The Audit is Dead, Long Live the Audit

I can't work.  When they call me to teach, I say "no."  I can't write.  No concentration.  I can't play.  I don't want to go out or visit anyone.  Systematically, like poring over old gasoline receipts, I withdraw my involvement with other people.  I sleep alone.

After four months of being scrutinized in detail by the IRS and the State of Illinois IDES (two separate audits, curiously simultaneous), I was right in my reporting of my income and expenses all along.  But I had to fight for it.  It took them four months to agree with what I had said all along.  My accountant screamed at me, then resigned, and finally she herself was found to be the cause of any errors on the returns.

I am boring you.  It is how my mind has grinded down to a pebble for the last third of a year, repeating the same llines, telling myself the same things, going over and over rules and laws and fine print so many times, the rut has left no possibility of alternative, of joy.

Nothing is left.  A lonely walk down a long, narrow-walled rut.  I was right.  But they won.

And now, no, it isn't over.  My wife screams at me, hates me, wants to escape.  It is January.  This thing has barely begun.  I have two weeks before I have to file more papers, more 1099s to independent contractors, one month before I have to file the same papers to the federal govermnent, two weeks to sift through the 2006 papers, to decide whether to dissolve the corporation, to keep giving that little lecture/demonstration side project or just give it up, throw it away, be poorer than ever, try to earn so little they don't even care...  wait, I had already done that, hadn't I?

It goes on and on.  And it is all money, meaningless, ruinous.  I don't even care about the money.  I should have just let them take the $5,400 they originally demanded and smiled and said, "See you next year." and gone home and payed the minimum on my Visa bills and watched "24" and eaten popcorn.  But, no, I had to try, at least, to be right, to understand, to give a fuck.

And it has left me with nothing.

Maybe it was random, as they kept insisting, but whatever it was, it would seem to be eternal. 

Clear the table.  It's time to look at the receipts.  The accountant has resigned.  She has Alzheimer's, I think.  I'll bumble through.  And then wait, wait, wait for the letter, telling me they're coming again.  Maybe this time, they'll bring their waterboarding tools.  They may as well go for my body.  My mind and soul?  Already gone.