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Nutshell Kingdom: Job Talk
2005
There are mornings that I dream I'm one of the Salvadoran or Peruvian guys in my neighborhood. I wake up early, put on a quilted flannel and a ball cap, and go down to the 7-11 and drink a cheap cup of coffee in the half light, crouch low and lean against the outdoor wall while "Sugar Sugar" plays over the gaspump speakers, waiting for some white guy to pick me for his crew. Of course, the man never picks me and I wake thinking, "But I've got a JD!"
In real life, I worked once at a job where I would be dropped off in a strange neighborhood far from home for five hour stretches. I was to go door-to-door collecting money to Save Our National Forests. It was Christmastime and cold out. I would wander darkened residential streets, heavily bundled and wool capped, while Christmas lights glowed merrily from picture windows, Frosty plastic snowmen gleamed in front yards, and a warm hearth and cup of steaming hot coffee pervaded my every fantasy. One night, I found a port-a-john on a frozen construction site and hid inside of it for a half-an-hour just to get out of the wind. I sat quiet and thankful in its otherworldly, undersea light smoking cigarettes and making up numbers for my nightly checklist.
Sometimes when I'm at work now, I get restless and panicky. The flourescent bulbs and the ringing telephone start to make me feel like a boat that has lost its moorings and is drifting a boundless sea. Other times, it has been worse: sometimes I'm the anchor cut loose from that boat, sunk deep in the muck and left to rust at the bottom of a fathomless ocean for a thousand years or more.
