Six thirty 🕡. Hearing the old Lover Boy song about the weekend. Everybody’s working for it. I remember that lifestyle. The only freedom happened two days out of the week. Such a nightmare. It might’ve been different had I cared about making glasses 👓 for people on Medicaid. But I had no personal interest in the business. I believed in the cause that Optical supported, ie psychiatric rehabilitation, and I donated out of my paychecks each period. Still it was too hard to keep my focus on the greater good the while I had to drudge every weekday with the same street people I had nothing else in common with. Ron’s brain was the most disorganized thing I ever saw. His politics was an inconsistent stew of conservatism and gay culture, always discordant with itself. It hurt to have to work with him, and the only item we shared was alcohol addiction. In March or April of 06, when I walked in the door each day he was tuned in to Doctor Laura on the radio 📻. I asked him many times why he listened to that trash with his sexual orientation. He said it was something to get his blood boiling. But I could tell he was confused about which way to jump. Poor Ron lacked the ability to think logically, to discriminate what was important in an argument and draw a conclusion. He hadn’t the insight to pierce the details and pick up just what was being said. And this guy was my supervisor! I must’ve had too much caffeine, for these memories are painful. But I kept trying to help him choose what would benefit himself when it came time to vote 🗳. He was adamantly opposed to gay marriage, which I could never understand, because he was gay and being married to his partner would entitle him to the same protections as straight couples who were married. Ron was just beyond help. Over the years I came to care about this guy in spite of myself. But I also wanted to get away from him. I haven’t thought about him much since getting sober. Not in-depth. I remember hearing the old Beatles song in my head when I first learned that Ron was gay. I felt compassion for him that fall of 05. I was jobless then and looking for work with Alice’s help. Nothing was panning out. So when on Valentine’s Day of 06 Ron offered me day labor for him I took it. In only another month or two I was rehired in my old job as document scanner.
robgradens 