The Fuck Up by Arthur Nersesian Read Free Book Online Page A

another offbeat job.
    So I pondered for a moment with a renewed hope. Could this be the place? And if I did go in and was offered a job, would I take it?
    My affections were never inclined beyond females. But this was a job and I was broke. I had dropped out of college just before my graduation. I had no marketable skills, no connections, and no real ambition. After a succession of degrading minimum-wage jobs, I finally might luck into something with a salary, in which I’d most likely be unsupervised.
    Checking both ways, just to be sure that no past pillars of my oldMidwestern community were lumbering by, I followed the middle-aged man and his Ganymede inside. They paid and together they romantically squeezed through a single angle of the turnstile. I looked through the dirty bulletproof Plexiglas and saw an elderly olive-skinned lady sitting on a stool.
    “Excuse me,” I yelled through four small vertical slits.
    “Please turn it,” she interrupted, pointing to the turnstile. “They only turn it once.”
    I turned it and yelled back in, “Is Miguel in?”
    “A segundo.” She replied in an accent, and then yelled into a cheap intercom.
    “You wait here.”
    I stepped to one side, turned away from the door and waited. After the turnstile spun a couple of times, I turned to the entrance and watched those coming through. They were mainly businessmen types, family men who didn’t fit my naive idea of what gays looked like. A door finally opened and a very young man with only dark peach fuzz for a moustache introduced himself as Miguel and asked if he could be of any assistance.
    “Yes,” I replied, shaking his hand, and in a conspiratorially low voice I explained, “Tanya sent me.”
    “Oh, I’ve been waiting for you. Come this way.” He led me around the turnstile and down a narrow hallway in the theater. “So how’s Tanya faring?”
    “Fine, fine.” The whole place was darkly lit. Occasionally I would brush shoulders with some passing patron. Finally stopping at the end of the corridor, he opened the door and flipped on a light. His room was a modified closet, the fluorescent bars of light revealed a macramé Yin Yang calendar, a small refrigerator, and a tiny television set.
    “One second,” he said, flipping his desk lamp on and turning off the fluorescent flood. He offered me a group of film canisters as a seat. When I sat, he leaned back in his swivel chair and began, “So talk to me.”
    I told him my name and gave him Helmsley’s address and then explained that I had theater experience at the Saint Mark’s. About to elaborate on my theater know-how, he interrupted.
    “I don’t want a resume.”
    “Pardon?”
    “I want to know what you’re thinking.”
    “About what?” I asked.
    “Just about.” And he leaned back further in his swivel chair and set his thin arms on the rest of the chair and threw his head back.
    “Well,” I said, leaning forward on the dented canister, “I’ll level with you. I’m in dire straits for a job, and I’m probably not qualified, but I am willing to put a lot of energy into learning, and I guess that’s really what I’m thinking about.”
    “Well.” He grinned. “Let me first ease your tension. You’ve got the job. Now, I’d like you to feel unencumbered. Go ahead and shake out your arms and legs.”
    He started shaking his arms and legs demonstrating how it was done. I followed him. “Now, tell me how you feel and what you’re aware of.”
    This was all very weird. “I feel very happy.”
    “Is that precisely how you feel, pleased as opposed to satisfied?”
    I thought about it a moment and replied, “Well, I am exceptionally pleased, but as I adjust to the news of being hired—security, authority, responsibility—as this sets in, I taper off into satisfaction.”
    “Good, very good. Okay, now I want you to close your eyes and think about this: I was only lying to you. I’m sorry, but you simply don’t have the qualifications. I simply