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By Darren Kaminsky
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Darren Kaminsky's novel, Sugar Spun Sisters, appears in serialized form every Monday right here on Me Three. The story follows the lives of five twenty-somethings living in Washington D.C. As far as the editors are currently aware, none of these characters work in politics.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
August 28
Work today-->Stupefying. For most of the morning, I sat at my desk trying to remember what it was I was supposed to be doing, then I was called into a meeting where there was a long discussion about ways to get college students to subscribe to magazines via high interest credit cards.
A district manager, a guy with a fake tan, a straight smooth nose perfect as a billboard for rhinoplasty, and big oversized lips actually said, “If we are lucky, we can get these kids in a beneficent circle of debt that will keep them paying the credit card companies (our clients) for years to come.”
Nice thought. Enslave some kids to debt. Keep them working and paying their whole lives, like some modern day version of indentured servitude.
I went back to my desk and wasn’t quite sure what my role in enslaving these kids was supposed to be so I called Jean on the phone and we talked music, our conversation eventually snagging on the idea of whether or not punk music is inherently sexist.
I Want To Be Sedated? Or the Fugazi song Waiting Room, full of verses like, “In the waiting room...shut the door...in the waiting room...shut the door?” It hardly says anything at all. But then she was talking about how the whole scene was inherently sexist, that it was just one more barnyard where the rooster makes the noise and the hens find food and raise the chicks.
“Bitter?” I asked. “Why don’t you start a band if that’s how you feel?” And she said she wasn’t musical, but that the voicelessness of women in the punk purview was the reason for her starting a ‘zine.
I looked over to see that Jill, my boss, was standing in the corner, arms folded over each other. She was staring at me, her mouth set in an impatient grimace. How long had she been there listening to me jabber away about whether or not punk rock was inherently sexist on company time?
I told Jean that I had to go and put the phone down. “Nathan can I see you in my office?” Jill said and walked out.
“Sure, Jill.” I said and followed her out of the room. My eyes met my co-worker Chris’s eyes as he sat in his spot dutifully working. He shrugged his shoulders and gave me a look that said, “We’re friends of convenience. I don’t mind working here without you.”
I walked into Jill’s office and shut the door. Jill’s office is the smallest of the individual offices and the desk is definitely an old hand-me-down. It was one of those particle board IKEA things that doesn’t age well. Some of the plastic veneer had chipped off or been dented off, leaving splotches. There was a faded print of a Monet lilypad on the wall. Generic, standard issue office/dorm room art. Meant to take up space and yet not be seen. My mind covered it over almost as soon as looking at it.
Jill sat at her desk and said, “You were in that meeting today?”
“Of course,” I replied. “You were there. You saw me.”
“I’m not asking if you were there physically. I’m asking if you were there mentally.”
“Sure.”
“No you weren’t.”
“In case it escaped your notice, this is the fourth time the district manager has been down here in the last two weeks. Corporate is leaning on us. We’re being leaned on because we’re not...” She broke eye contact with me and looked off into the corner. “...We’re not meeting expectations. They want us to cut the dead weight.”
“You’re thinking that I’m dead weight.”
“You’re starting to seem that way and let me tell you if it’s my job or yours? Well, I’ve attempted to build something here. This isn’t my job. This is my career. Can you say that? You can go on now.”
“You don’t want to hear my ideas on getting college kids to accumulate credit card debt?”
“Do you have ideas?”
“No.”
“Didn’t think so,” she said and looked down at the pad of paper she was writing on. I walked out of her office and sat at my desk the rest of the day refraining from personal calls and trying to look busy while not actually doing much of anything.
My bike has had a flat that I can’t fix. I thought it was just the inner tube, but the wheel frame itself is bent so I have to walk to and from work. It’s a little hairy as there are no sidewalks on the roads leading through Rock Creek Park.
I was feeling pretty shitty on my way home. I hate the job, but don’t know what else to do moneywise. The photos don’t pay enough. And, no matter what I’m doing, I don’t want to do it badly. Even if it’s creating an enslaved semi-educated debtor class. If that’s what I’m doing, I want to do that well.
Rock Creek Park, which divides Mt. Pleasant from where I work is basically a valley. The creek is at the bottom of it and there is a small little bridge over the creek. I always feel a little hesitant as I approach, as it’s dangerous. Park Road on the home side of the bridge connects to the bridge at an almost perpendicular curve. Any car using the bridge from that side is curving on to it with only a few seconds to see if anything -- like a pedestrian -- is on the bridge. Cars don’t use it a lot meaning that there isn’t much traffic on it, making it worse. Another car might make the cars that do use it slow down. To make matters worse still, branches from the trees on both sides grow right over the bridge reaching towards each other and making the blind spot more blind. You can only walk on the bridge itself, there are no paths around it unless you want to wade through the creek.
Just as I approached, I heard the zipping wheeze of a car speeding towards the bridge and I jumped to one side sliding right down the embankment and almost into the creek, getting one leg of my khaki pants covered in mud in the process. It was almost too appropriate a coda to a shitty day.
When I got home, Gaff was over. Never going long without a boyfriend of some sort, Brenna has had Gaff over here several times in the last few days. He seemed even goofier than before as he tried to do a bigger job of impressing Brenna and trying to earn a place in her life. He seemed to gesture in bigger gestures and laughed louder at jokes.
As he told his jokes and made his big gestures, Brenna smiled at him with the affectionate, approving look that is given to particularly spoiled pets when they piss on the carpet or tear up the only known photo of your great-grandmother in her wedding gown. But, that’s ok because the pet is your little tutums and the way it chews through grandma’s head is just so cute.
Gaff has also been very annoyingly ingratiating towards us. He brought us two cases of beer tonight and made this big deal about it. “Here everybody, I got beer for all of you. Here Nathan, have one.” He even opened if for me. I hope he realizes that I have no influence over who Brenna does or doesn’t date.
Brenna won’t talk about John Slater. She won’t say what’s up with the two of them or if they’re even talking. When his name is mentioned she just glares with a look that definitely says that she doesn’t want to talk about it.
August 29Dani has been going month-to-month on her lease and was able to convince her landlord that she should be able to give up her apt. at the end of August rather than the end of September so she’s going to be out of there in just 3 days. I went over last night to help her pack.
When I got there it was a bigger pigsty than usual. Everything was on the floor in disordered piles. Nothing was packed and there were unformed boxes in the corner. There didn’t even seem to be enough of any one category of item to decide what should be put or packed with what.
Dani herself was crying because she couldn’t decide what to do first. I kissed her face softly, on her nose, on her closed eyelids, on her chin and lips until, finally, she stopped crying. The tears made her skin taste ocean-water salty. Tasting tears really does make me think of swimming and the sea.
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Darren Kaminsky is a writer living in Brooklyn. He can be contacted at sugarspun @ bigbagoftricks dot com.
© 2005 Me Three
