A chuckle and a slap on the back

I pulled up to the house that was soon to no longer be mine.

The cool ocean breeze hit my face as I exited my car. The last chords of American Aquarium’s “Burn, Flicker, Die” faded into the air, replaced by the distant waves crashing on the beach.

“I’m going to miss this place,” I say out loud to no one but myself.

I look at the dilapidated plastic flamingos that stand guard. One of them is duct taped on the legs to keep him upright. His partner is missing his eyes. On the other side of the yard, two more sway in the breeze. They came later in the process. A gift of a friend who has sort of faded into the periphery of life. I hate it when things like that happen. But it does happen. Too often when you never stay put. I envy folks who have stayed in one place for long periods of time. They develop roots. They develop routines and have friends always available.

Me? I’ve moved so many times to so many different places. My friends are scattered from 30 miles away to New Orleans to California, then over to Japan and into England. Pockets of friends are in Virginia. Some on in Louisiana. Others are in this hell hole of Eastern North Carolina.

Some of those same friends say they are jealous of me.

“You’ve got to see so much, travel so much,” they say, “And you don’t have things holding you down.”

True, I tell them, but you have things I have always wanted. A wife, a family a dog and a cat. A steady paycheck and a feeling of purpose.

“I’ve got none of those,” I’ll say.

Usually that gets a chuckle and a slap on the back.

I open up the door to my “paradise house” as one friend described it to me once. The intense heat hits me like opening an oven to pull out a pizza. It actually blows the hot air outside. A front was just formed by this.

My brow instantly begins to sweat. I open the fridge and enjoy the cool air. I grab a Lone Star – 16-ouncer – from it and pop the top. I swig a huge sip of the Texas swill and realize that life is good most of the time. It’s only bad when you start worrying about it.

I go to the thermostat. It’s 99 degrees inside, according to the piece of plastic. But it doesn’t go to 100, so it could be 120 in here. It isn’t. There was a time about a month ago when it was 99 on the thermometer. But it was much hotter than it is now.

Then, I turned on the air. My girlfriend was there and it had to happen. We left for an hour to get some coolness from a local dive bar. Drank a couple Yuenglings and forgot about the last 48 hours.

Those are the times you remember. When someone sticks by you. Even when most people wouldn’t.

“You got a keeper,” my dad said a week earlier.

“Damn right,” I thought then, and am thinking now as I finish off the tallboy.

I don’t turn on the AC. It’s too expensive now that I’m unemployed. I have enough money to support myself for about 8 months, I figure. Of course, my figures will be way off and it’ll last five, tops.

I open up the windows and turn on a couple of fans.

Soon, it’s 91 inside.

“Not too bad,” I think.

I take a swig of beer and go outside. I open my car’s hatchback and start hauling in boxes. Medical boxes. Rubber gloves and gauze, they are slugged. My boxes display my journey as well.

These are the “I’m dating a nurse” boxes.

Others are : “I’m dating a girl from New Mexico who’s mom liked fruit” period.

Still another is :”I’m dating a Mexican who’s mom wrote what was in the boxes” period.

And still another is “This was the lesbian that I pined for” period.

Lastly, there’s the “The bitch was just looking for a safe place to be for a while” period. Those boxes, I threw away.

I sit down at my computer, hoping one of the gaggle of jobs I’ve already applied for has responded. I boot it up, log in to my email and … nothing.

I log into my other email … nada.

I went through nearly 14 months of this before, but I had a steady paycheck from the taxpayers of the United States then. I don’t now. Even though an old colleague told me “You should apply anyway.”

What’s the worst they can say? No. Right, I get that.

But why bother getting even two seconds of hope raised?

You’re a glutton for gluttony. If by gluttony you mean stupidity and pain.

I shaved my goatee off yesterday. I don’t really know why. I just did. I look weird without it. I think I look older. I definitely look “sweeter” as my girlfriend told me.

I’d rather look surly. Keeps people – other than tourists who want directions or a photo taken – away.

I need to eat some food. I always slip into these “forgot to eat” days when something happens dramatically in my life. And though I was going to make this happen in about two months anyway, this does qualify.

I look at the stains on the carpet and the broken blinds and I wonder if I’ll get any of my security deposit back. My last place I got it all back, minus the carpet cleaning fee. I had even left a piece of petrified baby poop – well, three and a half year old poop – exactly where the kid had left it months before.

Yeah, you can call me disgusting for that, but I didn’t want to touch it. And hell, that kid was good at shitting somewhere and hiding it away from us. Gotta give him credit for that. I’m sure his dad had nothing to do with that talent.

This makes me think of the Doug Stanhope concert I went to the other night. I’d bought the tickets drunkenly one night. So it was a sunk cost. Except for the three beers and tip I bought. I woulda bought more, but I felt bad about it. That kind of thought process probably won’t last.

Anyway, he told an Assburgers joke. Or maybe one of the opening act guys did.

It was funny.

I laughed.

But it made me a bit sad too.

I wonder how that kid is doing?

Good, I hope.

It’s really all I can do.

Home

For some reason the “Race for your life, Charlie Brown …” song entered my  mind just as I entered the office. It stayed there, echoing over and over as he spoke to me.

I knew my resume wasn’t up to snuff. I was qualified for the job I was interviewing for, but I hadn’t show it at all. But for some reason, Mr. Steven Jacobs IV decided to call me when he got my credentials in an e-mail one day.

“Mr. Jones,” he said over the phone three days earlier. “I’d like to bring you in for an interview.”

I, of course, immediately said “Certainly, Mr. Jacobs.” And we arranged a time for me to be in Raleigh for it. I was beginning to become familiar with the city, after living in the state for over a decade now, that city had always eluded me as a place I was comfortable. Now, having made the weekend trek there every other weekend for over a year, it was becoming quite easy to navigate.

“So, then, Mr. Jones,” Jacobs said as Charlie Brown kept racing in my skull, “what exactly do you think about my company?”

It had been a long time since I interviewed somewhere and they asked me actual questions about the company itself. In newspaper interviews, it was always about getting a feel for a person. That’s why I never prepared for a newspaper interview. I had that shit down pat. I could talk the talk and look a hell of a lot more confident than I ever was sitting in whatever shitty chair I was in. And believe me, the chairs were always shitty. Except the time I interviewed at Media General. The first ones, yes, when I was in the newsroom. Those chairs sucked. But by the time I got to the head honcho’s office, he had chairs that cost more than my monthly salary at any job I’ve ever had. And you wonder why the company was/is in disarray.

I started pulling stuff from my couple of Google searches the night before. Being sure to drop plenty of strategic key words. Something a friend of mine said was useful on resumes. “It gets you past the robots,” he quipped.

I didn’t buy into that, so I would write elaborate cover letters. All of them telling a story, because that’s what I did. Told stories. Some of them true, very true. And some of them lies, utter lies.

“Employers don’t want stories,” a career counselor said to me. “They want you to prove you’re going to bring something to the company.”

When she said that, I zoned out. Probably missed a bunch of great things she had to say. But, that just irked me. And reminded me of one of my favorite books of all time – “The Confederacy of Dunces.” And from it, one line : “Employers sense in me a denial of their values.” And since I was a wear my emotions on my sleeves kind of person – except with relationships, especially early on – this was a problem.

“I see you really know my company,” Jacobs said.

“I try to be an informed person, especially when it comes to matters close to me,” I replied. “It’s part of the journalist in me.”

I felt a twinge of regret for saying that. I was harking back to the “good ol’ days”, something which did not serve me well. All employers look at my resume and see a career journalist. So why do they want to hire me to do the complete opposite?

After about an hour of talking, Jacobs gave me the tour. It took all of six minutes and thirty-eight seconds. I timed it with my cell phone. Why? Because it distracted me from that damn Charlie Brown song.

Then, all of the sudden, Jacobs pulled a fast one. At least that’s how it felt.

“Jones,” he said. “Wait here just a minute.” And he vanished. I was in the middle of some kind of stock room. Dark and full of boxes. Stacked to the ceiling filled.

About two minutes later, he called me.

“You answer a phone on an interview?” was the first words he said.

“Not usually, but my caller ID said it was you,” I retorted.

“Heh,” he said. “I like the way you think on your toes, Jones. Come back to my office, so we can talk real stuff.”

D’oh. I had not paid any attention to our stroll through his offices and had no idea where his office was. It took me five minutes to find another person, and immediately I asked where Jacobs’ office was.

“There’s no Jacobs here,” the young lady said.

I was startled, then I said: “sorry, Mr. Jacobs.”

“Ohhhhhhhhhh,” she said with a snort afterwards. “You must be the new guy, huh? He was just talking about you.”

This wasn’t cool. I had no idea if I was going to be offered a job, and if so, whether I’d take it. But before my pride or ego could get any bigger, she talked again.

“How long has it been since he left you?”

“Oh, about 10 minutes,” I replied.

“You failed the test,” she said.

“Huh?”

“You’re supposed to find him in five minutes or less. He read it in some book on management he read in college. Says anyone that can’t find him in five minutes can’t have a job in this company.”

“Really,” I said unbelieving.

“Yep.”

“How long did it take you?”

“Four minutes and 44 seconds,” I said.

“He times you?”

“With a stop watch.”

She pointed me in the right direction and I found him.

“Well, well, well,” Jacobs said. “You’re more tortoise than hare, I see.”

“I am bald.”

No laughs. Not a good sign. Even a bad joke should be laughed at under these circumstances. He looked me up and down, then stuck out his hand to shake mine.

“Good luck, Jones,” he said. “But you’ve got to be able to think on your feet to work for me. Even if you’re just picking up my laundry.”

I went back home and opening up a 16-ounce Lone Star can. I was saving them for a big shin-dig, but sometimes you just have to have a drink. That was one of them.

The next morning, I got up and went back to the newspaper. Even though it smells bad and everyone hates each other, it felt like home.