Those assholes at the YMCA want $36 a month for a scholarship membership on top of their $50 annual membership fee. They wanted my financial information. So I gave it to them. I can’t talk about money here, but it is beyond pathetic how little I make. Without the help of the remnants of LBJ’s moribund War on Poverty I would be out on the street. I tried to tell the YMCA that I already plunked $350 (full price, non-member) for their lifeguard course. (I recently failed their swimming test though did obtain their CPR/AED certification. I nearly needed a lifeguard to save me after attempting to swim 500 yards.) I tried to tell them that I just need to use their pool for five hours a week for two months in order to pass their lifeguard certification. But they just don't fucking listen. My mother offered to pay, but I want the goddamned YMCA (Young Man's Christian Association) to honor their Christian mission of helping the poor to help themselves. Who knows, maybe I’d find Christ if they actually fucking helped me to help myself. It is their fucking job to help me find Christ -- they are at heart a Christian organization, and I am a poor Jew badly in need of a fucking savior! I might just demand my money back for the course. The Aquatics Director did tell me in writing that I could get a refund minus the Red Cross handbook in the event that I couldn't complete the swimming requirement.
But that's not really why I would abort the lifeguard course. I'm having second thoughts about the Walmart Strategy. There is no more money coming in, and for the first time in five years I'm feeling that cold hard bite of poverty. I had forgotten how painful it is to buy gas and to buy even the simplest things. And you know what? I fucking HATE poverty. I think I have a better chance of not living in poverty as a hack EFL teacher. And you know what? --fuck my father who thinks I should see a shrink because I feel the only real escape from abject poverty is overseas. I would like to see him try to get a job as a middle-aged man with a severe fucking learning disability, with no marketable skills, and no resume. I would like to see him make it as a $9 dollar an hour life guard or pool boy and moonlighting 30 hours a week as a $8 dollar an hour Walmart worker. What a shit fucking life. And I’m living in a dreamland to think that I could find a woman who would be interested in creating a child with a grunt like me. In the miracle event that I find a woman to impregnate, how in the fuck could I afford to provide a life for this child that is not complete shit? The answer is that I can’t! Love is not the answer. Love is not enough in this asshole world. You need cold hard cash.
I don't fucking have to listen to my asshole father. I am my own man. I don’t have to listen to anyone who I feel has his or her head up his or her ass. The only person I really need to listen to is myself. I think overseas EFL may be a better option. I'm going to play three thousand more hands in poker rooms. I can do that in the next month while I continue my medical treatment here and possibly work on trying to pass the lifeguard course. If I can't reliably make at least minimum wage at 2/4 poker, I think that I may seriously reconsider teaching EFL overseas, despite what a tortuous job and shit life this looks to be. I need a safety net, even a small, shit one, if I am going to condemn myself to the life of the working poor. As unqualified as I am to teach English, my English is better than President Obama’s. At least I know to use a possessive pronoun in front of a gerund. It is also better than Secretary of State Clinton’s English. She mixes singular and plural pronouns, and it’s really pathetic and embarrassing. I think I’ll probably be able to at least fake being an EFL teacher who knows what he is talking about. I’m no longer thinking about teaching in Central/Eastern Europe. I’m thinking about teaching in Vietnam. They pay a lot more, and their language is a lot easier than Russian and Hungarian!
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