Damien Galeone

It’s Friday night. For the general populus, Friday has a different feel. This is true no matter what you do: Stay in, go to the pub, eat a bag of fries on a park bench. For example. When you do these things on a Friday night, you do so with a calmer mind, one setting at arm’s length the previous five days of work while looking forward to a day or so of rest.

Usually.

This Friday night has been dampened (for me and, by the transitive properties of grumpiness, the other inhabitants of the flat) by a working Saturday. So, as I make dinner, I think about the next day. As I tidy the kitchen, I think about the next day. As I read, I think about the next day. My brain can’t process and forget a week’s worth of the joys, stresses, minor humiliations, and personal epithets that come along with a life of teaching. I have been robbed not only of a Saturday, but of the calm contemplation of a Friday night mostly found through TV and a drooling that might suggest the recent removal of my frontal lobe. But, no, not this Friday. I show my displeasure for this by throwing several tiny mini-tantrums. These mostly involve colorful language regarding people and what they can do with their Saturday. 

Making matters worse are the facts. The facts that refuse to modify as I examine them under a microscope in the hopes of rendering them less invasive. That is, there ain’t enough lipstick in Europe to make this Saturday pig beautiful. This Saturday I work from 9–17:10. In other words: all frickin’ day. No matter how I put this into my spin factory, it all comes up that I will spend the 8 hours the next day in front of students and others online. People on their way to the chopping block have had brighter futures.  

What’s worse, the other inhabitants in the flat have become used to a cycle of sorts. The dog and cat understand that there are a few days, we’ll call them Monday through Wednesday, where we humans get up very early and there’s a subdued tone of misery and hopelessness in the flat along with the smell of coffee and soap. The dog wakes up each day in a state of absolute joy, as if she can’t believe she gets another day of being spoiled, walked, fed. She licks us like a happy white mop with dark eyes and then rolls onto her back waiting for the day’s inaugural belly scratch. She also knows intuitively that on a few days a week, the optimism that we return to her is a bit … forced. She knows that on a few of those days – we’ll call them Thursday through Sunday – the optimism is truer. The cat may also understand this, but does not alter from her routine of standing outside the bedroom door screaming at us until we feed her. 

I worked in a bar for a long time, which made my working hours other peoples’ leisure hours. I showed up to work on Friday and Saturday nights, right when people were in full unwind mode. This was the first time I explored my Other Self. You see, for me to not only work when others were relaxing, but to work to help them reach higher levels of that relaxation, it was necessary for me to put myself into a state of mind and I had to do this without pharmaceuticals. Enter Jimmie Kuhl. Perhaps the grandest of all bar gurus. I related this to him once – namely, that my jealousy was getting the better of me – and he said he fully understood. He had been at this bartending game for much longer and had come up with a system.

“When I break the threshold and go from out there to behind the bar, I walk through another version of me,” he said. “I just walk into him like he’s a costume. And when I get through him, I’m optimistic, in a good mood, and ready-to-work.”

“Huh. And you don’t do any shots or anything?”

“Not right away.”

“Huh.”

Well, it worked. From them on, when I broke the threshold and ended up behind the bar, I was a different character. I was my Other Self. This guy was great: fun, light (usually), full of good stories, predilection for HoHos (the cakes, not two fun-time-people). And I’ve kept my Other Self around for work purposes. Though I may dread work beforehand, the very second that class starts I become my Other Self: fun, engaging, keyed in, cognizant that the experience is underway and therefore heading towards finished. My Other Self knows he’s on schedule for tomorrow, when he’ll have to be fun and engaging for 8 hours in a hot room, but I don’t know if he’ll be able to do shots with his students or tell them dirty limericks when things get slow.

Maybe after lunch.  

But it’s Friday night and my Other Self can’t help me yet. I snuggle into bed and start reading. The words and sentences keep getting interrupted by visions of the version of me who doesn’t have to work in eleven hours. The levels of relaxation and content he reaches in my mind are beyond description. His legs are less kicky, his breaths deeper, his brain quieter.  

It’s then I realize what’s happening. I have been hoisted by my Other Other Self.

My Other Other Self is the one who shows up when pessimism and gloom rule my world. If my Other Self is the fun one, and my Current Self is the one who’s usually in charge when I do things like pay bills and have conversations, then my Other Other Self is the one who’s around when I feel like drinking a bottle of whiskey and playing badminton on the roof. Normally on a Friday night, I’d be a more relaxed and happier version of my Current Self, a guy who could put the week behind him. He’d make dinner, do the dishes with a whistle in his mouth. Jokes would come easily, optimism, empathy for others. So, my Other Other Self does everything my Current Self does on a Friday night, it’s just that he is depressed the whole time. We have dinner, we clean up, we take the dog out. Each person I see, my Other Other Self accuses in our mind: I bet he has the day off tomorrow; I bet she’s looking forward to lying in bed and reading tomorrow; Bastards. We watch TV and play on devices. The time gallops ahead with little to no consideration for my feelings. Everyone else settles into the best sleep of the week: the one that comes before two days off. My Other Other Self, holding the rest of us hostage, closes the book and tries to nod off. When the horror fiction of John Langan can’t engage you, all hope is lost.    

But after a while, my brain matches Tulsa with vulva. With intense struggle, my Other Other Self opens an eye. Then comes chronicles with testicles. We all sit up. Then nomads and gonads match themselves with no effort at all! My Other Self breaks free of his bounds and grabs a notebook. The light is on. My Other Self forces through and jots down tipple with nipple and shorts with warts.

Ah! The making of a dirty limerick! We’re gonna be OK!