Mac vs PC. I am on a Mac about 8 hours a day, then when I go home, I try to do Mac things on my PC. It’s frustrating, but not the end of the world. It’s been a very quiet Friday at the Manhattan Fruit Stand.
Listening to the Cocteau Twins on the Mac. Memories of other people, sometimes other people’s memories. Stan Bogdansky, Jet Watley mainly. Been over a decade since I last saw Stan and Jet’s been gone for almost 40 years. Away longer that he was alive.
I have a Zoom call at 1:30 PM so I have eaten my lunch much earlier than usual. There are a few flirty guys here and then there is Marcus who is more flinty than flirty. He warms up later in the day when I see him for less than five minutes, and he heads back to his desk in the bowels of the fuit stand.
I just came across the proposal from January 2025 regarding the podcast video show that I was planning. Sort of like Spalding Gray or at least inspired by him. Bill and Mike were going to be involved; Jim Mastro was going to charge me $50 for use of the 503 Social Club space.
Then I had gotten a job and that has fallen by the wayside, though it does float to the surface every now & then. I suppose it can happen again, just need the proper timing and planning. Mike’s not working but that does not mean he would be available.
And Bill’s schedule is literally and figuratively all over the place. I don’t know what his schedule is this weekend and I am not sure if Bill knows either.
It is certainly a slow Friday, but then again, they are almost always slow, work days that is. I’ve been going to bed at a decent hour and walking up before the alarm clocks and winding up at the fruit stand about a half hour than I need to be.
It goes unnoticed and that is fine with me since I do not do anything until 8:00 AM since I don’t start getting paid until 8:00 AM.
I mentioned that I followed Marcus’ advice the other day and sent an email to my counselor regarding the gaffe I made the other day. It was mainly to cover my ass since Marcus felt Yancy was going to email the counselor himself.
Whether or not he did is unknown to me and I should not have been surprised by the fact that my counselor was in the corner of Yancy and suggested I do what Yancy had suggested. I guess my email was just to get my side of the story out there before Yancy and now we see how that went. Awkward.
And in 21 minutes, the Zoom call with representatives of the company that placed me at the fruit stand. All about my goals and how to achieve them. And you know, I am all about achieving goals.
I showed up on time for the Zoom call. No one else did. It seems the host when moving the date from Good Friday to today did not notice (ahem) that the time had changed from 1:30 to 1:00 PM.
They rescheduled for next Friday. We shall see about that.
The Google Gemini rewrite as an Oscar Wilde essay
To live between a Mac and a PC is to experience the most tedious form of dualism. I spend eight hours a day in the elegant, white-walled garden of the Apple, only to return home to the brutalist architecture of the Windows machine. To attempt “Mac things” on a PC is a pursuit as galling as attempting to read poetry to a tax collector. It is not the end of the world, of course, but it is certainly the end of one’s patience.
The Friday at the Manhattan Fruit Stand has been a languid affair. I sit enveloped in the ethereal sighs of the Cocteau Twins, a music that suggests memories of people I never knew, or perhaps memories that other people have simply left behind in the cloakroom of my mind. I find myself thinking of Stan Bogdansky and poor Jet Watley. Jet has been gone for nearly forty years—an impressive feat, considering he has now been absent for longer than he was ever present. There is a certain exquisite permanence in such a long departure.
Because of a scheduled Zoom call, I was forced to take my luncheon at an hour so early it felt like an audition for a different day entirely. The office is populated by a variety of flirty gentlemen, save for Marcus, who is decidedly flinty. Marcus is the sort of man who treats a smile as a precious heirloom he is loath to spend. He only warms up when the day is nearly done, emerging from the subterranean bowels of the fruit stand to offer five minutes of humanity before vanishing once more.
In my idle wandering through old digital drawers, I stumbled upon a proposal from January 2025. It was a podcast—an artistic venture inspired by Spalding Gray. It was to involve Bill and Mike; it was to cost me fifty dollars for the use of the 503 Social Club. It was to be a performance! But then, alas, I suffered the ultimate indignity: I found a job. Employment is the death of many a fine ambition. It is the refuge of those who have nothing better to do than survive.
The project floats to the surface occasionally, like a ghost demanding a better costume, but the timing is never quite “proper.” Mike is currently unburdened by labor, yet that is no guarantee of his availability; idleness, after all, is a very busy profession. As for Bill, his schedule is a labyrinth. I doubt he knows where he will be this weekend, and I am quite certain the weekend itself hasn’t the slightest idea where to find him.
Work remains a slow, rhythmic drudgery. I have taken to retiring at a decent hour and waking before the alarm, arriving at the fruit stand a full thirty minutes before my presence is required. It is a gesture that goes entirely unnoticed, which suits me perfectly. I refuse to perform a single meaningful act until eight o’clock, for I have a moral objection to being productive before I am being paid.
I must mention that I followed Marcus’s advice regarding my recent “gaffe.” I sent an email to my counselor, a tactic the vulgar call “covering one’s ass,” but which I prefer to think of as “curating the scandal.” Marcus feared that Yancy—a man whose very name sounds like a grievance—would reach the counselor first. As it turns out, the counselor is firmly in Yancy’s camp. It is a dismal truth of the modern world that when one seeks an ally, one often finds a mirror reflecting the enemy’s opinion. It was all very awkward.
Finally, the Zoom call arrived—the modern world’s way of ensuring we may see our disappointments in high definition. It was meant to be a discussion of my “goals,” a word that has always struck me as terribly athletic and therefore quite exhausting. I appeared precisely on time. No one else did. It seems the host, in moving the meeting from Good Friday, neglected to notice that the hour had shifted from one-thirty to one o’clock.
There is, I suppose, a certain sublime perfection in a meeting where no one meets. It is the only truly successful form of bureaucracy. They have rescheduled for next Friday. We shall see. I have always found that “seeing” is the most tiring part of waiting.