Everything you wanted
to learn at university
but didn't.

I The overeducated janitor never had an enemy before, much less an archenemy. Sure, here and there, there were people whom he didn’t get along well with, certain personality types even, the arrogant, the selfish, the extroverts, the attention seekers, for example, but his social circles had always been wide enough, in punk, at The Punk University, in community organizing, to steer clear of troubled waters, to circumvent conflict, to troubleshoot enough to ensure that the occa

“Don’t quit your day job, kid.” The overeducated janitor kept notebooks when he was younger. In his past life, his punk past life, he kept one on him at all times. At the merch table at shows, in the loft of the van on tour, on the porch of the flophouse, in the breakroom of any number of menial jobs, on the rooftops of the industrial corridor, down by the sulphur-soaked riverbanks, on rickety park benches, on public transportation, or wherever he happened to be when the word

Take the long way every time. To and from work. Along the freight train tracks. Where the cottonwoods grow tall. Where they have room to misbehave. Pick a spot. As remote as possible. Not visible from the chain link fence. Lost in the thistle. Atop a pile of discarded railroad ties. The trunk of a fallen tree perhaps. That one slab of cement jutting out of the gravel, spraypainted with the names of seventeen people, friends and lovers, long gone, colors faded. This is the one

Don’t set your alarm. Plan on sleeping in, as late as possible. “The longer, the better,” you tell yourself as you switch off the lamp on the nightstand, as if it were a question of will. Wake up, nonetheless, after a few short hours, still night. Don’t reach for your phone. Don’t check the hour. If you do, it’s all over. You can forget about falling back asleep. Once your mind is back on the hamster wheel, there will be nothing to stop it from turning, nothing to stop the ax

Don’t just lie there on the cold ground, covered in snow. Roll over onto your side, at least, and, from there, into a sitting position. Notice, as you do so, how it stings, your side, the whole bony mid-hip region. Check, before doing anything else, your glasses. Make sure they are not broken. You can handle bruises, sprains, fractures even, but your glasses? No, not your glasses. They come first. So, tap your temples with a gloved hand to check. Wait, what? They’re not there

Do not try to compose an anthem for your generation. Get that idea out of your head. It is simply not how this works. Don’t worry about your clothes or haircut or any of the songs on the radio or any of your friends ’ bands. Focus instead on breakfast, on getting the temperature of the maté right, on buttering your toast with the correct amount of butter, on standing at the window for a few seconds and trying to get a feel for the weather. There is something in the air, somet

Write a letter, several of them. One to The Big Boss, heavy-handed, full-blooded, yet without misgivings, without grievance, without insouciance, one that enumerates The Reasons in painstaking detail. One to Arturo, more of a manifesto than a letter, one that confirms his worst suspicions, political in nature, concerning my generation’s repetition of his generation’s mistakes. One to Chip, a countercultural Pass-the-Torch letter that bequeaths to her the volumes of subversive

There is always a moment of doubt. When you clean the hair from the drain at night, somewhere near the end of your shift, when the surfaces shine and your muscles ache, when the building goes quiet, eyes half closed, chest slowly heaving, breathing now regular, Totoro between the trees, there is always a moment of confusion, however small and unstable, confusion about whether the hair that has accumulated in the grate of the floor drain, a matted mess of assorted strands and

The toilet bowl is situated on the very edge, perhaps even a little more on the far side, over there, than over here on our side, the safe side, the legible side. It is a tear in the fabric of the curtain. By getting down low, really low, and by moving your body close, unbearably close, the most awkward of embraces, you can almost feel the breeze of the abyss on the skin of your face, you can almost taste the minerals in the air, as familiar as they are otherworldly, underwor

We have the place to ourselves, The Celebrities and I. All regular activities have been suspended for the week between Christmas and New Year's Day. The pool is closed, the gym is closed, the weight room is closed, the classrooms upstairs are all closed, getting their beauty rest, so well-deserved. The lifeguards are gone, the physical trainers are gone, the instructors are gone, and the receptionists are gone. The supervisors and coordinators, all long gone. It’s just us, t

The Overeducated Janitor runs his fingers through his hair, what’s left of it. It’s been a long time since he has done something like this, something so drastic, so desperate, like standing in front of the mirror in an ill-fitting Christmas sweater, holding up the line to the bathroom at The Halfway House. Anything other than cargo pants, anything other than his beige coveralls, his chain wallet, his oversized keyring, his steel-toed waterproof slip-on Sketcher’s work shoe, a

You forgot all about the snow. It was there, falling from the sky, leisurely at first, cottony round flakes of it, bellies swollen, sticking to everything, the city surfaces, pavement, lampposts, street signs, mailboxes, rooftops, as well as the other surfaces, lawns, tree trunks and branches, patching over the holes, filling in the crevices, healing the scars, until most of the available surfaces were generously coated, the edges softened and a significant part of the noise

Chip took a small notebook from her pocket and jotted down the code to the alarm and a few other indications. She wrote quickly, barely looking at the page, which, by the time she finished, was cramped with arrows and diagrams and terse captions written in several different languages. She had been doing this throughout the night, throughout the shift, the third shift, my usual one, her first. Naturally, her compulsion to write everything down, to create an archive, a hand-dra

I’m not feeling myself today , The Over-Educated Janitor tells himself in an attempt to explain away his foul temperament, positively sulphuric, his spleen, enough of it to put even Baudelaire to shame. Yet he is mistaken.  He is more himself than at any other moment. This is his condition, specific to his station in life, his vocation, weighed down with words, the mess of them, caught in their web, the web of half-hearted texts, of half-resolved theories, of half-finished pr

4. I rode down to the tracks Thinking they might sing to me But they just stared back Broken, trainless and black as night Climbed out onto my roof So I'd be a poet in the night Beat the walls off my room I saw the big room that is this life Put my ear to the door I just heard hot rods and gunshots and sirens People kill me these days There's keys in their eyes but they lock from the inside. -       Blake Schwarzenbach, “Condition Oakland,” 24 Hour Revenge Therapy , Jawbreake

1. Carrie, Fred, and I arrive early, before the other punks. There is a lot of work to do. The bowling alley clearly doesn’t have a janitor. The place is a mess. The floor is peppered with ash, crumpled cigarettes, bend butts, smeared here and there with traces of lip gloss. The white plastic tables are covered in flyers, folded, crumpled, or uncreased, hot off the press, straight of the oven, which is to say the photocopier. They announce assemblies, protests, community acti

It’s the next big thing. Any day now. Just around the next corner. Brace yourself for celebrity janitors. Like celebrity chefs, but cleaning instead of cooking. An Anthony Bourdain of the beige coveralls and belt-hoop keyring, hitherto undiscovered, will write an exposé. It will have to be in the off hours, on the thin margins of the quotidian exigencies of life behind the broom, the long hours, the dirty fingernails, the elbow grease, the body weariness of it all. It won’t t

I take the photograph off the wall and put it face down on the dresser. There is a white rectangle on the wall where the photo had just been. It is lighter than the rest of the wall, which I now realize is gray, not white, discolored and covered with smudges, streaks, stains, soot, handprints, shoulderprints, bodyprints, all the usual evidence of hard living. I take a step back and squint my eyes. The lines that compose the rectangle become bolder. Ever so slightly, they quiv

“You look better than I expected,” Alex said upon seeing me again. We were meeting for coffee downtown to discuss his project. It was the first time that I had been downtown in over a year. Nothing had changed. Except for me, of course. I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the glass when I opened the door to the coffeehouse. That person looks vaguely familiar , I thought with a tinge of panic and resolved to keep my distance, until I realized my mistake. Alex was vibrant an

1. It was bound to happen sooner or later. When it did, I’m just glad it was Jean Christophe and not someone else. In the first months on the job, a newly initiated member of the brotherhood of the broom, beige coveralls still starchy and stiff, I was vigilant, jumpy, convinced that the dreaded encounter, the supremely awkward moment, was just around the next corner. Making the rounds, I gripped the broom handle extra tight and kept one eye on the door as I mopped the floors.