Email, opened

If it were late, late on a Tuesday night and you were my brother, you would be getting, which only a few minor changes, this email from me. You might be sitting up in your hotel room, with your dog and your bike and your laptop, all included in the orbit that has followed you on your extended business trip, and you might be checking your email. Or more likely, given that he is two time zones further east, you would be sleeping and it would be too cold, or too hot, as hotel rooms always are. And I would be here, writing to you.

I try not to crib from emails when I blog-- it just seems like bad form-- but tonight I sat down fully feeling like I had only tiny little bit of something to share, and lo, it became more and made me feel as though I'd actually been Doing Things in recent days, and that feeling was just too delicious and rare to pass up. So here, like some scribbly found art, like one of Paris Hilton's silly letters from prison, is most of that email:

Pants is on duty tonight and it's too late to call, but I wanted to share some good news-- I finally got a call back about one of the jobs I've applied for. It's part-time at the nearby library and doesn't pay a whole hell of a lot, but it's something and if the interview goes well, I'll have a means of getting out of the house and talking to people. Like more than, "Plastic is fine" and "thank you."

I'm supposed to call the woman back tomorrow to set up an interview time. I actually just now got her message because I've gotten deeply out of the habit of checking my phone for messages-- I'm here almost all the time except for when I go out to run, so it's stopped seeming like a good idea to check for missed calls.

Also, my (one) friend J. says that her podiatrist's office (where she works as a medical assistant) is hiring a receptionist this week. I'm not so keen on that avenue because a) it's reception work, and I feel like at least at this juncture, I'd only like to be a receptionist for places where I could conceivably work higher up in the food chain once they get to know me, and b) because I worry that working with my (one) friend J. might put undue strain on the friendship were we to get sick of one another. How to say this though without offending her? Any suggestions?

Yesterday and today I applied for more jobs-- Monday was devoted to paring and shaping my resume and experience to make it seem like I'd be a good sexual health educator. I actually believe this-- penis! dental dam!-- and was excited when they immediately sent me (an admittedly stock) email confirming receipt of my application and letting me know they'd be reviewing it.

I talked to a lady today who works at a company that provides social services so several sovereign Native American nations. They're looking for an adult literacy instructor, but since their internet connection is down, she's mailing me the application. Could be interesting, though relying on the postal service to communicate seems like a bad omen.

Today I also applied for another position at the university, this time as a Library Assistant. Despite what it sounds like, it actually pays quite well. The not-so-great part is that it looks to be for many closing shifts, including weekends, which would take me right out of the partying/possibly meeting people scene. Since that scene has yielded little besides my (one) friend J. so far, and has predictably evolved into a bland and recurring series of "Let's drink and watch a movie" nights, perhaps this isn't a bad thing.

Side note, minor irritation: there's apparently a TV hierarchy in effect now-- N. (one of Pants's buddy M.'s two roommates) bought this massive fucking TV and now everyone refuses to watch movies on anything smaller, like our own silly little 19 incher with the now-antiquated convex front. N.'s TV, if laid facedown on the ground, would cover enough surface area so that underneath one could dig a grave for a child easily into the fourth grade. When you consider the modest size of their living room, it feels like the TV constitutes an extra wall, and like anything you watch on it automatically becomes that much more overbearing, like what we watched Monday-- "Caddyshack." (Avoid that one when you're in a funk.) It makes me want to trade in our tube for a smaller one, maybe with a clacking turn dial and rabbit ears.

Anyway. Tomorrow I may or may not drop off my resume at the podiatrist. There's also a grant writer position for a civil and environmental engineering firm that I may apply for. That one's frustrating-- website's under construction so I can't research the specific company, and I have only the barest Wikipedia-augmented knowledge of environmental engineering. All I know is that the Central Valley could use a lot of it.

Love you and hope all's going well-- hug your dog for me,

Rachel

Lies I've told Salespeople

I just got an email from a friend about unsolicited sales pitches from acquaintances, which should really be counted as the 8th Deadly Sin-- "Thou shalt not fowl thine own social nest by pitching to thy friends." I got so hot and bothered by the sheer effrontery of such an experience that I began recommending techniques to discourage it from ever happening again, and in so doing, I remembered a brimming double-handful of times I've been outright Bad to other people simply because they tried to sell me something.

Commerce, in itself, is not a sin-- I know this. People must somehow be persuaded to purchase things, even things they hadn't previously considered purchasing. But there are limits, I say, limits on when you can pitch, and ruining things like a little hard-won peace at home or out walking is just unforgivable.

See, I got burned once, really bad, on a magazine subscription service who called me at work-- where my JOB was to answer the phones, so no fair-- and the woman mumbled her pitch at me while I was distracted with three other phone lines and RECORDED me agreeing to a four-year subscription to Jane. I would write their company name here in all caps on the blog and take pains to mention it many times so that it might ping a search engine or two, but I can't because I entered the checks I wrote to them into my register under the name "Motherfucking Charlatans" every time. Anyway, I tried to appeal on the grounds of entrapment or something, but the head service representative got on the phone and, very professionally, gave me a yell-down ebonics hell-ride. This company and I went back and forth several times until my genetically-programmed nice girlness failed spectacularly and I yelled an expletive and paid them off in full.

Since then, I've had absolutely no compunction about telling great big fabulous lies to people who try to ensnare me with an unsolicited pitch. I take a special joy in it, tempered only by the smallest draught of guilt, and fully expect to see it on the itemized receipt Hell will give me for my soul come Judgment Day:

1) Two skeezy dudes with patchy facial hair showed up at my apartment in Austin, which CLEARLY forbids solicitation, and tried to sell me magazines because they could win a trip to Panama or something. I told them that just that afternoon I had been fired from my job and then I cried, openly, right there on my doorstep. They were stunned, and then one awkwardly shook my hand and told me it would be OK. For a few seconds after they left I stood behind my closed front door and thought, "What the fuck was that?" And then I gave myself a mental high five and regretted not getting a nose and boob job and acting in soaps.

2) Back when I had a land line (oh, the folly) I used to get solicitation calls all the time, even though I'd put myself on Texas's "Do Not Call" list, which I'm convinced was little more than a cunning fiction. I've been told by a former phone solicitor that it's best to just hang up right off the bat, so the solicitor can get on to the next number on the list and hopefully make some money, but first, that's just too much of a leap for my manners (lying, apparently, isn't), and second, if it allows phone solicitors to make more money, isn't that just perpetuating an unmitigated evil? So I told one once, "Look, I have these seizures, and it totally feels like I might be about to get one, so I have to go lie down down." IT worked so well that I actually started answering the calls Caller ID identified as ANONYMOUS and developed some good standby lines: "My kids just set something on fire", [in an all purpose European accent] "I'm visiting in this house and will put the phone back now" and for irony, "I have to go-- there's a solicitor at my door!"

3) People on Guadelupe Street, the main drag in front of the University of Texas, solicit to students all the time and I definitely had my share. I was much nicer then, and often waited for the end of a complete sentence to fit in my "No, thank you, I'm not interested," but then I realized that most of them talk in run-ons, and that there's an unspoken buy-in involved in just listening. Obligation grows on you like some fast-acting fungus if you don't snap out your disinterest right at the beginning. "I'm broke!" was surprisingly ineffective, and even worse once the credit card companies started in on you, so I moved on to "I don't believe in money-lending," but by far the most effective was the Crushingly Personal Non-Sequitar. I stumbled upon this one by accident, but it's like Round-up on a converastional weed:

"Hi, did you know you can save 15 percent on all your lingerie purchases by opening a free account with--"

"I am so depressed right now I don't think I can stand it anymore. I honestly don't."

"Oh. OK."

Why won't a simple, forceful, "No" do? I don't know. Truthfully, I don't think I've given myself much opportunity to practice those, and many painful, pointless, and embarassing chapters of my life could explained just that simply. In fact, I once took this stellar self defense class that taught that the best thing to yell in an attack isn't "help!" or "aaaaauugh!" which both feed the attacker's power jones, but rather, "NO!" And we practiced this a lot-- a whole big room full of women shouting "NO" over and over again-- and I swear it was the weirdest feeling. Soon I will write a whole blog post on the "NO" and my difficult relationship with it, but for now, just know that it's so sticky and uncomfortable for me that elaborate, soul-damning lies come to me easier than that one little syllable.

Here's why I've left you for so long, blog

I've been trying to write something publishable (silly, I know), but the uncomfortable set of literary splits I've been having to do between my usual voice (highly, sometimes too, personal) and what I think would appeal to others (ruh?) has had me occupied. By occupied, I mean lying awake in bed at night trying to read the text of my brilliant Opening Shot off the nubbly text of my ceiling. I wasn't able to do it, so instead I wrote this:


The Summer Reading List of a Bored, As-Yet Unemployed Navy Wife

It’s 105 degrees outside and I’m crouched low in our study, peeking through the Venetian blinds at the third Jehovah’s Witness to tap lightly at my door in the space of a week. It’s a fairly typical day since our fourth military move, this one landing us in California’s scorching Central Valley—I’m home alone, trying to fly under the radar of religion-peddlers and my husband is out screaming over Death Valley at 400 knots, trying to learn all the creepily neutral sounding commands on the touch-screens of the F-18 Super Hornet. The plane itself is so highly computerized that pilot inputs are treated as “suggestions,” which must pass for approval by the main system, which will then decide how (and whether!) to interpret and carry out those suggestions. My life these days has no such overarching plan—if [Pants] is cradled in the certainty and forethought of the Super Hornet and the Navy at large, my guiding mechanism is closer to that crazy bicycle-looking thing with the dragon fly wings from the early days of aviation.

I am, for the third time in as many years, starting fresh in the job hunt. With several applications set out, baited hooks on as-yet still lines, I wait. Is this what all military wives do? I wouldn’t know, really. The wives out here have so far been like spiders—you know they’re around, but they seem to melt into the shadows whenever I start looking. I’ve heard tell that there’s a show on TV about Army wives (in my already indoctrinated state I immediately thought, “Yeah, but the Navy’s so much different”), but since we’re still austerely eschewing cable, yet another model of how I could possibly be handling things right now is off limits.

So far, all I’ve got is the Jerry Bruckheimer summer blockbuster model: I get that slow close-up shot right at the beginning of the movie where I suddenly drop what I’m doing and get that shocked, middle-distance stare as I take in the blooming mushroom cloud/ alarming TV news report and utter my slow monotone line, “Oh my God…” And then the action, of which I’m not a part, starts. Obviously, this leaves me with quite a bit of extra time on my hands while the world is being saved, so lately I’ve embarked upon an intensely codependent relationship with the San Joaquin Valley Library System.

Without further ado, I offer you the Summer Reading List of a Bored, As-Yet Unemployed Navy Wife:


Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee

“…[A] woman’s beauty does not belong to her alone. It is part of the bounty she brings into the world. She has a duty to share it.” Such is the twisted logic of David Lurie’s seduction of his young student, Melanie, in this tale of a horny professor’s downfall set in modern South Africa. A must-read for nubile co-eds, leering professors, and lesbian dog-lovers, Disgrace opens with a sex scandal and closes with dog euthanasia, both events which neatly encapsulate some really compelling metaphors about the lingering impacts of colonialism and racism, and how no debt can ever really be repaid. There’s not a spare word in the whole book, and when I finished it I wondered how Coetzee was able to fit so much into such a slim novel. I actually ended up pissed off at writers like John Steinbeck, who seemed to take pages and pages to move their characters around and make a point with metaphor. Which brings me to…

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Probably every one of my former English professors would drop their faces into their hands in exasperation if they read this, but Jesus Cornpone Christ, does Steinbeck know how to belabor a phrase. I felt I should reread this classic under something less than AP English duress since I’m now living in the book’s fabled Land of Plenty, but I found myself counting the times the phrase, “the men squatted on their hams” appeared. Perhaps it was all a clever literary device to make the reader feel like she actually traveled every mile of the whole miserable trip with the Joads, but often it felt like Steinbeck’s wife and editor at the time, Carol Henning, could have been a little more aggressive with the red pen.

Steinbeck said of the novel, “There are five layers in this book, a reader will find as many as he can, and he won’t find more than he has in himself.” Well, la-ti-da. One has to wonder if the Nobel panel heard some version of this quote and thought, “Shit, guess we missed a few layers… well, can’t appear intellectually shallow, can we? Prize for you!”

In all, yes this is an important book, and yes, for sheer beauty and one-of-a-kind impact, you can’t beat that last scene where Rose of Sharon breastfeeds the starving man in the barn as the floodwaters rise around them, but maybe this is one best left for academic reading.

On the other hand, for reading that feels as fact-licious and edifying as a graduate seminar, but still makes you read until way too late at night, try…

The Demon Under the Microscope: From Battlefield Hospitals to Nazi Labs, One Doctor’s Heroic Search for the World’s First Miracle Drug by Thomas Hager

The miracle drug is sulfa—the world’s first antibiotic—and boy, did things suck before it was invented. This book is a fascinating account of all the wretched, ghoulie things that can happen when bacteria get up in your business and do their thing unchecked. For instance, did you know Calvin Coolidge, Jr. died from a blister on his foot from not wearing socks while playing tennis? Or that the reason so many women died of fever directly after childbirth was that bacteria was spread to them by doctors who trotted in to attend them directly after performing an autopsy—without washing their hands?

While this was reason enough for me to read the book, Hager goes on to give a detailed and engaging account of how German scientist Gerhard Domagck, after witnessing the horrors of trench warfare and the limits of battlefield medicine, hunts down the elusive chemical combination that will stop strep, even as Allied bombers and Nazi Party officials get in his way. Hager takes a few interesting detours to explain the downfall of patent medicine (Dr. Loosetooth’s Magical Heroin Toothache Tincture!) as well as the rise of drug-resistant bacterial strains.

A perfect read for that interminable wait in the doctor’s waiting room or the ER. You can finally greet your caregiver with the proper derision, knowing that most of the truly hard work of figuring out how to heal people was done back in the 1930’s.

Don’t look for a transition here because there’s not one leading us to…

What is the What by Dave Eggers

Is it fiction or is it some kind of facilitated autobiography? The librarian and I had a long discussion about this: Valentino Achak Deng is a real person, one of the Lost Boys of the Sudanese Civil War of the 1980’s and 1990’s (the predecessor to the current bloodbath in Darfur), but his story, as told here by Dave Eggers, is a composite of many stories, the characters composites of many real people. But that’s not the only odd thing about this captivating narrative—the other is that the author, whose two previous books, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and You Shall Know Our Velocity! manages to subdue disguise his thoroughly postmodern, ironic, and often device-laden prose with a simple, authentic, and emotionally powerful voice.

The result is an unforgettable account of a young boy’s trek across Sudan to the refugee camps of Ethiopia, and then to Kenya when the Ethiopian government falls, until he is eventually resettled in the U.S. Throughout, Valentino becomes part of various temporary families and communities, always searching for a place to belong and to be safe, but a sense of home eludes him. The novel opens with Valentino being attacked and robbed by Atlanta thugs, and the story of his past is told in reflection as he navigates the local police and the ER waiting room, trying to put his life back together yet again.

Despite what it sounds like, the story isn’t incredibly depressing—Valentino’s life is told as a whole, with good memories, crushes, even some really funny bits. I spent quite a long time reading this in the local Starbucks over my “socially responsible shade-grown coffee,” which felt distinctly less so after the third militia recruiting raid on Valentino’s group of starving boy refugees. Maybe read this one at home.

And now, my favorite so far…

The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai

I’ve got nothing witty to say about this one because it’s just that beautiful and complicated. In fact, if I ever developed enough excitement and faith in something to compel me to go door to door like the Jehovah’s Witnesses, it’d probably be books and writing, and if you were dumb enough to answer the door, I’d start my pitch with this book.


The Inheritance of Loss is a story about the emerging New India, and is peopled with characters that represent nearly every period of India’s growth. First we meet the Judge, a grumpy old Indian Civil Servant who hated his Indian-ness enough to powder his face pink and white and affect British slang. His granddaughter, Sai, comes to live with him as a nation-less product of parochial schools, an orphan whose future is uncertain, and who falls hopelessly in love with her science tutor. The science tutor, Gyan, eventually joins a violent Nepali-Indian insurgency that threatens to destroy Sai and her grandfather’s way of life (again, the question of who pays the debt of colonialism). Against this backdrop, we also take frequent breaks to check in on the Judge’s cook’s son, Biju, who has gone off to America to make it and finds he can do anything but.

Desai’s writing sparkles with original phrasing and I found myself reading many paragraphs two and three times over just for the pleasure of the wording. The characters, even the minor players like Father Booty and Uncle Potty (seriously), are knife-sharp and brilliantly illustrative of an India struggling with modernity, diversity, and identity. My door to door pitch for this one would end, “read this or I’ll be back in two weeks to break your fingers.”

So there you have it-- what I do all day conveniently justified and crystallized into a few recommendations of what you should do in your spare time, all lovingly subsidized by the U.S. Navy. Who said the military industrial complex never did anything for you?

Perfect Teeth

Well, well, well. Turns out my little brother's genetic superiority has been confirmed by an outside source. La-ti-da, broseph.

I would like to remind him, as well as the largely indifferent internet, that we are also the products of extensive and expensive dental and orthodontic intervention. We are not the golden children of a benevolent, cavity-free God, orbited by floss-bearing angels. I like to think of us more as the dental version of Wolverine from the X-Men-- fundamentally tampered with, painfully altered, and yet so much cooler for it.

Perhaps my little brother forgets, but there were times when our individual smiles produced winces in other people-- his when he was six years old and I had attempted on three separate occasions to knock out his two front teeth (perhaps my low success ratio can be accounted for by the profound genetic deficiencies in my eyesight, which were already manifesting themselves); mine for a good three years between grades 6 and 9 when instead of normal adult teeth, I instead grew the long, yellow burrowing teeth of a nutria from my upper gums.

But now... oh now. My teeth are pretty. Pants even says so. And functional-- did you know that my bite-ratio is in the 98th percentile? I too had a faith-affirming visit with a dentist after a criminally long hiatus, and as he poked and scraped at my gums he also praised my choice in undergraduate majors and my selection of a mate in the service. Imagine! I remember a time when Dr. Smith (our first dentist) sat next to me peering at my X-rays and just sighing over and over again, like I was the most hopelessly fucked up thing he'd ever seen. When someone with a tiny steel hook wedged between your molars finally approves of you, it's no wonder you felt you were meant to rule all mankind.

Just remember your roots, snaggletooth.

Artless Dodger

There are ten voice mails on my phone right now, and six are from my brother. His message intros are unorthodox but they're a pretty accurate reflection of the often frustrating process of getting me on the phone:

"You suck. So Bad."

"Holy tits! Where are you are?"

"You're call-dodging me, aren't you?"

"Christ on a bike! Callmeloveyoubye."

It's not that I don't want to talk to people, especially my brother, who is easily one of my very favorite people. I love having conversations. I love hearing what's going on in other people's lives. And it's not like I'm always busy either-- in fact, more often than not, I'm lonely and pacing around the house trying to decide whether I should vacuum and dust or just burn the whole place down because, really,when you're this bored and lonely what's the difference? So it would follow that phone calls would be a wonderful thing for me, a convenient and comforting link to a world outside my increasingly cramped and stifling head.

And yet, it is not so. There's something about the phone, both making calls and receiving them, that makes me anxious. Calls from my immediate family mostly don't trigger this response, but sometimes they do. I took a personality test not so long ago that specifically asked how I react when the phone rings, and what surprised me was not that my exact reaction was listed, ("D. I cringe and hope someone else answers, or that it's not for me") but that there were other reactions, reactions like curiosity, excitement, anticipation, a desire to get there first and answer it. I have a friend who even thinks of it as a little victory when she gets a call, like validation.

Pants is one of these people who loves getting, making, and returning calls. We have the same model cell phone, but the "Samsung" on his is worn off to a vague "ung" from his aggressive fondling. It is never far from one of his many, many pockets, and it is always juiced up and ready to go. He returns calls promptly, and periodically calls up friends across the country just to check in. He will never take more than 12 hours to get back to you. This is how accessible he is, even when he spends up to 9 hours a day either studying in a government-secured vault where cell phones must be checked at the door, or in a giant piece of machinery far from cell phone range.

My phone is in mint condition, but takes frequent sabbaticals under the car seat or in the crack behind the bed, and is often found drained of all power after issuing its last, tiny "Battery low!" cries for help. It's little display is always reproachful: "5 missed calls." "9 new messages."

Recently I was talking to my mom (on the phone, lucky woman-- she'll never know how exclusive that club is), and she brought up something I haven't thought about it in years but that might be a clue to my phone anxiety: when we first moved to Saudi Arabia, I was one of 3 new ninth graders in a class of 79. Very few people had cable. The internet was in its infancy. Cell phones were still large enough to bludgeon someone to death with. In other words, kids my age were catastrophically bored and since we lived on a guarded compound in the Middle East, there weren't that many places to go or things to do. I had never before-- and have never since-- been so popular in my life. For an entire year, I got an average of seven phone calls a night. My mother griped about it, my brother rolled his eyes and made faces, and my dad took my picture while I leaned exhausted against the dining room wall, the flesh-colored phone cable stretched around the corner in a feeble attempt at privacy (but from whom??).

And who was it? What did they want? I can barely remember. What I do remember is the way your ear starts to feel all hot and the cartilage starts to go soft after you've been on the phone for so long.

The next year, when I went off to The World's Most Negligent Boarding School, the ringing of phones no longer haunted me. In fact, what began to haunt me was the absence of that ringing. 33 girls on my floor shared one pay phone, and since my family was still back in Saudi Arabia and we traded off having the sun on our side of the planet, there was never really a good time to call or to linger near the phone in hopes of it being unoccupied AND ringing for me. Of the few calls I made that year, none were that satisfying or capable of making me feel any more connected to the people in my life. One in particular was so weighted, and yet so flimsy-- the one where I had to tell my parents that I was getting kicked out of The World's Most Negligent Boarding School-- that if it weren't so damned depressing, the ridiculousness of having to convey so much information, and such bad information, it could have been really funny. In a dark sort of way.

The other way the phone has been a constant in my life is that it's often been the only way I could talk to my dad when he was away at work. In that respect, it represented a frustrating constraint-- it was always such a big deal when he called, and we'd all get excited, but then when it was my turn to talk, I'd realize there wasn't that much to say. How often did I summarize What's Been Going On In My Life and feel deflated at how meager it sounded? How many times did a phone call only sharpen the point of loneliness and longing I felt for someone, and underscore the fact that they're not here?

In a way I sometimes feel like the phone requires a performance from me, and that much of the time I'm not up to it. I skip completely over the point where phone calls help maintain connections with people, and jump directly to worrying about how I'm perceived, and how I perceive myself trying to connect with them, and how I'm inevitably failing at it. The times I feel the lowest are always the most difficult times to call someone who might help me feel better, or pick up when they call me. When I do call people, it's because I've reached a painful tipping point of loneliness and guilt, and I begin to worry that my silence might look an awful lot like negligence or dislike.

I realize how incredibly self involved my phone anxiety is. I also realize how lucky I am to have friends and family who are lenient and patient with my cringing call dodging habits, and have somehow figured out how to not take it personally. I just wish there was some way for me to explain all of this in my voice mail message and not scare off potential employers:

"Hi, you've reached Rachel. I have pronounced phone anxiety. What does that mean? It means that most likely I really need to connect with you, would love to do so, but I'm afraid I'll fail at it and you'll stop liking me. Which is ironic, because the fact that I'm call dodging you will likely achieve the same result. Or I could be busy! Really! Also, if you're calling about a job, I'd love to discuss my resume and how I'm not at all high-strung. I'll probably call you back, but if I don't, please don't take it personally. Have a great day--"

beep