the holder of this ticket assumes all risk, danger, and injury

Just as a week ago, a Mexico City metro map with an "Usted estes aqui" arrow spun me into an existential tailspin, the fine print on the flip side of my Mets vs. Cardinals ticket has me feeling pretty grim about the future of my profession and my future role in creating nonsensical phrases that will be printed in 6-point sans serif fonts on the backsides of everything that Americans find pleasure in doing. Kenji wants to know about the relationship between law and utopia? The answer is: antithesis.

I'm not just being grim because I had eight interviews today, and all of them were, one after the other, reasons to fork up $2 at a slapping booth for a swift blow across the cheekbones -- anything to wake up, bring color to the cheeks. We go through these idiotic rituals, which both sides freely admit are meaningless, and feign interest in each other's answers, when all we are doing is judging the amount of mileage, measured in prestige, that a student's As and Order of the Coifs will bring the firm, or the amount of lucre, measured annually in hundreds of thousands, that those hard-fought As and Orders of the Coifs will reap in reward. Why bother with telling me in great detail about your work, or the firm's culture -- and do you want to know about my summer? Or my "interesting" resume? Or my NAMBLA membership? -- when neither of us gives a damn?

I realized as I was walking down West 3rd this mid-morning -- which is something I try to avoid doing since even the slightest activity provokes a sweat deluge -- and sweat was pooling at my wrists where my black wool coat was draped and revealing Rorschachs on my shirt, that there is no dignity in this. Early Interview Week is watching contessas rummaging at a buffet, beads of lamb fat squeezing out from underneath their fingernails. The longer I spend listening to people talk about firms, the longer I think I'll stay...oh, eight years to partner...why not? Why not indeed, when everyone is so fucking collegial? People seem so thrilled to report that they have not been screamed at like a master screams at a slave, or that when strangers pass them in the office they smile and nod hello. And compared to the megafirms, these niceties matter! Of course! But is collegiality all I can ask for from my life? For the rest of my youth?

Collegiality seemed like a palatable but none too delicious fritter, but it was revealed for a potato in comparison with the vitality of my night's activities. There was a long trip on the 7 to Shea to witness the Mets slaughter (at least through the 7th inning) the Cardinals, then shabu shabu at Minni's in Flushing with Stephanie and Toby (the brilliant placisicist painter) and David (the hilarious archivist), and a long cab ride home with an all-Korean conversation in the front about Saigu (the L.A. riots) and Korean evangelism, and ghost stories and kvetching about Staten Island in the back. This wasn't the stale air of collegiality; it was the breath of life. There's more that I want than just what is barely tolerable, starting with good conversation, interesting people who are committed to the things they are doing, weirdos, pinkos, stories about moon observation, unflinching debates about lowering the age of consent.

Oh, but I complain. And I will work for a firm, providing they don't read blogs. I will have to continue to entertain myself for the next X number of years by imagining the suits in front of me are morphing in paranormal ways, like today, when I imagined one particularly blinky interviewer's wide eyes turning into white balloons and exploding in gore all over my new suit. The inappropriate jokes will have to continue -- today I told an acquaintance who asked me if her collar was in proper place that everything looked fine, except she might want to try to get the bloodstains out (shock, horror, nervious giggle) -- as tomorrow I think I'll tell the next person who asks how an interview went that it went great, I got a callback, twenty minutes is exactly the amount of time one needs to give a decent handjob. Listen for the sucking sound, gentle readers, that's the soul of me at the beginning of a long descent.