Tutor

I had the easiest job interview of my life today. It was for a tutoring position, and I, for one, would expect (hope?) that screening processes might be somewhat more intensive, but apparently not. I spent three minutes telling him about the experience I have had working with children, and he spent the next twenty explaining the philosophy of their program.

"Here we emphasize the three C's: we make sure that work is Completed, Checked, and Corrected."

This man is intense. He believes in this stuff, passionately. He's on a mission to make sure that never again will another middle-class child fall through the cracks.

Never Again!

Coffee

I learned the name of my favorite barista today. I will not mention it lest some unscrupulous reader inform said barista that he is my favorite—after all, I only frequent two coffeeshops often enough to have a favorite barista. But I now know his name and that makes me sigh happily.

Speaking of coffeeshops, while I'm there, I find myself realizing that L.A. isn't merely all the stereotypes that surround me. They may look like crazy thift-store hipsters, but there's substance there. Maybe they read, maybe they think. There's hope for this city yet.

Size Does Matter

Today I took a hard look around my weightlifting class—I mean, I really looked carefully—and one girl was a contender, but I'm now completely positive: no one in that class is smaller than me.

Psychobabble

I went to Psychobabble in Los Feliz to get some writing done, but I realized how utterly uninterested I am in writing anymore for two main reasons.

1. People bore me. I tried observing them today—supposedly a great way to generate ideas—but I didn't care about them. Their lives were completely bland to me.

2. I have no passion. Fundamentally, conflicts arise in stories when people's desires are frustrated. Lacking in desire, I cannot project it onto my characters.

Whoo-hoo. People bore me and I have no passion—that's a stellar advertisement for myself, isn't it? I do take snide satisfaction in my contempt for other people, and maybe that counts for something.

Loss

I went to Kathleen's to read a play with her roommates who are graduated theater majors who still want to feel like they're involved with theater. We read The Heidi Chronicles. I thought it would be about a girl who picked daisies in the Alps with a bearded woodsman, but its actually about the vacuous life of a woman who constantly worked for women's liberation. There was an absolutely heart-breaking scene where she plans to leave New York City, so she goes to say good-bye to her gay friend Peter. He talks about how he keeps going to funerals for friends who are dying of AIDS, how his world continues becoming smaller and smaller, how his family can only be his friends, and now she's leaving him too.

I feel that way sometimes—not that my friends are dying, but like Peter, my friends can be my only touchstone. And one day they will all inevitably divide themselves two-to-a-box, before they begin multiplying again—and I will remain outside of that always. So I feel nostalgic for a youth I constantly have to remind myself that I still possess, and I can't help but see everything macrocosmically when a friend, say, forgets to return my call.

Then I went to a party, and I saw this well-dressed boy making elaborate hand gestures. I immediately assumed he was gay, but then I heard him talk, and he was British! I stood there just aurally oggling the way he spoke. Then someone told me he was British and gay. I was thrilled, but later rebuffed conversations made it pretty clear he didn't want to talk to me. So I return home sullen, lingering over the sound of his voice.