It's Monday morning in Manhattan, my first official day as a correspondent for The Awful Truth television show. I spring out of bed, enlivened by the fact that I'm a part of something for a change. I think to myself: I'm an American today. I have a job to go to.

I have details and duties to address. I have an office that expects me. An office full of paper clips and coffee-makers and intercoms and bulletin boards and co-workers and small talk and hall talk and tall talk and all talk and...

Suddenly deflated, I crawl back into bed. I pull the sheet up to my chin and stare at the ceiling. It's peaceful in this room. No one wants anything from me. Behind the blinds all the lunatics are reinventing the wheel and jumping out of its path. Why is that it comes so easy to them? Did I skip school on the day they provided the operating manual? Will the hounds take me down like they did Sister Mary Peter back in those odd and fragile days when all we knew of falling down was the hazardous act of getting back up?

Poor Sister Mary Pete. She was fresh out of the nunnery when she was assigned to our seventh grade homeroom. I remember we were all quite taken with her. Hell, how many other nuns had we been issued who actually had the incredible gall to dance the Frug to a Rolling Stones record with Mr. Sellers from across the hall as a way of showing us how to poke out of our pubertal shells? Now and then, I can still see the remarkable vision of her black habit swaying while Mick Jagger stumped on and on about some unsatisfactory conflict in his life. But that was all so early on. Before the fall.

We eventually took full advantage of Sister Mary Peter's youth, exploiting her mild approach and mirthful disposition. She had showed us kindness but we would have none of it. We were the sons and daughters of shoprats who brought their hatred for shit-jobs and shit luck right home through the front door at 3:20 pm every weekday afternoon and launched it in our faces. It was really a shame how much we'd learned from them.

We tormented Sister Mary Peter with everything we had. The way most of us looked at it, she had a job to do and we had ours. It was never intended to be personal. She was authority and authority bothered us. The peculiar part was we still loved her, just not nearly enough to prevent us from destroying her. By Thanksgiving, she was gone. Mr. Sellers came in on a Monday morning and ripped into our asses like a madman. I'd never seen an adult so angry. It was obvious that he had loved her, too.

He explained that our behavior had been the cause for Sister Mary Peter experiencing a severe breakdown and that she was hospitalized somewhere and would not be returning. Though none of us had any real idea of what a breakdown was, we could tell it was some serious shit. Mr. Sellers kept asking us if we were satisfied. I remember several of my classmates crying. I remember that I wasn't one of them.

A few months later, Sister Mary Peter wrote us a very beautiful letter. There was no mention of what had occurred to her. It only spoke of how much she loved and missed us. We cherished the letter so much that we hung it on the blackboard for the remainder of the year. The strange part about the letter was that it hadn't been penned by hand. It was spliced together from odd-shaped letters torn from various old magazines, much like a ransom note or the calligraphy on a punk rock record.

I remember Kevin Hern's father telling some of us that this was due to the fact that Sister Mary Pete was crazy now and that they wouldn't allow her to have access to any sharp objects like pens and pencils. None of us liked the sound of that one bit. Then again, Hern's dad was a shoprat, too -- one of those world-beaten factory fools like our own dads who seemed to specialize in redirecting his own daily torment upon any able target. The assembly lines were their madhouses. Knowing this, it made it very difficult to accept his version of who was crazy and who was not.

GZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!! GZZZZZZZZZZZ!!! The sound of my apartment intercom jolts me back out of bed. GZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!! Well fuck, at least give me a chance to reach the bastard before...GZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!

"What is it?" I howl in the box.

The voice that comes back at me is unfamiliar...some spanish-speaking gentleman concerned about some important matter. All I really get out of it is that it has something to do with paint and my apartment door. Ah, yes, how had it escaped me? It's a Monday morning and this is Manhattan and I'm in the United States of America and there are doors to paint and boulders to budge and memos to jot and trails to trot and notions to plot and, more often than not, you better get hot.

"How about tomorrow?" I suggest. There's a slight hesitation, then the door painter gives his consent to the idea...although, since I don't speak much Spanish, he may have been telling me to kiss his ass.

I start getting ready for the office. For the first time in my life I find myself shaving as a matter of occupational courtesy. The assumption being that a television correspondent should be nothing if not well-groomed. It's an entirely new pleasure to slog through this ritual knowing that there's a point to it besides just the riddance of facial irritation. In every previous job I'd ever held -- from janitor to autoworker to tale-teller -- it mattered little whether I shaved or showered or even retained consciousness.

I look in the mirror when I'm finished. That's strange: there appears to be an adult looking back at me. I have seen adults before. Some of them in person. I peer at the lines under my eyes. These weren't around in seventh grade. Oh, how young we were then! In seventh grade. With the sunbeams bursting across the monkeybars and those turquoise skirts lifting in the schoolyard and the pretty little nun that we drove straight back up the cross dancing her ass off to the Rolling Stones.

"What a drag it is getting old," they had sung.

* * * * * * * * * *

Upon my arrival at United Broadcasting, a young woman shows me to my office. It's way down a side hallway near the editing rooms. This suits me just fine as I'd learned from my hitch here last summer that an office on the main thoroughfare almost obliges one to appear alert...if not actively hatching a hunch.

"I take it you're here for the meeting," the woman mentions as soon as I plop into my new office chair. Meeting? What meeting? I immediately bounce back up as if I were merely checking the chair for a defective spring mechanism.

"Well, yes, naturally."

"They're all down in Michael's office. Do you know the way?"

"Sure, no problem."

I can think back on quite a few annoyances from my years on GM assembly lines, but at least we didn't have many meetings. The ones we did have weren't all that bad. They'd usually break down quickly into idiot rows between our foreman and the crew like the time Morton accused Wendell of missing work so he could "sit home on his ass watchin' The Edge Of Night" and Wendell angrily responding that this theory was quite impossible because, "they cancelled that motherfucker years ago, you stupid bitch!" At least we got paid time-and-a-half and the jellyrolls were a nice touch.

Unfortunately, meetings based around television programs like TV Nation, Michael Moore Live and The Awful Truth weren't nearly as infrequent ...nor a fraction as loony. They occurred with severe regularity and always dragged on too long -- sort of like last-call sex romps between barflies. It also wasn't rare to see initial meetings give impromptu birth to spin-off meetings. These meetings were always the worst. Like being forced to babysit the offspring of last-call sex romps between barflies.

I give a short rap on Mike's office door and proceed inside. The room is full of people from the show -- some of whom I know, most of whom I don't. Mike springs out of his chair and gives me a big bear hug. "Hamper, I always knew ya could do it!" he booms. The origin of this greeting goes back to a remark a foreman once made to me soon after he saw my face on the cover of the Wall Street Journal. Up until that point, the guy had never accepted me as much more than a beer tumor draped to an air gun.

"Glad to be aboard," I reply.

Introductions are scattered around. Everyone seems so perky and focused. My hunch is that none of them are taking Klonopin. Though I've cut back measurably on this drug, I still can't find the nerve to waltz into social settings without having a few milligrams of the junk covering my back. I keep telling myself that someday I'll ween off entirely, but today is just another day that doesn't happen to be someday.

The meeting seems to consist of two main topics. In one corner, there's a big debate going on as to whether the show should send a real pimp down to Washington to bully politicians or perhaps just hire an actor who's known for portraying a pimp. One of the segment producers begins to lobby for Antonio Fargas, the guy who played Huggy Bear on the Starsky & Hutch television series. He's quickly shouted down by another segment producer. "No, no, no! That guy must be in his sixties by now. How intimidating would that be?"

"Well, Christ...pimps don't grow on trees! Who in this room knows a real pimp?" There follows a predictable hush.

The others in the office are haggling over what kind of plant The Awful Truth should run for political office on an upcoming segment. Keep in mind, everyone's discussing this as if they were zeroing in on the cure for prostate cancer. With the exception of Moore and myself, everyone locking horns on the issue is a college graduate. The thought occurs to me just how little tuition affords a person nowadays. "Hibiscus!" someone shouts. "Magnolia!" yells another. "Let's try a cactus!" another one chimes in.

I glance over at Mike. As usual, he has his head down, his poker face surrendering to a small grimace. He's peering into a McDonald's bag like there's some kind of solution to it all etched in the side of a double cheeseburger bun. I don't envy him any of this. At some point it will be his call and he'll have to cast the definitive vote on this ridiculous matter. With a few exceptions, most of the people in the meeting are only professional magpies drawing good checks to harp a steady twee. And I'm really just about to feel all bummed out for my dear pal -- I mean, you might think you want his job, you might even assume you could do it, likely much better than he, but you're as wrong as a cement canoe -- when Mike suddenly blurts....

"Let's hear Hamper's opinion."

Dear pal, my ass! Here I'd forgotten how he always favored this embarrassing olden-nun custom of calling on the one loser in class who hadn't the faintest clue as to what was going on and had no desire to participate. I'd also forgotten the simple anecdote to this quandary. It went like this: whenever the nun tossed out a skull-scratcher like, "who can tell us the true meaning of original sin?" or "why did Jesus accept his crown of thorns?" or "who put that root beer fizzie in the cry room holy water?" the total sensible reaction was to toss your upraised arm out of socket and start ululating like a doomed sky jumper in need of a rip chord salesman. This way it was almost assured you'd never be selected to speak.

But, since I'd forgotten this handy rule of thumb, I'm left to respond: "Uh, shit, I don't really have an opinion, Mike." He nodded his head as if this comment had somehow been the precise response he was looking for and then went back to gazing in his burger bag.

The meeting continued along. One hour, two hours, three. I doodled pictures of stick women with amazingly large breasts and looked out the window across the Hudson River and thought of all the people in those New Jersey condominiums and what they might be doing to afford such prime real estate. My hunch was that they weren't debating pimps or magnolias. Who really knew? Every person in this office was making double a factory worker's wage and that in itself seemed stranger than strange. "Daddy...what did you do at work today?" "Never mind that, son....do you know any kids at school whose fathers are pimps?"

I finally got up to go have a cigarette. Mike followed me out. "By the way," he asked, "what are you doing here?"

"Well, since I'm an employee, I figured I was supposed to come to the workplace."

"Correspondents aren't required to show up for this stuff. When are you scheduled to shoot the Clinton piece?"

"Friday," I said.

"Just worry about Friday then."

Which is exactly what I did.

* * * * * * * * * *

I've had panic attacks in several settings. In movie theatres, in factories, on beaches, in airplanes, in funeral homes, behind the wheel of a car. I remember one time I even had a panic attack in my shrink's office while I was describing to him how long it had been since I'd had a panic attack. Initially, Dr. K was impressed.

"You really have this intense ability to re-create the symptoms of..."

"This ain't no re-creation!" I gulped. "I'm having the real thing...right now!"

"Relax," Dr. K responded. "Maybe it's only a heart attack."

This oddball exchange was really not my doctor's fault. For years now, I'd told Dr. K how I often reversed the ever popular It's-Only-A-Panic-Attack self-composure credo to work the other way around. All I know is that it usually did the trick for me. There were a couple of theories at play here: 1) If indeed I was having a panic attack, I could at least look forward to the fact that I'd still be alive. 2) If indeed I was having a heart attack, I could at least look forward to the fact that I might soon be dead. Even God himself couldn't find fault with a dash of Devil's advocacy on this heroic level.

So, anyway, I've had panic attacks nearly everywhere. Perhaps the strangest part about it is that, for as much time as I'd spent there in the past decade, I'd never once had a single panic attack in New York.You would think that New York City -- with all of its insane bustle and menacing stimuli and berserk human density-- would be the most absolute fuck-awful breeding bog for panicky low jinks humanly imaginable. Just look what it did to John Rocker's normally amiable clod-suave psyche.

But here's where John Rocker and a multitude of other miscalculating wussies lose the rationale that had somehow saved me in New York all those years. The way I always saw it, New Yorkers were all fairly insane themselves. You could walk down the street and feel it all caving in on them. Thus, I always had this great comforting sense that I was completely invisible in this town. Were I to have a panic attack, I'd merely be doing a more extensive job of fitting right in. It wasn't like the Midwest where people regularly gave you an obligatory scan as you traipsed on by. In New York, you could be farting lightning bolts out of your ass while gnawing on a cable of your own viscera and no one would bat an eye. It wasn't cold or thoughtless or anything remotely negative. It was the way it was, and it was more than fine by me.

At least up until that Tuesday morning after the meeting. The buzzer in the apartment went off again just like the morning before. It was the door painters. I again pleaded with them to paint my door some other time and they seemed to consent to this. Like I say: I don't speak much Spanish so they may very well may have been telling me, "Kiss that hitting streak goodbye." They'd have been right on that score.

It all started going wrong the moment I left my apartment building.As I began a walk up the block, it struck me that the buildings were much taller than before. It seemed like they had developed spinal cords overnight and had used these sudden strands of nervous tissue to provide themselves a conjoined drooping effect. It was hardly fair. Buildings weren't supposed to behave like this. They weren't supposed to droop. Worse yet, they certainly weren't supposed to conspire to droop. I looked around to see if anyone else was noticing this sinister building prank but it was all business as usual -- the glum leading the glummer toward heaping bowls of it-really-doesn't-matter.

I decided the best thing to do was to walk with my head lowered to blot out the image of the buildings. I was experienced enough to know this was the onset of a panic attack as the vision was always the first thing to go screwy. A quick retreat back to the apartment seemed like the sensible option and a voice inside me told me to turn around. But another voice just as quickly vetoed the notion. I think it was Dr. K, though it may have just been an actor portraying Dr. K in an after-school TV movie special.

The voice said, "Don't surrender. Remember the benefits of confrontational therapy. Engage positive goal extension. Maybe you're just having a heart attack. Initiate slow breathing technique. Could ya pick up some ice cream on your way home from the bar?"

Well, actually, that last voice was my ex-wife's. Now I knew for certain I was in the process of losing it.

I walked on for several blocks. The situation neither improved nor worsened. I kept walking and walking. I bought a bottled water from a hot dog vender and slugged down an extra Klonopin. I resumed walking. The phrase, "What doesn't kill me can only make me stronger" flashed through my head. A half block later, the phrase had mismanaged itself into, "I'm a big fat baby, would someone please kill me?"

The uttering of this inner-plea was prompted by the horrible recognition of where I was currently standing. I had wandered so far that I'd somehow come to the intersection of 34th Street and 5th Avenue upon which corner the fucking Empire State Building does reside. This was hardly good news as irony on this level tends to treat panic sorts in a completely piss-poor manner not unlike Denny's serving breakfast to night owl Negroes. As I stood there, forehead-to-toenail with this impossible form, I had this sinking feeling that it wouldn't benefit me at all to look up. However, Dr. K's voice once again came striding back into my head. It said, "Confront your fears. Reject the notion of failure. Maybe it's only a heart attack. Your past is your past. Sorry, they no longer prescribe Quaaludes for insomnia."

I took a deep breath and slowly turned my head to the sky. Up, up, up...the building went on forever. It was drooping, also. Drooping like some goddamn sunflower pounded by a typhoon. What kind of architect could invent such a thing? Wasn't there enough pain and confusion in the universe without fusing a million vats of Play-Doh into the girded limbs of a skyscraper? What good could be gained by any of this? Furthermore, what in the hell was I doing in a town where this was an acceptable form of architecture?

I immediately wanted out of the area, out of this city, out of this stupid correspondent offer that had landed me here. Michael Moore was insane as the rest of them. What could he possibly have been thinking? I was no more a television correspondent than Roseanne was a Rockette. The sooner Mike knew this, the easier it would be to find a replacement for that Bill Clinton Job piece and I could retreat back to Suttons Bay. It struck me that I wasn't having a panic attack as much as I was having a serious change of heart.

I waved down a cab and hopped in. I was feeling a bit better, but still disoriented. The cab driver asked where I wanted to go. Holy shit, I had completely forgotten where I was staying. The address was a complete blank. I was about to tell the driver that there was a 24-hour delicatessan on my corner when I realized that doing so would only narrow down the search to approximately 8,000 intersections. Those damn Manhattanites sure loved their delis. Then another notion struck me.

"Take me to Flashdancers," I insisted. I knew of only one Flashdancers strip club and I knew it was right near where I was staying. I could find the apartment from there.

"Good choice," the cabbie chuckled. "They've got some mighty attractive ladies at that joint."

"As long as they're not drooping," I almost added.

* * * * * * * * * *

I spent the rest of the day in bed watching televison and trying to figure out just how to phrase my resignation to Moore. I knew that it wouldn't be easy. Mike wasn't nearly as familiar with the serviceable technique of retreat and surrender as I was. I had spent my entire life honing the stutter step of the chickenshit. Cub scouts, high school, rock bands, marriages, jobs, book contracts...I'd deserted them all once the heat index tilted toward toasty. If it was true what they said about a coward dying a thousand deaths, I figured I still had at least ten or twelve left to burn.

The next morning the intercom played its customary reveille and I once again begged out of the door-painting offer. By this point, the Spanish gentleman on the other end was beginning to sound a bit exasperated. I believe there may have been a cussword slid into his spiel, but not having much grasp of Spanish, he may have just been reminding me that today was as good a day as any to quit my job.

I walked down to the office focused on that intention. I felt relieved to know I'd soon be out from under this absurd fit. Even the buildings had resumed their normal stance. All that was left to do was inform Mike of my decision in a way that didn't sound ungrateful yet was forceful enough to discourage him from talking me out of it. I'd learned a long, long time ago that Michael Moore -- a man who could've talked Hitler into hosting a bar mitzvah -- was the absolute master of wily persuasion.

I paused outside of the office building for a cigarette before heading in. As I leaned against the rail, I recognized this old guy tottering up the steps toward me. It was Andy Rooney from the 60 Minutes television show. As Rooney approached, I couldn't get over how incredibly old and feeble he looked. I thought to myself: Well, Christ, this is what television corresponding can do to a guy. Trounce him and bounce him and leave him hunching up a long hill for more of the same. It also struck me how our TV careers were steering in very dissimilar directions. The proud old television icon set to embrace yet another day of network servitude and the unnerved sadsack imploding on the launch site.

"Hello," I offered as Rooney passed by.

He said nothing in return. Instead, he simply gave me a quick disdainful glance as if I was merely one of those tragic life-vexing nuisances he was always groaning on about in his commentaries. I was no more than a paper clip or a postage hike or a dirty spoon in a busy luncheonette. It was perfectly fine. I was always a Morley Safer man, anyway.

Mike wasn't in the office when I arrived upstairs. I tried to duck back out without being noticed but one of the segment producers flagged me down and suggested we have a quick briefing on the upcoming Clinton Job piece. "Let me go round up one of the writers," he said.

"Sounds good," I lied.

The premise for the piece was that Clinton would be leaving office soon and that it was the show's duty to help him find a new job...ideally, one of the 60 million that he'd boasted of creating during his term. Naturally, these were all shit-jobs with low pay and no benefits and hardly suitable for a family provider, let alone an ex-president. As the correspondent on the piece, I would trek around New York as an employment emissary for Clinton, attempting to gauge just what jobs he might be qualified for. They'd already lined up interviews at a number of locations including a temp agency, a telemarketing firm, a Dominos Pizza outlet and, quite naturally, the New York Sperm Bank.

I sat through the meeting without saying much. What was there to offer? By the time the cameras rolled on Friday, I'd be back in my old house on the outskirts of Suttons Bay watching the turkeys strut their stuff through the winter-beaten bramble across the road. I enjoyed watching the turkeys. They seemed totally at peace with themselves, as if being a turkey was the most splendid calling on earth. What's more, they never held meetings.

After it was over I took a peek into Mike's office. He was still gone somewhere so I went down the hall to visit with his wife Kathy. It wasn't hard to find her office. It was the only one on the entire floor which featured Porter Wagoner's "Sorrow On The Rocks" drifting out from under the door. It was all so true: you could take the gal out of Flint but it was pretty impossible to take Flint out of the gal.

"Where's Mike?" I asked. "I've got something I really need to talk over with him."

Kathy explained that he was out shooting on a segment for the show and wouldn't be around for the rest of the day. "Why don't you talk with him tonight," she added. "We were planning on calling you to go out for dinner."

Arrangements were made to meet up at my apartment and we'd go from there. Kathy said they'd drop by around 8 o'clock. I immediately began computing the aforementioned time into actual MST...Moore Standard Time.

"I'll see you around ten," I said before slipping away to find a happy hour that might live up to its billing.

* * * * * * * * * *

The Moore's arrived just after ten. Mike made his obligatory apology about running late and then asked who I'd been talking to. Apparently, he'd heard me practicing my dreary resignation speech through the door.

"Just prepping some of the material for Friday's shoot," I said.

"Hey, not a bad idea," Mike replied. "Just keep in mind we can't be using phrases like 'all fucked up' and 'such an asshole' on the air."

"Duly noted," I said.

We wandered around midtown for awhile. When we passed by the Carnegie Deli I mentioned how I had spotted Jackie Mason in there a few nights back. Both Mike and Kathy got a chuckle from this tidbit, explaining to me how bumping into Jackie Mason at a delicatessan in New York City, especially this specific one, was about as phenomenal as stumbling into a cop at a doughnut shop. I guess it was just one of those silly little truisms about this island that I wasn't attuned to and, with any luck, never would be.

We wound up at at place on 57th Street called The Brooklyn Diner. I was quite on edge. It wasn't every day that I had to break the news to two dear old friends that I was in such shambles that I had to beg out of a well-paying television job just so I could flee back home to peer out my kitchen window at a herd of turkeys and the occasional load-heavy cherry hauler.

I gulped down a couple beers and began by telling Mike and Kathy about the panic attacks of the previous day. I knew this was going to be a tough sell with Moore as he's never really given a helluva lot of credence to panic syndrome. I think he believes that panic attack victims are essentially quibbling malingerers who tend to confuse everyday anxiety for doomsday overplay. This was underlined as recently as a couple weeks ago when Moore and I were taking part in a workshop we'd been asked to address at a writer's retreat. Mike was rehashing some incident which had caused him to become nerved out when he remarked, "I was having heart palpitations ...or as Hamper calls them, panic attacks." As often happened, the people laughed along merrily at Michael Moore, though I can verify that I wasn't one of them.

I dodged around the subject before finally just confessing that I didn't think I was the man for the job. Mike just ate his meal and nodded. This wasn't a good sign. I noted how there had to be hundreds of candidates more suited for this television opportunity than I was. What did I know about interviewing people? I didn't even like listening to my own friends -- let alone the drab opinions of total strangers. Plus, seeing that I was short, bald and bloated, I was hardly what anyone might refer to as televison-friendly in any remote visual sense.

When I finished, Moore calmly put down his fork and wiped his mouth with a napkin. He looked at me with that same fatigued grimace that he used when he was staring down cheeseburgers during meeting lulls. This was anything but good. He exhaled, paused for a second, then started speaking.

"Obviously, you don't fucking get it, do you? You were not invited to be a part of this TV show because you're brilliant or suave or photogenic or any of that other shit. None of that makes the least bit of difference to me. I could find ten thousand guys more adept and professional than you'll ever be. You were invited here to be you."

"But what if I can't deliver?" I asked. "What if I suck so bad that..."

"What if you suck?" Moore loudly interrupted. Kathy put her finger to her mouth, motioning for him to keep it down. Mike leaned across the booth and continued a little lower. "The thing is, Ben, we're not only assuming you'll suck, we're depending on it! There's no other option. In fact, let me put it to you this way: No suck, no pay. I can't make it any clearer."

"Cmon, you don't expect me to..."

"I'll tell you what I expect. I expect that everytime your face shows up on the screen, the vast majority of viewers should react by saying, 'You know what? I could fucking do that guy's job. He's no better than us. In fact, he really sucks.' Not that you suck because you're nervous or short or any other of the excuses you've given. You suck because you're not typical of what people are used to seeing on television. You're just being you -- a funny bastard who could just as well be their neighbor or a guy they know from the bar."

"Let me get this straight," I said. "If I don't suck, I don't get paid?"

"That's exactly right," Moore added.

"Fine, then. I won't let you down."

"That's what I like to hear," Mike responded. "Let's all toast to how bad you're going to suck." The three of us raised our glasses and clinked them together. It marked the first time I'd ever remembered celebrating the notion that I sucked. Not that there hadn't been a lifetime of ample opportunities for toasts of this nature. I mean, it wasn't like I'd really done a great job of concealing this side of myself.

It struck me that Dr. K was quite possibly the idiot here. He's the one who was being paid handsome amounts of money to analyze me. He could've cleared all of this up years ago, allowing me to bypass all the pills and appointments and dreary postulations. He could've looked me straight in the eye on that very first visit and told me, "You really don't belong here at all. You belong on television. Christ, you suck."

I'm pretty sure I might have bought it.

* * * * * * * * * *

Buoyed by the conversation at the Brooklyn Diner, I proceeded to do a nice job on the Clinton Job piece...along with a couple other segments for The Awful Truth. It turned out that I enjoyed acting like a smartass on camera. It was easy work, not near as challenging as fastening dual exhaust muffler hangers to the ass-ends of Chevrolet Suburbans. Every time I got confused or nervous I just told myself it didn't matter. I was supposed to be confused and nervous. It was in my fucking job description.

The weeks went by quick. On the days I didn't shoot, I avoided the office and spent most of my time with a woman I'd met from Brooklyn named Sheila. We had too much fun. I remember the afternoon we went to see a play in the East Village. We arrived early and went to a small shop that sold these paper cones full of french fries. They were the most delicious french fries I had ever eaten. We adjourned to a bench in a neighborhood park by the theatre. We ate our fries and kissed each other. The pigeons kept pestering us for french fries. They were too good to just give away.

Sheila is back in Brooklyn. The pigeons remain there, too. It's now turkey season here in Suttons Bay. I can hear rifle shots not far from this kitchen table.

And I never did let them paint my apartment door.