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The Interview.

(Clock ticking. Buzz of fluorescent lights.)

I sat and waited in the suit my mother bought me, and the tie she also bought.

"We need something that says hire me!" She joked to the JC Penney sales associate.

"Okay Luke, we're ready for you."

Young guy, clean cut capitalist soldier, laser eyes that zeroed in on their target scanning for impurities. He looked like he probably watched a lot of sports center, liked to chug a brewskie occasionally, and most of all was very serious about his job. After a firm handshake and a little small talk, I was comfortable, not at all intimidated, but then things took a turn for the worst.

"Why should I hire you? What do you bring to the table?"

I was of course thrown off by this question. "Well I'm a hard worker. I'm responsible, you know, when I say I'm gonna do something, I do it. I'm trustworthy and I'm a hard, you know, diligent worker."

I've always thought that maybe I had Attention Deficit Disorder. A lot of people think they do, I guess. If I had been born ten years later, they might have exorcised it with pills. For some reason, during the course of the interview, I kept thinking about a party we had sophomore year. It's just like that old commercial: "someone is changing the channels in my head." You see I was in a fraternity and we had lots of parties, but I was thinking about one in particular.

I filled a crumpled plastic cup from the keg tap, over and over, tipping it at an angle. "I live here man, excuse me." Pushing my way through the mob of kids, it went down like water, my buzz flattening out like anvil tops of summer storm clouds, their peaks pressed up against the glass of the atmosphere, prevented from towering any higher until there is nothing to do but rain and pass out.

We resided on the top floor. I don't know if "reside" describes what we did, but anyway. Our room featured a home-made bar, constructed, sanded down, and lacquered some time in the late 80s by whomever lived there at that time. Couches suffered the ends of their lives here, neon beer signs, year round Christmas lights. Can't forget the retired liquor bottles full of water and highlighter, illuminated trophies behind the black light. I'll admit, back then it was cool. "Yeah, I'm underage, yet I drank all of those."

That night, we had the furniture moved to create space for dancing. The bass from the speakers pounded, and under a neon moon I watched those bodies grind just like the descendants of the slaves showed us. Guys with too much

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