Job Interview

Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch's wife He would have written sonnets all his life? DON JUAN, III, 63-4 "Where do you see yourself five years from now?" the eldest male member (or is "male member" a redundancy?) of the committee asked me. "Not here," I thought. A good thing I speak fluent Fog. I craved that job like some unappeasable, taunting woman. What did Byron's friend Hobhouse say after the wedding? "I felt as if I had buried a friend." Each day I had that job I felt the slack leash at my throat and thought what was its other trick. Better to scorn the job than ask what I had ever seen in it or think what pious muck I'd ladled over the committee. If they believed me, they deserved me. As luck would have it, the job lasted me almost but not quite five years. Anonymous submission.