My daddy was a working man, a hot tar roofer with skin grafts from being burned who showered when he came home from work, not before he went. I've spent my life wrestling with his proletarianism—most of the time believing that I was imitating him and patterning myself after him, though we never had an adult conversation about what it meant to be a working man, and I'm sure I made many emotional and factual errors as I aped him. 

I thought he wanted to be Spartacus, fighting on behalf of the workers of the world, and I received his intention to be head of the roofer's union as evidence of this impression. To be like him, I developed a Spartacus complex too—completely half-assed, uninformed by the strain of real labor. 

When I came into possession of his paperwork, I found a pamphlet from the Industrial Workers of the World (a.k.a., the Wobblies), a world-wide union considered by many to be a proto-Communist organization. So while I know I was way off in my blind imitation of Thomas J. Wingate's proletarianism, I wasn't making it up. 

Which relieved me quite a bit, because there were plenty of times I felt like a fool for clinging to something that didn't belong to me, that could never belong to me in return.

1. WORKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!
2. LOSERS WITHOUT MONEY
3. GET BACK TO WHERE YOU ONCE BELONGED
4. WHAT GOES UP MUST COME DOWN
5. SIX REVERSE ACRONYMS FOR THE WORD "PROLE"
6. OCTET IN HONOR OF MY PROLETARIAN HYPOCRISY
7. MAN OF RESENTMENT