This Will Not Look Good On My Resume
Jass Richards
Smashwords Edition
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Published by
Magenta on Smashwords
ISBN: 978-1-926891-41-5
This Will Not Look Good on My Resume
Copyright © 2010 by Jass Richards
Cover design by Jass Richards
Cover image by Amanda Kelsey and Jass Richards
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
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FORTHCOMING FROM JASS RICHARDS
Missing the Arteries
The Blasphemy Tour
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with chess
(and Taffi)
(and thanks to Bailey, Lundee—and Buddy)
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
8: Substitute Teacher from Hell
9: Crisis Hotline (Please Hold.)
* * * * *
My first job was in an office. I hated it. No, that’s not true. Actually, I liked the job. It was the people I hated. Thus from the start, I was destined for a long line of jobs in ‘the people professions’.
Perhaps most notable of these was my job at 602, a residential program run by the Mental Health Association. Selected patients from the local psych hospital (those with potential!) were transferred, at some point in time, to 602—so called because its address was 602 Bonkers Street (I kid you not)—where the staff would teach the residents life skills, help them find a job and an apartment, and generally provide support during their transition from institutionalized living to independent living. (I highly recommend the program to those who work in an office.) I was hired as a relief worker and mostly covered the midnight shift. Which meant that I helped the residents make the transition from sleeping in a bed to sleeping in a bed.
Which was okay because I would’ve had trouble teaching life skills. How to buy groceries, how to keep track of your chequing account—these were adults we were dealing with, and I had neither the desire nor the need to infantalize them. After all, people who need people are, well, codependent.
Besides, you want life skills? Okay, how about how to deal with the recognition that you’re never really going to amount to much. And how to be content nevertheless. And, yes, how to make foil headgear that is durable yet fashionable.
On my first midnight shift, I took Kessie with me, partly thinking of all those sweet and cuddly animal therapy programs, and partly thinking that if I dozed off, she’d be my alarm system, sure to wake up growling the second any crazy with a knife walked into the room. Turned out, she refused to go sleep. I stretched out on the couch and—she sat on my head. All night. At full alert. Apparently ready to scream. The place scared her.
No wonder. All of my coworkers had previous experience with mental illness. First-hand. In fact, I think that was a prerequisite for obtaining a full-time position. A relapse seemed to be the prerequisite for promotion.
Unfortunately, it turned outthat I was hired just in time for the annual staff retreat. I suspected it was an office party disaster waiting to happen. I didn’t want to go. But I also didn’t want to be reprimanded, yet again, for not being a team player. Damned if I do, damned if I don’t.
So Friday evening, six of us piled into Kathy’s minivan. We were obviously going to get a head start on the group bonding thing. I asked if that was fair. They smiled indulgently and said, “Oh you just want to drive down on that new Harley of yours instead of being with us.” Well yeah. Duh.
We arrived at the retreat site, which was well off the highway, and for a second I was glad I came—it was beautiful. Forest as far as the eye could see, in orange and gold, a sparkling blue lake, a couple canoes on the shore, gentle babbling from a stream that fed the lake...We spent the entire next two days inside. Replenishing our inner spirits.
Saturday began with a pre-breakfast yoga session, a breakfast get-to-know-you, two morning sessions, and a lunch mixer. So I was told. I don’t get up until noon. (Well, unless I work the midnight shift. Then I don’t go to bed until noon. Which means that on any given day, or, well, on any given night I guess—oh never mind.)
At around 1:00 p.m., I found myself being hustled to the first of three afternoon sessions by one of my coworkers, Clara. Who was way too chirpy. Obviously a morning person. I grabbed a carafe of tea and a cup from the lunch table as we passed it, and stuffed some creamers and a plastic-wrapped egg salad sandwich into my pocket. She led me into a roomful of people, and to the corner occupied by the 602 staff.
“Hello again,” the session leader at the front of the room said, and beamed. “Wasn’t that a fantastic lunch?” she asked, and everyone applauded. Applause? For egg salad? Plastic-wrapped egg salad? I glanced around the room. A lot of people looked suspiciously beatific. Did I miss something spectacular? Were the leaders that charismatic? No wait, I’ve seen that look—they’re fucking all on Prozac! I missed the free samples!
“What we’re going to do first this afternoon,” she continued as if she were about to present a won-der-ful gift, “is something called ‘What Colour are You?’” You’ve got to be kidding. I had finished my first cup of tea and had poured a second, but was still way too tired to run through my Meyers-Briggs critique, and anyway these people should know better, this is all so old, and lame, “—but with a little twist.” Her eyes twinkled. Mine twitched. “I want you to think about what colour each of your coworkers is. Then we’ll have you pow-wow in your work groups to share your perceptions. Be open. Be honest. Remember, those are the building blocks of a good team...” Yeah right. Like I’m gonna fall for that again. (When did you stop hitting your wife?) Director Jean, you’re airhead blue. Kathy, you’re—oh my god. They’re all airhead blue.
“I’m going to pass on this one,” I said. “I really haven’t had time to get to know any of you,” I tried to smile. “And I really have to pee,” I pointed to the carafe.
When I returned to the room, I discovered that things could indeed get worse. Each session ended with a group hug. I looked around. Surely they don’t have enough Academy Awards on hand to cover this performance.
The next session was a ‘revitalizer’. Up on our feet, stretch up, that’s it, one arm, skyreach, the other arm, skyreach, now climb that ladder into the clouds— I can’t believe I’m doing this. I imagined myself presenting these warm-ups to my old track buddies, started to laugh, caught Clara’s glance, then imagined myself back at the unemployment office. That’s it, now exhale, and blow those clouds away! Good! Now stand on one leg and lift the other, from the hip, that’s it, how do you feel?
“Like a dog taking a piss.” Oops. Jean gave me a look of disappointment. As did Kathy, Clara, and Lynn.
And then it was time for another group hug.
•
Shortly after the retreat, we got a new resident, Dave. Dave was what we called a ‘high functioning’ person. He could tie his own shoelaces. Within a week, he was placed at the local ‘sheltered workshop’, another MHA program, designed to provide employment opportunities to both the mentally delayed and the mentally ill. (I never did understand why the two were put together. Would you put Gomer Pyle and Adolf Hitler in the same treatment program?)
Speaking of ‘mentally delayed’, what a wonderfully optimistic label. Your train will, some day, pull into the Normal IQ Station, dear. It’s just been a little delayed. Delayed, deschmayed. His train was derailed.
As for the workshop, it was a woodworking enterprise that made crafts and furniture which nobody bought. Except the employees of the MHA. At Christmas time. I imagined those at the workshop spending the morning putting round pegs into round holes and the afternoon putting square pegs into square holes.
When Dave came home at the end of his first day, he said the job sucked, and he couldn’t stand his boss. He wanted to quit. I congratulated him, telling him that he was certainly on the road to recovery, and if he kept the job for five years, he’d be normal, if not healthy.
•
One midnight shift, when I had finished Inside the Mind of a Cat—which should be required reading for all new staffers, by the way—I started on the house copy of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual on Mental Disorders. Christ, was I sick.
The next night, eager to display what I had learned, I gave my coworker a pop quiz.
“Why did the delusional person cross the road?” Lynn waited expectantly. “Because he thought the grass was greener on the other side.” We laughed. Okay, I laughed. Lynn disapproved.
“Here’s another one. Why did the masochist cross the road? He didn’t. Because the grass was greener on the other side.” Yuk yuk.
I held up Sheila’s file. “Why did the passive personality cross the road? Because I told her to,” I said and giggled.
“No, one more—” Lynn was leaving the office, wringing her hands. I waved Bob’s file, our King of Hallucinations, “Why did the schizophrenic cross the road? To follow the chicken!” That one always cracked me up.
It’s not that I don’t have any sympathy for those who are mentally ill. It’s just that I can’t figure out which mental illness leaves you with an inability to do your own laundry and a tendency to leave half an inch of iced tea in the pitcher when there are two boxes of mix sitting in the cupboard.
•
One of the midnight duties was to get the morning meds ready. This meant making sure the right number of pinks and whites and blues and yellows were in the proper dispensers, labelled for whoever got said pinks and whites and blues and yellows. Once I played musical chairs with everyone’s meds for a week. Oddly enough, there was no noticeable difference in anyone’s behaviour.
So, seeking an alternative to pharmaceutical therapy, and just plain curious, I wondered what would happen if I acted crazier than the residents. One day I served everyone a slice of cake batter. Another day I posted signs written in my own private language.
Regular staff didn’t agree, but I say that did result in an improvement—if only because of a general increase in self-esteem: I mean, compared to me, they figured they were doing pretty good. They weren’t stupid, after all; they were just sick.
Or they were Mary Margaret. She heard a voice in her head. It was God. So the staff thought she was crazy. I thought they were jealous. Or just as crazy. And I told them so at the next staff meeting.
“You all believe in God?” I asked, by way of explanation.
Of course. Nods and murmurs of assent all round.
“And you pray?”
Yes, indeed they did.
“But none of you hears voices, none of you hears God.”
No, we do not, of course not.
“So you spend your time—some of you, your life—talking to a god that doesn’t ever talk back. And,” I continued, “you don’t really expect him to.”
Mary Margaret lay down naked in the middle of the road one day because God asked her to. She assumed she had been chosen as a sacrifice because at forty, she was still a virgin.
“Why didn’t you just go have sex instead?” I asked her, when we were sitting in the tv room one night.
She gave me the oddest look and walked away. Silently. Solemnly.
The next time I was in, I was told she’d been out to the bars every night soliciting men. Apparently she’d had sex with over two dozen in the last week alone. Staff was concerned with this further decline into depravity.
“You know, you only have to do it once to not be a virgin anymore,” I told her when, again, we were sitting in the tv room. “I don’t think God will choose you to be a sacrifice anymore. Or you can do it with yourself,” I added. “That counts.”
She looked surprised, confused, relieved, and pleased—though not necessarily in that order.
The following weekend, I was informed that not only had she stopped going out, she had started going to bed rather early. The staff was relieved—and surprised, pleased, and confused.
“So,” I plopped myself down on the couch in the tv room. She was sitting in the chair, her chair, across from me. “Heard from God lately?”
“No,” she said with some anxiety, “and I’m a bit worried about what He’ll ask me to do next.”
“Hm.” I thought for a moment. “I have a confession to make.” She raised her eyebrows. “God talks to me too. But I don’t think it’s the same god.”
Her eyes widened. Clearly she was torn between the possibility that God might speak to someone else and the possibility that there might be another God.
“Every Tuesday at 11:00,” I said. “I think that’s my appointment time.”
Her eyes widened further. “What does he say?” she eventually asked, genuinely interested.
“Oh, lots of stuff,” I said casually. “‘Be kind.’ ‘Be happy.’ ‘Always wear blue.’” Again her eyebrows raised. I pointed to my jeans.
“One time he told me to put my paycheques straight into the bank and only take out so much in cash so I’d always have enough for rent and food. That way I’d always have a safe place of my own, a home. That was real good advice.”
Mary Margaret was thinking hard. Very hard.
“But I don’t think it’s the same god that talks to you,” I continued.
“Oh.” She seemed sad. “Why?”
“Well he says his name is ‘Godd’—he really emphasizes the ‘d’ at the end, so I think he spells his name G-o-d-d. How does your god spell his name?”
“He’s never said.” And until now that wasn’t a problem.
I nodded. Wisely.
“Why don’t you switch?” I asked.
“What?” Wow. Another possibility to ponder.
“Why don’t you switch gods?”
“I didn’t know you could do that.”
“Oh sure. It’s like those long-distance carriers, you know, for phone calls. You just have to call and say you’d like to switch.”
So we went into the office and I helped her find the number for Bell, or maybe it was Rogers. And she called right then and there. It was 2:00 in the morning. And the customer rep at the other end, bless her, not only let her switch from God with one ‘d’ to Godd with two ‘Ds’, but also gave her an appointment time of Fridays at 10:00 p.m.
I saw Mary Margaret at the mall a couple months later. She had moved out of the house and into her own apartment. And she had on the cutest baby blue polyester pantsuit I’d seen since the ’70s.
•
Another time, about two weeks later, I left Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper in the tv room. It and Martha were gone the next week. I heard she left her husband. Plath’s Belljar disappeared next, with Jill. I heard she left her husband and her parents. Vonnegut’s Eden Express disappeared with Tony. Who took with him 602’s entire stock of vitamins. (Well, that and the stereo.) I called it my covert bibliotherapy program. The program ended, unfortunately, when Jean confiscated Szasz’s The Myth of Mental Illness.
That same night, coincidentally, Bob attacked Lynn with a kitchen knife, shouting “Let’s kill the aliens!” over and over. Okay. Point taken. So when I visited her in the hospital, I took her some reading material. A copy of They Really Are Out To Get You. She actually called Security. And, apparently, Director Jean.
* * * * *
It was a little ironic that she had called Security, because at my other job, I was Security. They didn’t actually call us that, but that’s what we did, or rather, provided. The O & D (Observation & Detention) was another residential program, and, again, I was a relief worker. Again, primarily for the midnight shift. Its purpose was to detain (D) ‘young offenders’ while they were waiting for a court appearance—for trial, sentencing, or whatever. (So actually we were called Adolescent Workers.) (In reference to our clientele.) While at the O & D, said young offenders would be observed (O), and the log kept by said adolescent workers offered to the court for consideration. This meant, of course, that, as with regular jail, you had innocent kids rooming with guilty kids.
Furthermore, in an odd display of parallelism to the mixed agenda of the MHA’s workshop, the O & D also served as a safe house for kids who had been abused—who had not even been charged with anything criminal—while they were waiting for an adoption placement. (Essentially, for trial, sentencing, and whatever). And the interesting thing was, relief workers weren’t allowed to read the kids’ files. I confess that my behaviour toward a kid who’s taken a cigarette lighter to the family gerbil would be different than my behaviour toward a kid who’s had a cigarette lighter taken to himself. (So if it was the same kid—as it was likely to be—I was, well, confused.)
And as for my behaviour toward the cigarette-burning parents of such a kid (occasionally, parents came to visit their kid; very occasionally, now that I think of it), first, I’d have them both sterilized. That’s it. No more kids. Then, since such parents demonstrate arrested moral development and are probably operating at thepre- adolescent stage, understanding morality only in terms of reciprocity, I’d take a cigarette lighter to the both of them.
Now, you might point out that chances are that’s already happened—that’s why they’re the parents they are. Right. So not only would I sterilize the parents, I’d also sterilize the kid. The O & D could easily add it to their referral services. It could be a family outing. We’re supposed to encourage that sort of thing.
But that’s not fair! I know. But one, you’re assuming the kid will actually want to have kids, and, truth be told, that’s probably unlikely. (I say that because, truth be told, most people don’t actually want to have kids. Whenever people announce to me they’re ‘expecting’, I ask them ‘Why?’ They usually give me a look, as if I’m sort of slow, and then they say, with a rueful grin, something like ‘It was sort of an accident.’) (To which I reply something like ‘Excuse me? You don’t accidentally ejaculate into someone’s vagina, nor do you accidentally catch some sperm with your vulva.’) And two, it may be unfair to the kid, but otherwise it’s unfair to the kid’s kids and all the people who then have to deal with yet another victim of cigarette lighters. And it’s especially unfair to gerbils.
Another interesting thing about the job was that staff were expected to psychoanalyze these kids’ every move, or failure to move, and none of us were psychoanalysts. Half of us were ex-daycamp leaders, and the other half were cop-wannabes. (And then there was me. I just liked the hours.) Let me just say that if for twenty-four hours/day, seven days/week, your every word and action was subjected to intense microscopic examination, by unqualified idiots, you’d have an anger management problem too. (Admittedly, most of us would have such a problem if we were subjected to intense microscopic examination by qualified idiots.)
•
Once, during an evening shift, I was reprimanded because I sat on the couch in the main room, reading. (Popular Mechanics or Car & Driver, I can’t remember.) (Amish porn, in any case.) A mistake. Not what I was reading, but that I was reading. I was supposed to interact with the kids. Hell, we interacted with the kids more in one day than my own parents interacted with me in a whole year. (Not that instead they ever sat on a couch reading. Or took a cigarette lighter to me. But the only time my parents interacted with us kids—apart from the occasional reminder or query regarding various aspects of the household routine—was during the holidays. On Christmas Day, during that long time between opening the gifts and Christmas dinner,when we didn’t have any chores to do, we weren’t allowed to do any homework, we especially weren’t allowed to watch tv, and there’s only so much enthusiasm you can generate for new socks and pyjamas and one or two toys, mom was in the kitchen, of course, making Christmas dinner, which somehow took all day, but dad wouldn’t dare escape to his workshop, so he and my brother would have their annual game of chess, and my sister and I would sort of watch. There we go: parent-child interaction. Normal, healthy parent-child interaction.) (Okay, perhaps more normal than healthy, but still—)
So I put the magazine down and reluctantly joined the monopoly game in the kitchen. Another mistake. First, I implemented a sliding scale of payments for those who landed on my property. Then I interrogated prospective buyers: what do you intend to do with the property? ’Cuz if you’re going to develop it into one of those super malls, forget it. We don’t need more stores. We don’t need to ‘go shopping’ as if it were a leisure activity. We in the so-called ‘developed’ world have way too much shit as it is. And we keep coercing those in the so-called ‘developing’ world to make it for us. Part way through my discourse on the sociopolitical evils of supermalls in general, and Walmart and McDonalds in particular, I was kicked out of the game.
•
Another time, at the end of a midnight shift, I was encouraged to watch tv with the others. Watching tv is interacting with the kids? Okaaaay. As it turns out, it was a Sunday morning and nothing was on but religious programming. Halfway through some evangelist’s sermon, I started reciting “Jabberwocky”: ‘’Twas brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe, all mimsy were the borogroves...” They all yelled at me to shut up. Like they really wanted to hear the sermon.
Then there was a station identification announcement, concluding with the comment that as a religious network, the station did not accept ads for beer, liquor, or feminine hygiene products.
“Well, that makes sense,” I said. “I mean, we all know what a good buzz you can get from a tampon.” Silence. Not one ‘Shut up!’
The next commercial was for guns. I kid you not. ’Course, as a religious network...
“I’ve got a better idea,” I said when it was over.
“Yeah?” a kid snorted. I couldn’t possibly.
“Yeah, what you do is get a dart gun and load it with a tranquilizer, or an emetic, or an extra-strength laxative. Your guy’s not going to be a threat if he’s unconscious, puking his guts out, or shitting his shorts, right? And while he’s doing that, you can run away!”
“Run away?” He was disgusted.
“Well, you could kick him good first,” I suggested.
Okay. That was okay then.
“It achieves the same thing as a real gun,” I continued. “But if you get caught, see, it’s a lesser charge.”
That got the kid’s attention.
“And if someone happened to get in the way, well you wouldn’t kill anyone by mistake. And that’s kind of a good thing, right?”
The kid had to think about that. “Okay,” he said, “but what if they shoot back with the same stuff?”
“Well better that than a bullet in the head, no?”
He had to think about that one for quite some time. “Maybe,” he finally conceded.
Every now and then, when the O & D pressure cooker got to be too much, sometimes before or after a court appearance or a parental visit, a kid would blow. And we were supposed to restrain him or her. We were taught several restraint holds, one that could be done by one person, another that required two, but they all immobilized the kid’s arms and legs while protecting the head (the kid’s mostly) (unfortunately). What a stupid idea. As a teenager, whenever I was volcanic, I went for a run. A good hard run. Long too, depending. (I still do that. In fact, shortly after I last spoke with Director Jean, I set a personal best for my ten-mile.)
Instead of holding them down, which to my mind just adds to their rage, we should be letting them go—taking them to the nearest high school and letting them loose on the track or the football field. Escape shouldn’t be a problem; there is, or should always be, at least one of us who can outrun a 15-year-old.
’Course there is the chance the kid will run full speed into one of the goalposts. But that needn’t be considered a bad thing.
•
At the end of a week during which I happened to be lucky enough to be staff escort for a trip to the grocery store with the 602s and a trip to an outdoor festival with the O & Ds, I had a great idea: why not pair a 602 with an O & D? I imagined a program that was a cross between those that paired juvenile delinquents with dogs and those that paired ex-cons with people in wheelchairs. You know the ones I’m talking about. (Kessie thought it was a great idea. But then she’d somehow gotten the idea that she’d get to go for a car ride in a wheelchair.) So I stayed up late, or early, and presented the idea to each place during the weekly staff meeting.
Surprisingly enough, it was accepted. Any idea proposed by a mere relief worker is usually rejected out-of-hand; actually, that’s not quite true—rejection presupposes some degree of consideration. So I figure it was probably that time of the budget year when program directors were told to either ‘use it or lose it’—and I suspect that neither the 602 program director nor the O & D program director had proposed anything new in a long while, so they were quite happy to grab the ball and run with it. My ball. Of course I didn’t get any credit for it. Not that it would’ve done me any good—relief workers are simply not on any career ladder, and neither initiative, good work, long service, nor ass-kissing results in advancement.
But that’s just as well because the program—‘Northerly Hills 602OD’—was pretty much a disaster. Rott (short for Rottweiler), a big kid with hair that was a cross between a Mohawk and an Afro, was a repeat offender for assorted assaults. Actually, one of these was against a coworker who, in a moment of canine confusion, called him Poo (short for Poodle). That was the first time. The second time happened when I dared said coworker to tie a pink ribbon in Rott’s hair when he was asleep one night (we had to do bedchecks every half hour). Anyway, Rott was paired with Len, the meekest and mildest of the 602s (who didn’t have so much a personality disorder as a personality deficit). The idea was that antagonism would be statistically impossible and hence another assault equally unlikely. Rott beat the crap out of Len at their first meeting.
So then he was paired with George, who was not only physically intimidating, at 6’4” and 240 lbs, butwas also suffering from delusions of questionable grandeur—he thought he was Hulk Hogan. Rott beat the crap out of George too. (The upside is that George no longer believes he’s Hulk Hogan.)
Two other pairings are worth mention, both having been reasonably successful. Lily was 602’s compulsive shopper. Luann was one of O & D’s shoplifters. The three of us headed out to a mall one day, the two of them delighted at discovering in common an enthusiasm for shopping. They made a bee-line for one of those sprawling economy department stores that have everything you could possible imagine but nothing you could actually want. Let alone need. I trailed behind, at a discreet distance that was supposed to make them feel independent, one of such a trip’s many purposes.
Lily grabbed a shopping cart and began to fill it at once—with socks, tshirts, scarves, hats, jeans, sweaters, umbrellas—all the while maintaining a chatter that was part auctioneer and part shopping channel spokesperson. Luann followed, recognizing Lily as the perfect decoy, and stealthily secreted various items into various pockets.
By the time they left Ladies’ Wear, Lily was onto her second shopping cart. By the time they’d gotten through Kitchenwares, she’d enlisted Luann to push a third. She was in Shoppers’ Heaven. She’d never filled three shopping carts before.
Luann was feeling aggrieved—it was clear she was outdone. She’d never be able to lift more than Lily was accumulating. So she scored the next item when Lily was watching, and winked at her. Lily was confused for a moment, looking much like a puppy seeing for the first time an older dog calmly walk away with the just delivered pizza box. While stealing clearly had advantages over buying, she realized, as Luann had, that she couldn’t possibly take nearly as much that way. So she decided to stick with compulsive shopping. And that made Luann doubly aggrieved. So when Lily put shoehorns into that third cart—six of them, one of each colour—Luann blew.
“YOU DON’T FUCKING NEED ALL THIS SHIT!!” she yelled. So loudly she lost half her loot. Among the many items that fell clattering to the floor was a mini-shoeshine kit. Lily stared at this shoeshine kit. Luann stared at the shoeshine kit. Lily looked at her shoehorns. Luann looked at the shoehorns. I call it ‘the shoe moment’.
Then, wordlessly, they both left the scene. Unfortunately for me, through different exits. I eventually found them both, wandering in the parking lot, looking for my car. (I was doing the same thing.) We left the mall and neither one of them went ‘shopping’ again.
The other interesting pairing involved Shane, whose conversation was pretty much limited to “Fuck this!” and James, who had no conversation—he hadn’t spoken in five years. We figured that Shane, having to carry both ends of the conversation, would be compelled to become a little more articulate.Or at least increase his vocabulary. And that’s exactly what happened. When he was with James, he was overheard saying things like “Wanna coffee?” and “Gotta piss.” Given another ten years, I thought, he might actually engage in the mindless pleasantries that indicate social maturity. (Go figure, but that’s how people measure social maturity.)
But the really interesting change occurred in James. One day, sitting alone in his room, he was heard to have quietly said “Fuck this.” Now, not only had he uttered words, but there had been a reasonable facsimile of emotional expression in the utterance as well. Whatever, saying those two little words quietly, alone in his room, seemed sufficient to simply dismiss whatever it was he had been obsessed to silence with for all those years.
A little while later, while watching tv with the others, somewhat less catatonically than before, he again said, “Fuck this” and left the room. It was the first display of autonomy the staff had ever seen.
Of course, only one more step remained, which he took a month later. He said, once more, “Fuck this”—and walked out of 602, never to be seen again.
•
A few weeks after the demise of 602OD, I showed up for a midnight shift at the O & D to discover I’d be working with John. Shit. John is the kind of man who takes himself way too seriously, the corollary being that he takes me, and all women, not at all seriously. We had finished with ‘shift change’ (an interesting routine in which the outgoing shift read their logs to the incoming shift) (a routine for which we were required to show up fifteen minutes early—unpaid time, of course), and the evening staff had left. John and I were in the upstairs office. I happened to be sitting at The Desk, in the position of Power and Authority; John was sitting in the small chair at the side. The arrangement clearly bothered him. So he stood up, thinking, I guess, that if we were playing basketball, he’d have the height advantage. I ignored him. That clearly bothered him too.
“Why don’t you do the logs tonight,” he said. Then he added, “You’re good at writing”—in a tone implying that writing was a sissy task unworthy of his effort.
“Sure, okay.”
In fact, when I first started at the O & D, I found writing the logs to be quite an engaging activity. Witness this gem: “Early in the shift, Matthew seemed to be trembling slightly as he lay sleeping. Thinking he was perhaps cold, I put another blanket over him. However, at the next bedcheck, I discovered he had thrown the blanket onto the floor. Obviously he was resisting even the smallest gesture of kindness that might be offered by others. Or maybe he was too warm.
“He spent most of the night sleeping in a fetal position, which, to my mind, could well indicate a desire to return to a state of infancy rather than accept the challenges of adulthood. However, since he is, after all, only thirteen, and has probably faced too many adult situations already, this is probably a healthy desire. Matthew should have a childhood.
“At one point, however, he moved onto his back, arms flung out to either side and feet crossed, suggesting, of course, the crucified Christ. One could easily interpret this posture as indicative of a persecution complex. However, again, since so much has actually happened to Matthew during his young life, this attitude is not necessarily pathological. Nevertheless, we may be wise to realize that perhaps he is reaching a critical threshold with regard to unpleasant things happening to him that interfere with whatever life plan he might, if it were not for this constant ‘persecution’, develop.
“Towards morning, Matthew’s legs were jerking, as if he were running. Given the above observations, it may be that he is planning an escape attempt during tomorrow’s outing, and day staff might want to be extra vigilant in this regard. Or maybe he dreamt that he was chasing rabbits.”
Shortly after, I was told that I didn’t have to be that thorough, and I was advised to look at other midnight shift logs to get an idea of what was required. So I did. The first one said “Slept well.” I noticed the difference right away, but read on through several other logs. “Slept thru the night.” “Slept soundly thru the night.” “Restless but slept thru the night.” “Did not fall asleep until mid-shift. Then slept soundly thru the night.” Hm. There’s a pattern here.
Why not just use a key? The half dozen variations could be listed and numbered, and then staff could just enter the appropriate numbers in the logs. As I started to prepare such a key, however, I realizedthat we didn’t even need a half dozen—two options would suffice. 1 - Slept soundly thru the night. 2 - Did not sleep soundly thru the night. On further thought still, I decided that ‘thru the night’ was unnecessary. I put my final version of the key at the front of the master log and ever since, my midnight log entries have consisted of simply ‘1’ or ‘2’.
Now John was probably not aware of this, but it didn’t matter. I was still “good at writing” and I was still agreeable to doing the logs for our shift. And he was still standing over me. I guess he was waiting for me to vacate the chair of Power and Authority. After all, the first few times I worked with him, I pretty much did what he told me to do; I had just been hired, and he’d been working at the O & D for a while. But he probably thought I’d been deferring to his Almighty Maleness.
“You can get started on the laundry and the meals, if you like,” he said. “I can handle the Security Checks myself,” he added, smiling. He actually called them Security Checks. He even had his own flashlight, a rather large and sturdy thing suitable for Arctic Search and Rescue missions. It dangled from his belt loop.
“No, that’s okay. If I’m doing the logs, it makes more sense for me to do the bedchecks.” After all, the logbook was kept in the office upstairs, which was where the bedrooms were. He continued standing there. Rather dumbly, I thought. So I clarified, “You can do the laundry and the cooking tonight.” And reached into my knapsack for the book I’d brought to read.
Well that did it. I may as well have castrated him and thrown it into the garbage. He stomped around the small office as I opened my book and started chapter one. Then he stood in the doorway, arms raisedand pressing against the frame. (Be big. Be very big.)
“Why are you being so uncooperative?” he demanded.
“I’m not being uncooperative,” I said. “I agreed to do the logs and I offered to do the bedchecks.”
“But you’re supposed to do the laundry and prepare the meals. That’s part of the midnight shift duties.”
“I’m supposed to? Why am I supposed to?”
“Well why do you think they always put one guy and one girl on shift together? The guys take care of Security and the girls do the cooking, cleaning, and stuff.”
“Nooo, that’s not it,” I absently turned a page. “’Cuz we all have the same job description.”
He came over to the desk then and leaned on it, over it, putting his hands rather far apart. But then found he had nothing to say.
“As for why one of each,” I continued, “I suspectthat it’s in case a strip search has to be done for a new admission. Though that assumes all our kids are heterosexual. Frankly, if I were a young gay male, I’d rather have me looking him over than you.”
Oh that was definitely it. I’d now, somehow, called him gay as well as suggested he do the women’s work. He was not, definitely not going to stand for this.
“What?” He looked at me as if I was crazy.
Unfortunately, we were not exactly whispering at this point and one of the kids woke up. Told us to shut up. (Damn. Now I’d have to erase ‘1’ and change it to ‘2’.) Which unfortunately woke up another resident who called out, with some anxiety, “Stop fighting! Please, I didn’t do anything!” John was now leaning in the doorway, arms crossed, glaring at me. I got up, brushed past him, and went to the kid’s room to tell her it was okay, she was okay, go back to sleep.
When I returned to the office, John was sitting in the big chair at The Desk, smiling smugly. So I took my book, and the log, went downstairs, and made a pot of tea. I did not do the laundry. I did not prepare the meals. I did go upstairs every half hour to do the bedchecks.
First time, he grunted, as if I was a simpleton, that he’d just done them. Second time, he informed me again that he’d just done them. By the fourth time, I think he figured out what I was doing. (The bedchecks.) And then his ‘I just did them’ got louder and angrier with every passing half hour. At the 5:00 bedcheck, I pointed out, being careful to whisper, that if he didn’t start the meals soon (tuna salad sandwiches for lunch and some kind of casserole for dinner), he wouldn’t get them done before shift change.
“I’m not doing the fucking cooking, are you dense?!” he exploded. And everyone woke up. Except Matthew, who was chasing rabbits.
Well, the day shift was rather peeved to discover that neither the laundry nor the meals had been done. It was hard enough for two adults to keep tabs on four kids who were restricted to one floor when you didn’t have anything else to do. Especially when the kids had something new to complain about all day.
When the supervisor spoke to me about that fateful shift, she said things like “If you can’t resolve conflicts with your coworkers better than that, well, I’m afraid you’re not much of a role model for the kids” and “I’m concerned that you put the kids at risk—who knows what could have happened while you were busy bickering.” And I said things like “John has a little flashlight” and “He lacks the capacity to follow a recipe.” Then she said something like “What you lack is the capacity to get along with people.”
So, later that morning, or evening, at around mile seven, it occurred to me that maybe I should look for a job that didn’t involve people.
* * * * *
In this respect, my next job was an improvement of sorts. I worked on maintenance at a summer camp. It was a beautiful camp, on a lake in Muskoka, with swimming, canoeing, arts and crafts, theatre, waterskiing, tennis, golf, horseback riding, and etiquette for the ruling class. Maintenance was responsible for thegrounds, the docks, and the buildings (dining halls, rec halls, cabins, washrooms/showers, offices, infirmary, sheds, and stables). For a while, I did okay. There was some concern, I admit, when, on the day the kids arrived, I started dancing around, weaving in and out of clusters of mostly wide-eyed and wary kids, taunting “I don’t have to deal with you! I don’t have to deal with you!” However, since the episode wasn’t repeated, everyone pretended it didn’t happen. And I went about my business cutting the grass, repairing the docks, painting the cabins, and so on.
But then there was lunch. With the rest of the crew: Jimmy, the youngest member, summer help for three years while getting a forestry diploma, and now full-time; Clyde, a little slow—slow-thinking, slow-moving; Zeke, a wiry guy who would have reminded you of a World War I marine even if he didn’t have that tattoo of an anchor on his arm; and Mac, our supervisor. Jackie, summer help like me, wasn’t there. She didn’t eat lunch. But the others did, and they were talking about going hunting on the weekend.
“I don’t understand hunting,” I joined in. The look Mac gave me indicated that women were to be seen and not heard. Hm. John’s brother? He did have a ridiculously large and sturdy all-in-one wrench thing hooked onto his belt loop.
“I don’t understand the desire to kill,” I spoke again, loudly.
“It’s not that,” Zeke said. “It’s the excitement, the thrill of stalking an animal that’s big and wild and can tear you apart!”
“Yeah right. Like Bambi’s cousin’s going to tear you apart.”
“And it’s the challenge!” Clyde added. “Deer are smart, you know!”
I’d say the average deer has an IQ of what, three? So I had to ask, “Smart compared to who?” For example, I understand there were a lot of hunting injuries the year the M-10 Moose Call came onto the market. Well, what do you think’s gonna happen when some moron stands in the middle of the forest during mating season and yells out in moose language ‘COME FUCK ME NOW!’
“The challenge?” I continued. “Give me a break. You guys hunt in a group, so already it’s what, six against one? And you use dogs, and ATVs, and even helicopters, to scare the animals out of the bush. And then you’ve got some geezer sittin’ in a truck parked at the side of the road just waiting to pick off the first fear-frenzied creature that runs across. Oh, the challenge.” ’Course then again, since said geezer has probably been chugging beer all afternoon, I guess that would be a challenge.
“It’s not just all that,” Jimmy pitched in. “We like the meat.”
“Then why don’t you go to a deer farm and just shoot one that’s out grazing in the field? Or a cow farm. Hey, I know! Get a job in a slaughterhouse!”
“’Cuz it’s gotta be wild,” Zeke grinned at Clyde.
“Okay, why don’t you just go shoot a skunk?”
“Big and wild,” he winked. He winked?
“Yeah, about this ‘bigger is better’ thing,” I responded. “It’s completely illogical. I mean, anyone can shoot a moose that’s just standing there. If you really wanna brag, hang a pair of chipmunk ears on your wall.” They looked at me with such— What? Had I suggested castration again?
“And the wardrobe,” I carried on. “Also highly illogical. I mean we have the—,” I adopted the bored and very gay voice of a pretentious British fashion designer, “—matching pants and shirt in camouflage ‘I’m hiding’ greens and browns. With perhaps a smudge of olive or taupe. While the accessories—vest and cap—are in fluorescent ‘I can’t help but be seen’ orange. The ensemble fairly shouts ‘I’m a man.’” By this point, they were ignoring me. Well, eating did require their full attention.
Another time, another lunch, I heard Jimmy and Mac mumbling to each other trying to figure out if Cathy, one of the new kitchen staff, was Chinese or Japanese. Or maybe Korean. Vietnamese even. They asked me what I thought.
“Isn’t she Canadian?” I replied innocently.
They glared at me. Now what? Oh. I’d broken another rule. The ‘Never ever expose our dim-witted prejudices, we take pride in being assholes, we take even greater pride in being ignorant assholes’ rule. So I asked her when she next passed by our table.
And with only half the attitude she was entitled to, she answered simply, “Canadian.”
Never one to pass up what was coming to me, I said, “See I told you so! Ya bunch of dim-witted prejudiced ignorant assholes.” Well, lunch was clearly over.
They all got up, heavily, as if eating was a job well done.
“Tonight then?” Mac looked at Zeke.
“Yup—Clyde’s place, right?”
“Right—”
“Who’s bringing the beer?” Jimmy asked.
Ah yes, it was Friday. Friday night was poker night.
“Y’know why women can’t play poker?” Mac asked, smiling nastily at me, rubbing in the exclusion. “They’re no good at bluffing.”
Hm. “Guess you’ve never had sex with a woman then, eh?”
•
So on my third day of ‘firewood duty’—a supposedly punitive assignment that involved being dropped off at the chopping site first thing in the morning and not picked up until the end of the afternoon, leaving one all alone all day long to chop firewood—I figured as far as being on the maintenance crew goes, life doesn’t get much better than that—on the third day of chopping wood, I developed my Theory of Man. Frankly, I think it rivals the Theory of Everything for explanatory value regarding life, the universe, and, well, everything.
My theory is this: men have a defective chromosome. The Y was supposed to be an X, but somehow it ended up missing something. Maybe it’s a case of stunted growth or arrested development. Whatever, due to this defective chromosome, uniquely characteristic of the male, men are less evolved.
Consider their fascination with movement. They always have to be doing something. They can’t sit still. This importance of movement is characteristic of many lower animals. Certainly it’s required for flight and fight. (And no other options occur to lower animals.) And for many, movement is a form of posturing—which explains the way men walk, and stand, and sit. On the other hand, such excessive physical activity may simply suggest that the organism’s mental activity doesn’t provide enough stimulation.
Not only must they be doing something, they must be doing it loudly. Men seem to be inordinately fond of engines, jackhammers, and chainsaws. This desire to make noise is suggestive of the lion’s roar—the louder the noise, the greater the threat.
Because, usually, the larger the animal. And of course size is another male obsession. Girth which in a woman would be considered obese and disgusting is carried by men as if it increases their value, their authority: they thrust out their gut just as they thrust out their chest. It brings to mind the many other animals that inflate themselves—the blowfish actually doubles its size. Men are concerned not only with physical size—in general and in particular—but also with the size of their paycheques, their houses, and their corporations. Simply put, the bigger, the better.
Closely related to the size thing is the territory thing. Men occupy a lot of space. Again, look at the way they stand and sit. They take up, they occupy, more space than they need—they lean on counters, sprawl on chairs, take over small countries.
Consider also men’s obsession with speed. Cars, trains, planes. Sex. Speed is, of course, important for flight, one of the forementioned behaviours favoured by so many lower animals.
Like their sexual response, men’s emotional response is, well, uncomplicated. They are easy to please. This lack of complexity is further indication that they are less evolved.
Some say that language is the mark of higher life forms. And, of course, as any grade school teacher will tell you, boys lag behind girls in verbal development. They’re just not very good at communicating. I believe the word I’m looking for is ‘inarticulate.’
By way of summary, consider dick flicks. Also called ‘action movies’, there is indeed lots of action. And lots of noise. The heroes are usually big. And they have big things—big guns, usually. The central conflict of a dick flick is almost always territorial. There is little in the way of plot or character development, but there’s always at least one high-speed chase. And, understandably, the dialogue in a dick flick consists mostly of short and often incomplete sentences.
•
Alas, lunch wasn’t the only problem. There was also that ‘Merger Maniac’ thing. Of course, maintenance staff was not supposed to interact with the kids—it goes without saying that we’re unqualified to do so. Which is why one kid stopped in his tracks on hearing me, seeing me, the janitor, take a moment to play some Chopin on the piano in the rec hall I’d just swept. Janitors can’t play Chopin. It totally rocked his world view. I’d probably sent him into years of therapy.
Anyway, one bright summer day while doing the washrooms, and pondering the cleaning products I was supposed to use—my rubber gloves were disintegrating—I heard what sounded like an awful lot of kids chanting “More! More! More! More!” Curious, I stepped outside, toilet brush in hand, to see four or five teams of kids on the playing field, each under a huge banner variously proclaiming Microsoft or Monsanto or something. After the chant, they’d huddle in their teams and apparently plan hostile takeovers, because then they’d all run around and, according to rules I still haven’t figured out, some won and some lost, and the kid in the corner with a huge stock market ticker tape thing changed some numbers.
At the next scrimmage, I ran onto the field with my pail of water—yes, dirty washroom clean-up water—and doused ’em all. I flicked my rag in the face of each of the camp leaders present, yelling, like Pink Floyd, “Leave the kids alone!”
I tried explaining—to Security, ironically—that I was not threatening to throw bricks at anyone, nor did I even have any bricks, but the incident went on record nevertheless.
•
And then there were those little signs on the sanitary receptacles. One sign per receptacle, one receptacle per stall, ten stalls per washroom, five washrooms—that’s fifty times a day I’d read “This sanitary receptacle is provided for your convenience. You are requested to co-operate and use it for the purpose intended.”
‘For our convenience?’ I suppose the toilet paper is for our convenience too. No doubt some man came up with these signs.
‘A sanitary receptacle’? That’s just wrong. The receptacle may well be sanitary, thanks to yours truly, but I think what’s meant is ‘a sanitary napkin receptacle.’ ’Course the napkins put into the receptacle aren’t very sanitary at that point—‘menstrual napkin receptacle’ would be more accurate. But men do have trouble with such words. (Though they seem to handle ‘cunt’ easily enough.)
‘You are requested to co-operate.’ Someone’s been watching way too many late night movie interrogation scenes. Really, I think a ‘please’ would’ve sufficed. And actually, I don’t even think we need a ‘please’. I doubt we even need to be asked. I mean, why shouldn’t we ‘co-operate’? Women are generally inclined to keep things clean. And this was, after all, the girls’ washroom, not the boys’. (Twice as much time was allotted for cleaning the boys’ washrooms. At first, I thought that was because the men on the crew worked twice as slowly. But then one day I was assigned to the boy’s washroom. Until then, I’d always thought ‘pissing contest’ was just a metaphor.)
Lastly, ‘for the purpose intended.’ What else might we use a ‘sanitary receptacle’ for? A lunchbox? A weapon? (“And now for tonight’s top story: as we speak, gangs of women are roaming the streets armed with sanitary receptacles...”)
So I took all the little signs off the receptacles and bolted them to the walls in the boy’s washrooms—one above each urinal. Alas, this too went on record.
•
And then there was that trip to the dump. Jimmy, Jackie, and I were to make a garbage run. Not knowing how long the trip would be, I asked Jackie, who’d gotten into the front seat of the pick-up beside Jimmy, who was already at the wheel, if I could ride up front instead. “I’m very prone to motion sickness.” It’s true. Ask any one of eight airline attendants. And five train attendants. I even get nauseous working the microfiche machines in the library.
“Oh no, me too,” she moaned. She had a crush on Jimmy.
Well, the solution was obvious. “Okay, Jimmy, how about you sit in the back then and one of us’ll drive?” He glared at me. Then angrily started the pick-up, jerked it into reverse, and headed out to the road, spinning gravel and bumping recklessly over all the ruts. I guess I was staying in the back. My stomach lurched. What’d I say? I couldn’t figure it out. Surely he knew I could drive; in fact, I was driving my van clear across the country ‘bout the time he was just getting his license. Halfway to the dump, it dawned on me.
“Oh I get it!” I leaned forward into the front seat. “My truck is my penis!” And then I threw up.
•
Near the end of the summer, the kids put on a talent show. Curious, I joined the other members of the crew sitting at the back of the main rec hall. Suddenly, everyone stood. What’s this, they stand for the Camp Director’s grand entrance? I looked around in disbelief. Then everyone—kids, counsellors, staff—started singing the national anthem. They were standing for the anthem. Shit. If I’d known that, I would’ve shown up late. Mac glowered—down—at me. I’d never actually seen anyone glower before. Glare, yes. Glower, no. Then as soon as it was over and everyone sat back down, he jeered at me, “Too stiff to stand?” (I’d been chopping firewood again.)
“No, I just don’t stand for the anthem.”
“Why not? You some kind of commie?”
“One question at a time,” I kept my voice low, as someone had come onto the stage to introduce the evening’s events. “I don’t stand for the anthem because first of all, it’s a bit arbitrary—why not play the town anthem instead, or the provincial anthem, or the planetary anthem? Second, why even encourage group bonding? I prefer to encourage individual identity: it’s much less dangerous, not to mention healthier.”
He gave me a blank look. You know that look of incomprehension, the look Sultan, Köhler’s chimp in that famous experiment, probably had on his face before he understood he could pile the crates on top of each other to reach the banana?
“Whenever we divide ourselves into little groups,” I continued to explain, against all odds of succeeding, but because the guy was taking a long time to introduce the first act, “there’s a good chance we’ll get into a hyperemotional, nonrational gang thing. And groups based on territory, such as nationalistic groups, are the worst. If you have a sense of self, you don’t need the identity of a group, a gang. As Einstein said, ‘Nationalism is an infantile disease.’”
“So you are a commie.”
“What?” It took me a few seconds to figure out his mistake. “Communism is an economic system, not a political system. It’s at odds with capitalism, not nationalism. And actually, my guess is that communists are quite nationalistic. They probably stand very proudly for their anthem.” Was the first act ever going to begin?
“You should still show some respect.” What a fine upstanding citizen he was. As self-righteous as they come.
“But I don’t respect—”
“What’s your problem?” He cut me off angrily. And a little loudly.