PrettyFakes

Let me tell you, dead sober and scared so bad I can barely sleep, that law school final exams are not cool. Not cool at all. I want to give my up-nawth Senor Queso a hearty “godspeed” and hope he comes out only partially scathed in this coming week’s gladitorial conflicts.

Tomorrow morning I have my four-hour Business Associations final, which if jp! gets his way, will surely queer my magna cum laude and I’ll have to buy him a case, verily, a case of Jack Dan’l’s fine recreational sauce. My stomach is twisted up like a Faulkner sentence, and I’ve got this chalk grit in the back of my throat from the half-dozen Target antacids hastily chomped down.

I, my friends, is scared but good.

I do have a job, and a good one: not a lot of money but a lot of what I want, call me sometime, buy me a beer, and I’ll tell you about it: ‘cause I can’t on the cat-top-trick. But I wanted it and I got it and the Camino, even though it’s leaking a bit around the rearviewmirror (okay, leaking a lot) and thus perma-fogged on the inside, is running, and as the great New Jersey poet Jon Bongiovi said, “that’s a lot for love.” Plus I made a cassette of Team Boo and it plays just fine outta that one 6×9.

The long and the short of my B.A. class (I have already slogged through a three hour Type-K style Ethics exam and a puffy Environmental Law tribulation, with Labor Law not ‘til Thursday) is this: partnership, corporations, mergers (A and B and C and triangular and reverse triangular and upside-down, and I’m not kidding) and securities regs (1933 and 1934, thank-you very much) and it makes me mad because I suppose it makes a bit of sense, and I never intended to be the kind of lawyer that knew money, I wanted to know civil rights. But I guess I didn’t choose my hair color, either.

I did get my hair cut, which made me feel good. What didn’t make me feel good: realizing that just because I found a great pair of cord pants stuck in the back of my closet didn’t mean I should wear it with a semi-matching corduroy jacket. I swear I didn’t notice until a buddy of mine, smirking, chipped in with “nice ribbed suit, pal.”

Friday night was pretty grand, with a keen prof and his documentarian fixing a spaghetti dinner for his Jurisprudence class. I brought way too much wine and tried to drink a great deal of it myself, before my greedy classmates could get to it. They beat me, but I got drunk in the interim. That Big House Red is cheap but good, I tell ya.

The prof’s house had fourteen-high foot celings and old wavy glass in ten-degree off windowframes. It was amazing, and warm, and clean. A real grown-up house. Counter my treehouse, with—oh yes, my houseguest.

Law school makes strangebedfellows. So why does I, Gorjus, indy-rock liberal Democrat, becomes pals with ex-cop Republican activist? Well, first off, he’s just plain nuts, but he’s a good guy. I’ll never forget the time, 2L year, when he overheard me in the financial aid office, imploring our stone-faced lock-box of a “financial aid consultant” to hurry up with my loan. “We’ll call you when it comes in,” says he, and I say great—too bad my phone’s cut off.

When I stormed out of the office, JW corners me—all three-hundred pounds of him (and he’s a bit heftier now). “Are you cool with money? I couldn’t help but overhear.”

I stammer that I’m fine, I’m cool, it’s just tight, you know? And he looks me dead in the eyes—he’s still got that cop stare—and tells me that if I need cash, to tell him. If I need a place to stay, just say it—him and his wife will put me up, and he’ll even fix me some pinko liberal Ted Kennedy hippy vegetarian food.

I declined, but politely, and I was moved very deeply. We’re not close, but we’re friends, and that meant a lot to me. So when JW told me he was closing on his house, and there was a few days lag in between him heading back up to Memphis—hell, I had to offer.

Yet to spare the world a hideous new Fox version of the Odd Couple—he’s a liberal! He’s a conservative! He’s got a .45! He’s got Buddy Holly glasses!—I quietly abdicated my Belhaven treehouse and have been living out of a suitcase for a few days.

Which ain’t bad. I’m in hour 13 of B.A. crash day—and I think it’s going to be all right. Maybe. Feel free to root for me; or feel free to root against jp!

One more thing and I’ll go—a great present you can send a friend is a couple loaves of fresh baked bread. It’s off the wall and wonderful and thoughtful—I know, because Wyatt and SC sent me some the other day. Thanks, guys.

SENOR QUESO!! Hit the books, and GOOD LUCK!

[note: this was written yesterday but published today, in case you’re a stickler for continuity—gclark]

This entry was posted on Monday, December 15th, 2003 at 12:42 pm and is filed under Gorjus. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.