Two weeks before the end of my government service, the pink-taloned secretary who was left with the job of coordinating the remaining volunteers in my program called me up to nag me one more time about paperwork. She needed my resume, she said, because she was planning a series of activities which would prepare us for returning to the working world. First on the agenda was a meeting with a temp agency staffer, which I've described before; the following Friday, we were to have a full morning to browse the job resource section at the main branch of the New York Public Library, followed by lunch and then another session at another temp agency.
I dragged my heels about the resume, which she couldn't give me a compelling reason for, and thought about "forgetting" the all-day education session. I find temp agencies odious. When I was temping at Scholastic Books, I discovered my agency was getting paid the same amount I was. (What is there of use to be learned from an organization which essentially wants to pimp you out? Temp agencies must inhabit a worse circle of Communist hell than landlords.)
I didn't relish the prospect of hanging out with the lady with the long fingernails for a whole morning, either. From the first moment I met her she has acted like we were old friends. I would come into the office for my check, and she would try to engage me in conversation about my life outside of the government program, which I was always at pains to hide. If my political involvement came to light, it would have been grounds for my dismissal. Grasping for some bone to throw her at one point, I made the mistake of telling her I was doing theater in my off hours (I was preparing a street performance for the Surveillance Camera Players that week); every time I saw her after that, she asked me how my acting was going and cooed over how far I was going to go with all my talent. She did this with such familiarity it set my teeth on edge.
There were a handful of women in my office who were the same way: every day they would make a show of hyperbolic concern for me, ignoring the cues I gave that I didn't consider them friends. We had never been formally introduced, and I still don't know any of the women's names. I worried for a while that the irritation I developed with them sprang from subconscious racism (most of them were African-American). Eventually, I excused myself as I realized the buttons they were pressing were wired to my family's culture more than their race. I associate unwarranted chumminess with door-to-door salespeople and telemarketers, the Great Satans my parents raised me to hate. My gut instinct when faced with a forceful smile is to say "We don't want any," and hang up.
But I pulled myself out of bed early on that penultimate Friday to make it down to the pink-clawed lady's office. I was dazed, operating on some three hours of sleep and trying to juggle the hundred lies which contributed to my safe continuation as a government employee. She was peeved that I hadn't turned in my resume after she'd badgered me for a week, and probably still suspicious of the fact that I only picked up my paychecks every one and a half (low rent made this possible), but she still kept up the vacuous cordiality. This morning, we were all "winners." "You're all winners," she kept telling me and the other three volunteers, and assuring us that we would be strong and god would ultimately provide us good jobs because we were all survivors.
Winners though we were, we lost about forty-five minutes taking a bus to the library when the subway might have taken fifteen. The driver was braking like a Hindu driving through a feedlot. This prompted the lady with the fingernails and the other volunteers to laugh nervously and excuse him. They knew it was my first time on a city bus. Most of them had been in the city all their lives.
We arrived at the library after a few minutes of lost wanderings following the Fingernail Lady, who hustled us around the streets praising our future prospects. The first order of business at the library was for everyone to get library cards. Everyone but me, that is. I have a card. I got it within a month of my arrival in the city eighteen months ago. I grabbed a copy of Mike Nelson's Movie Megacheese instead, since I didn't have any Valium.
Upstairs to the job resource section. The Fingernail Lady first gestures to a carousel of videos. Everyone oohs over the novel possiblity of getting their job training that way. "Take your wallets, ladies," says the Fingernail Lady, loathe to leave so much as a sweater on a chair within range of the rest of the library patrons. She runs a coral-tipped finger over spines of books with titles like How Hard Are You Knocking?, You're Certifiable, and Postal Clerk and Carrier. "So these are resources," she says, vaguely.
One of our number pulls down a book entitled How Canadians Can Survive in the New Global Economy and cracks it open. "Oh, this is for Canadians," she says, after a few minutes. Another volunteer eagerly opens Postal Clerk and Carrier. I reach for When Smart People Work For Dumb Bosses, and hope Fingernail Lady doesn't try to make polite conversation out of unearthing my accidental expertise on the subject. Fortunately, she leads my fellow sufferers off to another aisle looking for information on government jobs, and I find the opportunity to hunt down a copy of Writer's Markets.
I settle at a table, and eventually they join me. One of them has a book about opportunities in Baltimore. "Baltimore," says her friend, approvingly. "The economy is rising in that state so fast." Another woman starts rhapsodizing about the business she wants to start, without any plan for what that business will produce.
I'm being unnecessarily harsh. These women have great hope, and I really do think it would be great if they had their own businesses or really did move up the career ladder as a result of our service experience. It just seems so fscking unlikely when they've been at such a disadvantage all their lives. As we left, someone wondered about the maximum number of books we could take out at one time. It was thirty. They made little surprised noises, as if they'd never think that anyone might check that many books out. I was struck by the vivid memory of maxing out the 26-book limit back in my hometown library in third grade.
It took us a while to check out, because the job resource section is full of reference books. I was the only one who knew you couldn't check those out, and hadn't begun to suspect that even our erstwhile guide wouldn't know that.
On to lunch. The goal is BBQ's, a restaurant I've never heard of around Times Square which is revered by all and promised to have vegetarian food -- vegetable tempura, which is so greasy I make my placemat transparent with it. My first thought when I walk in the door is Now I know where all the working class men I see on the subway eat lunch. Honest that's what I think. I mean, the only people I ever see in Manhattan restaurants are skinny yuppies, which says more about where I eat than anything else.
BBQ's: Giant tacky murals of "Indians" on paint ponies on the wall. "Southwestern" decor. Tropical drinks the size of my head. I order a non-alcoholic piña colada, because I'm not paying, and corn and beans in an attempt to educate my unenlightened peers about the dietary needs of vegetarians. The corn is gummy and has a searing pent-up heat which burns my gums. The drink is like a glorified slushie. I give most of my tempura to someone else.
This is a wake for our term of service, an Al-Anon session, a women's support circle. I don't dare bring up how awful my year has been, because I'd have to explain about the p0rn and the charges of racism and the blackmail, but the women from an agency around the corner from me praise god they've made it through even though their supervisor was using them for base secretarial work, which goes against our contract. We all murmur amens. The lady with the fingernails delivers the last rites:
Well, ladies, we just have to feel sorry for the man, because he ain't gonna get nowhere in life with that attitude towards people. We're all strong, we're winners. One of these days we're going to be supervisors; I know we will, because we're winners. We will overcome.
Supervisors. What is the fscking point if all you want is a somewhat more powerful desk job? We were all supposed to go out into the community and learn to organize. I guess it was a lie before we started: the program we were in was hamstrung by the Ford, Reagan, and Bush I administrations, and what was once a haven for Students for a Democratic Society members is now a glorified welfare-to-work program. All that's left is the rhetoric.
By the time we made it out into Times Square I had already been to the bathroom twice to set up the first sally of a food-poisoning ruse. I clutched my stomach and moaned. It happened that we walked by the Condé Nast building, and for a moment I almost destroyed the ruse.
"Right there," I said. "That's where I want to work. The New Yorker, on the twelfth floor."
"Why don't you just walk in there to the human resources department and ask for a job?" said the Fingernail Lady. I explained that you don't just do that at the New Yorker, that it takes degrees and years of experience and a reputation I might not ever have. The other women murmured vaguely, with no idea what I meant.
There is a destructive disconnect here. These women believe everything is possible, which is wonderful, but they have almost no frame of reference when it comes to prerequisites, and at the same time they have a painfully cramped sense of what "everything" could constitute. The kind of education which put my childhood classmates on the fast track to power does not come into the picture. When a woman with status slightly higher than their own comes along, dressing professionally and telling these women how to do the same, speaking in pop therapy platitudes and bolstering their self-esteem, opening the door to a world of resources that has been hidden under their noses all their lives, they listen. This is how it ends, then: a woman without enough education to discourage us from checking out reference books pulls together a printout of a dozen entry-level administrative positions, arranges two sessions with temp pimps, and sends us out into the world with hopes as artificially extended as her nails.
I bowed out, exaggerating my stomach pains even to myself, and found myself on the sunny elevated train home at two p.m. Another lie to juggle, and one more week to lie low.
Posted by Gus at March 05, 2001 10:51 PM