed that she saw the soda in her bag.

The accused was pissed, of course, and yelling. But the employee wasn't backing down. It was stressing me out. So the accused said, "Come with me and I'll show you where I bought it." The worker went with her. I'm thinking she just wanted the situation to go away and could care less about where the soda was in fact purchased. But she couldn't have spent this much energy in the scuffle in front of all the people (remember, the deli is huge) to have the woman walk out with the last word. So I think the employee went to save face. Whatever. I left shortly thereafter and found a much less invasive deli from which to buy lunch.

It even had a place to sit. The outcome: ceasar salad, wedge fries, seasoned-with-something chicken, and white rice. Whatever.  But the lunchtime hour wasn't over yet. After I ate, I headed back to the office where I would stay out front and smoke and read. As I crossed Park Ave., I approached a woman who was walking in the opposite direction. I could tell she was transgendered, but whatever. There was a moment of recognition, but I'm not sure what it was about. What confused me further was the fact that her eyes went straight to my tits as we got closer in proximity to one another. Either she couldn't tell what was going on with me or she envied what I had. Shit, she can have 'em. Ahhh, New York.  Here's something cool. I'm mentioned in a New School press release. I saw the headline announcing the latest issue of canon, and so I looked at it, thinking it would just mention my name and title of the piece. I got a whole paragraph. I love getting whole paragraphs. Here's an excerpt:  With an engaging and personal presentation of a little-understood need for some individuals to do away with the sometimes-suffocating American compulsion to engage in ethnic/racial classification, Pickavet attempts "to kick the legs out from under identity, one construction at a time." Nice. Flattering. The quote is actually from my bio. It's interesting because one of the things I said I wanted to do with "my academia" was destroy identity. And then I had that conversation with a prof last semester, the one I fired from being my advisor. I saw her last week by the way. I was out front smoking and all of a sudden, someone slapped their hand on my shoulder. It was the prof. I told her the reason I wasn't using her was because I decided not to use theory in my thesis and I didn't want her to have to endure 40+ pages for really no reason. She said, "good," (about not using theory) and proceeded to tell me that I should have sat in the class she just taught. I guess they discussed using theory in academia. Apparently she's not a huge fan. Interesting.

Anyway, she said during our conversation last semester that we need identity. I guess. I'm not totally convinced, but I am even guilty of relying on it to get by. It resonates so strongly for me, though, because of my racial, sexual, and gender identity issues/struggles/outcomes/progress. In a way, I'm really getting sick of my stories, but I can't help but be reminded of them every day. And my frustration with the need for identity comes from my feeling like I have to explain myself a lot. Definitely more so than others who have no racial, sexual, or gender identity issues. What're you gonna do?  Ok, I'm procrastinating now, so I need to go get another (third) cup of coffee, so I can resume writing about my gender shit while listening to Jesus Christ Superstar.