The Gmail Bop-Bop

My phone bop-bopped yesterday. It was the G-mail bop-bop.

That’s different than the text message do-ding, and it’s not the same as the Yahoo! Mail blong, and it definitely wasn’t a voicemail, which is the first 22 seconds of the theme from “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen” followed by a ga-ling.

I lazily pulled out the phone from my trouser pocket and noticed the insistent red light flashing at the top right-hand corner, letting me know that someone was urgently trying to tell me something. In emergency circles, flashing red lights indicate matters of grave import. In the black-and-white, bygone days, at White House, they had red desk phones with no buttons, and no rotary dial, just a flashing red light that would go off when Premier Kissoff urgently needed to speak to President Muffley.

Nowadays, we are all our own Merkin Muffleys. We can all be reached at any time of the night or day, and every email, text message, or voicemail carries its own little red light, indicating that it must be responded to immediately.

Of course.

Because my Spam and Junk folders have ironclad testicles, I am rarely disappointed to see that a message or an email is for scams trying to sell me discounted psychotropic medications or enlarge my PEN!S. Because my online work scheduling software is synched with my phone, I am, however, disappointed by receiving frequent emails alerting me to shifts that need to be filled that I will not be filling.

“You don’t ever work extra, do you?” a colleague asked me last week.

“Nope. But I’m very grateful that there are those that do, so I don’t have to.” And I thought that was a diplomatic way of stating my belief that I wouldn’t want to stay in that place one millisecond longer than I had to.

(No offense.)

The email that I received yesterday following this particular bop-bop was from my old boss. She had read somewhere that there was a local playwriting contest going on, so she forwarded the email to me. Not trying to be an asshole, though probably sounding like one, I wrote back a brief note thanking her for thinking of me and adding, “You still think of me as a playwright. That’s very sweet. I like that.”

Really, though—do I? Or was this email just another reminder of who I was, or barely was. I mean, I was a student who wrote plays. Then, I graduated, and I wrote a couple other plays. I’m not really sure that qualifies me as… much of anything, really. But I guess you are whatever people think you are. At least, to them.

Perception is so funny, and so tenuous. If you inflate your opinion of yourself just enough, you’re maybe looking at delusions of grandeur. If you minimize and undercut and justify, then you’re on your way to Poor Self Esteemsville. I wonder sometimes if it is even possible to have a completely untarnished, unbiased view of oneself, and if what we think we are is any more or less accurate than what others think we are.

I read that email and I knew I wasn’t going to write anything for this playwriting contest, but I lied and told my former boss that “maybe I’ll whip something up for this thing,” like it’s no different than preparing a bowl of mashed potatoes or a batch of brownies. Obviously, if I had any intention at all of taking this contest seriously, I would be sketching out ideas and creating well-dressed, middle-aged male characters who do silly things, in the spirit of my old friend Gilbert, and my not-as-old friends the Pythons.

But I’m not doing that. I’m writing to you. For you. For… me?

Well, probably not. But maybe I’ll write for me some day.

She thinks I'm still (or was ever) a playwright, so she sent me an email. It shouldn't have sent me through a loop, but it did. It shouldn't be taken as a guilt-trip, but it was. It shouldn't have made me feel bad, but it did. I don't know where that part of me went-- that desire to make up people and situations and move them about a tape-marked flat, black floor as if they were chess pieces and I Kasparov. I don't know where that went. Maybe it will come back some day. Maybe it won't. Who knows? I'm reasonably certain I'm never going to be mentioned in the same breath as Edward Albee or Tom Stoppard or Sam Shepard. But I've got my little red flashing light on my phone, which means I'm important. And I'll get back to you at once.

*** POSTSCRPIT ***

And, after all that horseshit: I wrote the fucking play.

Moo.

Going Back

Because I was working until 9pm yesterday, my boss saw her way clear to giving me some time off in the morning.

Isn't that nice?

I spent the morning blogging, shopping for ingredients for a vegetarian casserole thing which will probably look post-digested, and, of course, looking online for jobs.

Because I'm not a "masseuse" or a clean water activist, there wasn't much going on on Craigslist yesterday morning, so I got in my car and, somehow, I ended up thirteen miles away from my home in the parking lot of the small optical shop where I used to work, where I landed my first big boy job.

The owner, my former boss, was there all by himself and, as was the case in the days of my employ, there were no customers to be seen. He greeted me with a wry smile and, in honor of my visit, proceeded to stick the cordless telephone up his asscrack with a twist as we both cracked up. Did I really just refer to this as a "big boy job?"

"Yo," he said after our man-hug, "did you eat yet? I had lunch already but I'm still fucking starving, man. Let's go get some pizza."

We walked out of the store, leaving the door unlocked, and went to the pizza place two stores down. I remembered that smell, of cheese, and oil-soaked pepperoni. We ordered our pizza slices and, as my old boss stared out of the window listlessly, he suddenly shoved some dollar bills into my fist and said,

"Oh fuck-- there's Mr. Wembel-- with 2 base up prism and a stigmatism. You remember that retard? Pay for the shit with this," he said as he flew out the door-- chasing another dollar. Speaking of dollars, the bill came to $5.88, and in my hand were three dollar bills and a $2.00 bill. I thought to myself, well, I have to add in a dollar of mine anyway, and I can't use his $2.00 bill-- so I bought lunch for us.

Though I haven't worked in his shop since 2002, I did remember that retard. A finnicky, anal-retentive man whose glasses prescription we could never quite seem to perfect. And yet, he still comes back. Most of them do. The limpy Italian woman who cannot read and pays for her lenses in gigantic tureens of homemade pasta and gravy. The middle-aged woman with the smoker's cough and the Joker's laugh who once tried to fix me up with one of her daughters. The UPS delivery guy with the donkey teeth. The high-powered pharma executive who loves to wear purple tinted lenses. The thoroughly insane woman who required a $800 pair of Oakley sports goggles so she wouldn't "get snow in her face when she shoveled."

Sometimes it scares me how much I remember.

By the time I brought the sopping wet and delicious pizza back to the store, he was already in the process of kicking Mr. Wembel out. Wembel had complained that the earpiece had what he called "a burr" on it that was irritating the side of his head.

"A burr," my old boss snorted as he waved at Wembel through the glass of the store window, smiling, "do you believe that fucking faggot?" He shoved a piece of the greasy pizza into his mouth.

I had intended to stay there for maybe twenty minutes, but my visit lasted from 11:00 to 12:50. I said, "Well, I should go," four times before it finally took-- but it was hard to leave. We were cracking each other up, hysterically reminiscing about old times and old customers and old coworkers. I mentioned the name of one of the lab technicians who used to cut lenses for us, and our shared memories of him prompted my boss to go online to see if his name came up on the Registered Sex Offender Database.

"Dude-- New York City is like, fucking completely red on this thing-- everybody's a fucking diddler there. And I looked up my neighborhood. There's three-- and a guy I went to high school with whose dad was one of my teachers-- he's on here, too."

Back in 2002, when I left the optical store, my boss barely knew how to use a computer, and he didn't have an email address. Now, his technological grasp on the internet has improved to the point where he obsessively Googles everyone who comes into the store-- endlessly searching for who has the biggest pocketbook, or, apparently, the biggest hardon for pre-teens. While I was there, he showed me a YouTube video of some long haired loser playing the electric guitar.

"This fuck was in here a couple months ago pissed off about a contact lens exam. He called my secretary a bitch and wrote a letter to corporate. Fucking antisocial dickhead. Look at him-- playing guitar in his mom's bedroom."

He asked about every single member of my family, and he expressed great concern over my current work dilemma.

"I've always told you that you could do anything, man-- I'm so freakin' jealous of all your talents. You've just got to use your thirties to commit to something, even if it fucking sucks. I mean, look at me-- I'm forty-eight. You think, when I was thirty I woke up and I was like, 'Oh! I know-- I wanna be a fuckin' franchisee! Yay!' But I did it, and it's pretty decent. It's okay."

I told him that what helped was a realization I'd had, helped by affirmations from my wife, that contrary to what this society says, your job doesn't define you.

"I struggled so hard because I thought that my life wouldn't be worth anything if I didn't become, I don't know, 'a person of note' or someone that people read every day in the newspaper-- a name people recognized. And then I thought, well, okay, if all I get is rejection letters-- then I'll do something socially important-- I'll be a cop. And I'll revolutionize the way people think about law enforcement, even if it's just in my own small little corner of the world. And I realized I couldn't do that. And then I just accepted that-- it's not what you do to make a paycheck, it's in your thousands of little interactions with other people. Can you be a decent person, a person people like or at least can stand? Can you love your wife and be kind to her? Can you raise fine children? Can you attempt to appropriately thank your parents for all that they gave you? That's what matters-- that's a successful life."

He looked at me.

"See? This is what I'm talking about-- you've got your fucking head on straight. Not like Heath Ledger-- 'Oh, I'm so talented I'm going to stick a spike in my neck till I'm dead' or Tiger Woods 'Let me just fuck everything that breathes because I'm a God.' You get it, and you always did. You wouldn't have ever talked to me when I was in my twenties, man. Hair down to my ass-- felony convictions. I wasn't good for shit till I was thirty."

I laughed, because I could picture it. My old boss in an "Anarchy" t-shirt, swilling back long-necks and grabbing black girls' asses in downtown D.C. or wherever, doing drugs and fucking off. But he's got a shirt and tie, and his hair is closely cropped and his face is closely shaved and his diction is closely... well, close. He's a fine upstanding businessman. And I smiled when the phone rang. He answered with carefully coreographed precision. I could hear the voice of a telemarketer on the other end,

"My name is Keisha and I work for PSS Processing, I would like to speak to the owner, please."

My boss smiled at me. "Sure, here he is," and he handed me the phone. Just like old times. I took the receiver.

"What's happenin', babe?" I crooned.

Pause.

"Um, I represent PSS Processing, a new online payment processing center that handles..."

I cut her off.

"Oh my God! OH, MY GOD! THE CAT! NOOOO!!!!!"

And then I hung up.