In a previous life, about six careers ago, I was a licensed sub-contractor. It started out as a temporary gig, a stop-gap after I was fired from my job as a counter-girl at a pizza shop, or was let go, or quit; I still don't know. What do you call it when you phone your boss from the road en route to a hospital six hours away, explain that you wouldn't be in for your shift that afternoon because your mother just had a heart-attack, and your boss tells you "I don't care... if you don't make it in to work today don't bother coming back" and you don't? Well that.
So I was unemployed. After about a week of hitting 'the usual suspects' (restaurants, bars, temp agencies, etc.) and getting nowhere, I did what any sensible person would do. I called my friend J, a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, and suggested we buy a few bottles of cheap wine and get drunk.
Bottle one: I complained; he raved about Reagan.
Bottle two: I cried; he raved about how coupons are actually a form of government surveillance.
Bottle three: I wailed "Rent is due in a week! What the fuck am I going to do?!" and bashed my head through the wall; he raved about the mood-altering drugs his landlord puts in the drinking water, told me he could get me a job sub-contracting, and threw up a brilliant tapas/red wine combo all over the couch I had just bought from the Salvation Army.
The evening was pretty much over after that, we threw the couch to the curb on his way out (not because he threw up on it... because it occurred to me he undoubtedly wasn't the first to throw up on it). Well, that and J's explanation of the process of 'sanitizing' second-had furniture, which --according to him-- consisted of spraying Lysol around the thing ceremoniously and slapping on a tag. The more I thought about dust mites and cockroaches and some old smelly fat guy's butt crack hair, it struck me that paranoids, like stopped clocks, are probably also right twice a day.
But still, imagine my surprise at 6am the next morning when I awoke to the bleat of the phone and a voice that said, "... so you ready for work motherfucker?".
Funny, I had figured his other non-delusional moment was the coupon thing.
Posted by Antigeist at June 19, 2003 01:59 PM