The Job Pirate Read online

  “Well?” he asked again. “How does it sound, Brandon? You kinda faded off there.”

  I was very hungry, and I didn’t want another 1994 on my hands. I needed food, and I needed rent, and I needed this job. I needed to suck it up and grow a pair. “It sounds real good.”

  “Great, great!” he exclaimed, the burden of finding some asshole to work the Wacky Wax Cart finally off his agenda.

  “See you tomorrow then?” Becky asked me.

  “It looks that way.”

  “Come by the toy store tomorrow about 8:00 in the morning and you can fill out the paperwork,” the manager said. “I’ll give you a shirt also.”

  “A shirt? That shirt?” I asked, pointing at the green thing covering his chest.

  “One just like it,” he replied proudly, “this one’s mine.”

  I did my best to smile and sauntered through the crowd and back down the hill to my Cadillac. I drove back to my apartment in time to watch People’s Court and make three grilled cheese sandwiches and curse the day I gave up journalism for art and film and English.

  Seven a.m. came swiftly and furiously into my slumbering apartment. I had forgotten what mornings were like. I had forgotten how good coffee tastes in the cool dawn hours. I had forgotten how delicious a hot shower feels, and the invigorating smell of soap at first light, the touch of a car’s headrest on wet hair. I had forgotten all the forgettable moments of getting ready for work.

  I parked my Cadillac in the same parking garage halfway up the hill—this time legally—and walked up to CityWalk. I stopped by the toy store and the manager gave me my green shirt, a nametag, the semifilled cash register tray and keys, and some words of encouragement. I changed into my new green shirt in the bathroom near the storeroom and left before the manager could say anything more.

  The walk through the dormant CityWalk was relatively calm this time. The entire place was empty except for a few uniformed employees milling around the various stores preparing to open. I caught a very thorough glimpse of myself as I walked by a glass storefront. This new green T-shirt that fit over my thin chest like a starched cotton box; the new nametag pinned near the center of my new green cotton box; my perma-pressed slacks; and my lucky leather wing-tips with the good arch support. What an asshole, I thought to myself. What a Grade-A asshole.

  I arrived at the Wacky Wax Cart, opened the cash register, and deposited most of the money inside, leaving some out for my lunch and basic necessities. Stealing money on the first day was one of the golden points behind starting a new retail job—no boss would ever accuse an employee of being stupid enough to steal on the first day! They would simply chalk it up to error: The new employee was unfamiliar with this particular cash register; the new employee was both nervous and excited and pushed the wrong button.

  I quickly crossed the empty courtyard and bought myself a $3 cup of coffee and returned to my Wacky Wax stool. I sat there at my stool and sipped my coffee and smoked my cigarettes as more employees began streaking across the courtyard. I turned on the heaters below the vats of wax, like the little “To Do” list taped to the side of the register had suggested. Even more Universal employees began arriving, each in their various department uniforms and salary color codes. They greeted each other politely, and held the doors for one another, and congregated in little hordes by lobbies and benches. Nobody looked my way. Nobody fucked with the Wacky Wax Cart.

  The sun finally broke over the east end of the façade, and the employees quickly dissipated into their appropriate offices like cursed gargoyles returning to their perches at the first break of dawn. I had already finished six cigarettes since stepping out of the shower that morning, and the fact that it was now only 9:40 a.m.—plus the notion that I was most likely going to burn through an entire pack before quitting time—brought on high acclaim for the side of my brain that recommended buying the generic cigarettes today.

  It was about 11:30 when the manager walked over and inspected the cart for dust, debris, and customers. He glanced at my green shirt and smiled—but a strange smile. It was a smile that declared: “We both stepped in shit now.”

  “The shirt looks good,” he said.

  “I feel very authentic.”

  “What does that mean?” he asked, nibbling on his moustache with his bottom lip.

  “I really feel like I’m part of the program.”

  “That’s good. Listen, the crowd should be coming through in about an hour or two. Have you tested things out yet? Did you make anything?”

  “I wanted to make sure the wax was good and ready first.”

  “It only takes about 30 minutes before it’s ready, but you wouldn’t know that; it’s your first day. Here, let me refresh your memory on the process,” the manager said, and he proceeded to dip his hand into the vat of white wax several times, then the red wax, and then the blue wax. Hoisted then in front of my face was a red and blue fist attached to a thick tan arm, but I don’t think his colorful waxwork was what he was really attempting to convey.

  “Nice one,” I replied.

  He then smashed his colorful fist against the side of the cart until the still hardening wax broke off his hand and fell to the ground. Didn’t even aim for the trash can.

  “One more thing,” he added. “Sometimes the parents want a wax hand of their baby or their kid, and kids usually don’t like having their hand dunked into hot wax, so …”

  “So what do I do?” I asked seconds later, after his “so” trailed off.

  “So you be careful. Practice first.”

  Before he walked off, I jumped in with a “One last thing.” He paused and begrudgingly turned back around. “What is it?”

  “Am I here alone?”

  “Until 2:00, yes.”

  “Is that wise? I mean, this is my first day and all. What if the crowd demands too much?”

  “I’m right over there at the store if you need help,” he replied. “Becky will be in at 2:00 and then you can take a lunch and all that.”

  The manager walked back to the toy store, and I attempted my first wax hand. After too many deliberations on which gesture to choose, I settled on a sort of claw-hand with the fingers pursed like they were going to pluck an eyeball. I dipped my talon into the vat of white wax several times—it was indeed hot but somehow comfortable, like taking a scalding bath on a cold night. I decided on green with black tips, so I dipped my hand all the way into the green vat then partially into the black. I elevated my hand in front of my face and watched as the wax hardened and set before my eyes. Not bad. I could handle this job for awhile, I thought to myself. Might even be interesting. I’d be outdoors, cute tourists … and Becky.

  I had traveled back into Pretend Land for several minutes thinking about my new coworker before I remembered something about pulling the wax glove off before it hardened. And it was now pretty hard. So I poked the wooden tongue depressor down in between the wax and my thumb only to find out the reason why I was supposed to have removed the wax before it congealed: body hair. The hair on my fingers and wrist had bonded with the thick layer of wax coating them, and no matter how much I pulled and yanked, whined and whimpered, it wouldn’t budge. The green wax hand with black fingertips had attached itself to me. I weighed my options: If I slammed it on the register to break it off, I’d have a hundred little wax pieces clinging to my hand. A hundred small pains. A hundred small pains were much worse than one big pain. One big pain. There was only one thing to do: I was going to have to yank it off.

  With my remaining good hand, I gripped the wax claw and readied myself. I gave it a small tug to assess the coming agony, and a subtle “ooohhh” seeped from my lips. It was going to be bad. I glanced around first to see if there were any tourists or managers watching, but the coast was clear. I gripped the wax claw a little harder now and centered the force around the knuckles region, then yanked as hard as I could. It was a colossal yank—one worthy of the “FUCK!” I shouted at the storefronts.

  I looked down to my lef
t to find a normal, ordinary hand clutching a stretched green and black thing. I looked down to the right to find a swelling pink entity with trembling fingers. Attached to that was a wrist—once hairy but now bald and cherry-colored. There was a perfect line of separation between my hairy forearm and my bald wrist, where the wax had ended. It looked like I was wearing a fur sleeve that was too short for my arm. My knuckles, which didn’t have much hair to begin with, now had none whatsoever. I lifted my new hand closer to my face and studied the unfamiliarity of it; inspected its crimson glow; examined the dots of blood forming everywhere.

  Inside the remains of the green wax hand I found a two-inch collar of short brown strands, like a vivid still shot of a 1970s porn vagina. The four patches of hair from my knuckles were found a few inches deeper inside, like little hair islands. Like Hawaii. I couldn’t do much more than stare at it and regret the college thing again. There was no way I was ever going to do that to my hand again, hair or no hair now. Starving or not, this job just became expendable. I would work this gig until the first paycheck came, or until the first time someone pissed me off enough, then I’d be gone. I’d find something else. Something better, and that paid at least $10 an hour. The good times were just ahead.

  As the day went on, I turned three tourists away with stories of faulty wax and a manager who had just had a heart attack. And when Becky came in at 2:00, I showed her my hand and relayed the story of how it got that way along with a secret decree from the manager for her to perform all the hand waxing duties while I managed the cash register and healed. And I spent the rest of that day behind that cash register smoking cigarettes and not much else until the manager got wise to the operation and shut us down. I showed him my wounded hand and tried to explain my actions, and he said I should go home, put some Bactine on it, and not come back.

  So my new green shirt and I left. And we never saw Becky or CityWalk again. But I walked away with an honest day’s pay, along with about $14 that wasn’t that honest. And I have never been happier about getting fired than I was that day. Because sometimes it’s just easier being terminated for the right reasons than quitting for the wrong ones. And on top of that, fuck the Wacky Wax Cart.

  A STARING CONTEST WITH 40

  JOB #80

  Seattle didn’t fix me. I really thought it would have. Hoped it would. I made the move in my late 30s. Left my hometown to start over—start fresh—start again. But my ghosts followed me here too. There’s no avoiding the ghosts of the past. There’s no new clean white slate, no new Word document to start another story on. The life you led is yours forever. You own it. The events of your past stick with you for the next 10, 20, even 30 years. Who you were at 23 is who you’ll be at 33 and 43—just a bit smarter and a tad more cautious. No one tells you that, but it’s true—that’s life. You are you and you will always be you. You will always be the asshole that cheated on someone you cared for, that quietly tore the condom off in the middle of a one-night stand, that didn’t help the meth-addicted neighbor when she fell down the stairs right in front of your apartment door on a three-day high that her children couldn’t make better—you just stared through the peephole at her until someone else came. You will always be that same person … that same asshole. But you learn and you gain new experiences and become a better person each passing day. But even as time goes on, just below that shiny new paint job, you will always be you and it would be a crime to pretend that you weren’t.

  That’s my version of life in a nutshell. That’s how this 80-some-year lease on mortality unfolds. You can adjust your future but you can never alter your past—it’s with you through the good times and the bad, the strange nights and the bland days, the Saturdays spent in bed and the Mondays spent at work. You are you, and there’s no way to rewrite how it all began.

  So you move to Seattle. Partly to find someone to love, but mostly to get the hell away from someone you had loved. You move to find your own kind. You move to discover a new land and a new you. You move to reach your hand into the pond and retrieve that scaly lust for life that you once kept in an aquarium near the bed. You move to both get lost as well as be found. And there’s something so romantic about going to a bar or restaurant where no one knows you. When you move to a new city where you don’t know anyone, you can do those sorts of things. You can reinvent yourself every single day, and enter an establishment like a shadow in the wake of the couple before you. With your newspaper under your arm like a proud badge of dining autonomy, you saunter into the diner and take the small booth near the back. You keep an eye on every person that enters and deliberate how many of them are foreign spies. Two for sure, and then you order the eggs with hash browns and bacon. Coffee. Cream and sugar. Fuck orange juice.

  And the waltz of walking home drunk is something I’ve gotten too acquainted with. Seattle is a drinker’s town, and I’m a “problematic drinker,” as Alcoholics Anonymous puts it. The rainy days and nights drive people into pubs and bars and restaurant bars and hotel bars, where Happy Hour still reigns supreme. Most writers would relish the thought of a city that encouraged its most creative patrons to spend their evenings knocking back potent, locally produced beer. But I am one of the few wordsmiths that I could think of that couldn’t write when I drank. Never been able to. When I write, I’m a cigarette and coffee man. And lucky for me, Seattle is also a coffee drinker’s town, with just as many nearby cafés as there were nearby bars. Feed the monkey until it gets good, in one way or another.

  I did some of my best work in a coffee shop on Pine Street. The morose interior and free Internet seduced me inside, and the French Roast kept me coming back. I was making a meager living as a freelance writer for a seafood company at the time. The projects were few and far between, but the job allowed me the lifestyle of avoiding any type of work in an office other than my own studio apartment’s “home office,” which was just freelancer’s code for a desk and a computer near a window. I was able to wake up at a reasonable hour before walking to Bauhaus Café, ordering my French Roast, and checking my emails for work—an act I had pictured all real writers performing. Most mornings found my Yahoo inbox basking in that empty pink no-new-mail glow, but once a week or so I’d get a project that involved writing the appetizing descriptions on packages for new seafood products. Some human does indeed write that, and usually in his underwear after getting high.

  The most recent example of my literary seafood prowess was for a new product called Lemon Pepper Tilapia, whose upcoming package would boast a glossy image of a broiled and seasoned fillet beside the italicized description: A moist, flakey tilapia fillet glazed in a tangy red pepper and citrus marinade. Boom. I got paid for that. Paid well, too. If I could have knocked out a couple of those every day, I’d be a rich man. But it was far from every day—it was about three projects like that a month, which meant about $850 income per month. With $700 for rent and another $100 in bills and minimum-due credit card payments, I was barely able to feed myself a meal that didn’t involve cheese slices and toast. But I was finally a working writer in my newly adopted city, and pornography, tourists, and cash registers were in no way involved. I had proven to myself that I could just pack up and move into a strange new life, and survive.

  At the age of 40, most people were already naming their third child, maybe halfway through a 30-year mortgage, or counting down the days until retirement. But at 40, I was just finally starting to figure life out. All those retail jobs, the bouts of unemployment, the soul-crushing office positions and laborious livings—they’re just periods every writer must go through to stir up the sediment of new experiences and fresh challenges, kind of like an unprovoked fistfight or falling in love or pneumonia. All those crappy, crappy jobs, I have come to find out, would be the chapters in this fickle writer’s book of life.

  AFTERWORD

  Starting a new job, no matter what profession or position it is, always requires an incubation period before allowing your true character to start shining through. What you do and don�
�t do, say and don’t say, in those first two weeks can sometimes mean the difference between a month of employment or a year or more. The butterfly does not simply start a new job; it must be a quiet caterpillar during the first week, gestate unassumingly in a cocoon-like state during the second week, then it is finally free to flap its wings and shine once that third week rolls around.

  These ten simple rules are intended to help ease you comfortably through those first two awkward weeks at a new job, and guide you past the pitfalls and snares that will undoubtedly arise. Because coworkers are savages and the 9-to-5 is a goddamned jungle, and every new employee is just a defenseless cub out there all alone.

  1. Read a newspaper on your lunch break, not a book.

  Reading a proper newspaper in a communal lunch area immediately conveys to your new coworkers that you possess intelligence, have an interest in world affairs, and are up to date on politics. The newspaper also makes for a perfectly ambivalent prop, neither declaring your sexual preference, level of internal craziness, nor general discriminations. And the proper newspaper is essential, of course. The New York Times says you are classy and wise, while the USA Today says you scored an Egg McMuffin on your way to work. But still, even the worst newspaper is almost always better than reading a book during your first week. Most people might assume that flipping through a hardcover at a table by the coffee machine looks rather literary and French, which it does, but it also tells everyone watching you (and they are) exactly what you’re made of. Henry Miller implies you’re a pervert, Dave Eggers says you are an asshole, poetry paints you as a pretentious fruitcake with a degree in art history, and sci-fi and fantasy books clearly suggest that you spend most evenings sorting through downloaded porn pictures and categorizing them into easily accessible files on your computer’s desktop. And don’t even think about bringing a recognizable bestseller into work; that just screams you’re into Oprah.