Fire Sale: The Economy Has Won - My Bodily Organs Are Now on the Auction Block

There is no reason to be demure or embarrassed about my financial life any longer (my Catholic upbringing has finely calibrated my being to experiencing and carrying -- camel-like -- shame) -- I am fucking broke.

Whenever I read of my literary heroes' financial troubles -- Thomas Wolfe, John Berryman, Jack Kerouac, Frederick Exley -- there is something almost noble about it. When it comes to my own flatlining financial situation there is nothing but graceless, unartful panic and preoccupation.

For the past eight years I've earned a fluctuating living as an IT technical writing, taking jobs with leviathan corporations so large they were often unaware of my presence until I had quit or been fired.

In the autumn of 2001, I was laid off from a job two days before my wedding. Nine months and more than a thousand later, I found a job in Dexter, Michigan -- 53 miles from my home. For a calendar year I drove to Dexter -- 106 miles round trip -- battling the U.S./Canadian border each morning and afternoon. Around the time I bought my home -- summer of 2003 -- I was hired as an "information architect" with a multimedia company in my city. My daily commute went from a cumulative two hours a day down to about half an hour. The job was miserable, the company for which I worked even more miserable -- a train-wreck-of-a-place that sought be an innovative, easygoing workplace and a buttoned-down-IBM-type of company at the same time. The management was equally schizophrenic, and within six months I was fired. Soon after I was hired by Hewlett-Packard in Dearborn, Michigan earning the highest salary of my life. This situation was so bizarre and surreal that it merited its own posting in this blog.

For the past year I've somehow scraped together a living with freelance writing work, and borrowing money from anyone who'll lend it. In January of this year I scored a very important job ghostwriting the memoirs of a successful local businessman. Those cheques have been absolute oxygen for me. I am due three more cheques, and then my wife and I will once again sink into that airless, anxious realm filled with a pointless procession of faxed and emailed resumes to job openings listed in the newspaper.

I have applied to work at branches of my city and county library. Applied to work at my alma mater, the University of Windsor, in a Writing Development lab environment; the job posting so down my alley all it lacked was mentioning me by name. I've also applied ad nauseum to media companies, offices, and any other place of business requiring anyone who even needs someone to answer their goddamned phones. So far, I haven't even received a call for an interview. My masters degree is not even any use to me as a bookmark, being as oversized a document as it is useless.

So, I'm making this blog posting to advertise the fact that I am willing to sell my organs to the highest bidder. I'm in pretty decent physical condition, I haven't eaten fast food since 1998, and I no longer drink alcohol. I have one kidney, a portion of my liver, bone marrow, blood, flesh, and perhaps even one of my corneas (depending on how much money I can get for it) that are now formally up for sale.

What I'm hoping to do is two-fold: sell enough organs to earn money on which to live, and donating enough of my physical being as to decrease my number of years on this earth, so the money I earn in this manner might last until the end of my life.

If there was debtors' prison, I would voluntarily commit myself.