Once in a Lifetime

March 11, 2007

After returning home from Pennsylvania, I was thrust directly into a series of long days at work. Only today, a week later, have I finally had time to unpack my bag. That doesn't mean I've unpacked it, though. It's mostly just dirty laundry, anyway.

I was talking to a fellow freelancer at work the other day, comparing notes about our schedules. He told me he was approaching the end of a month-long stint as a substitute for one of the full-time staff who'd been away on vacation. He was happy to have the work, but at the same time, happy to see the end of it. "I could never handle a full-time job here," he said. "I don't know how these people do it. Everyone scurries around from cubicle to cubicle; it feels like a gerbil cage. 'What was that? Did you see something? Oh, that's just Mike from accounting.' I wanted to get a giant water bottle — the kind they have in rodent cages — and put it up at the end of the hallway."

"Sounds like a Kafka novel," I said.

Friday was the last day of his booking, and I asked what he had lined up next.

"Nothing," he said.

"So what are you gonna do? Walk the earth?"

"Ha, yeah. I could use a little of that. I used to do that all the time. I'd work for about a year and a half, which was a half a year too long, get totally burned out, and then take a few months off and go away. I haven't done that in a long time, though. Now that I have a wife, a kid, and a mortgage, it's impossible. My wife and I have been married ten years now, and we've moved nine times: Upstate, Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Los Angeles, Washington, DC. I'm happy moving around. We've been in New Jersey for four years now, and I'm starting to go stir crazy. I look around and think, Where am I? What the hell am I doing?"

I quoted a few lines from Once in a Lifetime by the Talking Heads:

"And you may tell yourself

This is not my beautiful house!

And you may tell yourself

This is not my beautiful wife!"

"Yeah, that David Byrne was ahead of his time," he said.

"Not ahead of his time,” I said. "Ahead of your time."

After an afternoon motorcycle ride to shake off the dust and enjoy the spring-like weather, I met a friend at a bar around the corner from the garage and down the block from her apartment. We sat at the end of the bar and talked about an assortment of unrelated topics: my trip to Pennsylvania, her trip to Jamaica, Deborah's jewelry, Brittany Spears.

"A friend of mine is related to Kevin Federline," Harriet whispered. The bar was crowded and noisy, so I asked her to repeat it. "My friend is Kevin Federline's cousin. He's really embarrassed about it, though, and doesn't like people to know, so don't tell anyone."

"I won't tell anyone, I'll just blog about it."

"No!"

Honestly, I don’t even know who Kevin Fedrline is, and wouldn’t have even mentioned him if she hadn’t brought him up.

I asked how her trip to Jamaica went. She originally booked the vacation with her boyfriend, but by the time the trip rolled around, he was her ex-boyfriend. They decided to go anyway and make the best of it. When they arrived, the room was equipped with one bed, and her now-ex-boyfriend didn't think it was a good idea to share, so he ordered a cot from the front desk.

"I told him, I didn't spend all that money, and travel all the way to Jamaica to spend my vacation sleeping on a cot like some eight-year-old kid on a family vacation."

"Wait, what? He was going to make you sleep on it? He's the one who couldn't handle sharing a bed."

"I know, right? That's what I thought. Anyway, the bed they brought us turned out ot be nice. It wasn't just a cot. It had a box spring and everything."

"So who slept on it?"

"We took turns."

I shook my head.

Four young guys in black T-shirts, leather jackets, and chain wallets arrived at the bar and sat next to us. "Vodka!" one of them barked at the bartender.

"Vodka?" I thought. Who orders vodka? Vodka martini, vodka and orange juice, vodka and cranberry juice, cosmopolitan, metropolitan, even vodka and Coke, but just plain old vodka? How would it come, I wondered. The others in the group ordered more predictably: "Sportsman Specials" — a shot of Jack Daniels and a Pabst Blue Ribbon for four dollars. My friend told me the Sportsman Special was what she usually had when she went to this bar, which, since it was only a block away from her apartment, was quite often.

It became hard to carry on a conversation. The guys were in a band talking at maximum decibel about the rehearsal they'd just had, their ears undoubtedly still ringing as they discussed the various and subtle intricacies of their revolutionary three-chord rock tunes.

The bartender, a somewhat cocky though admittedly good-looking guy with long stringy hair and a beard, seemed to be friends with the band, or perhaps they were just regulars and he was only friendly for the tips, but either way, they tried to get him to drink with them.

"No thanks, man," he said.

"Aw, dude, c'mon, don't be a puss."

"No, man, I never drink on this side of the bar."

"Why not?"

"There are two rules I live by: I never drink when I'm tending bar, and I always wear a condom when I go to Tijuana."

"I didn't know donkeys had AIDS," one guy said.

"They don't," said another. "They have chlamydia."

I suggested we move to the back room, where things were quieter.