What Do You Do

Cocktail party, only we renamed them barbeques. I still do not want to be here, dragged by a so-called friend. It is free food, he had a point there. He drops me immediately, heads toward the dazzling ones. I am worse than common. I sit in a corner, listening to music I despise, hoping no one talks to me. I am on my third plate of food when someone plunks down. What do you do? I do lots of things. For a living? I am a writer. Her face turns weird. She begins to laugh. Excuses herself. Wanders off. No doubt looking for a lawyer or a doctor. This is not a soiree’ for the unemployed. Two minutes later someone else plunks down. She does not stay long either. I am not interesting, not dazzling, not anything. Just a writer, who writes. Nothing more. If I did not have a compulsion to do it, I might do something else. But for right now, this is me, and I am it. I take out my notebook and begin making fun of them on paper.