“HIPPIES MUST USE BACK DOOR”

It’s a novelty road sign I’ve been seeing with some frequency inside the city of Austin, Texas; specifically in Austin’s Kooky Beatnik Pizza Joints. The anti-hippie sentiment implicit in the sign seems so incongruous with the city of Austin’s self-imposed WEIRDNESS MYSTIQUE. Is this city not the Hippie Mecca, an oasis of liberalism ensconced in a desert of its own antithesis?

Or maybe such an insular liberalism, simmering in such a bubble for so many decades would simply evolve into a cultural of hippies so progressive and avant-guard that they would bear no resemblance to any of the TV hippies we see on VH1, holding none of artifacts reproduced out of cheap plastic in those INSTANT HIPPIE COSTUMES one can buy in the Halloween Store. Maybe liberalism in Austin has simply become so esoteric, so evolved, that “BACK DOOR” is just a kind of new-fangled dissident’s jargon referring to a new variety of Peruvian Super Weed issued by the U.S. Government to seriously bed-ridden glaucoma patients.

I was sitting in a KOOKY BEATNIK PIZZA JOINT today, near the campus of the University of Texas, celebrating my recent employment. “It has come to this,” I sigh to myself, overjoyed at my own employment, but dishearten by the cold reality that I have chosen to celebrate such a monumental occasion by feeding myself mushroom pizza alone in the booth of a sit-down restaurant. I pulled out my note-book and began to scribble nonsense into it. I was going to take out my cell phone and open up the saved text message draft I sometimes write in when I’m in awkward social situations, but eying both the phone and the mead notebook, I decided that the young professionals sitting in the booth across from me would be more impressed if they thought I was LITERARY, rather than TECH-SAVY. So I wrote notes about the New Peruvian Marijuana called “Back Door” while the song “FREE BIRD” played on the radio and the waitress, who called me “Man” (probably a side effect from having smoked vast quotas of Peruvian “Back Door”) served me slice after slice of celebratory pizza.

I am supposed to work on Monday at the Michener Center, the SELFSAME Creative Writing Program from which I was DENIED ADMITTANCE one year ago! This is a very exciting, seemingly ideal prospect. During the telephone interview the woman I talked to said, “I thought I remembered you’re name, so I looked it up. You applied last year, didn’t you?”
I imagine she remembered me because of my statement of purpose which began, “Just two days ago, I was punched in the face.” Doesn’t that just GRAB YOU and make you want to throw money at whoever wrote it, offering free education and a fur-coat and a fleet of limousines?
The program is very exclusive.

FIASCO
In order to complete the application process at the University of Texas Hiring Department, I need a document that proves I am a U.S. CITIZEN. I’ve had this asked of me before, despite my pale complexion and brash xenophobia, and usually when it is asked of me, I simply dial up ole dad. He’d pull them out of a fireproof save hidden SOMEWHERE in his mansion, dust them off, and fax them away. However, it seems my parents have MISPLACED my:
1) Social Security Card
2) Passport
3) Birth Certificate

So Monday I will bike across a highway to the Office of Social Security to try and get a quick replacement. Keep your finger-crossers crossed. If all goes well, I’ll be wearing a starched, button-down shirt Monday afternoon, holding sway over the applicants to the Prestigious Michener Center, grabbing dirty hippies by their ear and casting them out, shouting, “AAAAANNNDDD, STAY OUT!”. If all does not go well, and I cannot procure and ID, I too will be cast out.