books i plan to read once i graduate college next may or before then

kafka-the castle
hemmingway-green hills of africa
nietzsche-ecce homo
jaspers-philosophy of existence
ellison-invisible man
nietzsche-the birth of tragedy
rhys-good morning, midnight
kierkegaard-either/or
dostoevsky-the brothers karamazov
dostoevsky-the idiot
dostoevsky-the possessed
zachary german-eat when you feel sad
tao lin-richard yates
pessoa-the book of disquiet
hesse-steppenwolff
melville-moby dick
wilde-portrait of dorian gray
wittgenstein
pynchon-gravity's rainbow
sartre-critique of dialectical reason
mann-death in venice
cheever-stories
bukowski-factotum
bukwoski-women
baudrillard-simulacra and simulation
bukowski-hollywood
zizek-looking awry
murakami-kafka on the shore
proust-in search of lost time
roth-american pastoral
cormac mccarthy-the road (or maybe ill just watch the movie)

this list will be added to as time passes

why i might not like philip roth

two important things happened today but they probably have little importance to you.

first, i read philip roth's short story called The Conversion of the Jews and I thought it was stupid but I didn't get past the halfway point so I say that out of some degree of ignorance.

the only other things by him ive read by him were portnoys complaint and the plot against america (although i wont be referring to the later in the lines that follow-it sucked for somewhat other reasons) although i didnt finish either of those either because i didnt like them

i didnt like them for the same reasons that i didnt like the story i read today

he is way too obsessed with negating his own jewishness while still thinking it is something worth talking about ALOT

i also think he talks about sexual experience/frustration/repression way too much in portnoys complaint, although i didnt notice anything overt in that manner in the story i read today

he also comes from too much of youthful perspective for someone who was well into his twenties and thirties when he wrote these stories

the story i read today comes from a book that won the national book award

so i can understand that

it was 1959 and no one was really talking about jewishness or that kind of stuff TOO MUCH at that time, at least not in the manner in which he writes about it

but then portnoys complaint comes ten years later and now hes still youthful but talking about sexual shit a lot but also STILL talking about the jewishness basically at least every few pages

maybe this all sounds anti-semitic, but its not. i think jewish people are great. i love hannah arendt and josh+toby from the west wing and all my favorite comedians were jewish and i hate people that hate jews.

its more that i just dont like to hear people go on an on about religion. i hate most religion and i dont like to hear people go on about religion.

i come from a family of christian fundamentalists and i went to a catholic jesuit high school bc my dad taught there but i wouldn't make anyone sit through a story about all that because its boring

its boring because its boring

even someone like philip roth, who is way more talented than i will ever be, even he can't make that exciting

i dont think anyone can

maybe freud, because hed talk about how money stands for shit and snakes symbolize my penis and shit like that

but i dont think hed be able to make it into a narrative

so that was one thing i learned today

the other thing i learned was that i compiled a bunch of shit that ive written in the past 6 weeks which is all related and i now have a 47 page, 10,000 word manuscript which i am only 50 to 60 percent done with and which i hope will eventually be published as a novella

but that is a long way away

also, ive been told that philip roths best stuff comes later than the two stories i was talking about, so i am going to read american pastoral later next year

The leaves fell as I walked through a windy autumn breeze and it reminded me of how they fell in my childhood and every fall since I can remember. The sidewalk was gray and come to think of it I felt kind of gray myself.

I am walking to my friend Josh’s apartment. There is going to be a dinner party. Usually I wouldn’t go to something in which I have to be around more than a couple other people and not be drunk, but it is free and Mark convinced me to go so I am going.

There was a girl who looked a few years younger than me walking on the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street. I gazed at her for a minute or so and then she turned her head and stared and I looked away. I began walking faster than her and didn’t look back. I worried about it for a few minutes and then I got bored.

When I got to the party there were only two other people there besides Josh and so it was easy for me to start up a conversation and prepare for the arrival of everyone else at the same time.

I had begun to zone out the conversation I was involved in and was daydreaming and gazing around the room. I was staring around the room when there was a knock at the door and Josh opened it and the girl who I had been looking at on the sidewalk was there. I looked away and pretended to not have noticed that she came in and that I was involved in what had turned into a heated discussion between my friends Brett and Rob. They were talking about politics and I didn’t really care, at least not about talking about it.

Meanwhile, Josh seemed to be “catching up” with the girl. I wondered what took her so long to get here and then I realized she probably just had to run and errand. I figured they wouldn’t notice me so I looked the two of them over to see if there was a sexual connection or tension. I couldn’t really tell and didn’t really care so I stared at the palms of my hands for a while.

“Hey, I saw you on the street when I was walking here.”

I looked up and saw that the girl was standing with Josh next to and above where I was seated.

“Oh, yeah sorry for staring at you. That was kind of creepy,” I said.

“Oh, no it wasn’t creepy at all. It was kind of funny, actually.”

I gave a light laugh and nodded my head.

“Bob, this is Carol. Carol, meet Bob,” said Josh. “Now I’m going to go finish cooking. If someone knocks at the door would you guys mind opening it?”

We both said no and then he walked away. I watched his retreat into the kitchen with anxiety.

“So where are you from?” she asked.

“I’m from Ohio, but I live in New York. You?”

“I’m from New York. Born and raised and all that.”

“Word. How old are you?” I asked.

“Twenty-two,” she said.

“Are you in college?”

“Yeah, it’s my last year. I go to NYU.”

“Word.”
I had run out of introductory things to say and was tired of making small talk. We both remarked how we knew Josh and how he was funny and how he always cooked good food whenever we had hung out with him. I wished there was some common memory I could recall which we could reminisce about, but there was none. Such it is when you first meet people.

I asked her what she was majoring in and she said “sociology” and I talked a little about it because I knew the basics and then I ran out of things to say. She didn’t seem very interested in talking about sociology so we just sat there.

No one came to the door. I didn’t know how many people were coming. Mark had called me when I had first arrived to tell me and for me to tell Josh that he wasn’t coming.

I thought that maybe we were the only ones coming while I was trying to think of something to say. Then I realized that I didn’t really care if I thought of anything to say. I got up and asked the group if they wanted to go on the porch and smoke a cigarette and they all said yes and we told Josh we were going to smoke and then we went out on the porch and smoked and I realized that I didn’t care about anything. I wanted free food and I was going to get in soon.

history of western philo

Socrates-"I'm gay."

Plato-"I wrote down what my boss said but it might just be what I said."

Aristotle-"I'm so old-fashioned. Fuck!"

Jesus-"I don't know why I gave up so easy. My philosophy is weak."

Seneca-"It will be okay, I think, or maybe not."

Augustine-"I'm Christian, but I am a serious philosopher."

Aquinas-"Me too!"

Machiavelli-"I'm the dude who is the favorite philosopher of every dumb bro."

Descartes-"I think therefore.....whatever."

Pascal-"I believe in God because I don't want to go to hell."

Spinoza-"We need to start pissing people off."

Locke-"I'm a racist."

Hobbes-"I'm a douche."

Rousseau-"I want to go on a walk."

Voltaire-"Shit sucks."

Kant-"I will explain everything but you will learn nothing."

Adam Smith-"I love money!"

Mill/Bentham-"Sex is good; so is reading a book."

Schopenhauer-"I hate life, I think. Maybe not."

Hegel-"I am going to kill you and then steal half of your clothes."

Marx-"It is impossible to misinterpret my philosophy."

Dostoevsky-"I write really long books."

Kierkegaard-"God is alive, I think."

Nietzsche-"God is dead, pretty much."

Dewey/James-"We're American."

Weber-"Bureaucracy!"

Freud-"There's something I really want to say but I'm staying silent."

Wittgenstein-"Why should I say anything?"

Jaspers-"I'm random but I fit in somehow."

Husserl-"I'm important."

Heidegger-"I'm a Nazi."

Arendt-"I am a Jew but I think Heidegger is cool."

Jung-"I am indifferently opposed to Nazis."

Lacan-"You probably can't understand anything I say."

Sartre-"We're totally free and this makes total sense!"

Camus-"We're totally free and this makes no sense!"

De Beauvoir-"We're free because I agree with Jean-Paul a lot."

Althusser-"We're not free."

Foucault-"Yeah, we're not free."

Derrida-"Yeah. I hate myself. And you."

Adorno-"Everyone is so critical."

Rorty-"We got to get back to how shit used to be."

Rawls-"We need to help the poor."

Nozick-"Fuck the poor."

Habermas-"What the fuck did you say?"

Peter Singer-"I think he's talking shit about my animal friends."

Baudrillard-"Fuck it."

Zizek-"Youtube me!"

Clancy Martin-"Google video me!"

“All thinking men are atheists.” (H-8) This statement jumps out at the reader in the midst of the first pages of Ernest Hemmingway’s novel, A Farewell To Arms. The novel is set in World War I, and the statement just cited comes from a Major in the Italian army as he addresses some fellow officers, one of whom is the American ambulance driver Lieutenant Frederic Henry. Lieutenant Henry, the narrator, maintains an acknowledging silence during this statement, as do most of the other officers present. The weight of this phrase hangs over the entire novel—hardly anyone sees any hope for salvation or redemption in the midst of the unprecedented destruction and chaos of the war. Perhaps some simple-minded soldier or farmer or worker could keep their belief in a higher power or purpose, but these officers are “thinking men” and so therefore they can have no such illusions.

A description of this utter destruction can also be found in the novel’s first pages. The narrator says, “At the start of the winter came the permanent rain and with the rain came the cholera. But it was checked and in the end only seven thousand died of it in the army.” (H-4) The way the death toll is phrased with the word “only” makes it seem like this is supposed to be an understatement. Most people would assume seven thousand deaths to be a rather large number. What Hemmingway does is he immediately puts the reader in the position of the narrator, and what passes for tremendous in everyday life is no longer relevant once we are in the eyes of the narrator. The narrator exists in a world where there is no god to save him or watch over him.

These short passages are reminiscent of the concept of the “death of god” that Nietzsche discusses in his book entitled The Gay Science. In that work we are introduced to his famous statement that “God is dead.” The statement is actually spoken through the voice of a fictional madman, who says the following: “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.” (N-181) This statement reveals more than meets the eye. Not only is a deity dead who had been an idol of Western society for almost two millennia but, also, his death came at the hands of the many who worshipped him. Really, the most important phrase is not “god is dead” but rather “we have killed him.” We (western society) killed him through our search for new dogma: enlightenment and truth. This search for enlightenment and truth has brought progress in many forms. There has been scientific, military, philosophical, and all sorts of other progress. The quest for pure reason brought about the seeds of doubt in relation to our faith in God. The quest for scientific, technological, and, by extension, military power threw Western man into a moral and ethical disorder. Once one man had decided that one moral grey area was safe for crossing, soon many other men were crossing many other moral grey areas. The massive destruction that serves as a backdrop to A Farewell To Arms is the result of this desire on the part of various Western nations’ to achieve supremacy in the field of military weaponry. The death of god has brought about greater freedoms and possibilities for the individual but it has also left humanity in a state of confusion and despair.

But the more important question is how to endure such a godless world that is filled to the brink with godless murderers. The narrator decides to endure the struggle with a woman, Catherine Barkley, with whom he falls in love. Knowing that they could die at any moment and wary of dying with regrets, they embrace of a path of living live to the fullest. Early in the relationship, there is a key passage where the narrator realizes that he can no longer live life in a passive and nonchalant manner. After getting drunk and forgetting that he was supposed to meet up with Catherine Barkley, the narrator has the following inner thoughts: “I went out the door and suddenly I felt lonely and empty. I had treated seeing Catherine very lightly, I had gotten somewhat drunk and had nearly forgotten to come but when I could not see her there I was feeling lonely and hollow.” (H-41) This passage refers to how he got intoxicated but then eventually remembered to meet Catherine Barkley, and then when he got to her place he found that he could no longer see her. The key word in this passage is “lightly.” The fact that he is admitting that he treated her in such a way suggests that at first he had considered her merely as another woman he was trying to fuck and, in the end, as just another small aspect of his life. He then says that this realization makes him feel “lonely and hollow”, which one could assume means he is coming to believe that he needs to start taking an active role in giving meaning to his life. He does not want Catherine Barkley to become just another girl with whom he wanted to have sex; rather, he wants to be with her every moment and savor everything about her while he still is alive.

This attitude towards life is similar to the concept of “eternal return”, which Nietzsche also develops in The Gay Science. In a section entitled “The greatest weight”, Nietzsche poses the following thought experiment: “This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you…The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with, speck of dust!” (N-273) Such a statement is significant in a godless, self-destructing world, for there is no longer the hope of a salvation of one’s soul in the afterlife. Rather, one must make the best of their life while they still can. At the same time, it must be realized that this to some extent opens up the door for a kind of despair. Still, it must be realized that this despair is not in vain; on the contrary, it provides the imperative that we must treat life with a certain amount of reverence such that we can confidently take control of it and make it some worth living an infinite number of times again. While such a thought experiment could be discouraging (as the title “the greatest weight” suggests), the important lesson Nietzsche is stressing is the life is not to be treated lightly.

The elevator was humid and dim and it seemed to be taking forever to go down. I was on my way to a job interview at a company called Martin Publishing House. It was located on the fifth floor below ground level in a skyscraper. Ever since I had graduated from college six months before, I had been pretty lazy about looking for a job. A friend had recommended I apply for a job in publishing. So here I was, trying to move up into the world.
When I got off the elevator I had to close my eyes for a second because the lights in the hallway were blindingly bright. When my eyes recovered from the shock I began looking for the door marked -531. I opened the door to the office and walked up to the receptionists' window. A couple of women were seated on the other side of the waiting room reading magazines.
At the receptionists' window I tried clearing my throat and coughing to get the attention of the receptionist but then I realized that she couldn't hear me because there was a glass window between us.
I tapped on the glass and she opened the glass door and said, "Hello."
"Hi, my name is Bob Dorff. I am here to see Mr. Martin."
"Okay, let me look here."
I waited patiently while she typed away on her computer and flipping through files. I tried to look out of the corner of my eye to see if the two women were looking at me or if they were reading their magazines. I had stretched my face as far as I could without directly looking at them, and then the receptionist said something.
"I'm sorry, what did you say?" I asked.
And she said, "Is your name Bob Dorff?"
"Yes," I said.
She then proceeded to begin looking through a file cabinet again. I watched the hands on the clock behind her desk as they moved. I waited for four minutes and twenty-two seconds.
"Okay, Mr. Martin will see you now. Follow me."
She motioned to a door next to a window. I opened it and followed her down a hallway. She knocked on a door and then opened it.
"Mr. Martin, Bob Dorff is here for his interview," she said.
I heard a muffled, indecipherable voice, and then she turned to and smiled and held out her arm for me to go in. Once again I had to readjust my eyes, because there was only a desk lamp on in his office. The secretary closed the door and left.
I looked over the desk at Mr. Martin. He had gray hair and a moustache. He had on a pair of round, wired glasses that made his stare seem even more intense.
"Have a seat," he said.
I sat down.
"So you are looking for a job in publishing, correct," he said.
"Um, yes."
"What kind of work would you hope to do should I hire you?" he asked.
"I mean, I could read manuscripts and edit them, and that kind of stuff."
"I see," he said.
He began looking over my application. I sat there staring at him and then I began looking around the room. There was a plaque saying he graduated from Dartmouth University. Along one wall there was lots of photos. In one of the photos he was sitting on a beach chair next to a woman. I noticed that he was naked and his flaccid penis was hanging out. I opened my mouth in mock horror (or was it real horror) and then glanced at him to make sure he hadn't seen my make that facial expression.
He continued looking at my application. I could hardly stare at him anymore, for fear of immediately envisioning him on a beach chair with no clothes and a flaccid penis. At the same time, I could hardly look at the walls for fear that I might find another such picture. I decided to look down at my lap.
"Well, it looks like you could do a good job here, Bob, but it will just be a matter of figuring out exactly where to put you. We'll give you a call, okay?"
I said "okay" and "thank you" and then I asked where the nearest bathroom was and went and washed my hands. Then I left the office and walked as fast I could to the elevator. When I got to the ground floor and left the building, I was blinded by the sun, because it was so bright.
Rather than taking the subway, I decided to just walk the whole way home. It took me 80 minutes to get back to my apartment. I sat on the stoop and smoked a cigarette and then I went inside. On the way to my apartment I heard loud noises coming from the apartment across the hall from me. It sounded like a dog yelling in pain. I opened the door to my apartment and went in and shut it behind me and bolted the door.
I went to my bedroom and sat down at my desk and laid my head down on the desk. I tried to fall asleep but I couldn’t, so I turned on my computer and checked my email repeatedly every five minutes over the course of two and a half hours while I browsed websites on the Internet.
I leaned back in my chair and looked at the living room and kitchen of my apartment. I didn’t really need them anymore, because I had moved most of my furniture and the microwave and the fridge into my room. Since I was always in my room, there was no need for the television, because I would prefer to just stare at my computer screen. Since the microwave and the fridge were in my room and that was what I used when I cooked food in the house, there really wasn’t any need for the oven. My proudest possession in the room was a hibiscus plant which I watered everyday. I kept it on table by the window because I was afraid that if I put it on the windowsill it would fall twelve stories and smash into oblivion on the sidewalk.
I called my friend Mark and he told me to go over to his apartment. I took the subway over to his apartment. We talked about how much we hated everything and how we didn’t want to get real jobs and how we were above all that and then he asked me how my job interview went.
“Oh, um, pretty good,” I said.
“Where was that again?” he asked.
“Martin Publishing House,” I said.
“Oh yeah, I remember now,” he said. “Come to think of it, I’ve actually been thinking of taking this job offer from an advertising agency downtown.”
“Oh yeah,” I said.
He began talking about this job that he had been offered and one sentence began to bleed into the next. He began to sound like the teacher sounds in the show Charlie Brown. I thought about feeling sentimental about the fact that we were growing up and then I realized that I didn’t really care even though it did was kind of overwhelming.

The cool autumn breeze swept over me as I walked out of my apartment. As I was lighting a cigarette, a white van pulled up right in front of me. Men in black masks got out and threw me in the van.

They blindfolded me. I asked them who they were and they told me to shut up. I asked them what they wanted from me and they told me to shut up. There weren't seat belts, and it seemed to me that that was very dangerous.

We drove for what seemed like hours. I started to wonder who these people were. They couldn't be the government. The government has to have warrants and shit. I thought maybe they were the terrorists, but then what would terrorists want with me.

I wished that I had never gotten out of bed that morning. I didn't have to go to work. I had just gotten out of bed because I wanted to be productive and read a book. I was reading Ecce Homo by Nietzsche.

The van slowed to a stop, and someone took me by the arm and led me out of the van. They took me into a building and put me in a room and removed my blindfold and then they left.

The room was dimly lit and very hot. There was a chair on the other side of the room. I thought about sitting in it but instead I just paced around the room. I wanted to be back at my apartment. I wanted to go out on my balcony and smoke a cigarette.

I began to think about sitting down in the chair. A man walked in. He had a cleanly shaved white face and he was wearing a suit and tie.

"What's your name, son?" he asked me.

"Shouldn't you know my name, since you kidnapped me?"

"No. Well, yes, but this is just protocol."

"Oh. My name is Bob Dorff."

He began scribbling on a notepad.

"Why did you kidnap me?" I asked.

"You said your name was Bob Dorff?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Hmm...I think we might have made a mistake."

"What do you mean?"

"Shut up."

I sat in silence for several minutes as he went outside to talk to someone.

When he came back in he said, "Okay, well there has been a mistake, we are going to take me home now."

I gave him and angry and confused look. He nodded at me and left the room. Men in masks came in and blindfolded me and drove me back to my apartment building. They shoved me out of the van and sped away.

I sat on the stoop of my apartment building and stared at people as they walked past. Then I went to Joe's diner and ate a chicken sandwich. As I was washing it down with a Coca-Cola I noticed a woman who was twitching violently a few tables away. No one else seemed to notice, and I didn't really care, so I paid my bill and left.

Outside it had gotten cloudy and so I began walking home quickly because I didn't have a raincoat. Back in my apartment, I thought about calling the police and telling them about my abduction. But then I realized that I had no evidence and no witnesses.

I laid on my bed and stared at the ceiling for ten minutes. I picked up my laptop off the floor and got on the internet. I went online and saw my friend Ian was online too.

"Yo, dude," I typed to him.

"Yo," he typed.

"I got abducted today. You probably won't even believe me."

"No I don't, but it is a funny story. Who abducted you?"

"I don't know, they had on masks."

"Of course."

Our conversation hit a wall for a few minutes as I checked my email and facebook.

"What are you doing tonight?" he asked.

"I think I am gonna get drunk."

"Word."

"I'll call you later," I said to him and then I signed off.

I walked across the street to the bakery and got a donut. But then I realized that I had left my wallet in my apartment so i just walked out of the bakery with the donut. As I exited a man yelled at me and then I began running as fast as I could across the street. I reached into my pockets for my keys and realized that I had left them in my apartment too. The owner of the bakery had run out of the store and now he had cornered me.

"You didn't pay for that," he said.

"Yes, I did," I said.

"Where's your receipt?"

I scratched my chin. I needed to shave. I acted as if I hadn't heard him say anything. He took me by the arm and we went back to the bakery, where he called the police.

The police came and listened to the bakery owner explain what had happened, and then he put me in his squad car and we went to the police station.

I was sitting in a coffee shop staring at a girl sitting a few tables away. I thought, "Should I go up to her and introduce myself?" I thought that she seemed to be involved in her newspaper and that it would be rude to interrupt her. Also, I hadn't the faintest idea what I would do after I introduced myself and was afraid that it might have gotten awkward. I sat there drinking my coffee and contemplating this for several minutes, and then she got up from her seat, threw her newspaper in the trash bin, and walked out of the coffee shop.

During my whole time staring at her I had felt self-conscious, reserved, and detached all at the same time. The intensity of my gaze upon her had been so great that I had realized that if I knew someone was staring at me I would feel very uncomfortable. And yet, it is so much easier to look at someone when there isn't a gaze reflected back at you. But then I realized that everybody else in the coffee shop was involved in completely different endeavors than staring. By the time I thought of that, the girl had left shop, and so I stood up, paid my bill, and went outside and lit a cigarette.

I got into my car and began driving aimlessly. My cell phone began to vibrate. It was Danny.

"Hey," I said.

"Hey, what's up?" he said.

"Nothing, just driving around."

"You want to hang out?"

"Sure. I'll come pick you up."

"Alright, cool. Bye."

"Bye."

When I arrived at Danny's parents house, I sat in my car in the driveway for five minutes, expecting him to come out. Then I called him, and he said, "Oh, you're here?" and hung up.

When he got in the car, we each lit a cigarette, and then I asked him what he wanted to do.

"I don't know, just drive until one of us thinks of something," he said.

I began driving up hills and hills and more hills. Eventually, I realized we were driving near the highest point in the county. I looked out over the hill we were driving on and I could see the whole city of Cuyahoga Falls laid out before me. I looked out over the thousands of beige and gray boxes and felt nothing. I then realized that Danny had been saying something to me.

"What'd you say," I asked.

"I said that it could maybe even be kind of nice to live here for the rest of my life. You know, have my own house and get married and shit."

"No, that's stupid," I said, "Then we would have kids like everyone in all those houses down there and then our kids would grow up like us, complaining about how much it sucks to live here."

"Yeah, I guess you're right."

"You want to go eat pizza?"

"Alright."

I drove to the nearest Pizza Huts and we both ordered the buffet and then we both remarked how all the other Pizza Huts had gotten rid of their buffets.

I nodded out the window at the bar across the street.

"You want to go over there after this?" I asked.

"Isn't it a little early?" asked Danny.

"If it was too early then it wouldn't be open," I replied

Danny shrugged and then he took a bite out of his bread stick. Knowing him as long as I knew him, I figured that meant that we would go to the bar.

After we had each eaten everything on our plates we got up and walked across the street to the bar. Before we went in, Danny said, "Isn't it kind of early," again, to which I said, "It's six o'clock."

Inside the bar, the lights were dim and the music was relatively loud, but neither of these things bothered me because I had gotten used to the fact that most bars were like that. The bartender was watching the six-o'clock news on a television, and I had to clear my throat in order to get his attention so that we could order our drinks.

We sat down at a table and sipped on our drinks. The news was talking about the presidential election. I squirmed around in my seat, trying to find a comfortable spot. I thought about removing my wallet from my back pocket to make the surface of my butt balanced but I was too lazy.

As we sipped on our drinks I looked at the three other people in the bar. One was the bartender, who was still gazing intently at the news on the television. Another was guy that was maybe a few years older than myself, and I suspected that he had some kind of relation to the bartender. The other person in the bar was a rather ragged looking older man who had dirty white hair and what looked like a week-old beard. I looked at his face and then I saw that he had turned around and was looking at me from his chair at the bar. He nodded his head at me and I looked away and began talking nonsense to Danny.

"I was reading about how Sartre did mescaline once and he had a bad trip," I said.

Danny gave a somewhat confused look and then he said, "Cool."

I began telling him how Sartre became obsessed with Judaism and the messiah at the end of his life, and then I noticed the older man from the bar was walking over and I was lost for words.

"How is that related to him taking mescaline?" asking Danny.

I stared at the old man as he walked over towards us. Danny noticed that I was looking oddly at something and then he too began staring at the man.

He walked up to our table, "Hi, I'm Pete, can I sit with you?"

Danny said sure, but he moved over to give the man a place to sit, but the man decided to nudge me over instead.

We all introduced ourselves and then we all sipped on our drinks in silence for about 30 seconds.

"What do you do?" Danny asked the man.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"Like what do you do for a job?"

"I'm the bouncer here," said the man.

"Ah," Danny and I each said simultaneously.

"Yeah, I just check ID's and stuff. But I'm pretty good at guessing people's age. You are both in your mid-twenties," I would say.

"Twenty-four," said Danny.

"Twenty-five for me," I said.

"Yeah, thats what I thought," he said. "To be honest, the liquor board hardly ever comes here, so I hardly ever check. I think that if you are old enough to go and die in a war, then it should be fine if you have a drink."

"Yeah, I've always thought that was how it should be," I said and Danny concurred.

"Either of you in the military?" asked the man.

"No, no way," I said.

"Well, I was in the military, back in the 70s."

"That must have sucked," I said and I realized that he wasn't as old as he looked.

"Yeah he sure did suck," he said. "I thought I was going to go do some good, and all I ended up doing was killing people and destroying my mind for the rest of my life."

"Shit," said Danny.

"Yeah, so I wouldn't recommend it," the man said. "What do you guys do anyway," he asked.

"I just graduated college this past spring," I said.

"I am going to graduate next spring," said Danny.

The man asked me what I was doing with my degree and I said that right now the economy was bad and I was just working at a deli in New York City. He asked what I was doing in Ohio and I told him I was home for Thanksgiving. Danny said that he was home for Thanksgiving too, and then the bouncer had to get up to check the IDs of three barely-legal looking boys. Danny and I finished our drinks and walked out of the bar. We got in my car and each of us lit a cigarette.

"What do you want to do," I asked.

And he said, "I don't know, just drive around until one of us thinks of something to do."