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attered Spines and Dusty Shelves
     
    Posters requesting help for the student newspaper The College Column concealed the chipped paint on the walls. I met the editor and showed him some poetry I’d written.
                  ‘A poetry section could be interesting,’ he said.
                  ‘You could call it The Poet’s Corner ,’ I suggested as if on a whim (I’d actually spent all night conceiving what I thought was, at the very least, an ingenious title…).                                                                                     ‘That sounds good. I like it!’
                  My mates laughed at me. They thought poetry was for girls. And they were right: the college girls took a keen interest in my poesies.
                  ‘Well,’ Michael told me, ‘chicks dig all that poetic crap. You could be a college sex symbol before long.’
                  During lunchtimes, the college library morphed into the papal court of Avignon, and I became a regular Fransesco Petrarca. Girls watched me while I scribbled my verses among the tattered spines and dusty shelves. They fluttered their eyelashes over their books and smiled, often enquiring what my next poem would be about. My mates suddenly became very jealous.
                  People asked me if I wrote about a particular girl in my sonnets. But I imagined an idealized girl, just as Shakespeare imagined a dark lady and fair youth, because none of the girls I’d snogged during college parties really interested me. It would take a special girl to distract me from my self-love. Michael, on the other hand, had no interest in relationships and dating whatsoever.
                  ‘Dating a girl is like reading James Joyce’s Ulysses . You always wish you hadn’t started it. We’re all gonna be tamed by time and its baggage eventually, dude. So you should pause before you rush regret,’ he said.
                  Despite Michael’s pretentious epigrams, I liked the idea of meeting a girl I could do ‘couply things’ with, but I wouldn’t have told him that. He didn’t appreciate such talk.
                  I really wanted to have my poetry read, so I considered compiling my work and getting a book published. After months of receiving polite rejection letters, I turned to the idea of self-publishing. If I paid to get myself in print, I’d have something to show a professional publisher. I would kill two birds with one stone if I got myself a job: I’d have enough money to get my name out there, and my mother would stop moaning about my unemployment. I started working as a paper boy, which gave me good exercise before going to college in the mornings. But the job didn’t last long. I pinched a trolley from a supermarket to put all the newspapers in, but the trolley rolled down a hill and smashed into a parked Porsche. My employer fired me as soon as he found out.
                  ‘Ah, don’t worry,’ Michael said after I’d told him. ‘Who wants to be a paperbitch anyway…’
                  My next job was at the local newsagents, but my attitude stank. Hell, even I wouldn’t have employed me. I stumbled into work one morning with a killer hangover, telling my boss I wouldn’t start working until I’d had a cigarette.
                  ‘You’re so bloody arrogant,’ my employer groaned.
                  ‘Listen. I’m fucking gasping!’
                  ‘You’re fucking fired.’
                  I stormed out and then came back a moment later to purchase a lighter.
                  My third job was as a window cleaner. I know how shocking it can be when a stranger appears at your window, armed with a bucket of soap, and proceeds to wipe away when you’ve got your tackle out