Temporary

I like temp jobs. But there’s something repulsive about getting close to people – office parties, cakes for babies about to be delivered – I’m not cut out for the long haul.

I like cubicles with partitions so I can pick at my teeth, yawning when I’ve been up the previous night until two in the morning watching re-runs of The Twilight Zone.

Secretaries ask me, “How many days?”

Their voices are edged with envy, like they’d love to know when the monotony will end. It’s a question between prisoners behind bars, confined within the drab walls of a 12-Step meeting.

When I was at a law firm last year, Mickie, one of the paralegals, told me I’d make a good candidate for the bar. I said it depended upon whether the bar served Kettleone. She bellowed, and I saw every tooth in her horsy mouth and beyond: throat, epiglottis. I could have been swallowed by it. These companies do that, and then spit you out.

I worked picking flowers in towns around Humboldt County: Arcata, Eureka, Forestville. I had to watch a video about picking safely and equipment handling, in a room with three Mexican men. The video had no Spanish subtitles and they looked wary, waiting for the images to somehow translate enough of the story.

I realized that this was the story of their lives, and mine, too. How much more did I comprehend any of it than they did? How much less?

I was a marching band coördinator in Pembroke, New York. A flautist told me all pianists were notoriously control freaks. I had no idea there was any kind of pecking order among ensemble members when I helped to market for the Santa Fe Chamber Orchestra.

I worked sales and marketing jobs where I told strangers, “You’re going to love this gel!,” or, “Imagine how you’d feel wearing that Chronograph.” I offered money-back guarantees, two-for-one bargains. There were dialogue scripts that I’d tweak, changing the word “FANTASTIC” to BRILLIANT or “PRETTY” to ENGAGING! I’ve sold jewelry to the Japanese, catheters to cardiologists in Daytona Beach, butterfly nets to Science & Nature stores.

Once in between temp jobs in New York City, I volunteered at a soup kitchen for battered homeless women. My sister said, “That’s horrible! How can you expose yourself to those victims?” Years later, divorced from her first husband, she quickly married the man who plowed their driveway. He had HIV. I said, “How can you expose yourself to that illness?”

During a heated discussion, a former girlfriend once retorted, “Why don’t you get a real job?” It wasn’t the first time I’d heard this. I didn’t tell her that the thought of doing one job, any one task for more than a few months made me crazy. I didn’t tell her that I felt the same way about girlfriends.

I changed the subject. “Did you know that we spend a third of our lives sleeping?”

She waited, accustomed to my peculiarities.

I added, “I don’t want to sleep through the other two-thirds.”

“You’re just a big scaredy-cat,” she teased. “Commitment-phobe.”

Girlfriends forever were pressing to hear the L word, to move in, to exchange rings or vows. Most nights, I’d lie awake wondering why the exchange of body fluids wasn’t enough.

Then another place would beckon: San Diego, where I could sell surfboards, or run the front desk at the Angola Inn in northern Minnesota. Or put out fires in Angels Rest State Park, Utah.

~ Robert Vaughan: Milwaukee, Wisconsin | The Brooklyner