1000 Words Before Breakfast: Modern Serial Part 1

by Justin Philpot

"Hello, sir. I'm conducting a survey for the…"

It was early, so it took a second. "Get fucked."

Wood hung up. Usually they didn't get that far. Mornings threw him off his game. He checked the time on the alarm clock and rolled over. An hour later, after the alarm and while he was leaning into the hot water of the shower, he had a panic attack. Not a real one, really. But he got worried that maybe he snapped at the headhunter at Professional Staffing and not some survey fuck.

For all Wood cared, the temp agency, the headhunters - particularly the one who worked with him, or in this case, didn't - the receptionist and the goldfish on her desk could walk off the face of the planet. But saying so directly wasn't going to help him any. Not that not saying it had helped at all, either. Still, it bugged him. It wasn't until he had checked caller I.D. and saw the 888 of the survey taker's number that he calmed down. The vodka in his orange juice helped. He wondered how much the survey fuck got paid to wake him up in the morning. Probably ten or so.

The telemarketing place he applied to last week offered ten, no benefits. And if he got the job he'd be low-man, which meant that when he checked the weekend/nights box on the application next to availability, he signed away his weekends, his nights, everything that went with them and the things he'd only hoped would happen, too. Discouraging. Then again, if there had been a place on the application to make it clear that he'd take verbal, emotional and even an amount of physical abuse for ten dollars an hour, he'd have used it. As it was they didn't even leave enough space for his phone number. He debated for half a minute about whether or not it was poor application etiquette to write into the margins, decided it wasn't, and then worried about it on the way home. If he couldn't make his desperation clear in any other way, perhaps the last four digits of his phone number crammed into the void next to his social got the point across.

Maybe not. They haven't called.

Reading the minds of human resource associates, retail managers and temp agency representatives was dailyroutine by now. He categorized what he thought would be considered negative aspect of his paper personality as objectively as he could. Depending on what kind of day he was having, the doubts of those to whom he handed over applications, though essentially unknowable, would be considered possible, probable, or certain and categorized by order of importance. It could take hours if he was waiting to hear back about more than a couple of positions. This morning they were all possible, and while he rummaged through the fridge for breakfast they were all weighed equally.

Maybe the creeping, familiar sense of desperation was exactly what they got out of his application. Wood. A. Ellis, B.A., currently unemployed, last job unimpressive. Wood. A. Ellis, overeducated, over inflated sense of self-worth, willing to take a crappy job, but not willing to stick it out. And what the fuck kind of name is Wood., anyway? That some of these things were true had long since been accepted and put aside to be addressed at a later date; self-reflection was abandoned to focus on the larger, vividly mundane truth that if wanted to keep the warm place to go to the bathroom he called his apartment, he needed a job.

He had the cable turned off a month ago. Wood relied on the free weekly, discarded Globes on the subway and the radio under the kitchen cabinet for news. With no television he tried to keep the internet strictly entertainment. The radio clicked on. Noon news break. If he hadn't already been drinking, the sportscaster would have scooped his Onion desk calendar and broke the news that it was Friday, but Smirnoff scooped them both. Wood checked the change jar on the counter to make sure he had enough quarters for his other Friday ritual; five dollars to wash, five dollars to dry and fifty cents to call his voicemail to check to see if anybody had called. The jar was full enough. On Tuesday he'd cashed in some cans. Cans equals change equals clean underwear. While the eggs came together on the stove, Wood put some toast down. Same shit, different day.

For a couple of weeks he enjoyed referring to it as "Wood's Daily Grind," and toyed with the idea of sending email updates in the form of porn movie scripts to his friends. As a preview he sent a picture of some porn stud getting blown by somebody, who was supposed to be his secretary while he was on the phone. It was meant to be ironic - work is demeaning, ha-ha. His friends didn't appreciate it. He got one, and only one, reply. "Well, the work may suck, but at least she has a job."

That night, trying to fall asleep and with his mind wandering, Wood put a number on how much he'd have to be offered for him to take the secretary's position, if he really needed the money. Two realizations hit him back-to-back, hard enough to force him out of bed and to dip into his Friday vodka cache. First, the amount of money it would take equaled his monthly rent. Second, he had less than that in his bank account. His toast popped up.

Thankfully he had been able to pick up a temp gig at a gallery, helping to pack and unpack pieces while they changed exhibitions. The folks there seemed to like him, and the work was stigma free. It paid as much as a filing job, but was considerably sexier. Nobody looked down their nose at you when you said you were working at a gallery. He had the curator's card somewhere. Wood was sitting down, trying to remember where it was. As he reached for the butter, the phone rang.

(Check back next month to find out who's on the other end of the line!)