Loverboy: “Working For The Weekend”
You’re a kid—probably middle school as that’s when you’d start having such thoughts—in the back of your parents’ sky-blue 1984 Honda Civic hatchback and it’s Friday and you and the family are heading somewhere, anywhere, it doesn’t matter, while Loverboy’s on the radio singing, “Everybody’s working for the weekend,” and you’re like this is a great song, but fucking kill me when I’m older if I’m working for the weekend ‘cause every day should be like the weekend and when I’m older and out of school that’s how I’m gonna live. And then years pass and decisions are made/unmade and you, in your thirties now, come home from work and immediately have to do the dishes so that you have a clean pot to make dinner with and your better half asks, “How was your day?” and you answer, “It was a day. It was not good or bad. It merely existed and now it’s gone never to return,” or, your better half asks, “Is it Friday yet?” and you reply, “I wish,” and, no matter the version, you remember what your middle-school-self said and it makes you feel terrible as you scrub out the colander, so you sing to yourself, “Turn me loose, turn me loose, I gotta do it my way, or no way at all,” and then think about quitting your job and just fucking doing what you want, man, living how you wanna live, but, really, you know you’re living how you have to live and it sucks sometimes but it must be done—plus, it could be much, much worse—and, besides, why do you care what your middle-school-self thinks anymore? Your middle-school-self owned and operated a Green Day Dookie t-shirt. Your middle-school-self should be thrilled that you’re living in the city writing stories. “Writing stories? With an MFA and a bunch of connections, right?” Your middle-school-self asks, still wearing that goddamn Dookie t-shirt, and you reply, “Well, no, our college-self was a mopey loner who stopped going to class sophomore year never to return, leading us through a series of jobs until we got it together like five years ago to start writing. So we have to work all week and write all night, kinda writing for the weekend, you know?” and your middle-school-self says, “Oh,” and looks kind of sad, the mope to come starting to show on its baby-face, until it looks up, expression changing, to add, “Loverboy had mullets. What do they know?” and you’re like, “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right,” and you smile at one another before you say, “Now go change your shirt.”