1- Jacket Talk

Peace: (Noun) a state of mutual harmony between people or groups, especially in personal relations.

Monger: (Noun) a dealer in or trader of a commodity.



I was talking with my jacket in the room I grew up in. I threw the jacket around myself, naked from the waist down, except for my socks. I retired my old pea coat, for my new heavier black coat, with a removable lining, which my mother had bought for me at Costco. After spending years in the pea coat, it seemed wrong to hop into my new jacket unceremoniously. Particularly since this jacket was going to be seeing me through my service in Peace Corps Albania. Needless to say, this jacket and I were going to have some adventures, so I felt we should get to know one another. Which is why I was talking to my new jacket, with no pants on.

“Alright, new jacket, here’s the deal: In three months I’m heading to Albania. You’re going to keep me warm and dry, and I’m going to try to not lose you or spill anything on you. Deal?” I didn’t expect an answer from the jacket. Because it’s a jacket. However, I felt that the jacket and I had reached an understanding. I began zipping and unzipping the coat, while wind milling my arms, and jumping up and down, kicking the tires on my new traveling garb. I stretched out in all directions like a starfish as I marveled how common this jacket would become to me. Knowing very little about what my life in the Peace Corps would be like, I’d taken to doing what I’ve always done. I made stuff up.

I imagined blizzards in the mountains of Albania attempting to tear the jacket from my back, and armies of European pickpockets thwarted by my jacket’s zipper pockets. I imagined curling my entire frame into the jacket like a twentysomething turtle, during freezing nights in Soviet apartment complexes. I imagined throwing my coat around a bent old woman, who would then use gypsy magic to give me super powers. In the absence of fact and the presence of the unknown my imagination often wanders to super powers. I got down on to the floor and started rolling from side to side, in case I ever found myself in a similar situation in Albania. Eventually I stopped, arms splayed out to the sides, in between the beds that my brother and I slept in as children. I zipped the coat all the way up and tucked my nose into the collar. Self-imposed existential crises are one of my favorite hobbies.

I thought back briefly to the absurd process of becoming a Peace Corps Volunteer. It took me a year and a half of going to interviews, filling out bizarre forms*, developing a teaching resume, false starts, enraged emails, and hopeless wallowing in self pity, until finally, after writing a somewhat terse** letter to the Peace Corps Director, I received my Peace Corps Invite package.

As soon as I saw it at my door, I forgave everything that Peace Corps ever did or said, like an unfaithful lover who had come back to me. “I didn’t mean any of those nasty things I said about you Peace Corps. I never wanted to blow you off for Grad School for a second.” And without a second thought, I agreed to spend 27 months teaching English as a second language in Albania.

Which brought me to laying pantless on my floor in my new coat. Up until then, the biggest concerns in my life involved teaching a course called “Imagination Theatre” to children***, freelancing for a local news website, and finding time to make plays with my theatre company. I’ve spent most of my life studying, and working in the, less than real world, of the theatre. Confronted with actuality of biting off a small bit of the real world, is daunting and the only thing I could say with any certainty was that I would be warm in my new jacket.

After a couple minutes of lying on my floor I spoke again, this time leaving my jacket out of the conversation.
“Holy crap. Is this what I’m really doing?”
Yup.

Welcome to PEACEMONGER!


*Actual questions: Do you have a problem with the following? High Elevation? Extreme dryness? Extreme Dampness? Can you ride a bicycle over uneven terrain? How do you cope with being alone?
All of this is enough to make me think that I will be living alone on a mountain, that is simultaneously too damp, and too dry, with terrain so uneven I feel like I’m in a paint mixer every time I ride my bicycle. Welcome to the hardest job you’ll ever love. Sign me up.

** I put on my best professional letter tone. I even busted out a, Dear Sir; with the semi-colon, so that he knew that I meant business.
*** As a part of my youth actor training program, we engaged in psycho-emotional exercises like, Animal Freeze Tag, Zip, Zap, Zop, and of course everyone’s favorite Giants, and Flying Robots. I miss those kids already.