Amazingly hard to believe the sight of, once it’s there in front of your face and not just some down-the-road notion, the actual image of giving the world hell.

In the mirror before me: striped boxers, yellowed white t-shirt, 50’s greaser hair (and not on purpose), the patchy growth of a 17-year-old sprinkled around the growing beer-chin of a man at least twice that age, crooked glasses hinting at a slight bent of academia, hand clutching the ever-present coffee cup. Taking it with me now – for comfort, for slurping, for something to appear to be doing with my hands – all around the apartment. So here it is now, again, as I appraise myself and the day’s prospects, digging crusts out from the corners of my eyes, post crack-of-11:30 am bowel movement kicking the proceedings off.

I scratch my gut with my left hand, just because that’s what it looks like the guy in the mirror would do, violently almost, thinking he might look more natural in a wife-beater. Taking a sip of coffee, the wonder creeps as to how bags develop under my eyes despite me batting barely below the 12-hours-a-night average (always like batting the illustrious .400). And then I flush the toilet.

Just like that, I’m home. Exercising some long-neglected pipes and valves. Beginning to neglect the daily need for pants. Or showers. Flushing my own toilet, sitting in my own chair, and there’s little left but the ghosts of noble, hard-won hangovers. The Monday-in-class feel of never having fully appreciated the developing-any-direction sprawl of the previous Saturday night. Wistful. Pissed, too. It’s all over. Further complicating matters is the realization that, amidst the meanderings and still too-quick journey home, I no longer know where my toothbrush is.

Regardless of its absence, the solo tour of my apartment’s lowly recesses has begun. Wheels are in motion, the schedule has been made, dyed, concreted, sharpie-ed, whatever. Backed only by a couple of mostly indifferent cats – you gonna get up today? ‘cuz I’m kinda comforble here on yer feet – the rigmarole of agenda has begun. And dear God, how it will be begin, completely and whole-heartedly, in earnest, tomorrow. Yes, tomorrow, when I will not hit ‘snooze’, won’t even think about it. Certainly not 8 times – at 9 minutes per rip – for a total of 72 bonus minutes of what is already bonus sleep. No, the schedule will be maintained. Snooze will be eschewed. Starting tomorrow.

How will it go? Alarm-clock clamoring, coffee percolating, lap-top booting, sunshine sunshining, some calisthenics getting the blood flowing. Perkish, optimistic, brow perpetually furrowed. So lost in the search for self – deep in the tangled webs of the internets - as to ignore growing hunger or empty coffee cup, like Julia Roberts in the Pelican Brief (there seemed no applicable analogy from Easy Rider, thus…), up all night, head leaning toward the goal, oblivious to the entering roommate…

Well, not exactly oblivious. In truth, this has become the highlight of my day, when I look up from my 4pm bagel break, realize I’ve had 3, am still hungry, and it’s already quarter after 5, lowering the volume on the ESPN talking heads, or maybe Steven Segal, and entering into my first non-cat conversation of the day.

“Tough day, buddy?” The roommate, how he’s enjoying it all, laughing it up, comfortable in the living (and pizza-ordering) situations, my continual assurances about cushy severance pay and the coming over-stuffed, bean-bag like tax refund offerings just around the corner, via Uncle Sam, easing his mind.

“I’m on R and R, motherfucker!”

I look forward to his appearance each evening, subconsciously waiting on him like a housewife or loyal pug. This one who used to interrupt my writing flow, who impinged any hope of a sexual – solo or otherwise – life, who killed my guitar boners like he was a Mormon, who consistently brutalized leftover pizza every morning before my sleeping ass had any chance, who’s entire presence in my life embodies my inability to live or exist on my own, even when employed, simply so we can have exchanges like this.

“Hope you don’t start getting bed sores, buddy.”

“Hope you don’t choke on your fucking tie tomorrow.”

As I ease toward that coming militarized daily schedule, waiting has become typical. Waiting for an email, a telephone call. Waiting to matter again. Waiting on Unemployment. Waiting on a friend. Waiting for a trip to miraculously plan itself, insert itself into my day-planner, to pop up unexpectedly as I’m whiling away and glancing toward the empty whiteness of future weeks. Waiting for something to indicate that I won’t need to become a waiter. Waiting to stop writing in Dr. Seuss-speak. Waiting for that line of Kerouac to tell me how to feel again. Waiting to open up the summertime possibilities like we were 18 again, when the sun used to feel like the sun and not an indictment of my inactivity. Waiting for that magic, waiting for energy – waiting for anything other than this oafish, goonlike un-feeling of inconclusiveness.

Yet I read somewhere that standing on a street corner waiting for nobody is power. So, maybe, this is at least close to my proper state of being. Or at least halfway there.

But here, sitting in my bedroom’s worn green easy chair, in my boxers, another cup of coffee cooling too fast, another blinking job description on the screen before me far exceeding my ambition and experience, and the inertia with regard to applying too strong to overcome, the blinds perpetually drawn on the ever-intensifying summer, I can’t help but feel that tomorrow won’t be tomorrow at all. It will be next month. Then August, September, the days bleeding into one another, time at once standing still and running away from me. Undressed days. Wednesday’s boxer/t-shirt combo drifiting into Saturday’s, Sunday’s boxer/t-shirt combo. Little clue as to the weather outside.

All the while, former co-workers sit on happy hour patios, libating, laughing.

Anyone talked to Ski?

Heard he was dead.

Har-har-har…

Chesty laughs, cigars lit, tennis rackets resting on the table, white Oxford sweaters tied casually over their necks, waiters bringing another round of sweating top-shelf Arnold Palmers…

And me, repeatedly clicking ‘Inbox’, getting it to refresh, and marveling at my TV and how Steven Segal appears to be the sort that has probably never waited for anything in his life. Conquering shit. Kicking ass. Even by himself, on a boat. If you can wait and not be tired by waiting… That is Kipling’s man. But here I am, getting it all confused with roundhouse kicks, effortless guitar licks, and the ability to successfully pull off that Manly Man ponytail.

Torn between the waiting and non-waiting. Waiting ‘till I can go back to that street corner, unfettered. Unperturbed. Powerful again, waiting on nobody, except maybe a bus, for a ride, to a place I have to be. Not waiting for something that, yes, might never come. Not sure, either way, which is correct, except about the part that at the very least I need a new toothbrush.

Or maybe not.