2002-02-19 - 12:12 p.m.

Well, that was quick.

I am reffering to my weekend, which I just spent in a highly unusual fashion: working. Friday, at Vienna Cafe: 5-2am. Saturday: 4-2am. Sunday: 9:30am-12:30am, straight. Monday: 9-3:30pm, rehearsal: 6:45-10:30pm. I am, to put it mildly, a little overworked.

Of course, this has its up-sides as well. I made about $600 last week, not counting $50 in wages I will receive on Friday. This has allowed me a little more breathing space as far as living is concerned. I've paid off some important debts, including $300 to my dad, and caught up on all credit card bills as well. The very existence of my bank account, regardless of size, seems to be summoning credit-card apps from the bureaucratic woodwork, like a pool of honey collecting flies and cockroaches. Next up on the debt-repayment block, my brother.

I do need to mention this, tho, and not just out of the small-child's need to tell people about every small acheivement, as if to say, 'see, look what I did!' That's part of it, but there's something else underlying it all. Why am I obsessed with paying back my family? Not that I shouldn't want to pay them back, but it takes up a huge amount of psychic space, and prevents me from accepting my family's generous offers to let the debt sit while I pay off my credit card. My brother, for christmas, rescinded a big chunk of the debt I owe him. That was a wonderful gift, but I still felt terrible that my joblessness had put him to the point of forgiving debt. He did it entirely selflessly, and he keeps trying to increase the amount of money he forgave. My response is always the same: embarrassment about the money forgiven, and an absolute refusal to accept any increase in forgiveness. I even find myself increasing the debt when I work out my financial situation on paper, adding a hundred dollars or so before figuring out when I can pay him back, figuring I probably borrowed the extra money from him in NYC.

I'm beginning to think that phrase 'forgiveness' is rather apt. My borrowing was, in a real way, a sin. Or at least, I see it like that. And I feel as guilty as if I had sinned against him, and I will not feel pardoned until I'm ready to forgive myself. That can only happen when I've repayed him: my conscience won't let me take the gift from his hands. Which really says a lot about the nature of guilt. If it were really my brother that I was worrying about offending, then his forgiveness would be the end of the matter: the debt would be closed, or at least, no longer a moral problem. Instead, it's not my brother that I'm working to placate, to renew myself to: nor could it be, because we have suffered no rift, there is no power differential between us, we are brothers eternal. I'm worried about forgiving myself, setting things right with my conscience, finally, and for once, proving that when presented with gifts, or charity, or luck that I won't simply take, that I will give back, that I am responsible. That I've grown up.

When we were 13, my brother and I were confirmed, a Catholic ceremony much like a Bar Mitzvah: you are made a man, at least religiously. When we turned 18, we were made legal men, and what is a Bachelor's degree if not a scholastic recognition of adulthood? Society conferred its own degree when I lost my virginity. So why haven't I grown up? Because I haven't confirmed it, made it real to myself. Like a bill, waiting to be signed by the president, all set and ready to become immutable law, lacking only a single, but indispensible, assent. I need some proof for myself, something tangible to say "yes, there it is, you have proven yourself."

To finish this ramble on a slightly more literary note, and to continue my penchant for metaphor, I leave you with two ideas:

1) If the president refuses to sign a bill, it still becomes law if the support for it is strong enough.

2) Marlowe's 'Faust' refused forgiveness, divinely and freely given, because he could not comprehend that he could be forgiven by someone he had wronged so badly. For that, he damned himself for all time, and God wept for him.

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