'In Transition' Series for The Boston Globe

Because the Boston.com website is a bit difficult to navigate, I started this blog to post the articles of a series I wrote in 2005 so that my friends and family could read them more easily.

IN TRANSITION

Part 1: Diploma, done. Now what?
Part 2: A rich life, a full life, a sadly expired e-life
Part 3: Nuke at Night
Part 4: As she jets off, I slouch away
Part 5: The confessions of a couch-to-couch surfer
Part 6: Going through a 'temporary' phase
Part 7: Alone, waking up to a nightmare
Part 8: 'Only' seems to be the hardest word
Part 9: The kids are back -- me, too, a tenant with dreams
Part 10: A commitment, of sorts
Part 11: I've experiences monotony from both sides, now
Part 12: Wait, let's do that over
Part 13: When did I become so old?
Part 14: Ahh, a warm family embrace
Part 15: When a diploma fails, try a plunger
Part 16: A guilty spectator, at 22, to this war
Part 17: The neighborhood ties that don't bind
Part 18: We'll always have New Haven
Part 19: Post red-eye blues: A wimp now, I once did all-nighters
Part 20: At my own pace, I'm following suit
Part 21: Suddenly, as thunder rolls, a great leap forward
Part 22: In a celebratory season, time to go

Update

So I haven't posted anything to this blog in over a month. The purpose of this blog had been to record the series I was writing for the Globe, but when that came to an abrupt end with my move to New York, so have my posts to this blog.

But the blogging isn't over. I promise. (Not that anyone actually reads this blog.) In the next couple of months I intend to come back, once I've been able to start freelancing at the Times.

In the meantime, a lot has changed -- and for the better. I have a great studio all to myself in Brooklyn, and I'm loving my new job. New York City is great. And we're in one of mildest winters since I moved to the East Coast.

In a celebratory season, time to go

IN TRANSITION #22

By Benjamin Toff December 25, 2005
Read it on Boston.com

Flying down the Mass. Pike last Saturday en route to the North End for dinner, I looked up at the blurry but beautiful Boston skyline. My heart sank: Would this be the last time?

Suddenly nostalgic, I realized how attached I had become. Four years after arriving here as a stranger and all set now to move on in a week, I was struggling with that ever elusive sentiment: closure.

''We must get dinner!" I had written an old high school friend, Ai-ris, who had moved to Boston along with me in the fall of 2001, she for MIT, myself for Harvard. We had been meaning to catch dinner for some time, but now it seemed somehow apt. We had convened periodically over the years to reminisce and reflect on this cold foreign place we'd come to inhabit and explore.

This time, I wrote to tell her that I was leaving. I told her about my new job at The New York Times. Ai-ris, a med student now, had news of her own. She was engaged.

I didn't put a lot of thought into the choice of the North End for the celebratory dinner, yet the selection felt satisfying. When I was a freshman, the North End had been the only place I knew of to ''go into Boston" for a special occasion meal.

As we waited for the valet to return the car late Saturday night, we looked up at the empty space where that other green monster -- the highway version -- used to be. (Speaking of the Sox, the Curse vanished during my time here, too.) Four short years ago, like a conscientious explorer, I had wandered through the maze of construction underneath it, combing the city for surprises, giddy with excitement that for the first time in my life, almost anything I'd ever wanted could be found on foot.

Growing up in Tucson, Ariz., -- a sprawling desert metropolis of strip malls, parking lots, and single-family dwellings -- the notion of walking from one side of the city to the other was exotic. I was enamored with the T, which rumbled every few minutes beneath my dormitory floorboards. I became instantly fond of this place where so much life -- political marches, conversations in dozens of languages, street performances -- kept on at what seemed like all hours, within earshot of my desk.

My college thesis adviser told me that back when she graduated college, Boston was the ''it" city for the post-college 20s. New York, I would argue, has since become the indisputable owner of that distinction. And the longer I've lived in this city, the more I can see why. I've become restless. Every time I've failed to find an open kitchen after 11:30 at night, every time I've been forced to take a cab or decided to stay at home because the T closed down not long after midnight, I've (guiltily) thought of moving. The pace of life I once found so exciting has morphed into sluggishness. It took me months to recognize, but I'm eager for change.

But as I wandered lazily through the Public Garden on my way back to the Charles/MGH T stop Sunday night after a long day of Christmas shopping, with the trees lighted, couples holding hands, a bright moon hanging just above the old buildings lining the Common, Boston seemed, in its own way, idyllic. An ideal setting for a fairy tale wedding proposal; and as Ai-ris had related events of the night before, it had been.

Four-and-a-half years ago, I gathered with high school friends on a cool August night before departing for college. We sat under the stars, discussing where we imagined ourselves in five years. Would we stay in touch? What kind of people would we be? Where would we live?

How much of our lives would be spent transitioning from place to place, lover to lover, friend to friend, change to change? All of it?

In that moment in the Public Garden last week, the range of possibilities seemed endless.

Benjamin Toff, as of late last week, became a New Yorker. Reach him at benjamin.toff@gmail.com.

Suddenly, as thunder rolls, a great leap southward

IN TRANSITION #21

By Benjamin Toff | December 18, 2005
Read it on Boston.com

The world is falling apart outside; ice is forming at the base of my window; the six-month mark since my college commencement has come and gone already. (Who knew there could be thunder during a snowstorm?)

I find the stillness inside my work cubicle unsettling -- and the ferocity outside remote. The humid pomp and circumstance of June has never felt more distant. Disappointment has replaced the initial post-grad period of awkward expectancy, and that, too, has given way to a general malaise. It's dark before 5, but I rarely notice the sunshine anyway.

My friends and I distract ourselves by reminiscing about our good ol' college days. To our horror, we've become people who do that. What about the good ol' shapeless days just after college where you felt like nothing in your life was going anywhere and weren't quite sure what you spent the last four years preparing for? Why doesn't anyone talk fondly of those years?

When I began this series in August, I was undergoing more life adjustments than I could process. Every day it seemed a new reality of post-college life set in. So many changes and discoveries -- the puberty of professional life.

But unlike puberty, it's been more difficult to figure out exactly what's so exciting about being grown up. Sure, life since college has been a series of firsts -- a first apartment, a first office job, a first coworker's holiday party. But invariably these firsts have let me down.

The edgy uncertainty that marked the frantic weeks directly after the diploma ceremony has morphed, in half a year, into complacency. I anticipate my alarm clock -- I reach for the snooze button before it even goes off. I've developed a standard list of items for my supermarket shopping list. And I hardly ever waste away any hours fretting about what I'm doing with my life. Angst over choosing a life path seems so . . . college.

The most oft-repeated feedback I've received on this series is that the disorienting feeling of post-graduation letdown never fully goes away. It may dull over time, but the sensation of the bottom having fallen out stays with you.

''You have to get past realizing that you're blind and basically throw yourself headfirst in one direction or another," a friend who graduated a couple years ahead of me told me. He was a fantastic actor who had taken a job in investment banking. ''You'll inevitably hit a wall since you don't have a clue where you're heading. You'll fall down. Get hurt. But then pick yourself up, pick another direction, and get going again."

Here I go. I got a phone call. A new (dream) job offer: I'm becoming an assistant and researcher to a columnist at The New York Times. So much for the post-college letdown.

Suddenly I'm giving notice to my employers (a new first), subletting my room (yet another), and packing up books that I'm pretty sure I haven't touched since I unpacked back in September.

I suppose looking back on this period, it will come to fit inside some broader narrative with a trajectory and a plot. (I can see it now: a suspenseful gap for dramatic effect.) It might even be neat and organized -- something akin to a ninth semester of college; a coda. Introduction to Life. Syllabus: TBA.

One thing college did teach me? How to cram. Good thing, too; my final exam (or midterm?) is daunting: Say goodbye to Boston in a week.

Benjamin Toff lives in Somerville, briefly. Reach him at benjamin.toff@gmail.com.

At my own pace, I'm following suit

IN TRANSITION #20

By Benjamin Toff | December 11, 2005
Read it on Boston.com

Along with what seemed like the rest of America, I took to the shopping malls last weekend. It was, in retrospect, an inopportune time to go looking for clothes -- I may have been the only person who wasn't consulting a gift list -- but as a full-fledged working adult (white-collar, anyhow) the time had come to take my wardrobe to the next level. I needed a suit, and no enormous mass of waddling Christmas shoppers could get in my way.

Partly for financial reasons and partly for psychological ones, I had put off the experience of buying my first suit as long as possible. It was a rite of passage I had, if not dreaded, at least felt especially unenthusiastic about.

And for good reason. Suits are what fathers -- and some mothers, too -- wear to work. That and bar mitzvahs have been my only associations with suits: Torah portions and my dad rushing out the door to the garage, a cup of coffee in one hand and a stack of papers in the other. Even when my brother got married, suits were the exception at the wedding, not the rule.

My conception of formal wear has been forced to mature a very long way in just a couple of years. I grew up in southern Arizona; before Boston, my idea of formality meant tucking in a shirt with buttons on it -- and maybe for a really special occasion, a tie.

''When you start working here full time, I'm going to need you to wear nicer clothes," my boss told me this summer after we decided I'd transition from part-time student assistant to full-time temp. She added, ''Not jeans!" when it occurred to her, after seeing me in sandals and shorts for months, that I might not know what ''nicer clothes" meant.

College was a fashion awakening. Apparently, here in sophisticated Boston ''black-tie" means ''full tux." My roommates snickered the first time I wore a suit to a formal dance -- a suit my parents had purchased for me back in high school. Yet I held out despite the glares and wore that suit all four years of college, through black-tie dinners, theater openings, and fund-raising balls. (Perhaps simply to play out the stereotype to its extreme, Harvard students find an inordinate number of excuses to get dressed up.)

Don't get me wrong; I appreciate nice clothes. I just typically feel an excessive amount of buyer's remorse the moment the receipt gets rung up. The bottom line just never feels justified, and as a result, I tend to draw out the purchasing process until it becomes excruciating for whoever has agreed to go shopping with me. These days I shop alone.

(My college friends can testify that at spring break in my sophomore year, it took me several hours of traipsing around downtown San Francisco before I could settle on a single pair of shoes. By the way, Brian and Sophie, I'm still wearing them. But for nearly a hundred bucks, why shouldn't I?)

All of this is to explain the shock I felt when my suit shopping Saturday went off without a hitch -- aside from the lines and hordes. I might even say the purchase brought me a significant amount of pleasure. It helps that the buy was reasonably priced, and Eric, the teenage employee who waited on me (itself an unfamiliar luxury), successfully distracted me from talking myself out of it.

(I did, however, call several friends from inside the dressing room on my cellphone to do just that. But none would. ''Buy it!! Buy it NOW!!" one friend replied in a text message.)

My new suit is navy blue with three buttons down the front. When I wear it with the tie that Eric picked out for me, I think I look pretty grown up but not so grown up that I feel old.

And best of all, it fit directly off the rack; I don't even have to get it tailored.

One step at a time.

Benjamin Toff lives in Somerville. Reach him at benjamin.toff@gmail.com.

Post red-eye blues: A wimp now, I once did all-nighters

IN TRANSITION #19

By Benjamin Toff, Globe Correspondent | December 4, 2005
Read it on Boston.com

High up in the sky somewhere over Western Massachusetts, I listened to the hum of the airplane mixed with snores of the passenger in 36D, and tried unsuccessfully not to think about the cramp in my right leg. Between the many pesky thoughts about work and school, family and turkey bouncing around my head was the sad realization: It was going to be a very long Monday.

I just didn't know how long.

''Use the breathing method," my mother had instructed me on our way to the San Francisco airport. ''When you sleep, you exhale for longer. You can fool your brain into sleep mode by doing that." (Where do moms pick up these things?)

But it hadn't worked. There was so much turbulence on my flight home after Thanksgiving I kept getting jarred awake. My starchy synthetic blanket -- useless. I'd be going to work, for the first time, on no sleep.

As I watched the sun come up, I was reminded of the last time I took the red-eye from SFO to Logan. It was early September 2001, flying East to college for the first time. I had squandered that night of slumber, too. It didn't matter. On my move-in day, I fed on the adrenaline. My cheeks were pressed to the windows of the cab as we pulled up to the campus gates. I woke up one roommate by knocking wildly on the door of my new dorm room. I threw down my bags and accompanied him to CVS, where I wandered up and down the aisles too antsy to think about what I might need to actually buy.

This time, the adrenaline was painfully absent.

Over Thanksgiving dinner, I had dealt with a barrage of questions from my family: ''What are you doing now?" ''How does it feel to be done?" ''Do you like your apartment?" ''Where do you see yourself in a few years?"

They assured me that everyone goes from job to job in their 20s. Everyone feels aimless. For a while. It's a rite of passage.

I tried to keep it all in perspective as I quietly and sleepily slid back into my daily routine. Typing. Photocopying. Researching.

Everything so thoroughly uninspiring.

My stamina wasn't quite what it used to be, either. I once considered myself an academic athlete. Among other things, college trained me to push through on no-sleep days. I used to handle them with zest. (Then again, as a student, I could crash after trekking across campus, bleary-eyed, to turn in a last-minute paper.)

''Sorry, could you go through that once more?" I floated through e-mails and telephone calls. I barely made it through my first hazy post-all-nighter work day, sucking down coffee, espresso, diet soda, and more coffee. You can't take naps at work, but at least you can take stimulants.

By the time I got home that day, jittery, my bed had never looked more inviting. I made my lunch for Tuesday. Ironed. (OK, no, but at least I thought about how I should iron.) How grown-up I pretend to be. How far I've come.

I went to bed dreaming of that view from the plane, descending through the clouds -- that glimpse of the whole of Boston from the harbor. So beautiful. How promising it had once looked. Still does. I think.

Benjamin Toff, a recent grad making (and resisting) the transition from college student to working stiff, lives in Somerville. Reach him at benjamin.toff@gmail.com.

We'll always have New Haven

IN TRANSITION #18

By Benjamin Toff, Globe Correspondent | November 27, 2005
Read it on Boston.com

Yale may keep coming up the loser, but at least they know how to throw a pretty good party.

I slept late last Sunday. I just lay in bed even as the scant few hours of November sunlight slowly waned. Life as a new college alumnus never felt so lazy.

I had returned close to midnight Saturday from New Haven, where alongside my collegiate former brethren, some friends and I had taken part in the raucous tailgates outside the Harvard-Yale game. It was my first Game post-graduation, and all in all, not tremendously different from the ones I remember from my undergraduate years. It was like stepping into a time warp for the weekend and being given the permission to act incredibly stupid once again.

Even if Monday morning I had to wake up and go to work.

The day was historic. The first overtime game in 122 meetings of the two schools, the first triple-overtime game in Ivy history, the Crimson's fifth consecutive win over the Eli (every year since I arrived in Boston). And surprisingly enough, despite the debauchery and, let's face it, extravagant bingeing (about 30 people were carted away from the Yale Bowl for evaluation after excessive alcohol consumption), not a single alcohol-related arrest or injury. Even the weather was nice.

''It's always more fun at Yale," my friends and I agreed in the car on the way back. Perhaps it's nothing more than a ''grass is always greener" (and the beer more plentiful) phenomenon, but something tells me larger forces are at work here to make us envious of Connecticut.

Forces such as Boston Police Department Captain William B. Evans, commander of the Allston and Brighton districts, who has made curbing underage and unruly drinking a personal crusade. Last year, when The Game was hosted at fair Harvard, Evans gave students and administrators football-sized headaches. Kegs, banned at the tailgates since 2002, made a slight return only as a controlled substance, IDs were checked at the gates, wristbands were required for revelers 21 or over, students and alums were forced to pick up separate tailgate tickets at the box office. And despite being lauded as a healthy success by most standards -- no near-death ambulance trips, no severe drop in fun levels -- Evans was irate.

''To me, that day was a disgrace," Evans later told The Harvard Crimson. ''Within a week I had three Harvard deans in my office, and I told them that that day will never go on like it did again."

New Haven, on the other hand, at least we'll always have New Haven. This year, tales of strict new policies at Yale were for the most part exaggerated. The New York Times had a report over the weekend on the resistance the college was facing from alums to those rules. But the ban on drinking games and the threat of shutdown by the start of the third quarter didn't cause any measurable disturbances. The tailgates my fellow students and alums have come to know and love were back, as well they should be. For one day out of the year, Harvard and Yale students -- like everyone else -- can afford to kick back and throw a silly indulgent celebration for the sake of celebration.

Alums, too. And those of us who aren't yet ready to extricate ourselves entirely from undergraduate life -- us, too. My friends and I never did stumble upon the alumni tailgates.

''They're kind of dull," my friend Alex, a Harvard senior, told me. He gestured toward their mysterious locale across the street when I asked if he knew where they were. ''But I have to hand it to them. They've got bottle after bottle of Harpoon lined up."

We both looked down into our red plastic cups of watery light keg beer. At least I've got something to look forward to.

Benjamin Toff, a recent grad making (and resisting) the transition from college student to working stiff, lives in Somerville. Reach him at benjamin.toff@gmail.com.

Read the reply from Capt. Evans (12/11/05).

The neighborhood ties that don't bind

IN TRANSITION #17

By Benjamin Toff, Globe Correspondent | November 20, 2005
Read it on Boston.com

It's nearly Thanksgiving and we still have Halloween candy on our kitchen table. In the fruit bowl, embarrassingly enough (though at least to our credit, we have a fruit bowl).

Most of the candy is long gone; what's left are the items that nobody wanted -- a couple of Tootsie Pops, a small bag of Peanut M & M's, the sad remnants of a holiday we were probably too old to be celebrating anyway.

Try as we might, Halloween just wasn't the same as a grown-up. My roommates and I drank a couple of beers out on the front porch of our old triple-decker. We lighted a jack-o-lantern and watched the kids trickle by our quiet little block.

A few boys, 15 to 16, didn't bother saying ''trick or treat" as they stuffed their sacks. Others were so shy and young, they hardly dared to look at us. All in all, we had somewhere between 30 and 40 revelers at our door.

It was my first Halloween as a candy giver rather than receiver. I suppose that reversal was an inevitable part of coming of age, but the holiday seemed particularly confusing to me this year. I had never encountered any of these children before. Who were their parents that they allowed their kids to consume such massive quantities of sugar? And how could they let their children wander about freely talking to strangers like me?

Presumably, just a few decades ago, Halloween made a little more sense. When you know all your neighbors and your neighbors' kids, the celebration could potentially turn into something resembling a block party, something to strengthen community bonds, something that everyone could enjoy together.

Not on my block. The strange candy-gathering ritual came and went so mechanically. The kids, the parents, my roommates and I -- we were all just crudely marking the date by going through the motions.

Little by little, every old triple-decker in my Somerville neighborhood will be renovated and replaced by condos. Already, most of us are grad students, young professionals, people with no real ties to our community. We are relatively transient. Kids are scarce.

Sometimes I'll wave hello to a neighbor or two on my way home from work, but we've never actually met. The insides of their homes will likely remain forever mysterious. I've only spoken to one of the four people who live upstairs above us. (I hear their cats scurrying across the floor every night, but I've never seen them.)

It's the quiet, anonymous loneliness of life in this city that has stuck with me since Halloween. And it's that feeling that lingers weeks after the pumpkins have all rotted and been discarded.

A friend of mine braved Christmas alone last year for the first time, just months after moving to Boston. He said it was the worst experience of his life. He volunteered at a homeless shelter so as to ensure some contact with other human beings.

I'll be with family later this week for Thanksgiving. It's a holiday I skipped out on last fall; I drove up to Montreal with a friend to drink Canadian beer and escape from the stresses and pressures of college.

This year, turkey and stuffing and loved ones close by sounds, well, downright reassuring.

Benjamin Toff lives in Somerville. Reach him at benjamin.toff@gmail.com.

A guilty spectator, at 22, to this war

IN TRANSITION #16

By Benjamin Toff, Globe Correspondent | November 13, 2005
Read it on Boston.com

A few weeks ago I engaged in a cellphone argument in the middle of South Station. It was about American foreign policy. Sort of. My friend wanted a job in Iraq, and I thought she was crazy.

''I'm tired of spending all my time reading and writing about it, having never been," she said. ''It's the place to be in the world for what I want to study." She was right, I must admit, although I thought her career advancement in international security affairs was beside the point.

''Why don't you work in a place that's less likely to get you killed?" I asked. ''How about a formerly war-torn region of the world?"

The particulars of our argument were less important than the phone call that interrupted it --the phone call I didn't answer. Only after I hung up (or was hung up on, I can't remember which), did I receive that voice mail.

The message began with heavy breathing and then uncontrollable sobs. I heard something garbled about a group of men. It was all so incomprehensible between gulps of air and steady tears. I distinctly made out the words ''11 people." And then this eerie cry:

''You've got to do something, Ben. You've really got to do something."

I had been pacing back and forth through the lobby of South Station throughout the earlier phone call, probably drawing far too much attention to myself than one should ever draw in a busy transportation hub these days. I stopped abruptly while I listened to the voice mail. I watched the people milling about so bored, so aimless. I assumed the worst. An attack? Rape?

I dialed her number. She answered calmly.

''Hi," she said. ''Umm, sorry about that hysterical message."

In a strange collision of cellular airwaves, my friend's message concerned, yes, Iraq. Eleven men -- several of them younger than ourselves -- had been killed that day. Their photos had been plastered on the evening news, and my friend had lost it.

Back on the phone, we nervously tried to make light about her emotional outburst. How ridiculous! To get so worked up about a few pictures on TV. And it's not like we haven't seen pictures like that every few days in the paper!

Still stranger: How anesthetized we've become.

America observed Veterans Day this past Friday -- a holiday that had come and gone 22 times in my life without so much as a moment of silence. I've had no immediate family in the military -- save for a grandfather who once served in the Coast Guard. I have no friends in Iraq or Afghanistan. I only know one or two people, period, currently serving in any of the armed forces.

I have been a guilty spectator to this war -- too sidelined from the powers that be to have any say, too insulated from the war for it to have any direct impact on my life. Sure, I spoke out against the decision to invade. I marched, wrote editorials, participated in dorm room discussions late into the night.

But the question was never put to me directly. Would I go fight? In fact, nobody asked me to make any sacrifice. There was no draft, no recruitment at my school, no personal repercussions for a decision I didn't support. Like so many liberal Americans, I've watched the pictures come back with a sickened ''I told you so" anguish, and then continued to go about my business -- detached from the horror unfolding day after day in the Middle East.

Last week I browsed photos online of those who have died in Iraq. Their smiling faces, their youth and hope, so haunting. So many 22-year-olds, like myself. Some are just out of college, others left temporarily, and still others never had the opportunity. Instead of working through these strange post-diploma days, contemplating the prickly questions of what direction to set out into the world, how to transition into a 9-to-5 routine, etc., they fought and died in a war because their president told them to do so.

I suppose the least I could do is notice.

Benjamin Toff lives in Somerville. Reach him at benjamin.toff@gmail.com.

This piece was also published in the other Globe zone sections in advance of Veteran's Day, so that it could be sent out over the New York Times wires.

According to the Myrtle Beach Sun News, I'm a syndicated columnist.

And here's a link to the piece in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Apparently, I was published alongside Charles Krauthammer and Ellen Goodman. And here it is in the Winnipeg Free Press. And here in the Grand Forks Herald.

When a diploma fails, try a plunger

IN TRANSITION #15

By Benjamin Toff, Globe Correspondent | November 6, 2005
Read it on Boston.com

Dragging a $3.50 plunger behind me through the aisles of the supermarket just prior to closing the other night, I wondered if I had reached bottom.

Nope. Just adulthood.

It had been one of those inevitable days of maturation I'd been waiting for. A perfect storm of fiascos had formed -- everything from a clogged shower in the bathroom to the freezing wintry conditions outside. And then this: an overflowing stopped-up toilet.

I had come home late from a long day of work and found one of my roommates hunched over the toilet with an old plunger too small to properly plunge. In between flushing attempts we chatted about his ailing health.

''There's nothing worse than trying to fall asleep in a freezing cold room," he said, and then returned to the toilet bowl.

Despite the unseasonably cold temperatures, we had yet to switch on the heat. Too cheap, too lazy, whatever the reason, we had all just tried to live with the sub-40-degree nights with as many layers and blankets as possible. But with my roommate's health -- and this new toilet problem to boot -- I figured maybe it was time to do something about our living conditions.

Raised in the warmth of Tucson, I had imagined -- like most things I had imagined about living in my own apartment -- that turning on the heat would be a major ordeal. I had heard confusing anecdotes from friends about having to call the natural gas company; another friend mentioned something about flipping a mysterious switch in the basement. In our case, it was easier than any of that. In fact, not surprisingly, all we had to do was find the thermostat -- which turned out to be prominently displayed in the living room.

One of the lesser known (and debatable) downsides of attending college at Harvard is that almost everyone lives all four undergraduate years in dormitories, which means, among other things, that you never learn how to cook, clean, or tend to the many unforeseen incidents that arise when you're responsible for your own apartment.

Or at least that's the line my friends and family always gave me.

''You won't have any idea what goes into taking care of your own place," one friend warned over the summer. ''I can't believe Harvard deprives you all of any real-life experience."

I suppose there's some truth to it. The utter lack of life skills training probably made the transition out of college that much more abrupt and confusing. This fall I have been consistently let down by my oh-so-meager culinary training. I've quickly tired of my rotating menu of canned beans, instant rice, and frozen dinners. (Fortunately, I have enough roommates and friends who are willing to cook for me in return for favors.)

But the fact is, in most respects, taking care of my apartment hasn't been especially complicated. I would even argue easy if it weren't for the other night. Sure there was that letter threatening to turn off the utilities right after we moved in, and there's that stuck window in the bathroom the landlord's been talking about fixing since back in August, but all in all, apartment living has been as I expected.

In fact, even the toilet turned out OK. After I sent my sick roommate to bed, another roommate came home desperate to pee. So I went on a late-night scavenger hunt to the grocery store for a new plunger and some pipe-clearing chemicals. Not to brag, but within minutes, voilà!: we were back to full-flushing action.

And the landlord came by the next day to fix the bathroom window -- just in time for the freak October snowstorm. Even the shower drain problem turned out to be just a clump of hair.

The experience has only emboldened me. College may not have taught me a lot of skills applicable to the real world, but really, I'm not in such bad shape. I can plunge a toilet after all.

Benjamin Toff lives in Somerville. Reach him at benjamin.toff@gmail.com.

Ahhh, a warm family embrace

IN TRANSITION #14

By Benjamin Toff, Globe Correspondent | October 30, 2005
Read it on Boston.com

One night during the summer, I had dinner with my uncle, who was in Boston for business. I brought him a copy of one of my first-person articles for City Weekly.

''You don't have health insurance?" he responded with shock after he read the piece. (He's a doctor, by the way.)

No, I told him, I didn't have health insurance.

''You've got to do something about that."

Not like I hadn't tried. After my college insurance plan expired mid-summer, I made inquiries about the price of extending it. I can't remember how much I was quoted on the phone because I was so exasperated, I threw away my notes on the subject. But it was more than the $300 a month I had (miraculously) been expecting to pay in rent -- and for catastrophic coverage only.

Besides, the deductible was so high, the insurance was unlikely to be of much use anyhow. Bottom line: There was no way I was going to make those payments on part-time wages and temping. And I was a healthy 22-year-old. No wonder 45.8 million Americans didn't have health insurance in 2004.

Getting health insurance was, I must concede, a major reason I eventually acquiesced into taking the full-time position I now call my job. Or more exactly, it was the impossible price tag of buying my own insurance, combined with talking to a friend who had recently fractured her toe, needed dental work, and broken her collarbone in a car accident -- all during a time in her young, healthy life when she wasn't insured. (Fortunately, the other guy's insurance paid for her car accident-induced injuries).

What a difference a couple of months makes. I recently found myself at a Human Resources orientation explaining the smorgasbord of benefits and choices I am now entitled to as a full-time permanent employee at Harvard, where I am a staff assistant to a professor and his research program.

Overwhelmed by new acronyms -- HMO, PPO, IRA -- and new services I had never thought twice about -- long-term disability, short-term disability, retirement planning, pensions -- I felt like a little kid playing Employee in a league of grown-up Professionals.

But the benefits, which I had once thought of as ''extras" when in fact they were essential, practically made me swoon. I talked them up to all my friends back home. ''Did you know I get a full week off for Christmas -- paid vacation -- on top of the regular time off that accrues?" I asked one gleefully.

Silence.

''Oh, and don't forget the 35-hour workweek," I preened.

My friend's reaction? Hostility.

I had known there was a difference between being a temp and being a regular employee. And certainly there was a difference between part-time and full-time work.

But I hadn't fully comprehended that being on salary also meant being included in part of the family -- that old-fashioned system where the company really did treat you as a human being and member of the community for life. (Or at least paid lip service to such things.) But the other big difference was being in a union.

The day of my union christening had finally arrived. I was giddy.

''My brother's a labor organizer," I told the union rep during a coffee break after she spoke about the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers at the orientation. ''He'll be so proud," she replied as I handed her my signed card.

Some day, my union idealism may crumble, and I'll be disillusioned along with a lot of America. After all, only 12.5 percent of wage and salary workers were union members last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But it feels pretty comforting after months of employment-seeking with no health insurance or job security.

It's a feeling I wish I could share. After all, the only difference between the work I do now and the work I did then is I've agreed to stick around for the year.

Is that what it takes to be part of the family?

Benjamin Toff lives in Somerville. Reach him at benjamin.toff@gmail.com.

When did I become so old?

New refrain: not a boy, not yet a man

IN TRANSITION #13

By Benjamin Toff, Globe Correspondent | October 23, 2005
Read it on Boston.com

In a tragic turn of events, somebody stole my umbrella last weekend.

It wasn't so much the umbrella that bothered me -- it was only ''mine" because an unknown passenger had left it in my car. It wasn't even the fact that it meant I'd be soaking wet by the time I arrived home in Somerville. It was simply a poignant end to a cold, unfriendly night, which I can only hope does not foreshadow the rest of my postgraduate social life.

But I'm worried.

The Friday night had begun with some promise -- drinks with friends from college at Charlie's Kitchen in Cambridge to celebrate a birthday. Charlie's was a mainstay: the jukebox, the jumbo-sized bottles of Newcastle, the bad, bad karaoke. But the festivities very quickly reached a plateau.

''I can hardly keep my eyes open," one friend admitted after a single round.

A full day's work -- no matter how lacking in laboriousness -- put a damper on our after-dark plans. We were beat, and minutes after the last (first) pint was empty, we were out the door and headed separate ways into the night. The rain, which had been falling for over a week straight at this point, only seemed to intensify.

Faced with the prospect of retiring early -- yet again -- I did the unthinkable. I met up with a couple of other friends who could still lay claim to the collegiate party-all-night lifestyle, being well, still enrolled undergraduates. How I suddenly envied them.

I braced myself for the confused stares and incessant ''What are you still doing here?" questioning that awaited. I had for so many weeks now successfully resisted the temptation to immerse myself in campus social life. Am I that desperately bored? I was. And I resigned myself to spending Friday night party-hopping with the college crowd.

Er, well, I went to two parties. Which was enough to remind me that maybe I'm too old to be drinking straight vodka (they were all out of mixers . . .) from already used plastic cups (. . . and glasses) while socially awkward 19- and 20-year-olds grinded up against each other to badly mixed music on a poorly ventilated, cramped dance floor/dorm common room.

When did I become so old and cranky?

It was at the second of these parties that my umbrella and I parted forever. By the time I arrived home in Somerville, I was drenched, annoyed, and confused about what to do with myself now that I'm not a student, yet not ready for the domestic, Martha Stewart breakfast-in-bed life I imagined as my fate.

I kept thinking of that bad Britney Spears schlock song from that waste of 93 minutes, ''Crossroads": ''I'm not a girl, not yet a woman."

So what am I?

People often say college is where we're supposed to go to find ourselves, but those people are lying. College is where we find ourselves hanging out after high school. I had a good time, learned a lot, trained and experimented in the things I now pursue. But I didn't find myself. Why?

Because I was in college. It's like finding out who you are on a reality TV show. It's not who you are. Just who you are on a reality TV show.

Who we are in the world? That's a more difficult one. But I wonder if maybe it's time I bought my own umbrella. A new one. After all, this rain's got to be just the beginning.

Benjamin Toff lives in Somerville. Reach him at benjamin.toff@gmail.com.

Wait, let's do that over

IN TRANSITION #12

By Benjamin Toff, Globe Correspondent | October 16, 2005
Read it on Boston.com

I helped my friend Katie move last week. Twice.

The first move happened over the weekend, relocating my friend from futon (the same one I slept on this past August when the summer wound down and left me couch-surfing) to her first-ever post-dorm apartment, in Cambridge. Within 24 hours, she was ready to move out.

''I made a horrible mistake," she told me sheepishly when she called to ask if I would help her move a second time that week. (These sort of favors are one of the many drawbacks of having a car in the city, but I can't complain. The complimentary meals as remuneration keep me well-fed.)

The room was smaller, stuffier, more expensive, and less inviting than she had processed on her first visit -- and the neighborhood less lively and farther from work than she recalled.

''What was I thinking?" she said, miserable, on the phone.

The experience sounds far worse than it was. She had a new place within days -- despite having spent all September shopping for apartments. There was no lease yet to breach, no promises broken. Katie's short-lived roommate took the news in stride and understood. And Katie packed light; everything fit in one carload in my Accord.

Which got me thinking: how easily mistakes can be erased. Things that seem unprecedented, that burden us for weeks at a time, so often turn out to be no big deal.

For months now I've stressed about life and career decisions, every one of which has seemed so pressing. Do I take this job or hold out for another? Do I sign this lease or pack my bags for the West? The weight of each choice -- so loaded with consequences -- has dragged behind me as I walk to work in the morning.

I spoke with another friend the other day just before he took the LSATs, the law school entrance exams. He fretted about the fact that one multiple-choice question could be the difference between his top-tier ''reach" choices and fallback law schools -- one split-second gut instinct could forever change the course of his life.

Of course, he'll never know.

We only live out the choices we've made -- not the ones we wish we'd made. Fear-mongering parents may rightly cultivate an ethic of risk-management in their children (disclaimer: some mistakes, foolish or unforeseen, can nonetheless be life-altering, if not disastrous), but not all mistakes are irreversible.

Dread of missteps and after-the-fact guilt can leave us blind to the choices we do have. If you don't like where you're living, move. Sooner than you think, you may find yourself in a great new space with bay windows.

I don't mean to sound like a Pollyanna. Obviously, a lot depends on having enough cash to expand the options. And I'm sure this lesson exists in every self-help book. Yet discovering it on my own gave it a gospel sheen.

''Do you think I'm crazy for doing this?" Katie asked after the second move was finished Thursday night.

''Of course not," I replied.

I admire it.

Maybe it's just temporary, but my walk to work feels lighter now.

Benjamin Toff lives in Somerville. Reach him at:benjamin.toff@gmail.com.

I've experienced monotony from both sides, now

IN TRANSITION #11

By Benjamin Toff, Globe Correspondent | October 9, 2005
Read it on Boston.com

Today marks exactly four months since my college graduation day. The monotony of subsisting eight hours a day hunched over a keyboard, banished to a remote cubicle, is already weighing on me.

Is this what I have to look forward to the rest of my life?

The transition from full-time student to working stiff -- despite a few detours along the way -- happened rather seamlessly and suddenly. When did I stop going out to the bar for drinks with friends and start spending my nights packing a lunch and ironing slacks? Instead of pulling all-nighters on papers anymore, I fall asleep before getting through a two-hour rented DVD.

(On a related note, I got a haircut last week. Discovered to my horror that my hair is thinning. Really thinning. Like when wet, I can see my scalp.)

At this rate, I'll be comatose by the time I'm 30.

Admittedly, the job itself is fine. My working conditions are relatively cushy: I have a window beside my desk and a fair amount of privacy, responsibility, and variety of assigned tasks. My co-workers ask about my life and take a genuine interest in me.

But it's the routine that's hollowing out my soul from the inside. The 9-to-5 slog, day after day -- fax, photocopy, file, collate, stamp, send, delete. I navigate through the empty corridors of a faceless, cold bureaucratic machine. Sometimes colleagues glance in my direction, bathed in the blue glow of their computer monitors, their eyes twinkling with fantasies of Bermuda or skydiving or anything involving actual human contact. But I push on, entranced as if sleepwalking.

Yet every so often something -- an event -- jars me awake after weeks of coasting along through shapeless time. I recalibrate. I am reminded that every day is new and every moment, no matter how bleak, presents new opportunities for discovery and beauty.

I had just such an experience last week. The weather had turned sour. It was one of those inexplicably windy days. I had listened to the storm developing all afternoon through my window, threatening to burst through the glass and relieve me of my e-mail turmoil. When I arrived at my car after work, I found it covered in leaves -- and, to my utter disbelief, an enormous tree branch had fallen from on high and pounded into the roof.

''Is that your car?" a former professor of mine asked incredulously as he strolled down Prescott Street. I was in the middle of dislodging the log from between my side mirror and driver's window.

Miraculously, the car still rolls. The only significant damage: a large dent above the driver's door (the same door whose window I had just finally fixed). Just a few more inches and that branch would have shattered my sunroof -- and likely put an end to my driving days. To make matters eerier, I had only parked there the night before so as to rush to get to a 6 o'clock meeting.

''I think God must be trying to send you a message," my friend Phoebe taunted later that evening in the car.

Message or not, my ears have perked up. I walk home from work each evening noticing new things. A friendly couple walking their dog, a baby crying, the sunset igniting the sky in brilliant purples and reds.

I've driven this same route countless times, zooming by, letting it all pass without ever really seeing any of it.

No wonder if felt so monotonous.

Benjamin Toff lives in Somerville. Reach him at benjamin.toff@gmail.com.

A commitment, of sorts

IN TRANSITION #10

By Benjamin Toff, Globe Correspondent | October 2, 2005
Read it on Boston.com

An ex told me the other day, ''You have commitment issues with the city of Boston."

''But," I stuttered, ''I love Boston." Then the reality sank in.

I had called soliciting advice. Earlier that day, I had been offered a job -- a salaried position with full benefits, the supposed holy grail of employment. And the timing was right. The pangs of guilt I'd felt all summer about photocopying away my 20s were starting to dissipate as each rent payment loomed. Unless I was ready to switch to a diet of Ramen and rice, this was my chance.

''Take it," one friend advised. ''You're supposed to take any job you're offered. Always. Deal with the consequences later."

But, in truth, the job itself is only a piece of the problem. Any job would ask at least a year from me -- enter my commitment anxiety. It wasn't about the position. It was about cold feet. Literally. It was about Boston.

''Where do you want to go? Where else do you want to be?" My ex was getting agitated.

''Traveling," I muttered.

''Where? Do you have any plans? Any way of paying for it?"

All these months since graduation, stewing and dreaming, finding my bearings in this new postgraduate world, never once had I sat down and sketched any concrete plans. I needed to keep my options open. That's what mattered. I was drifting -- from futon to futon, job to job -- intoxicated by the freedom of remaining perpetually available (to potential employers). And why not? I just graduated college; is there anything wrong with romanticizing life for a while? I like feeling as though I could pack up everything I own in an hour and take off for anywhere in the world at any moment.

Even if there is no destination.

And even if I know I'll never do it. At least not so spontaneously. The truth is I'm a planner. Drifting doesn't suit me. Sure, I'll try it on, see how it fits for a few months; but I need something to work toward.

I need to get out of this city.

I took the No. 1 bus into Boston last weekend. The sailboats were out on the Charles, the water rippling and blue. You could sense the trees poised for their autumn ritual, the air turning crisp. The terror of winter, waiting in the wings.

Boston, I love you, but I think maybe I should see other cities.

In a year's time (with a year's salary), I'll be able to afford it.

Benjamin Toff lives in Somerville and just accepted a yearlong position as an office assistant at Harvard. He plans, at least at this point, to save up his money to travel the world next year. You can seek to persuade or dissuade him at benjamin.toff@gmail.com.

The kids are back -- me, too, a tenant with dreams

IN TRANSITION #9

By Benjamin Toff, Globe Correspondent | September 25, 2005
Read it on Boston.com

I spent my lunch break the other day browsing furniture shops near campus. I've never felt so old. And poor.

All around me, my former schoolmates laughed and shopped, happy to be reunited for another semester. They frolicked from store to store, buying books and school supplies, planning the decoration of their dorm rooms.

Meanwhile, my mind kept returning to the bookshelf I found abandoned down the street from my apartment -- my new stand-in for a dresser. It beats boxes and suitcases. But this recent graduate is wondering about something more permanent.

My Somerville apartment is finally showing (faint) resemblance to a home. Last week I bought a tablecloth and toaster. This week: My roommates and I christened the living room with toasts of Smuttynose Brown Ale and Sierra Nevada Porter.

The little things help distract us from the age of the floorboards, the draftiness of the windows, or -- shudder -- the thick layer of black slime in the cabinet beneath the kitchen sink.

Someday maybe I'll get bedroom furniture.

That is, if my pockets aren't empty come rent time.

A friend has been searching for an apartment for months. It's painstaking. The lease on his old place ran out in August. He's sharing another friend's studio while he keeps looking. I've tried asking whether he's just being too picky.

''It's too old. And dirty," he complains about every other place he looks at. ''And it looks like hell from the street."

He's from Texas.

''Back home, you could get something four times this size. With all new appliances!"

Of course, you'd have to live in Texas.

Still, he's got a point. If you want to live in the city, you've got to be willing to forgo a lot of amenities. Or sign over your paychecks. If you're lucky, you get bigger paychecks. The only place that has excited my friend costs more than twice as much as his last place.

''You know, I woke up really happy and peaceful the other day and smelled something familiar. I didn't know what it was at first."

He asked me to guess. I couldn't.

''Fresh-cut grass," he responded.

Across the street from his old place in Cambridgeport, developers had laid down a new lawn, part of their conversion of an old triple-decker into luxury lofts. That new lawn and its smell were things he didn't even realize he had missed. They almost brought him to tears.

My brother, faced with rising rents in San Francisco, did what so many have contemplated. He fled. I visited him last month in Portland, Ore., where he now owns his own house.

True, it's old -- with probably 15 layers of paint and wallpaper on the walls. And it looks like a construction zone (months of do-it-yourself renovations have gone, well, typically).

But it's his.

While I visited, he had the fir floors in his kitchen refinished. Within hours, 80 years of black sticky residue vanished. That night, my brother came home and saw the wood grain of his own kitchen floors for the first time. Months of stress peeled away from his face.

''That almost makes it all worth it," he said, his eyes alight.

Maybe there's hope after all.

Benjamin Toff works as a temp and lives in Somerville. He can be reached at benjamin.toff@gmail.com.

'Only' seems to be the hardest word

Desert experience an inward search

IN TRANSITION #8

By Benjamin Toff, Globe Correspondent | September 18, 2005
Read it on Boston.com

This is one in a series of reports about the strange time between getting a college diploma and entering real life.

I always tell myself that traveling will give me perspective, force me to reflect, provide instant answers to all of life's questions. It tends to be -- like most things in life -- only sort of true.

After a grueling summer, I gave myself a vacation. More of a mission, really, to the dry, dusty, inhospitable Nevada desert for an art festival called Burning Man.

For those of you East Coasters who haven't by now heard of the 20-year-old weeklong celebration of all things beautiful, debaucherous, and most importantly alive, I won't be much help. If you don't know what I'm talking about, go attend it yourself. As the burners like to say, ''Trying to explain what Burning Man is to someone who has never been is like trying to describe what a color looks like to someone who is blind."

Maybe it was the severe dehydration (my cracked lips are still recovering), but the days I spent in the Black Rock Desert have stuck with me like a dream. I'm afraid attempts to describe it will violate it; the sounds and smells and stunning visuals might evaporate as suddenly as they once bombarded me.

But I will relay this one chance encounter I had with a musician. It was late one night in the days leading up to the burning of the man statue. My friends were exchanging massages with strangers in the colossal ''Space Virgins" dome. I started up a conversation with a guy sitting nearby, Dave from Seattle, who as it turned out was a songwriter who gave guitar lessons for a living.

''I've never had a real job," he said sheepishly.

We traded stories, talked East vs. West, and eventually moved on to the pros and cons of devoting one's life to a profession that would never pay a salary above poverty. In his case, music. In my case, writing. (After traveling thousands of miles, my mind kept circling back to the same questions as though somehow the foreign surroundings would prompt new answers.) He worried how the decision had affected his love life. His voice dropped when he described his financially successful classmates.

''Think about whether it's the only thing you can be happy doing," he said. ''If it's not your 'only,' you want to be very clear about everything you're giving up."

In the morning, the sun rose, flooding the still-gray earth with warmth and color. A crane modified to resemble an enormous sunflower (a Burning Man ''art car") rose along with it in the distance. I thought of returning to my 9-to-5 routine in Cambridge.

I wondered about the meaning of the word ''only."

After a whirlwind couple of weeks, I've now moved into a place in Somerville. Scratch that: ''moved in" is an overstatement. I have no furniture. I'm still living out of boxes. But at least I have my own room.

Stability compensates for the squalor. At least that's what I've been telling myself. Late at night, the fan in my window rhythmically thwacking (I found it abandoned in another room), I stare at the ceiling. It is crusty with blotches from water damage and neglect. But I see through it to the stars above moving slowly across the night sky, and I imagine spinning slowly along with them.

Benjamin Toff works as a temp and lives in Somerville. He can be reached at benjamin.toff@gmail.com.

Alone, waking up to a nightmare

IN TRANSITION #7

By Benjamin Toff, Globe Correspondent | September 11, 2005
Read it on Boston.com

This is one in a series of occasional reports about the strange time between getting a college diploma and entering real life.

Four years ago, I awoke on the last day of my summer vacation groggy and annoyed. Hoping to sleep late, I had lingered in bed, despite the noisy television in the living room. I thrashed about between the sheets, cursing under my breath. I threw a pillow over my face.

I hadn't slept well for over a week. Last in my dorm suite to move in, I got stuck with the top bunk in a bedroom with a snorer. A loud snorer. So loud, he kept me up even from the futon in the next room over.

However, that night was supposed to be different. For the first time since arriving in Boston, I had the bunks, not to mention the bedroom, to myself. My roommate, home for a funeral in Georgia, had granted me a respite from his snores, and I had charted a night of eight-plus glorious hours of uninterrupted, silent slumber.

That was, until my rude awakening. Fading in and out of a dreamy haze, I caught only muffled snippets from the other side of the door. A plane crash. Evacuations.

Four years later, the exact moment eludes me when I finally succumbed to consciousness, slumped off the top bunk, and stumbled toward the television. Was it before or after the second plane hit? I watched the towers collapse live, in real time. I'm sure of it. The shock. Having to force myself to exhale. I remember it. So clearly. I think.

The events of that unceremonious day, so searing at the time, have inevitably bled together into a painful, jumbled patchwork of television replays, tearful stares, and befuddled introspection. I wandered around campus, still a foreign and unfamiliar place, making eye contact with strangers. How many had family members missing? Would classes begin as scheduled tomorrow? Could Harvard be a target? Would my roommate ever return from Georgia? How far away this city, Boston, where I knew virtually no one, seemed from everyone and everything I knew and loved.

My mother in Arizona tried my cellphone and dorm phone, but couldn't get through.

Her e-mail message: ''There's no way to call long distance all circuits are busy. Thank goodness for e-mail," she had written by noon to me and my brother, who was in England. The subject line? ''Uncertainty."

''This is about the most horrible state of the world I have personally experienced, and having my kids so far away just makes it so much worse."

I told her I would keep in touch. And for reasons that escape me, I went on and promised to ''let you know what's going on" -- as though being hundreds of miles closer to the epicenter of the tragedy made me somehow suited to grasp what was happening.

Classes began on Wednesday as scheduled. After an all-day train ride before the week's end, my snoring roommate returned. And in the midst of such chaos, the semester, like any other, gave way to lectures, papers and midterms, staplers, books, and pens.

Today, people across the planet will mark this fourth anniversary with vigils, marches, and moments of silence. As a newly initiated member of the real world, this is my first Sept. 11 out of college.

I am wide awake now. I just wish I knew what to do.

Benjamin Toff now lives in Somerville. He can be reached at benjamin.toff@gmail.com.

Going through a 'temporary' phase

IN TRANSITION #6

By Benjamin Toff, Globe Correspondent | September 4, 2005
Read it on Boston.com

This is one in a series of occasional reports about the strange time between getting a college diploma and entering real life.

To my shock, driving to work on the last day of my summer internship I had to turn up the heat in my Honda. Way up: the driver's side window is busted. The cold air kept seeping through.

Fixing it had been on my to-do list for weeks. And now it sure felt like fall.

For the first time in my life, school would begin without me.

With my internship over, I took a job elsewhere as a temp. A promotion? No. As an intern, at least I knew my role, however limited. I wasn't expected to carve any long-lasting impression on the organization. But I was on track. I worked to immerse myself in an environment, to gain experience that might one day be valuable in a respectable career -- and there would be one.

As a temp, I just work. I perform the unenviable role of substitute. It implies only the sense that I am between things. Temping pays the bills, but leaves a knot in my stomach.

While there may be no shame in temping, there's certainly no glory.

At a staff meeting the other day, scarfing down the lavish continental breakfast (breakfast is a rarity in my life), I tried to be discreet while the other employees went around the room introducing themselves. All but two were women. Several were more than three times my age. They welcomed a new assistant, pretty and petite, with smiles and flattery.

Then they turned to me.

''I'm temporarily working as a replacement," I mumbled into my plate of crumbs.

''Are you just out of school?" whispered a woman next to me. I nodded. ''So this isn't really what you want to be doing," she added, relieved for my sake.

But I wasn't relieved.

An hour and a half of shallow backslapping later (''The work you all do is so important to us"), I returned to my (pretend) office in a daze. An out-of-place kid, one who missed his summer vacation.

That day, I spent my lunch break outside in a park, soaking up the dying summer light. Two toddlers wrestled on the grass, twisting in and out of the shadows that fell upon them. In my head, I replayed highlights from the summer -- returning time and again to July 4, the trek back to Cambridge along the Charles, the dazzling fireworks display still dancing in my retinas, the cheap beer at the MIT fraternity keeping me going with a slight buzz, my friends alongside me, laughing, singing, full of life.

''That was a quick lunch!" my boss exclaimed, surprised to see me when I returned to my cubicle long before the hour expired. I had no answer; simply nowhere to go, nothing to do. For the 10 minutes that followed, I stared at the curser blinking on my screen, waiting for something to jolt me awake.

Earlier this summer, I scoffed at spending my 20s in a job that bored me. It felt like surrendering the last shreds of my youth. Maybe it is. Yet a salary with benefits, if not the holy grail of employment, would help settle my stomach.

Soon the students will be back. Temping will end. How long is the grace period before I'm just plain unemployed?

Benjamin Toff is living on a futon in his former college roommates' apartment in Cambridge, but he is moving to Somerville soon. Reach him at benjamin.toff@gmail.com.

The confessions of a couch-to-couch surfer

IN TRANSITION #5

By Benjamin Toff, Globe Correspondent | August 28, 2005
Read it on Boston.com

Editor's note: This is one in a series of occasional reports about the strange time between getting a college diploma and entering real life.

I used to joke about this day -- the day that Harvard kicked me out of the dorms for good -- and how I'd be forced to surf from couch to couch.

I'm not laughing now.

By today, I had expected I would be all moved into my clean, hip East Boston apartment I had arranged to sublet weeks ago. Failing at that, I have suddenly been reduced to houseguest status at my former college roommates' apartment (yeah, I know, they were successful at getting a place). But I'm not so bad off, really.

My failure to secure housing upon eviction from college was not my fault. Miscommunication with my would-be roommates led to a ''T"-minus-36-hours discovery that my housing had fallen through. Hours of confusion and the frantic search for an apartment eventually paid off -- despite intense introspection and frequent bouts of panic (''Is this instability really worth it?"). Now I am all set to move to Somerville in September. All set -- except I'm still wondering if I'm ready to take the leap.

The place is nice, without a doubt. New appliances. Two porches. Beats dorm life any day. But my roommates, who (don't get me wrong) seem perfectly nice, are all strangers. I've lived the last four years with the same two friends.

Though I guess we were once strangers, too. Freshman year, after eating dining hall meals in quiet awkwardness, my roommates and I would return to our suite, sit down at our solitary desks, and distract ourselves on the Internet, e-mailing friends from home, reading, anything to take our minds off the college's failed efforts at forced socialization. We shared a living space, but we could hardly hold a conversation.

A futon changed everything. We went on an adventure together four years ago to Central Square, trying to scheme up a way to transport one of those ubiquitous $200 metal futons up Mass. Ave. without a car (we eventually caved and waved down a station wagon cab). How did we bond? Decoding poorly translated assembly directions. To this day, I'm still not sure what to do with so many kinds of washers. Once it was assembled, I must admit it really tied the common room together -- not to mention us.

Sure, we've grown in different directions over the years, and we always spent summers apart, but this is the first fall in four years we won't be reconvening to swap stories and unpack together -- where the seasonal ritual of futon re-assembly will happen alone. In fact, that futon will be my new bed when (or, gasp, if) I get to Somerville.

The other night, we had gathered together for a farewell dinner (one friend is moving to Michigan). We had dinner, drank wine, played Trivial Pursuit. Afterward, doing dishes, my friend muttered about the strangeness of people wandering in and out of one's life. My thought: Would I ever again have so many wonderful people so close by?

We'll keep in touch, and we mean it when we say it. But there's so much that's unsettled. After all, I'm living on a couch. With the fragility of my housing situation, I've been telling myself to anticipate the unpredictable, but you can only prepare for so much. Life after graduation -- or at least the Intro course -- has been much more difficult than any class at Harvard.

As my soon-to-be landlord said, ''You sometimes feel like life just keeps happening to you."

At least with new roommates, whatever happens next won't happen to me alone.

Benjamin Toff lives on a futon at his friend's place in Cambridge, but he plans to move to Somerville very soon. He can be reached at benjamin.toff@gmail.com.