The conference room at my workplace is formal and spacious. The walls are covered with dark paneled wood. There is a chandelier and an enclosed bar area. The back is completely windowed and looks out into a neat, enclosed gated courtyard in a quiet residential neighborhood. It’s in this room that I am located four out of seven nights a week at approximately 4:00am. Usually, slouching down in a soft decadent burgundy chair with my legs up on another, shrouded dimly by the courtyard lamps that sparsely light the room. Tonight I put on earmuff headphones and listened to music. I loosened my black tie and played 38 Special. Then The Evens. Then Built Like Alaska. Then Elliot Smith. Then I felt thoroughly tranquilized and nostalgic. I miss the friends I’ve left back home. I miss the friends that have left me here. I am awake at 4:19am way too often. I spend too much time at computer screens.

When my dad was a little younger than myself he had a job that I’ve been fantasizing about often. Male Gigolo! He loved it. And man, how I would love to be paid to…, and of course I am joking. He was a boat captain in the Northwest Territories for chartered fishing trips. I always picture Great Bear lake when I think about it but it was probably elsewhere. He did it in the summer straight out of high school and I picture him young with big curly late seventies hair and appropriate stylin’ retro clothes. The boat would be a comfortable twenty footer maybe. He would have a smoke or cigar protruding out his mouth (cigars work really well to keep mosquitoes away, next time I go fishing I’m bringing some sweet smelling ones.). Maybe he would have his feet up while he trolled, with a warm summer wind gently blowing. He would say to the Americans fishing from his boat, “You know, those plastic toy lures are great and all, but why don’t you give a spinner and a minnow a try.” And then the image of him is replaced by me and I smugly chuckle as they start catching big fat walleye like crazy after changing lures. I would point out a moose swimming through the reeds and eagles scanning the water from high up on evergreens… And then I snap back to reality where I am shackled to my thesis and assignments and exams and crummy job and tiny student apartment.