More than several times during the summer of 2001 when I’d interned somewhere in Schaumburg, a ninety-minute commute for me, I’d gone out to lunch all by myself, picking up a sandwich and then eating it in my car in a mall parking lot, round the back near a gigantic green dumpster. I’d play AM radio and chuckle at all of the lame disc jockey jokes. And it was when I’d begin to recline my seat for a quick fifteen minute nap that I’d then look out my windshield and notice that I was not the only one there, that others were doing the same thing, that they were all, I think, male. A bunch of men, alone in cars, in a parking lot, eating lunch. I couldn’t decide if it was pathetic or funny, but whatever the case was, I’d mutter to myself, “I really need to get out of here,” and I didn’t just mean out of that depressing parking lot, but out of the city of Schaumburg itself, and perhaps out of that career path.

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