About a week ago I was on the subway, on my way back from seeing an apartment, when a guy got on the train. He was that awkward, sweet, quirky, husky sort of nerdy you see on guys who wear thick, black-framed glasses and argyle sweater vests. He was wearing both of these things. I have a soft spot for these sorts of people. He had obviously gotten caught in the rain. I watched him as he stood in front of me, holding the rail for support, and took his hopelessly tangled headphones from his pocket. Looking frustrated, he started the long and complicated process of untangling them. For a couple minutes I tried not to laugh, and then I said,
"By the time you get where you're going, you won't have listened to anything."
"Thankfully, I have a far way to go," he replied.
"How far?" I asked. He looked up.
"Kew Gardens. 'Bout 40 minutes." Then, tugging at a knot, he added, "If I fail, I'll just borrow yours."
I laughed and went back to listening to my music. Amused, I was turning this interaction over in my head when I looked up and noticed that we were at my stop. Startled, I leaped up and darted off the train, relieved that I beat the doors. Turning around, I saw him staring at me. Thinking I must have looked ridiculous, I awkwardly threw my hand up and waved goodbye. As I turned and started to walk away, laughing, I heard a sound behind me. Looking behind me, I saw that he had leaped off the train and was now standing on the platform, looking at me like a deer caught in headlights. As we regarded each other, the doors swooshed shut and the train started to pull away.
"Er, uh, did you hear something I didn't?" he asked.
"What do you mean?" I smiled.
"Like an announcement. Did you know something I didn't?"
"Hmm, no," I said, laughing. "I just hadn't realized it was my stop."
"Oh, shoot!" he yelled, gesturing at the departing train.
"It's okay," I said. "I'll wait with you."
We chatted for a few minutes, and when the next train came, he got on it. But for the briefest moment, he looked like he might not. His name was Jason. I almost asked him if he wanted to go out for a drink, on the spot, because, well, why not? I don't know anybody. I might have made a friend. Alas, I did not. But I kind of hoped I'd run into him again... however, the odds of that happening in a city of 8.5 million people? Well, they're slim.
I don't think he thought he missed an announcement.
I think he jumped off to talk to me more.
[smiles] Aw.
Tonight I move into a new apartment. My roommate is a 34-year-old music journalist turned illustrator. She's looking for a temporary roomie to split rent while she works on a children's book from home. So I can fill the bill until spring. Her place is great. It's pretty big with hardwood floors, it's clean, and it's decorated in entirety to look retro. My room is 11' x 11' with hardwood floors, big windows, and a big closet with custom shelving. The neighborhood is beautiful and the commute to Manhattan is short. The only downside? My room - and I'm not kidding - is bubblegum pink. Yes, you read correctly. Pink. Super, ultra Barbie pink. I guess it's the base coat of a larger, artistic, comic book-themed idea my roommate has for the room, but right now, it just looks like a My Little Pony threw up in there. It catches the light very nicely though. Perhaps even blindingly so [laughs].
Anyway, tonight I'm hiring a car service to help me transfer my stuff from Long Island City to East Elmhurst. I look forward to the fresh start.
Now if only I didn't lose my wallet, which contained many things, including: a $300 check, my ATM card, my license, and my original social security card. Seriously, it's an identity-theft starter kit. And now I'm locked out of my bank accounts because, without ANY form of ID, I could just as easily be the person who stole my wallet as I am the person who lost it. So, for the time being, I am a nameless, wandering human being. Hopefully nothing happens to me between now and when I get a new license because they'll have to check my dental records for identification... or wait until my face shows up on a milk carton and connect the dots.
Hm. I wonder who could be me right now.
Things are coming apart at the seams here at the dollar store. It's hard for me to keep track of the numbers.
ReplyDeleteThere were seven of us and then they hired a girl and then fired her a week later, and then Kerry got fired, and then Bev's husband died and she's still technically here but hasn't been in in a month, and then the manager hired two new people, Eileen and Liz, only Liz never showed up so she was replaced by Rob, who just got fired, and then Tanya quit.
We've been open two months.
John - he's the manager - explained to me that I would be working more next week because of this. I don't want to work more. I've been putting in requests to work LESS. But the fact that I had outlasted so many people at a job I've wanted to quit since halfway through day one was actually kind of heartening, at least for a time.
"Your schedule was worked out," John said to me, "and then I had to redo it." He said something like that, anyway. My response was something like:
"Do you know what a decay chain is?"
He did not know what a decay chain is.
A 'decay chain' is, in the world of nuclear physics, the series of transformations an at goes through as it spits out pieces of itself and, in doing so, becomes an atom of a different element. The new atom will keep spitting out protons and neutrons until it reaches a stable configuration. I explained this, in simplified words probably accompanied by hand gestures, to my boss, who probably hasn't slept since September.
A little later on, I ran into him again. I was in the process of cutting open a box with my car keys (I unpacked my first dorm room that way), and asked him if he ever noticed the stamps on cardboard shipping boxes, explaining the box's point of origin. This was supposed to be a lead to that time I saw a box from a town called Eighty-Four, Pennsylvania, and how I wondered why the hell anybody would name a town Eighty-Four, Pennsylvania.
"I'm still thinking about the decay chain," he said to me.
I'm seeing a lot of things I don't like here. I don't mean that as a euphemism for criminal wrongdoing or debauchery, but simple human unkindness and stupidity. I like this town less the more I see of the people who live here. I don't like what this place is doing to my opinion of the human animal.
I felt this way near the very end of my stay in Florida. I had figured that you would follow a similar trajectory of disappointment, but you haven't. You've found a place for yourself in the world as a self-sustaining citizen of Earth.
I am, myself, not in as good a position. I'm going to look for work again tomorrow. I can't stay at that place anymore, but I want to be able to leave the atom with a certain measure of pride, if I may distort the metaphor. I want to find work before I quit, not after. It's the responsible thing to do.
I wonder if John will ever get his good configuration, his stable isotope. Or if, when it comes, he will be part of it. He'll be made a district manager if he can hold this mess together. And that adds an added weight to the problem: we suppose that it is better for this store to survive, that it is right and good.
And yet only force of habit really has me thinking this way. Only one of us, Tracy, really seems to enjoy the job, and she's engaged to be married and therefore viewing the whole process through the rosiest of lenses. Bev seemed to be doing okay, but I think she's a long way from okay right now. The rest of us are trying to act like we enjoy working here, but the veneer is starting to come off.
I suppose there should be a moral in there somewhere, but I've got nothing. I'm leaving, but the difference between victory and failure is the conditions under which I leave. Learn from my suffering.
You should check craigslist missed connections. I bet you the guy made a post. I used to read those religiously, even though I scrupulously avoid eye contact on the subway. No one ever missed me, but once I found one that was meant for my roommate. It's a city of 8.5 million people...but they almost all use craigslist!
ReplyDeleteI never found him... but I'm totally hooked on Missed Connections now. Thanks [laughs].
ReplyDeleteI wish you'd post again. I like comparing trajectories.
ReplyDeleteI will blog soon. I keep meaning to find time and it keeps not happening! SIGH. I hope all is okay in your corner of the world.
ReplyDelete