Great expectations and other disappointments

"There are other people who are worse off than me."

That's what I tell myself when I wake up at 5 a.m. to work a retail job most mornings.

"At least I have a job, a pay check, a home."

I know it's true but it's easy to feel desperate. No one wants a journalist who has no degree and limited experience, I ask. How could they not?

Trolling Craigslist for quick cash, I apply for a focus group on interpersonal communication textbooks. Twenty five dollars for an hour. I run across an ad to become a male escort.

"No pressure," it saus. "No sex necessary, just company and a good night out."

I take a second to weigh the pros and cons. I'm short, will women mind? I'm young, only 22, is that what they want or do they prefer a more distinguished looking guy? Will I have to wear a suit? I dismiss the idea.

Though my first highschool reunion is about five years away, I feel pressure, panic. Everyone goes to see the ones who have burnt out. The jock whoo peaked as a senior. The prom queen who lives in a trailer park with six kids. I look forward to that, at least. I have a strong desire not to have to say that I still work at the Gap.

"As a manager, though," I picture myself saying and die a little inside.

My parents call a few times a week and give impromptu pep talks that sound like wishful thinking.

"Sounds like you've got it figured out," they say. "Sounds like you've got it together."

They don't mention that I failed three out of five classes last semester. Don't tell me that I should've had it together years ago.

My work "days" are almost always five hours or less, meaning that I'm home by noon at the latest. That's six hours earlier than my girlfriend, primary bread-winner. Those six hours are spent washing dishes, making dinner and wallowing in self-pity with my cats. I spend a lot of time in bed.

I can complete half of a crossword puzzle. Half of a puzzle with clues like "India's neighbor" and "Swedish band from the '70s." It's what I do on the bus to and from work. Do we get smarter as we age or have I hit my intellectual peak?

I pass an elementary school on the way to work. If it's in the afternoon, the kids are outside playing. It takes me back to when I was that age. I think it's so odd to be nostalgic at my age, to wish I could go back to that time. No responsibilities, few expectations of me, when I didn't ask anything of the world but to be open and exciting. When disappointment meant not getting a toy I wanted. But I look at the unhappy faces of other busriders, my people, and think that maybe it's not so uncommon.

Just a man on a bus...

The other day a man got on the bus. He impressed me because he was so incredibly confident and nonchalant, despite the fact that his white cutoff jean shorts were showing at least three inches of pocket and that the sleeves of his flannel shirt had somehow been removed. By force.

He stepped onto the bus and everybody else recoiled slightly, but he didn't notice. Nothing could penetrate his pink headphones.

At first I thought this man might have been homeless, but his cell phone and iPod told me that he probably wasn't. No, he was just going about his business, riding the bus like everyone else. It was electric and magnetic. It was repulsive and strangely alluring. His pull was something frightening. Confidence, thy name is...whatever this guy's name is.

By the time I got off at my stop, there was a empty patch of seats radiating out from the man with the shorts, a mixture of sweat and pride oozing off of his brow and darkening the buffalo check of his shirt. How was it that his leather boots seemed to match his shorts so well? How was it that his hair, carefully coiffed into a wavy, flat mullet, could be as regal as a powdered wig? And does he engender these thoughts in every person he comes into contact with or just most?