Work Indiscretions
I’m emotionally and mentally peach fuzz and cannot make decisions for myself beyond who to hit on, so it’s helpful to have a twin sister willing to advise me on such matters as What To Have For Lunch, Should I Wear My White Vee Or My Blue Vee, and Is It Cool To Lie On My Resume? I’m generally willing to listen to her, but the resume thing, which she recommends against, just isn’t possible. As I mentioned in a previous post, my resume is long and thin, like Tyra in 1996, but without a rib cage. I’ve had 26 jobs since entering the work force ten years ago, which averages to 2.6 a year, and although this may be slightly higher than average, I don’t think it’s wholly unacceptable.
Unfortunately, the 23 jobs don’t account for the long periods of unemployment in between. In Portland, for instance, I was hired to “manage” a coffee shack.—which actually was a shack, but a Range Rover and surgeon’s salary shack, with maple counters and track lighting and a $10,000 espresso machine. The first sign that this might not have been the most busty business plan was that I wrecked my bike on the way to the interview and showed up with elbows and knees painted in fresh blood. And they still hired me. Also, the company was called Java Sutra and the main selling point was that the coffee was infused with an Andean aphrodisiac called maca, which, according to God-like Wikipedia, “was eaten by Inca imperial warriors before battles. Their legendary strength was allegedly imparted by the preparatory consumption of copious amounts of maca, fueling formidable warriors. After a city was conquered, the women had to be protected from the Inca warriors, as they became ambitiously virile from eating such quantities of maca.” Good in theory, right? But do you really want blue balls with your morning hotdish? We were in business for three months.
Getting laid off didn’t really bother me both because I’d been fired from so many jobs already that it seemed like a backhanded compliment, and unemployment insurance left me time to do whatever I pleased. What I pleased was ride my bike and do crosswords and invest the dole in liver damage. At the end of happy hour, I would run home to shower off the smell of booze and smoke, clean my house like an Ecudorian line cook, and pull out job applications or my GRE study guide so it looked like I had a productive day when my girlfriend got home from actually having a productive day.
I eventually found a job scooping gelato for wailing, syrupy seven-year-olds and their attractive but totally un-fantasystic mothers, but this only lasted for a month or so before I some Real Bad Shit happened, which I’m not going to get into cause it’ll take the time I’d like to spend catching up on LiLo and Sam, but I will tell you that as soon as you are punched in the face by a partner, you become a victim, which is sort of like Catholics and their We’ll Forget About The Condoms For A Small Donation rule: convenient.
This isn’t to say that my entire life in Portland was full of booze and memory loss (although most of it was). I also interned at a gay rights non-profit, where I spent most of my time taking walks along with river with the bear accountant with the rocket ship tattoo and testing my gaydar on the bike messengers who worked in the building. The one time I went to Friday happy hour with the staff, I got so drunk that I told the outreach coordinator’s husband that he should get a manicure cause his hands were seriously calloused before realizing he was in a wheelchair and his hands were constantly pushing rubber. Actually, I already knew he was in a wheelchair, but I said it anyway. And when my girlfriend came to pick me up, I was like, “Babe. You’re tired. Just go home. I’ll get a ride in time for dinner. I love you.,” so I could smoke cigarettes without judgment. I later rode home with my boss, who started crying in the car because she had gotten divorced approximately six minutes before, and I was all, “Hey, let’s party! I’ve got Adderall in my bag!” The non-profit and I went our separate ways soon after—they to make political strides and me to another four internships, seven jobs, and zero references.
