I am so broke that it is, actually, kind of funny. I spend money on three things: train rides, cat food and bowling. I asked my accountant, and that's what he said to do. I couldn't afford a real accountant, so I hired Walter from my VHS copy of The Big Lebowski. It's working out okay. It's fun to go through my receipts at the end of the month and say, yep, bowling, bowling, cat food, bowling, transit card, cat food, bowling.

I am in a nice stretch at the moment, though, employed under the table and off the tax record for a nearly dead dot-com. They are nice people. They needed someone to sit at a computer and be left alone, and I am highly regarded in that industry, so a friend referred them to me and it's working out just fine. It's great to cut the temp agencies out of the equation. It makes me feel more like a migrant worker.

I want to talk for a moment about sombreros, which are occasionally worn by migrant workers in warm climates. I'm not sure which of my memories is the earliest, but this one is at least in the top ten: I was three years old, and my mother, her boyfriend and I were eating in a Mexican restaurant. Our salsa was served in an upside down sombrero and, needless to say, we cleaned that fucker out, because, like me, my mother (who was then younger than I am now) never had any money and therefore the impulse to hit the pre-meal chips and salsa like a ton of bricks became something of a proud family tradition. The sombrero, then, was empty, and for some reason the waiter never took it away. I asked my mom's boyfriend if he was going to take the sombrero. I had cleaned it with my napkin, so he needn't fear getting salsa in his hair, and it had clearly been presented to him by the waiter. He said no. I grew insistent. He ignored me. That was the crystalline moment: I had a feeling of utter disgust for this shithead who wouldn't claim his rightful sombrero. Did he lack the courage? Did he disrespect the sombrero? Fuck that guy, I felt, though not in those words. And my mother eventually came to the same conclusion, though probably not for the same reasons.