“The world is too focused on sex. Everything you see or hear or read—it’s all about sex. They’re making it out to be the panacea of everything.”
“Interesting. I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say that out loud before.”
“I’ve never been this certain of it before. It’s everywhere now! It seems like the most common answer to every problem is to have sex. The troubles of this world cannot be healed by vagina meeting penis. Poverty, unemployment, overpopulation, genocide, global warming; these things don’t give a good goddamn whether or not you’re boning Jody after she puts her kids to sleep. As a matter of fact, most of these problems are caused by having too much sex.”
“Do we know a Jody?”
“No, we don’t know a Jody! Can we focus on the matter at hand, please?”
“Which is that sex doesn’t solve the world’s problems? We’re still on this one? Or that sex causes the world’s problems?”
“Not just the world … I’m talking about local things, too. Things closer to home. Like us, for instance. How much time per day do we think about sex? How much money do we spend on stupid dates that end with a kiss and a ‘real nice to meet you’? How much porn do we watch on the Internet? If we had the best sex ever tonight, would it magically put a few thousand into my checking account? No. Would it even lend me a ten-spot to treat myself to a Denver omelet at IHOP? No. Sex is a bad investment. Sex is a time-share condo. You put $10,000 in and you get a couple of cloudy weekends a year. Sure, it’ll take your mind off of things for an evening, but so will a decent video rental. And speaking of movies, why is the focal point of every film ever made centered around love? Seriously. In the most inappropriate of films—war movies, hitman movies, bank heist movies, zombie movies, horror movies—there’s always this thick plot thread about the power of love and how it can shield a teenager from the guy with the machete or forgive all the contract murders a handsome agent committed.”
“You’ve moved from sex to love in your diatribe.”
“It’s all the same. It’s all bullshit. It’s a Band-Aid for reality.”
“Someone’s a Bitter Billy today. I think this is just another good example of you trying to force your beliefs onto society and then scorning them when they don’t see things your way.”
“You’re way off. You’re just arguing for argument’s sake now.”
“A good psychologist might even say that you feel this way because of … your little problem.”
“Our little problem. You’re no angel in this matter. And I’ll agree with you there to a certain extent. It originally might have been the seed of my stance on this matter, but now it’s opened my eyes. Now it’s a flower in full bloom. I can see the truth now. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”
“I think we just need to get laid, pal. What’s your stance on that?”
“Seriously? After all I’ve just said, you’re going to offer that little turd of advice up?”
“How long has it been? The last time … was with that gal at that bar in Los Feliz. She had the gay guy friend who tried to handjob you at the table.”
“No, it was the first grade teacher we met on the Internet. The gal from the bar told us she had Hepatitis as we were undressing, and it ruined the mood, remember? Our ‘little problem’ came in real handy that night. The first grade teacher was the last one.”
“That’s right. It was her birthday or something. Man, we were callous with that one. Real Grade-A assholes. I bet she’ll think twice about going home with someone on a first date after that night.”
“The dark side of the little problem. The blame game. But we’re drifting too far from shore now. I wasn’t finished with my diatribe, as you put it. Sex is going to kill this country. Look what it did to the Roman Empire; it destroyed it.”
“That wasn’t because of sex, and you know it. It was perversion, it was greed, indulgence, power; it was a stronger enemy, it was devaluating its own currency, it was the stretching of its armies across half the globe that caused the fall of Rome.”
“Well, those perverted Caesars near the end didn’t help matters.”
“Seven months. It’s been seven months.”
“Since the first grade teacher? Seven months? Well, sex is your thing now. I’m done with it. I wash my hands of it. I could go seven years, if I had to. You’re shit-out-of-luck, pal. I’m calling the shots now. I’m Mad Max and this is the Thunderdome. I run the show.”
“Not when we’re drinking. That’s my time to shine.”
“You’re a selfish son of a bitch, you know that?”
“Back at you. Dick.”
The door to the garage-turned-office opened and a middle-aged woman in salmon-colored shorts and shirt walked in with a clipboard. She wore the same phone headset as I did, but the thin microphone on hers rested beside her mouth; mine was pushed up around my eyebrow.
“Hi, you must be our new operator. I’m Denise. Any calls yet?” she asked with an anxious grin.
“Not yet, no.” I replied.
She shook her head and glanced at her clipboard. “And you’ve been here since eight this morning? That’s too bad; I really thought we’d get at least a few calls by now. Sorry for making you sit here by yourself for four hours with nothing to do.”
“Oh, I’ve kept myself busy,” I lifted Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar from the table. “I’m actually having a really nice time sorting out some thoughts.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re having a nice time, but I was really hoping we’d have gotten a few calls. We paid a lot of money for that commercial last night. Did you happen to see it?”
“No, no, I didn’t,” I replied. “But I came up with a pretty good theory as to why I think no one’s called by now … if you care to hear it.”
“Okay,” she replied sharply, “let’s hear it. I’d like to know why you think our $106,000 commercial failed to garner any interest in our treatment center.”
“The timing. You’re targeting alcoholics and addicts to seek your help, so you have to get them at their most vulnerable time: right after the bars close. The counselor before you, this morning, she said you aired the commercial last night at 10, 11, and 12. Most alcoholics I know are still in the bars at that time—they’ll usually close the place. You should have aired your commercial at 2:30, 3:00, and 3:30 in the morning. That’s when they’re depressed and hating themselves—that’s when the booze is wearing off, and they’re trying to get to sleep to face another grueling day—that’s when you can really send your message home.”
“Do you know very many alcoholics?”
“More drunks than alcoholics. But it’s the same principle, isn’t it?”
“No, Brandon, it is not the same principle,” she snapped back. “An alcoholic has to want to be helped before we can help them. We’re not selling a magic pill here; we’re offering an inpatient recovery program in a friendly home setting. We offer substance abuse treatment, not a substance abuse cure. If someone should happen to call, I hope you can remember that. And someone has told you the procedure for when someone does call, right?”
“Politely get their name and number then transfer them to extension four,” I answered. “And don’t try to help.”
“Exactly. And it’s very important you get that phone number. A lot of the times they’re curious or scared, and they’ll try to hang up before you can transfer them.”
“Got it.”
“How are you doing on lunch? You need a break?”
“I brought a sandwich and I have my book. I may need to pee pretty soon, though, and I didn’t notice any other doors than the one I came in through.”
“Oh,” her head tilted up a little, “okay, yeah. The bathroom. I guess we never thought about that; you’re going to need to pee. You’re our first call receiver … I didn’t even think about that. I guess you’ll have to use the bathroom in the house. But we just got some new … guests staying with us, so please be aware of what they’re going through, and please don’t communicate with anyone. One of our counselors will have to escort you in there, for legal reasons. And, I know I shouldn’t have to say this, but you can’t bring any drugs or intoxicants into that house for any reason. Even cough syrup. There’s always someone who tries to sneak in a bottle of pills or a little baggie of something—friends, parents, boyfriends, daughters; that’s why we don’t allow anybody not in treatment inside that house. We take it very seriously.”
“That would explain the counselor patting me down this morning.”
“Just tap on the kitchen window when you need to go, and someone will come out,” she said before leaving.
Denise had been a welcome intrusion from my four-hour episode of Plath and internal conversation. I took the headset off and walked around the room, when suddenly, and maybe for the first time in my life, I craved interaction with another person. Whether it was the full pot of coffee all to myself, the pristine walls at all four sides of me, or the lone phone sitting on a long barren Formica table, I felt the deep yearning to share a conversation with another living, breathing human being—even Denise again. But she didn’t come back, so I ate my sandwich and poured another cup of coffee, and then I returned the headset back onto my head. It was kind of nice getting paid $9 an hour to sit and read a book in a quiet room, but 102 straight pages of The Bell Jar was enough to make anybody want to walk into a crowd and stay there. Everything was so still and peaceful around me; the silence in the room was as thick as the tan paint across the drywall walls. No car alarms, no yelling, no trash trucks, no televisions—there wasn’t a single sound around me. It almost felt like time had stopped outside of this room—that the rest of the world had paused and didn’t bother to invite me. Or, even worse, as if I had died but my conscious mind had refused to accept it, and this tan room was my eternal ghostly afterlife until I admitted that I was no longer among the living. I could have drunk too much coffee, had a heart attack, and didn’t even know it. I could have slipped into a coma, and all of this was my active imagination recycling the last few precious hours of its life over and over again: this tan room.
“I think it’s called Cotard Syndrome.”
“When you believe you’re dead, yes, I think that’s right.”
“Sounds kind of mean. Cotard sounds like retard.”
“Nice. Nice mature thought. And you think you’re going to meet some beautiful lady and get her to have sex with you with that kind of witty banter? You’ve got another think coming.”
“Candor is all the rage with my kind of gals.”
“What’s the other one called? That other mental malady? It’s a cool one … What is that?”
“Capgras Syndrome is, I believe, what you’re looking for.”
“Capgras Syndrome! Yes, that’s a great one! When you believe everyone around you, all your family and friends, are imposters. Man, that’s messed up. I bet a few of the guests in the house have it.”
“We could really fuck with them.”
“We need this job too much, pal. This gig is gravy—getting paid to sit here and read a book? This is the graviest job we’ve had in months.”
“I don’t think ‘graviest’ works well as an adjective.”
“Agreed. Alright, I really have to pee now. I think it’s time we went in and met the houseguests.”
The tapping on the kitchen window, as Denise recommended, merely incited a wave from a gangly woman in a bathrobe sitting at the dining room table inside. She didn’t look like a counselor, at least not a counselor against the use of drugs and alcohol. But she continued waving at me like a scene continuously replaying on a blemished DVD. I attempted to pantomime a clipboard and pen through the glass but the translation got lost somewhere in the curtains. She shot me a bewildered expression before opening the back door and leaning her upper half out.
“Hey, what’s up?” she asked with the drawl of a content pothead, but her pimpled face said methamphetamines.
“Hey. I just started working here. Is Denise in there? Or any of the counselors?”
“Nope,” she replied. “I’m just watching TV. You got a smoke?”
I pulled out my pack and slid a Basic her way. “I thought we weren’t supposed to smoke near the house?”
“I just said the counselors were gone,” she said and motioned for a light by bending a thumb.
I lit both of our cigarettes just three seconds before realizing that I was now breaking two very important rules on my first day: the aforementioned “smoking near the house” decree as well as speaking with a patient. The young woman in the bathrobe didn’t seem like she had much to share in the way of conversation, so I stood there and smoked quickly, keeping an eye out for anybody with a clipboard. But things then took a turn for the worse.
“Oh God, I so needed that.” She tilted her head back and exhaled through a loud sigh. “This place is like a prison, man. Six days stuck in this dump with all these fucking drunks and speed freaks. Fucking rich losers who can’t handle their own shit, man!”
“What’s your story?”
“Me?” she asked as decoration on her ready reply; one which she’d probably already shared a dozen times since arriving at the house. “My parents threw me in here! I’m not here by my own decision. Dad gave me the ultimatum: Come here or move out. So I came here. I had no choice.”
“What was your vice? Pills? Grass? The White Lady?”
“Me?” she asked again, but this time genuinely. “You think I’m a coke addict? Like these crazy fucks in here? God, no! I’m here because of these …” And she raised her half-smoked cigarette to eye level. “My folks found out that I started smoking over the summer, and it didn’t mesh well with their ritzy weekend set, so they chucked my ass in here until I quit. Thanks, guys. Thanks, Blue Cross.”
“You’re in here because of cigarettes?” I couldn’t grasp the concept. “But you’re a kid! You’re not even addicted to them yet?”
“I’m not a kid!” she exclaimed. “I’ll be 18 in a few months. And I am seriously addicted to these. You don’t know me! You don’t know how rough I have it!”
It was then when I wanted to take back the cigarette I had given her and call her a faker; a little spoiled teenage girl reaching for anything that would make her more special. I wanted to tell her that the reason our entire health-care system was so fucked up was because of shallow, self-interested people like her and her parents, who would force their insurance carrier to pay $6,000 a week to cure a girl of her four-month-old experimentation with tobacco—and she didn’t even inhale! When my mother found out I smoked cigarettes at 15, she forced me to strike every match in a 2,500-plus box of strike-anywhere matches before being allowed back in the house. It didn’t quell my lust for cigarettes, and it may have actually awakened the slumbering pyromaniac inside me, but it was a hell of a more fitting punishment than putting your kid in a treatment facility with upper-crust drunks, lace-curtain junkies, and wealthy wife-beaters.
But before I could tell her all of this, I realized—at least realized how it would look to my employers—that I had supplied a “tobacco addict” in a treatment facility with tobacco, thereby not only breaking two major rules on my first day, but this third one as well.
“I didn’t know you were in here for that … So, you never saw me, alright? I never gave you that cigarette, alright?”
She smiled, snubbed out the cigarette in the dirt, then threw the filter onto the roof. “Tell you what,” then her smile grew even wider, “you give me that pack of Basics and your lighter, and then I never saw you.”
Always the optimist, I congratulated myself on buying generic cigarettes that morning. Even as broke as I was, it wouldn’t be so difficult to part with a near-full pack of the cheap shit. But there were still over four hours left until quitting time, and with the way this job was crawling along I was definitely going to need a few cigarettes for my afternoon. And even though I didn’t like the fact that she was trying to blackmail me, I knew she’d rat me out faster than one of her crackhead roommates would cook up a pale Fruity Pebble on a piece of tinfoil. So I needed to negotiate the terms of this ransom.
“Tell you what. I’ll give you half of this pack and a full book of matches,” was my counteroffer. “It’s a solid deal. Matches are easier to conceal, and you know the counselors are going to find your cigarette stash by tomorrow, so there’s no good reason to deprive both of us of these cigarettes.”
“Tempting offer,” she frowned her top lip to camouflage a mean smile, “but no. I want your full pack and your lighter. Or I just might have to tell Denise that you offered me the very same shit that my parents are paying a lot of money to make me quit.”
Damn, she was playing hardball with me. I wish I had something like economic sanctions to threaten her with, but those never worked anyway. I could try to subsidize the deal to my advantage; offer her my new cigarette investment package.
“How about this,” I countered again. “You get the half-pack and matches right now, but I also throw in an additional 3 cigarettes per day for the rest of the week. That’s 12 additional cigarettes spread safely out over the next four days. That’s cigarette security right there. We have a deal?”
“No dice,” she snapped back. “That’s a sucker’s bet. You’re not even going to be here tomorrow.”
“Yeah, I am! I work here. I’m the new call operator for that commercial they aired. I’ll be right back there in the garage. It’s really an office. Ask Denise.”
“Seriously,” she folded her arms, “you won’t be here tomorrow. I heard Denise on the phone about an hour ago, and she was yelling at whatever temp job company you work for. She had to pay like $500 dollars to break whatever contract they had. That’s where she’s at right now.”
“Seriously? I was supposed to be here for four weeks.”
“Hence the $500 fee to break the contract. I guess that commercial they did was a total joke. So, are we going to do this deal or what? What other counteroffers you have for me?”
“None now,” I answered.
“I get the whole pack and your lighter then?”
“You get shit. You have nothing to bargain with now.”
“I’ll still tell Denise,” she acted frantically knowing her cigarette deal was nearly off the table, “and she could still tell your temp company what you did. That would really fuck you up, man.”
I lit another cigarette from the cherried butt of my first, mostly for the dramatic effect of not offering her another one. Then I tucked the pack back into my blazer pocket. “Being 17 and not having tasted the pungent fruit of responsibility yet, you probably don’t quite understand that working for a temp company is what you do when you’re unemployable. It caters to people like me. I could take a shit on the floor in there and get fired from here today, then start working someplace new tomorrow. I am invincible.”
She nibbled on her thumb before asking, “Can you leave me one or two then? You know, a couple of smokes for the road.”
I had never before used laughter as a response to a question, but it was effective and worked quite well. I walked into the secluded backyard to pee behind the garage and could still hear her shouting obscenities at me from the kitchen door. She was a terrible negotiator and an even worse insulter; everything had either a “fuck” or a “punkass” in it. I returned to my garage as soon as I heard the door slam and poured myself a fresh cup of coffee. The phone still didn’t blink or ring, so I opened The Bell Jar and resumed where I left off.
“Very. And I think it also reinforces my theory about sex.”
“I don’t think it does. No, I’m positive it doesn’t. There was nothing to do with sex whatsoever in that situation.”
“It was mostly implied sex. Didn’t like her one bit. Big faker. Looks like we’re getting fired again, though. That’s something. An honorable firing.”
“That’s something alright. Hey, she lost her virginity. I was wondering if that was going to happen. And to Irwin. Seems like a nice enough guy.”
“That Plath. She can sure weave a tale, man.”
The end couldn’t have been better timed; just as I turned over the last page of the book Denise walked into the garage with her bad news. She explained that this would indeed be my last day, as no fault of my own—which is rare to hear in those types of circumstances—but, as a consolation to my newfound unemployment, I could leave right then and get paid for the rest of the day. So that was exactly what I did. And I pocketed The Bell Jar as severance.