Insomnia, redux

the painting that my high school boyfriend gave me for my 18th birthday.  Not a great photo, but I should really be asleep right now.

Once again, I can't sleep.  It's 5:30, but I've been tossing and turning for much longer.  Last night I read at Tuesday Funk, a monthly reading series at the Hopleaf.  I'd been on the bill for some time, and had planned on reading the story I titled "my boyfriend" and have posted elsewhere in these pages.  (Wow, that's the first time I've linked back to my own blog, how very self-referential of me).

But that's not what's keeping me up.  A while back I actually went and bought my boyfriend's wife's book, The Dirty Life, and as it turns out, it's a pretty good read.  Besides being an interesting story, it made me feel better - made me realize it was simply the pull of the past that was making me feel so nostalgic and whatnot, and it was nice to know that my boyfriend was doing well.  I genuinely wished him and his wife well.  So when I saw that his wife had a facebook fan page for the book, I hit "like", and posted the following comment back on February 6th:

Hello Kristin,

A couple months ago my NPR feed on facebook had a writeup about your book, and within the first three lines I recognized Mark from the description. I knew him in high school, lost track of him years ago, and although I've reconnected with many old friends through the magic of facebook, no matter what I did I couldn't find him (doesn't help that he changed his name and has no Internet presence). I've been reading articles about your farm and your book, and heard your interview with Melissa Block. What an amazing story, and what a remarkable adventure you've undertaken. Please give my regards to Mark, and all the best with your farm, your book, and your family.

JP

At the time, there weren't an inordinate amount of fans on the page, less than 300, and it flummoxed me that while she had responded to some other, less intriguing comments, she never bothered to respond to mine.  I thought about it, and realized that it was a bit ridiculous to wait around and feel insulted by a perceived facebook slight, when she wasn't even really the person I wanted to get in touch with.  My boyfriend is so off the grid that I'm not sure he has a flush toilet, much less a facebook account, so I took it upon myself to write the following note and drop it in the mail on March 7th:


Dear Mark,

Back in November, I had the strange experience of reading my NPR updates on facebook, and coming across a story about a journalist from New York who'd gone to western Pennsylvania to interview a farmer... and something told me right then that the farmer in question was you, even before I'd read two paragraphs.  I bought Kristin's book, and read it inside of a week.  What an incredible story, I'm really amazed at what you've done at Essex Farms.  I've tried looking you up from time to time, and now I know why I never got very far - I was looking for MG in Pennsylvania, and now you're MK in upstate New York.  I left a note on the facebook fan page for The Dirty Life, but I gather Kristin doesn't have much time to mess around on facebook, as she doesn't leave a lot of comments on people's posts.  I figured I should write you an actual note, since posting a comment on the facebook fan page of your wife's book is a pretty disconnected way of trying to say hello, and I'm pretty sure the last time I saw you I'd never surfed the Internet in my life much less tried to reconnect with old friends on it.  (If memory serves me, the last time we saw each other was in 1996, when I was living in Boston.)

I feel like I know so much about your life, but it's strange because I know it all from reading your wife's book.  I don't have any books for you to read about me, but I'll sum it up in a couple sentences: I'm still in Chicago, have been married for almost 10 years now, and I'm still a writer. I had a job writing human interest stories and grant proposals for an international humanitarian aid organization, but I lost it almost 2 years ago in the bad economy.  I was unemployed for a year, and used the time to travel, volunteer, and write.  Now I work doing administrative stuff, and it's not bad, if not my dream job.  I get to Plymouth, Vermont about once a year in late August, which I'm guessing is a busy season on the farm, but I'd love to stop by and say hello.

It's so good to know you're out there, doing your thing,

All my best,

   
JP (I included my phone number, which I won't do here, just in case the government or aliens are reading this)

And then.... nothing. I started to get irritated, I'd actually bothered to reach out across the years and make contact, and for whatever reason neither my boyfriend nor his wife deemed it necessary to respond.

Then, yesterday morning, as I was getting ready to walk out the door, the phone rang.  I looked at the caller ID, it said simply "New York call" from area code 518.  I don't know anyone with that area code, so I let it go to voicemail... and then I thought maybe I should check and see if there was a message.

I'm nerdy enough to copy and paste the note I left on The Dirty Life's wall, and I'm nerdy enough to have kept a copy of the text of the note that I sent my boyfriend, but there's something a little creepy about transcribing phone messages from old boyfriends word for word on my blog, so I'll paraphrase:

"J, I got a great letter from you, thank you so much.  It's been sitting on my desk for a month, and since I hadn't replied to it I figured I'd just call.  I can't wait to hear your voice and hear all your news."

I walked into the bedroom where my husband was still asleep.  He opened his eyes half an inch and I said "my boyfriend just called me!"

It was a trip; I haven't heard his voice since 1996, and he sounded exactly the same.  I went to work in a daze, and called back that evening.  I got his voicemail, and left a message that went something like this:

"Hi Mark, this is J calling you back.  You're probably asleep, or just not in your office.  Thanks so much for calling, I'm sorry I missed it.  It's so crazy to hear your voice on my voicemail, I'm pretty sure the last time I heard your voice or saw you was fifteen years ago.  I guess I'll try calling during the day, or - here's my cell phone number, I have my cell phone with me most of the time.  Hope to talk to you soon, and I hope everything is going well out there."

Last night, as I left work and walked to the bus stop to catch the #92 to the Hopleaf, I noticed I had a message from area code 518 from a couple minutes earlier.  It was Mark again.  I called back, and he picked up the phone.

"Mark?"  I said.
"Yes?"
"This is J,"
"Get out of town!"

We spoke for the entire bus ride, and continued our conversation as I stood outside the Hopleaf waiting for my husband.  And that, dear readers, is how I came to have a conversation with my high school boyfriend, who I haven't spoken to in 15 years, minutes before reading a story about him to a live audience.  (I didn't tell him that last part).

No wonder I can't sleep.

Mortified!

Tonight I had the distinct honor of reading at Mortified Chicago, a reading series in which willing participants get onstage and read ephemera from their youth.  It was fantastic/horrible, and really funny, and great to hear everyone's horrible/ fabulous stories.  Here's mine:

My name is J.P. - in 1988 I was 16 going on 17 yrs old -- I was in my junior year at a boarding school in Poughkeepsie, New York, I’d transferred out of regular high school after the 9^th grade because I was getting really terrible grades.  In April of that year, I met a boy named Mick, who lived in Brooklyn, where I lived when I wasn’t at boarding school during the week.  On our first date we saw the Spike Lee film “School Daze,” and once, when we were talking on the phone, he played Pink Floyd’s “Wish you were here” to me on the guitar, it was very tortured and romantic.

April 30th, 1988.

I have never lived so much in one weekend.  I have never laughed so much, I’ve never talked so much, maybe I’ve cried as much but not like this.  Like this it’s like a shooting star came by and left a silver dust in my eyes.

I know I am bleeding, but I am a woman, and a woman is most a woman when she bleeds.  I was bleeding when it started too.  (Aside - for the men in the audience, this means we dated for approximately 28 days)

And where did all those lights come from?  Did god put them there?  What’s so scary about the cornfield anyway? 

I must confess, I have no shame.  It’s true; it’s shameful how much shame I don’t keep inside.  It was I that insisted on knowing all about Mick’s wet dreams.

June 20, 1988

Mick is everywhere.  I ran into him five times yesterday and once today.  Can't he stay in his own neighborhood?  Every time I see him he's on 7th avenue.  Why?  I mean, it would be one thing if I was on Eastern Parkway when I saw him, but all 7 times I've seen him in the past 3 days it's been right here on 7th avenue.  Twice I saw him right across the street.  What's he trying to prove?  Okay, maybe I'm getting a little carried away.  But you know he's probably saying to all his friends "I wish she'd stop following me."  That boy is too much.  I'm wondering if he's part of what's been going on with the phones lately.  Playing with fire.  I just don't get it.

June 24, 1988

The cigarette ashes on my windowsill look like bird shit.  Somebody calls your fucking name.  FUCK YOU you're everywhere.  Yeah, don't think I didn't see you duck into Lisa Polanski (a clothing store) what were you doing, trying on women's clothes?  Jesus, you really piss me off sometimes.  "Hey everybody, its Mick the dick."  "Have you ever been Micked over?"

June 28, 1988

I'm having a dilemma - Mick has my earring with him and I'm not sure I want it back.  He's kind of scummy - but at the same time he's my friend.  He's going after Melissa Wolf, and he's already gotten Robin.  I feel like I'm just another slave of his harem.  I mean, how much would it prove if I got my earring back? 

This is really ill - he's going for both Melissas (there were two of them) and Robin.  Somebody has to castrate him quick.  Some of us have more control over our hormones than others.

I then wrote the following letter to Mick, but I didn’t just send it to Mick, I read it to him. To his face.

June 28, 1988

As you may or may not have noticed, I've been bitchy to you on and off.  And it's because, well, I'm getting offended at some of your behavior.  And by this, yes, I mean your "going from woman to woman like the honey bee goes from flower to flower".  It's really hard for me to watch you because I know I would never let anyone treat me that way, but it's very hard for me to separate me from them.  I mean, I know that I wasn't treated like that but I feel like I'm just like another girl and it makes me feel so cheap.  And I know I can't ask you to stop, but as a friend I'm asking you to please stop and think about what you're doing because even if you think that what you're doing isn't affecting anyone, you're wrong.  It's affecting me, and it's affecting the general atmosphere of things, and it's affecting other people.  And it's turning me into a dissing machine.  I feel like I have to be rude to you to maintain that I'm not one of them.  And being rude doesn't really help anything, it just makes things unpleasant.  So if you could just stop and think about what you're doing, or something, I'd really appreciate it.

July 21, 1988

Why don't I just start dating Claus Von Bulow?

So I kept on obsessing about Mick – and I continued to be a terrible student, and ended up having to go to summer school.  And over the course of the summer I read "Catcher in the Rye".  And it really made an impression on me – I even quoted it on my senior yearbook page with the line “I always pick a gorgeous time to fall over a suitcase or something.”   I wrote this journal entry mere hours after finishing the book, entirely in the voice of Holden Caulfield.

August 9, 1988

So I’m sitting here reading this book about some kid who lives in New York City and goes to boarding school and totally fucked up his junior year, among other things.  And I’m sitting there saying “Jesus this book is about me.”  I mean it really was.  And then I got really depressed like I do sometimes when I think too much about what’s gonna happen to me later on and stuff, so I took my cigarettes and went for a walk.

Now I’m not a smoker, it’s just that I smoke.  Believe me there’s a difference.  A smoker will buy a pack of cigarettes every day.  I’ll buy a pack of cigarettes and stash them away in a drawer for three months before I touch them.  This particular pack was almost finished, I bought it in June.  I never smoke them in public though, for a couple of reasons.  First of all, I’d ruin my priceless angel image that I seem to build for myself whether I like it or not, and everybody’d think I was a smoker, which I’m not, like I said I just smoke.  The second and most important reason I don’t smoke in public is that this particular pack of cigarettes I had, they’re really just about the most retarded cigarettes you’ve ever seen in your life.  Capris.  I got them cause I wanted to see how thin they were.  Jesus, if you’re going to smoke a cigarette, smoke a real cigarette, not one of these fancy thin Capri bullshits.  It’s embarrassing if people just see them in my drawer, you know, who the hell smokes Capris? 

So anyway, I grabbed my jacket and my cigarettes and went for a walk.  I couldn’t believe how late it was.  It was 3:30 when I looked at the lounge clock, and there were still people sitting around the lounge.

“Hi Jess,” my roommate said.

“Hi,” I had to say something, even though I really didn’t feel like it.

“Are you going to see CSN?” Rajiv asked me.  (That stands for Crosby, Stills and Nash.) 

“Yeah,” I said.

“You got a ticket?”

“Yeah, kind of,”

“Did you charge it?”

“Yeah.”

“You think you could charge me one?”

“Well, Allison charged it for me,”

“Oh.”

I left the lounge and walked outside.  I couldn’t help it but all of a sudden I started to cry, and I don’t cry too easy.  At least not here.  It’s like I have to put up my defense and all, I know that sounds awful, but you have to do that around here.  I’m not saying it’s a bad place or anything, but still I wouldn’t want to walk around the halls crying.

So I go outside and I’m crying and I light one of my goddamn capris.  I figure as long as I’ve got them I might as well smoke them.  It’d be a waste to throw em out, even if they are retarded.

So I take in a huge breath of smoke and exhale.  Things got a little dizzier soon, cause I have a very low resistance to cigarettes.  I could take two drags off a cigarette and you’d think I was fucking drunk, I swear.  I start walking crooked and shit, it’s a riot.  It’s also another reason I don’t smoke in public.

So I’m walking along, just letting the tears come out and smoking a goddamn Capri cigarette, and there’s nobody out on account of its 3:30 in the morning.  I was a little scared, I’ll admit that, but I needed to get out.

So I’m thinking to myself "my God this book is about me."  And it really made me depressed because it really was, and it really made me think about stuff.

So I’m thinking and all of a sudden I start thinking about Mick.  Now Mick is this jerk I used to run around with for a while, and whenever I’m in trouble I seem to think about him.  And I was thinking about all the crazy things he did.  Like one time when we had to dress up formal.  Now you’ve gotta understand, Mick is always dressed up, so when we had to dress up formal, I thought “Jesus, how’s he gonna get any more dressed up?”  Well you know what he did?  He showed up in red polka dotted (boxer) shorts.  It killed me.

Or the time I was wearing my Amnesty shirt with the dancer on it and he said “Why’s you’re goddamn pizza bleeding?”  And I guess the dancer did look a little like a pizza, but I’d never noticed it.  That killed me too.

So I kept thinking and I thought how absolutely pathetic I am sometimes.  I mean, he was just a kid right?  So why do I think about him every time I’m in trouble?  I don’t know.  I never understand men.

So then I sit down and I’m not crying anymore, and I’m on my second cigarette.  And I think to myself “Jess, you know you’re probably just overreacting.”  I’m good at that, it’s my specialty.  I always get overemotional when I’ve stayed up too late or something, I’m like a little kid that way, it’s pathetic.  So I’m thinking that I should probably just go to bed and sleep it off.  So I go back and it’s 4 already, so I head for bed.  And all of a sudden I’m so tired I couldn’t do anything if you paid me to.

Really, so I don’t even bother washing my face or anything, I just take my lenses out.  I don’t even bother cleaning them, and I take my shorts and my socks off and I get into bed.  I’ve never slept so hard in my goddamn life I swear.

You never know what a good piece of reading can do to you.  It’s kinda dangerous sometimes. 

Insomnia

at Massmouth last month in Boston, where I was judged harshly for going off topic. Photo by Paula H.S. Junn. 
I've kind of been burning the candle at both ends, if working in a gym and making appearances at local storytelling venues can be considered burning the candle at both ends.  I'm a featured reader this Thursday at Story Club, and I couldn't sleep because I was thinking about what to read.  Meanwhile, I've been ignoring this blog.  I thought I'd stop in and say "hi", and post this goofy picture of me telling my UTI story to a Boston audience.  While the judges at Massmouth gave me a bad score, the audience responded really well.  At the intermission - when all the women lined up for the ladies room, I got more than one "you were robbed, I don't know why the judges did what they did!"  Which was hilarious, considering it was coming from women who were waiting in line to pee  Even from my seat on the stage (it was standing room only, and people were encouraged to sit onstage if there weren't any actual seats left), I got a couple of mouthed "you were great!"s from women sitting in the front row right after my bad score was unceremoniously written in black marker on a sheet of paper on the back wall.  Hooray for the ladies at Massmouth!  Boo for the judges!  Ha!


Okay, more soon I promise, hope you all slept well.

I won The Moth Storyslam!!!

I took my pee story to the Moth tonight at Martyrs for the "Love Hurts" theme and won!!!!  I practiced it on Sunday in Boston, where I was visiting family, at a local storytelling series called Massmouth.  The theme was "The Beast," and I was pretty severely penalized for going off topic, I came in second to last.  I was hoping the judges would include my UTI story under the rubric of "the beast within," but they were far more literal with the theme than I'd anticipated.  When it was over, I realized I could have changed a couple lines to include phrases like "microscopic beasts," but it was too late.  No matter though, I flew home to Chicago this afternoon, got home at 5:45, left the house at 6:15 so I could make it to the Moth, and won!!!!  I'm stunned and giddy.

Urine, A Love Story

You may recognize this one, it's one I dusted off and made some improvements to, and brought with me to last night's Story Club.  Dana Norris, the woman who runs Story Club, told me I should tighten it up, get it down to 5 minutes, and bring it to the Moth later this month where the theme is "love hurts".  I haven't gone to the Moth since it first came to Chicago and was jam packed, and put my name in the hat but never got called up on stage.  The Moth is a little more intimidating that your usual reading: you only get 5 minutes, you're not allowed to bring notes onstage with you, you get judged by a panel and somebody wins, and  you have to put your name in a hat and don't know until they call your name if you're getting a chance to read.  I've been told that the Moth has slowed down since it's Chicago inaugural, and isn't quite as packed or competitive as it used to be, and have been meaning to check it out.  I'll have to spend the next couple weeks working on this, and maybe I'll get a chance to do the Moth.  Here, for your reading pleasure, is my pseudo-Valentine's day story:

Urine, A Love Story

My sister called me from Boston to ask me about the man I’d just started seeing, and during the course of our conversation I happened to mention the strange sensation I felt when I peed. A UTI veteran, (that’s urinary tract infection for those of you not in the know), she told me to go to the closest health food store and buy a bottle of Lakewood 100% cranberry juice - not cranberry juice cocktail, but 100% cranberry juice. No added water, no sugar, tart enough to turn my mouth inside out and sour enough to give me a stomach ache. She said that should help. We continued talking and when I described the strange pressure I felt on urinating she said “oh girl, if you’re feeling pressure when you pee, it’s too late for cranberry juice. You get off the phone and you go to the doctor. Now!”

I was taken aback by the tone in her voice, it was one she reserved for delivering really, really bad news, like when someone died or something valuable caught on fire. I was scared; really scared. The next time I peed it felt like someone was stabbing me in the urethra with a barbecue skewer, and when I looked into the toilet bowl it wasn’t yellow - it was red.

I considered my options: the closest emergency room was a block away, but I couldn't walk a block, it hurt too much. Everything hurt too much; there wasn't a position I could stand, sit or lie down in that didn't hurt. I needed someone to drive me. My roommate had a car but she was stoned, and didn't seem terribly alarmed by my situation. The only other person I knew who had a car was the guy I had just started seeing. I calmed down as much as I could before dialing his number. I don't think he even said "hello" before I burst in with “I’m bleeding, I have to get to a doctor, NOW!”
“Where are you bleeding from?” he asked. I hesitated, we had only been seeing each other for a couple weeks, he had just gotten out of a long term relationship and wasn’t ready to commit to anything serious, but I really liked him and was trying so hard not to like him too much, and this was way too intimate a conversation to be having with him at this stage in our relationship but my urethra was on fire and I couldn't think of a pretty, alluring way to say it: “When I pee,” I blurted, “blood comes out when I pee!”

He drove me to Thorek hospital on Montrose and Broadway, a place I’d heard vague rumors about, but had never actually seen the inside of.  I walked up to the receptionist and said “I think I have a urinary tract infection, when I pee blood comes out!” She told me to take a seat and fill out some paperwork. I remained standing, not that it helped stop the pain.

At the time I was a heavy watcher of the NBC series ER, and I imagined that I’d be waiting for hours as people with shotgun and stab wounds were wheeled in on stretchers, surrounded by fast talking medics, maybe Dr. John Carter himself would be pumping furiously on their chests in an effort to save their lives, but the reality was much different - I was the only one in the ER that night, their biggest emergency was that blood was coming out of my pee hole.

I was seen by a doctor, and had to produce a sample. I never truly appreciated just what a wonderful thing it is to urinate without pain, what a wonderful, magical thing it is to pull down my pants, sit on a toilet, and let the urine flow while my mind wanders until that simple act of voiding made me do the silent scream - have you ever done the silent scream? I sat on the ER toilet with a plastic cup between my legs, eyes squinched closed and mouth wide open, silently screaming as a tiny river of red daggers stabbed their way out of me.

This was not how I’d imagined things would progress with my new man.

The doctor examined my bloody discharge, and wrote a prescription. My boyfriend - I mean the guy I was seeing, drove me to a 24 hour pharmacy to get the prescription filled, and took me back home. Back in the apartment my roommate was stoned and watching loud TV, and barely acknowledged my presence. She kept the TV on all night, turning it off somewhere around 6 a.m. At 6:30 my alarm went off. I had a temp job to get to, and I needed the money more than I needed the sleep. I took a shower, clothed myself, and in a haze made my way to an office building near Union Station. I looked like hell, but nobody seemed to notice. It was a fairly quiet day, and I passed the time drinking huge quantities of water and visiting the ladies room, where I slammed the sides of the stall with my hands and silently screamed every single time.

After an eternity of watching the clock, 5pm blessedly arrived. I made the trek back to my apartment, opened the door, and found my roommate on the couch in the same position she’d been in the night before, stoned and reclining on the sofa, watching loud TV next to the guy I was seeing. I barely said a word to either of them, closing myself into my bedroom and curling up onto the twin futon mattress on the floor. I heard a soft knock; it was the guy I was seeing. He entered the room quietly, removed his shoes, climbed under the sheets, put his arm around me, and stayed there until I fell asleep.  Neither of us could think much beyond the next morning, and if we could have seen into the future, we would have seen other apartments, roommates, and emergencies, some better and some worse than the ones we were in the thick of at that moment, but if either of us knew that we were destined, five years later, to become married, neither of us showed it.  I can’t say that that was the moment when I knew I’d be with him for the rest of my life, but something had changed.  Not long afterward, a friend of his told me that he’d stopped referring to me as “the girl I’m seeing,” and replaced that ungainly phrase with the more elegant “my girlfriend.”  I stopped trying not to like him so much, and waited to see what would happen next.

Now if you'll excuse me, I think I have to find the restroom.

The Glamorous Life - read tonight at Story Lab Chicago

I read this tonight at a brand new reading series called Story Lab Chicago, and I had a fantastic time.  I've never gotten a reaction like that from an audience, and there was a little piece of me that never wanted to leave the Black Rock.  I ordered another beer and hung around for a while, enjoying the moment.  Tomorrow is just another day, but tonight was a blast, thanks!

The Glamorous Life

By nine a.m., at work, I’ve seen seventeen naked bodies, most of them belonging to ageing Korean women who spend the early morning in the pool doing water aerobics, and seem to have a cultural penchant for spending time together in the buff.  They drape towels over the chairs near a row of sinks in the women’s locker room, where they sit in the altogether, blow drying their hair in front of the mirrors and speaking in their native tongue in energetic staccato bursts.  I can’t say that seeing people naked has ever been a workplace hazard for me.  I consider which is weirder: the possibility that my coworkers might see me naked some day, or that I might see them naked someday.  My boss is a very fit, very socially awkward woman who reminds me of Jane Lynch's character on Glee, only she's not nearly as funny, nor as hot.  I don't think I want to see her naked.  

One of my first assignments at this job was to man a table outside the gym and hand out apples to people who had walked a mile for an event called the Apple Walk.  I’m no monument to justice; I distributed fruit regardless of whether people actually walked a mile.  I used to write human interest stories about women who gained economic stability raising guinea pigs in Peru, and grant proposals for girls’ education projects in Tanzania, among other things, for an international humanitarian aid organization.  Then I lost my job in the bad economy, and took advantage of the time off by traveling and volunteering while I looked for work.  I accepted a job doing administrative work in a gym because it was the only job that was offered to me after an entire year of submitting resumes, going on interviews, and collecting rejections.  After a while I began to expect rejection, and it was bad for my head; if nothing else, this job would give me a break from it.  I tell myself it’s what I’m doing for now, to get by, to get off unemployment, and for the health insurance.  

It’s been eight months though, which is apparently long enough for Stoil Stoilov, the tiny Russian man who maintains the gym equipment, to wink at me when we cross paths.  Loosely translated, his name means Stoil of Stoil.  In addition to maintaining equipment, Stoil is a bodybuilder, and has all his blue jeans taken in to fit his muscular, froglike physique.  He has them split down the center seam, the waist pulled in a couple inches, and then sewn back together.  He doesn’t bother to have the back pockets moved though, so the final product creates the visual effect of the back pockets coming together at an angle and disappearing into his ass crack.  I think he does this on purpose to direct attention to his ass, which is small and very tight.  Most of our interactions revolve around the spreadsheets that I create so he can keep track of his maintenance schedule; he seems to be just as impressed by my computer skills as I am with his ability to lift heavy things.  He once told me, his chest swelling with pride, or maybe it was just muscle mass: “I’m like St. Peter; I have the keys to everything.”  

My working life is filled with small indignities: eating cafeteria food, getting paid by the hour, wrestling with a time clock that only counts ten times an hour – so if I clock in at 9:03, I don’t start getting paid until 9:06.  This is somewhat mitigated by the fact that I have a ten minute commute, I don’t have to get dressed up for work – or even shower, and my ass has gotten 6% smaller.  

Sometimes I even have fun – my best friend at work is a 67 year-old woman named Lois, who was a dancer before she started working here.  We go to the cafeteria together to buy our institutional lunches, she lets me practice reading my stories out loud to her, and she keeps me updated on her husband who’s almost ten years younger than she is which is just scandalous.  She’s in charge of the arthritis program, and heads an annual event called National Senior Health and Fitness day, where she patrols baskets of snacks and goody bags in the lobby to make sure that only old people are getting free stuff, and that nobody gets seconds.

One of my coworkers is an enormous wall of a man named Fred, who wears t-shirts with the sides cut out so everyone can see the dragon tattoo that runs down his side, and to show off his defined musculature.  My interactions with him were limited to times when I couldn’t reach something and was too lazy to go find a step stool.  That changed the day he came to work wearing a ladies’ holiday sweater with an appliquéd teddy bear on it.  It had a very feminine, delicately scalloped neckline, and he wore it with a black turtleneck underneath, which for some reason made it even funnier.  He walked into my work area dressed like that and said “hey has anyone looked at Caitlin’s stocking?”  I knew immediately what he was referring to – for the holidays, every staff member has a miniature stocking with their name written in bubble paint.  It was my job to make stockings for staff that didn't already have one this year, and the rest came from a plastic storage bin, and were presumably made by my predecessor.  Caitlin’s stocking had a candle rendered in glue and glitter, but it looked like something else.  I looked my enormous, sweater-wearing coworker in the eye and said “I think you and I are on the same wavelength here.” At this he started laughing, which I took as a cue to continue.  “It’s um… it looks there’s a cock and balls on Caitlin’s stocking.”   “Yeah I showed it to her,” he said, and in a pitch-perfect imitation of Caitlin’s voice, dramatically reenacted the moment: “why what’s on it? Oh my god!”  He told all of Caitlin’s clients about it, and for weeks, people came up to her and said: “I saw your stocking.”  

So, I can put Stoil, Lois, and Fred in the good column when I make my list of pros and cons of this job; I've had worse.  There was the job working for a hulk of a boss at an ad sales company who asked me, on Ash Wednesday, when “my holiday” was – meaning… you know, Passover, only he didn’t want to come right out and say it.  He was gigantic, six foot five, easily three hundred pounds; he liked to bully people to get his way, and had breath that smelled like rotting cabbage.  My male coworkers said he’d recognize their shoes in the men’s room stalls, and start talking to them about clients while they were taking a crap.  

Then there was the woman at a realtor’s association who used an entire sheet of legal paper to write the sentence: “I’m having an emergency,” and left the note in my cubicle – which was located ten feet from her office.  “What kind of emergency,” I asked.  “I tried to make coffee,” she said, “and water went everywhere. I don’t know what I should do.”  Later I discovered that she never read her emails, never even opened her Outlook program, because, she said, it was “too overwhelming.”  Once, while we were meeting, her phone rang and she let it go to voicemail.  Afterwards she looked at the blinking phone message indicator with bewilderment.  “I didn’t even hear the phone ring, did you?” She asked.  

And I once had a short-lived job assisting a training program for nurses who work in senior care.  At the first and only training that I took part in, I refused to participate in an exercise that involved taking an adult diaper into the bathroom, running the absorbent center under a faucet, pulling down my pants, affixing the damp diaper to my body, and wearing it under my clothes for the rest of the afternoon as part of a sensitivity training.  There are some things that you don’t have to experience firsthand in order to know that they suck.  It seemed more like a sorority hazing than sensitivity training to me, and if pressed, I was prepared to tell the instructor that my previous job was at an organization that worked to eliminate child abuse, but nobody ever held a lit cigar to my arm as part of a sensitivity training.  

At the gym, there are TVs around the facility that play a loop of music videos, and lately Sheila E.’s “The Glamorous Life” has been in heavy rotation.  It’s been a while since I’ve heard that song, and I’d like to take a moment to share some of the lyrics:

She wears a long fur coat of mink
Even in the summer time
Everybody knows from the coy little wink
The girl's got a lot on her mind

She's got big thoughts, big dreams
And a big brown Mercedes sedan
What I think this girl
She really wants
Is to be in love with a man

She wants to lead the Glamorous Life
She don't need a man's touch
She wants to lead the Glamorous Life
Without love
It ain't much, it ain't much

I’m not quite sure if Shelia is saying that money is all you need, or that love is all you need, but sometimes I like to pretend that I’m the girl in the song that everybody knows from the coy little wink has lot on her mind.  I’m not really all that interested in a big brown Mercedes sedan, but I’m down with big thoughts and big dreams.  And I may run the risk of seeing my boss naked someday, but for now, anyway, this is about as glamorous as it gets.  Until further notice, I’ll be at the gym, hanging out with Stoil, Lois, and Fred.

You guys are SO cutting edge!

Because you've been reading me since forever, and now I'm in this thing next week: Story Lab Chicago.  I'll post my story after I've read it next Wednesday.  Tee hee!