Betsy Shebang - Column for 3/5

Chapter 1

As things get farther away, I mostly remember them one picture at a time, like a slide show. That’s how all of this comes together, so that’s where I’ll start.

My name’s Toby.

This is the list of career paths I considered when I was a kid. I changed my mind a lot, so some things are on there twice.

Astronaut
Fireman
Baseball Player
Scientist
Hero
Astronaut
Astronaut / Fireman
Performing Mathematician
Revolutionary Statesman
Baseball Player
President
Astrophysicist / Chef
Beloved College Professor
Film Writer / Director
Songwriter / Comedian
Songwriter / Screenwriter / Director
Exotic Dancer / Statesman
Musician / Roller Coaster Designer
Writer / Singer / Comedian / President
Exotic Dancer / Revolutionary Statesman
Drama Therapist / Film Critic

 Next slide. This is Portland, Oregon. I moved here to go to college, where I majored in Creative Writing and Theater Arts. I was totally focussed during school and graduated in only four years.

Next slide. This is my father. He assured me that professional writers never study writing in college, and that I should become an expert in something of general interest, and do my writing about that. Six years later he told me he’d spent his whole life wanting to be a writer but he got into paper product trade publications because that’s where the money was.

Next slide. This is the rusty brown 1977 VW Rabbit I bought in college with seven hundred dollars I borrowed from my parents. I call her “Freddie”, after Freddie Mercury, and the frog from the New Zoo Revue. Freddie’s currently having starter problems, and when I open the hatch door in the back I have to prop it up with the aluminum baseball bat I’ve had since I was ten, but my affection for this car is unmitigated. Except for the smell of the carpets, which reek, and the way rainwater runs over the instrument panel and gathers in a lake on the floor.

Next slide. This is my parents’ house in Pelham, Oregon, the small town where I grew up and discovered that not all high school teachers know what they’re doing.

Next slide. This is Eugene Cleveland. I sort of knew him growing up, and we went to college together. After college I stayed in Portland and rented a room from his grandmother, who’s insane, and that’s when I started writing.

Next slide. This is Clarendon, Idaho. I moved here after deciding that other people were a terrible distraction and I needed to be alone to focus on my writing.

Next slide. This is Seattle, Washington. I moved here three months later, after I ran out of money and survived a bout of hyperactive anemic depression, which I’m told strikes three of every two hundred people, but most people have never even heard of it.

Actually (shuffle back three), first I moved back to Pelham, which was a big mistake. Then (go forward three) I moved to Seattle, so I could focus on my writing.

Next slide. This is Mel. We’re not like best, best friends, but she’s the best friend I have in Seattle.

Next. This is Mel’s boyfriend Chad. We’ve never met, because he lives in Sacramento.

Next slide…here's my housemate Peggy, whom I really want to have sex with. When I was ten I'd have been too shy to admit that; now I recognize that we're lucky to have any motivation in life at all, so if it's the possibility of having sex with my housemate Peggy that makes me get out of bed in the morning, or keeps me in bed an extra ten minutes, then I might as well accept that that's what life is: those moments pining for Peggy. Plus, other stuff.

Next slide. This is the first script I ever sold. It’s for an episode of Delivery Dog, which was a syndicated sitcom about a dog with a paper route. It was cancelled as they were filming the second season because the star of the show was hit by a truck. Their check bounced and I took it as a sign that I should concentrate on films.

I’ve done other freelance writing too, including several movie reviews for an Internet thing that paid by the word. They fired me when I hated fourteen out of fourteen of the crappy movies they assigned me to review and again, I took it as a sign.

Next slide. Here's a list of all the occupations I've actually had in my life:

Newspaper Delivery Carrier
Newspaper Inserter
Newspaper Inserting Crew Foreman
Food Service Cashier
Retail Merchandising Assistant
Microfilming Clerk
Pizza Delivery Driver
Freelance Television Writer / Telemarketer
Telephone Support Representative
Medical Experiment Subject
Temporary Interim Administrative Records Clerk
Temporary Assistant Personnel Data Coordinator

 My current job title is Temporary Assistant Personnel Data Coordinator for Dunham Harrison Incorporated, which means I do all those tasks that require both the intelligence to do the job right and the spinelessness required to do the job at all.

I’ve been temping here for two and a half years. I accepted three days’ work and thirty months later I’m still here. My colleagues joke about having busy lives, and then they spend every lunch break talking about the stock options they’re hoping to have someday. The company has had money problems – my secret hope is that they’ll get a new kind of bankruptcy named after them - yet they continue to move our offices back and forth between different floors of the same three buildings, as if they’re hiding us from the mob. The irony is that I know this office could vanish off the face of the Earth tomorrow and nobody outside the building would notice. Three entire companies have forgotten we exist after they filed lawsuits against us. The lobby is staffed by security guards, whose job is apparently to prevent Dunham & Harrison employees from smuggling self-esteem into the building. I tell myself I stay here because it keeps my options open.

When I’m at work I tend to lose track of what I'm supposed to be doing. Like, in the middle of the day I'll suddenly realize I've left the building and I can't remember why, or I'm in a meeting and I'm not supposed to be there - that kinda thing. Today I spent forty minutes standing in the supply closet trying to remember what I'd gone there to get. Usually I'd just go back to my desk and sit down and suddenly I'd remember what it was I needed, but that ritual had grown humiliating and for some reason today I was determined to stand in front of the closet waiting to remember what it was I thought I needed.

It was then that I had what I later realized was my first out-of-body experience. I looked at the supply closet and I saw all the possibilities of life open before me, all sitting there on the shelves, waiting for anybody in the department to sneak away from their desks and take as much as they wanted. The boxes of pens and tape vanished, and instead I saw…well, I saw women, relaxing on the shelves. There were musical instruments, trays of food, gardens of flowers, sports equipment, sex toys, clothes, music, books, more women, all alluring and peaceful - every delicious thing in life, all stacked where the staples and paper clips were supposed to be. I’d shrunk to a tiny size, or my eyes had learned to magnify the world and study it as if every glory in sight were inches away. All the food, hot or cold, was steaming, floating before me, smelling like all awful deliciousness. It all did. Everything on the shelves had the aroma of the path mistakenly avoided, the fantasy garden never discovered, the modest height that would never be reached.


There was a commotion. I didn't know how long I'd been staring at the office supplies. I heard a rumble of voices, or a weird silence, or something. The normal workplace rhythms had been interrupted and a crowd had gathered by the mailboxes in the break room.

A wave of layoffs had come. Two thirds of our department would be gone the next day. People confusedly circled the floor; some of the women were crying. Most of them stumbled as they walked, like sailors on a ship’s deck, between tidal waves. Everything happened in a kind of slow motion.

Maybe it was just me. The rest of the day felt like a long, slow Earthquake. Nobody got any work done, yet nobody left. After half an hour the chitchat grew louder and the gathering looked like a party; but several of the faces were still anguished, and for some reason I found it sickening to watch. It was an otherworldly combination of prison break and coffee break, the stone walls collapsing and the inmates standing on the rubble, chatting about what they were going to do when they got out. “RUN!” I kept thinking. They’ll change their minds!!”

There was no notice in my mailbox, but I wasn’t officially an employee. I found my boss Susan in her office, probably avoiding those laid off employees who already didn’t like her. I don’t know what their problem is. She and I get along fine.

“So, everybody’s been laid off?” I said.

“A lot of people, unfortunately. Not everybody.”

“So, I presume I’m not expected back on Monday?”

“Toby, sit down.” I did.

“Here’s the deal,” she said. “I’d like you to come back Monday, and keep coming back. You’re our expert on the database. We’re gonna need that now more than ever.”

“Okay.”

“Problem is, there are some sticky issues with you still officially being a temp. So if you could – if you wouldn’t mind - I’d appreciate it if you could…avoid discussing with anybody the fact that you’ll still be here.”

“Okay.”

“Thanks. Couldn’t do it without you.” She smiled.

“Okay,” I said. I waved goodbye, retrieved my backpack from my desk and headed for the stairs instead of the elevator, hoping to figure out how I felt about all of this before I returned to work on Monday. When I stepped out of the building a few minutes later, I imagined that I was leaving for good. I spent the weekend angry that I would still be working there and relieved that I wouldn’t have to find another job.

That weekend I was busy with other things, though, and by Monday morning I’d sorta forgotten everything had happened. Everyone still at work walked as though they were wearing invisible backpacks filled with lead, and they all spoke with a mixture of weird politeness and hostility, but by Tuesday things were pretty much back to normal. The herd had been thinned and the cattle had returned to their grazing.


I still wake up with my head on my desk, the phone receiver clutched in my hand like a suicide weapon, the voicemail menu repeating hypnotically, all just like before. The sleep is strangely restful, too, which I always find surprising. I can’t sleep at home; at work, there’s nothing in the world I want to do more.


Tuesday afternoon Clive knocked on my cubicle. He’s a short guy, in his early forties and probably gay, I guess. He seems like the kind of guy who could be straight or gay and whatever he was, he’d be the last one to know about it. Clive is a fountain of worthless information. He’s always smiling, which is maddening. Clive is a source of moral conflict for me. When I was a kid and the other kids felt an obligation to tease me and push me to the bottom of some imaginary pecking order, it just seemed cruel and senseless. Since I met Clive, I understand.

Today Clive wanted to talk. “So, have you seen where you’re going to be sitting in the new building?” He was giddy with excitement.

“Uh…no.”

“They’ve posted the plans in the break room.”

“Cool.”

“So are you excited about the move?”

“Uh…sure.”

“I hear there’ll be brand new carpets!”

“Mmm.”

“Oh, you haven’t closed the old fiscal year in the database, have you?”

“No – probably tomorrow.”

“Okay. I’ll have to get some reports first. This afternoon okay?”

“Sure." I said. "Hey, have you seen Tracy today?”

“No, she was one of those laid off.” Clive gave one of those bad-news smiles.

“Is Bryce still around?”

“Oh, yeah. They’ll never get rid of him.” He half-whispered the last few words, then raised his voice again. “Good morning, Bryce!” Clive said as Bryce’s head appeared from behind the adjecent cubicle wall.

Bryce Kowalczyk is the floor supervisor. He dresses is a shirt and tie but otherwise looks like he’s still angry at his dead parents. He walks like a man neck-deep in cold sewage, eager to blame you for putting him there.

"Yeah, hi." Bryce grimaced back. Clive waved to me and departed.

Bryce turned to me. "Toby, you're the expert on the fiscal database, correct?"

"Well, I've been trying to contact Linette Pond with a few questions, but she seems to like being out of the loop now. So yeah, it's me."

Bryce's face was perfectly unchanged. "Okay, good. Randy is going to need a backup of the data file for the past fiscal year from before the closure. Very important."

"Absolutely."

"Good man. What's that thing on your monitor?"

It took me a second to recognize he'd changed the subject. "My bendable?" My daffy duck toy. My alter ego. My totem.

Bryce lifted his chin toward my toy. "That shouldn't be there. We got directors on this floor."

I stuffed Daffy into my backpack as Bryce plodded back to his office.


I can't sleep nights anymore. I'm exhausted all day, and when I get home I try to write and I wind up spending all day doing something else that doesn't get done. I'll clean my room for three hours and the mess just gets worse and worse. Then I go back to work and the whole thing starts again. It's like I'm a cow in one of those narrow cow walkways where they can't turn around; they just keep walking in one direction 'til they're in the back of a truck on the way to the slaughterhouse. I want to rescue myself from this, but every night I stay up late trying to write something and I wind up right where I started.

Lately I've been praying.

Dear God. Please help me figure out what to do next. Please help me be the writer I’m supposed to be. Do you want me to be a writer? Do you want me to be productive? It’s who I am, God. Please help me have the kind of sex life I’m supposed to have. It’s like I’m suffocating. Please help me be brave enough to write about real stuff. Everything’s so full of shit. You know what I mean. I’m sorry, God. Please bless me. I don’t know what to ask for. Please help me know what to ask for. Please bless everybody. And help me get a girlfriend. Amen.


I had dinner with Mel at the burrito place next to the sub place after work Tuesday. As we sat down I told her "I keep dreaming I'm at work. It's like I never get to leave. I spend my whole fucking day there, and then I go to sleep and I'm back in the fucking office."

"You still a contractor?" she asked, as if she didn't know the question would piss me off.

"Yeah."

"You should keep track of the hours you spend dreaming about the place, and bill them for your time."

I snickered resentfully through my nose, which sounded like I couldn't interrupt my chewing long enough to breathe. "So then, when I go to work, I'm exhausted."

"Seriously, Toby, you stress about that job too much. You're a fucking temp. You can just decide not to show up one day, you know. They can't do anything about it."

"They wouldn't know what they were doing without me there."

"Well, maybe if they won’t give you benefits, they don’t really need you.”

I grunted. I avoid using excess words whenever possible.

"Do you ever dream about anything else?" She was always changing the subject.

"Did I ever tell you about Eugene?"

"Who's Eugene?"

He's this guy I went to college with. I’ve actually known him since, like, seventh grade. I had a dream about him the other day."

"What was the dream?"

"I don't know. I just remembered he was in it. He was angry at me.” I looked at the table for a minute. “So how was Sacramento?"

"Did you get my postcard?" she asked.

"No."

"Well, call me after you get it."

"Why?"

"'Cause I want to talk about some of the stuff I wrote about.”

"What'd you say in the postcard?"

"What would be the point of mailing you a postcard if I just told you everything it was going to say before you got it?"

"Well, if you wanted to discuss what you wrote on the card, you coulda just handed it to me when you got back and we could be talking about it now, instead of waiting a week for the card to arrive."

"Don't you think it's more special if you get it in the mail?"

“Yeah, it’s really special, waiting to find out what it is you’re refusing to tell me.”

"Well, I hadn't expected to be back so early. I'm flying back next week to get my car."

"Why'd you come back?"

"Ehh, there was an emergency at work. I could have dealt with it remotely but I left my laptop at home. I was trying to get away from it."

"That sucks."

"Yeah."

"Did you think about not coming back?"

"Problem is, I love my job."

"You realize that makes you very unusual."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"So is your boyfriend ever going to move up here?"

"His name is Ben."

"I know."

"We're talking about him coming out here when he completes his dissertation."

"When's that?"

"June."

"Hmm."

By now Mel had opened her burrito along the seam where the ends of the tortilla wrapped together, and was eating the insides with a knife and fork. It looked like surgery. "So, was that the thing you wanted to ask me about that you said you kept forgetting to ask me about?" she asked.

"I don't remember."

"Oh.”

I shrugged. “It'll come back to me."

"Are you still writing for the porn website?"

"It's not porn. It's a fetish website."

“Well, same thing."

"Nobody reads anything at a porn website."

"Are you still writing for them?"

"I only wrote three pieces for them."

"I thought you'd written more."

"No. I just did a lot of research."

"What kind of resarch?"

"Reading porn." I shrugged again, without knowing why.

"You're not as embarassed about it as you used to be."

"I've crossed the threshhold where I don't care anymore. I don't even wait for all the women to leave the liquor store before I carry it to the register. Saves a lot of time."

Mel glanced around at the railing next to us. The balcony has a low ceiling and the railing is ready to collapse. Good burritos, though.





Copyright 2002 Betsy Shebang

Columns by Betsy Shebang