Yeah, That’s Not Going To Happen

OK, so I know it has been only a week or so, but no way is the Vegas version of a call center job going to result in the summer of a lifetime, long-term friendships or even sex like the Boulder incarnation did. Way too many people, for one, packed into tiny cubes; too many to interact with any one person. Plus there is nowhere within walking distance to go get a drink. And I am just so anti-social right now and the sort of people this job attracts are, well, not my cup of tea this time around. And my memory may be playing tricks on me, but I do not recall the surveys I did back then being as mind-numbingly boring as these (one was about an electric power line in Arkansas. Another was about how an international trade agreement would affect Oregon. Yawn). One thing that has not changed, however, is how rude and mean and downright horrible people are. You know, if you do not want to do a survey, fine, no need to yell at me about it. And those Arkansans telling me “I hate that son of a bitch” about our President or the number of stoned Oregonians I spoke with are really just enforcing their respective state’s stereotypes.

Will Lightening Strike Twice?

In the spring of 19??, I was living in Boulder, Colo. I was recently divorced and newly unemployed. I had been let go, after a week, from an office position because I did not have a car. They knew this at the interview. They thought it would not be a problem. Turns out, it was. Pisser was, I’d given up a relatively cushy job as an assistant manager of a book store. (Remember those? Funnily enough, it was located in a strip mall along with, amongst others, a travel agents and a Blockbuster. It must be a wasteland now.) Desperate for work, I took a job doing telephone market research. You know the sort, those ’phone surveys about, amongst other things, elections (“If the election was held tomorrow, who would you vote for?”).

That spring turned into one of the best summers of my life, even though I had no money, no car, and a pretty crappy living situation (I was rooming with two girls, an Indian girl who very sweet but boring and a born-again Christian chick who was just boring). I worked mid-afternoon to nine at night and weighed the least I have ever weighed in my American life (I am convinced that shift had a lot to do with that). I casually dated, read a ton, and hung out with some of my co-workers at bars on the Pearl Street Mall during their late-night happy hours (none of us could afford to drink any other time). One time, on a day off, I had a date in one such bar. After the date imploded, I wasn’t ready to go home so I went into the offices to see if anyone was about to finish a shift and wanted to get a drink. One girl did, and said, “Yeah, let’s go to the Cellar, it’s Trivia Tuesday.”

The rest, as they say, is history.

I’d have never discovered the Pearl Street Cellar if she had not taken me there (no one did, it was located, um, in a cellar and at the quieter end of the mall and pretty much everyone who went there had been taken by someone else). My co-worker introduced me to some of her friends there. One of them was a young man named J. He was, at the time, the most handsome man I had ever met in real life. We quickly bonded over our shared Capricornism (is that even a word/thing?) and our love of the Pittsburgh Steelers (although mine was not as advanced then as it is now). 

I eventually got a “proper” job but remained close to some co-workers, one of whom introduced me to her neighbor, T. I became, um, friends with T. who invited me to a party at his house. Also at this party was JTV, a friend of T.’s and a regular at the Cellar! I know to most of you this would seem like a wild coincidence but this was in Boulder, where instead of six, it is just two degrees of separation. JTV had brought along a friend of his. The prettiest boy alive (yep, that guy).

The rest, as they say, is history.

So yes, because of this one job I met some of the most important people in my life. I am still friends with J. and JTV, and T. and I are Facebook friends (he is married now, to someone who used to work with another dear friend of mine, PLL - again, Boulder, two degrees). I continued going to the Cellar in its new incarnation, when it moved to a street-level location in the middle of the Mall, and I took E. and D. there and we made it our regular hang-out in another brief but fantastic time in my life.

So why am I sharing all this? Because tomorrow, I start working a part-time and (god, I hope) temporary position at a telephone market research company.

Will the rest, as they say, be history?

One is the loneliest number

It's the loneliest number since the number one. Cats do not have opposable thumbs. That is all.