I
can’t tell you about a specific day as a cable tech. I can’t tell you
my first customer was a cat hoarder. I can tell you the details, sure.
That I smeared Vicks on my lip to try to cover the stench of rugs and
walls and upholstery soaked in cat piss. That I wore booties, not to
protect the carpets from the mud on my boots but to keep the cat piss
off my soles. I can tell you the problem with her cable service was that
her cats chewed through the wiring. That I had to move a mummified cat
behind the television to replace the jumper. That ammonia seeped into
the polyester fibers of my itchy blue uniform, clung to the sweat in my
hair. That the smell stuck to me through the next job.
But
what was the next job? This is the stuff I can’t remember — how a
particular day unfolded. Maybe the next job was the Great Falls,
Virginia, housewife who answered the door in some black skimpy thing I
never really saw because I work very hard at eye contact when faced with
out-of-context nudity. She was expecting a man. I’m a 6-foot lesbian.
If I showed up at your door in a uniform with my hair cut in what’s
known to barbers as the International Lesbian Option No. 2, you might
mistake me for a man. Everyone does. She was rare in that she realized
I’m a woman. We laughed about it. She found a robe while I replaced her
cable box. She asked if I needed to use a bathroom, and I loved her.
For 10
years, I worked as a cable tech in the Virginia suburbs of Washington,
D.C. Those 10 years, the apartments, the McMansions, the customers, the
bugs and snakes, the telephone poles, the traffic, the cold and heat and
rain, have blurred together in my mind. Even then, I wouldn’t remember a
job from the day before unless there was something remarkable about it.
Remarkable is subjective and changes with every day spent witnessing
what people who work in offices will never see — their co-workers at
home during the weekday, the American id in its underpants, wondering if
it remembered to delete the browsing history.
Mostly all I remember is needing to pee.
And
I remember those little glimpses of the grotesque. I’ll get to Dick
Cheney later. The one that comes to mind now is the anti-gay lobbyist
whose office was lined with framed appreciation from Focus on the
Family, and pictures with Pat Buchanan and Jerry Falwell, but whose
son’s room was painted pink and littered with Barbies. The hypocrite’s
son said he was still a boy. He just thought his sundress was really
cute. I agreed, told him I love daisies, and he beamed. His father
thanked me, and I wanted to tell him to go fuck himself. How the fuck do
you actively work to ensure the world’s a more dangerous place for your
beautiful little kid? But I didn’t ask him that. I just stood and
glared at him until he looked away. I needed the job. I assumed his kid
would grow up to hate him.
Maybe
the next job that day was the guy whose work order said “irate.” It’s
not something you want to see on a work order. Not when you’re running
late and you still have to pee, because “irate” meant that the next job
wasn’t going to be a woman in lingerie; it was going to be a guy who
pulled out his penis while I fixed the settings on his television.
I
know after that one, I pulled off the side of the road when I saw a
horse. Only upside of Great Falls. Not too long ago, Great Falls was
mostly small farms and large estates. The McMansions outnumber the farms
now. But there are still a few holdouts. I called the horse over to the
fence, and he nuzzled my hair. I fed him my apple. Talking to a horse
helps when you can’t remember how to breathe.
Maybe that “irate” was an “irate fn ch72 out.” Fox News.
Those we dreaded. It was worse when the comment was followed by “repeat
call.” Repeat meant someone had been there before. If it was someone I
could call and ask, he’d tell me: “Be careful. Asshole kept calling me
‘boy.’ Rather he just up and call me a [that word]. Yeah, of course I
told them. Forwarding you the emails right now. Hang on, I have to
merge. Anyway, it’s his TV. Dumbass put a plasma above his fireplace.
Charge the piece of shit ’cause I warned him. Have fun.”
I’d
walk in prepared for anything. There was sobbing, man or woman, didn’t
matter. There were the verbal assaults. There were physical threats. To
say they were just threats undermines what it feels like to be in
someone else’s home, not knowing the territory, where that hallway
leads, what’s behind that door, if they have a gun, if they’ll back you
into a wall and scream at you. If they’ll stop there. If they’ll call in
a complaint no matter what you do. Sure, we were allowed to leave if we
felt threatened. We just weren’t always sure we could. In any case,
even if we canceled, someone else would always be sent to the same house
later. “Irate. Repeat call.” And we’d lose the points we needed to make
our numbers.
The
points: Every job’s assigned a number of points — 10 points for a “my
cable’s out” call, four points to disconnect a line, 12 to install
internet. We needed about 120 points a day to make our monthly quota.
A
cut cable line was worth 10 points, whether we tried to fix it or not.
We could try to splice it if we found the cut. Or we could maybe run a
temp line. But you can’t run one across a neighbor’s lawn or across a
sidewalk or street. That’s what happened with the guy who was adding a
swimming pool. The diggers had cut his line. I knew before I walked in.
But he still wanted me to come stare at the blank cable box while we
talked. I did because the Fox News cult loves to call in complaints
about their rude techs.
“She
blinked back the flood of tears she’d been holding since God knows
when. She said, "It’s just, when he has Fox, he has Obama to hate. If he
doesn’t have that ..."”
The tap,
where the cable line connects, was in a neighboring yard. There was a
dog door on the back patio of that yard. I like dogs, but I’m not an
idiot. I told him it would be a week, 7 to 10 days to get a new line. He
said through his teeth he needed an exact day. I gave him my
supervisor’s number. This whole time, his wife was in the kitchen wiping
a clean counter.
I
was filling out the work orders and emailing my supervisor to give him a
heads-up on a possible call from a member of every cable tech’s
favorite rage cult, when his wife knocked on my van window. She stepped
back and called me “ma’am.” Which was nice. Her husband with the
tucked-in polo shirt had asked my name and I told him Lauren. He heard
Lawrence because it fit what he saw and asked if he could call me Larry.
Guys like that use your name as a weapon. “Larry, explain to me why I
had to sit around here from 1 to 3 waiting on you and you show up at
3:17. Does that seem like good customer service to you, Larry? And now
you’re telling 7 to 10 days? Larry, I’m getting really tired of hearing
this shit.” Guys like that, it was safer to just let them think I was a
man.
She said she was
sorry about him. I said, “It’s fine.” I said there really wasn’t
anything I could do. She blinked back the flood of tears she’d been
holding since God knows when. She said, “It’s just, when he has Fox, he
has Obama to hate. If he doesn’t have that ...” She kept looking over
her shoulder. She was terrified of him. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just
need him to have Fox.” I got out of my van.
The
neighbor with the possible attack dogs wasn’t home. The next-door
neighbor wasn’t either. But I looked up his account. I got lucky. He
didn’t have TV service. I pulled up his modem on my laptop, perfect
signal. There was an attenuator where the cable connected to his
house-wiring to tamp down the signal — too much is also a problem. I got
enough running a line from the neighbor’s house to theirs so the
asshole would be able to get his rage fix from Hannity. I remember
leaving a note on the neighbor’s door, some ambiguous lie about their
internet service being urgent. I figured the neighbor might be more
understanding about internet service than Fox. I sure as fuck was.
Maybe
the next job was unremarkable in every way. I liked those jobs. Nothing
to remember but maybe a cute dog. Maybe a few spiders. But I’d gotten
used to spiders. I don’t feel mosquito bites anymore either. If the
customer worked any sort of manual job, they’d offer me water. I
wouldn’t usually accept. But it was a nice gesture.
Blue-collar
customers were always my favorite. They don’t treat you like a servant.
They don’t tell you, “We like the help to use the side door.” They don’t
assume you’re an idiot just because you wear a name tag to work and
your hands are calloused. The books on their shelves aren’t bound in
leather. But the spines are cracked. Most of them, when you turn on the
TV, it’s not set to Fox. They’re the only customers who tip.
Maybe
the next job I had to climb into an attic. Maybe it was above 90
outside and 160 up there. I’d sweat out half my body weight, and my skin
would itch like hives from the insulation the rest of the day. At some
point, I’d blow something black out of my nose. You have to work fast in
an attic. You don’t come down, not all of these customers would even
bother to see if you’re at medium rare yet. If the customer had a shred
of humanity, you could ask to reschedule for the morning.
Humanity
is rarer than I imagined when I first took the job. One woman wanted me
to shimmy down into a crawl space that held 3 feet of water and about a
foot to spare under her floorboards. A snake swam past the opening. She
said it wasn’t a copperhead. Like I fucking cared.
We
had a blizzard one year — a few, really. Snowmaggedon and Snowverkill
and Snowmygod, I think WTOP named them. We had to work. I went to one
call where the problem was dead batteries on a remote. They didn’t think
batteries were their responsibility. The next, they wanted me to
replace a downed line. Yes, that’s the power line in the tree, too.
Well, sure the telephone pole’s lying in the street, but we figured you
could do something. I didn’t explain why I didn’t get out of my van. I
took a picture and sent it to my supervisor with “Bullshit.”
Most
of the streets were blocked. Thirty-five inches is a lot of snow. A
state trooper told me to get the fuck off the road. My supervisor said,
“We can’t. We do phone so we’re considered emergency service.” I didn’t
have any phone jobs. No one else I talked to did either.
The
supervisors made a good show of pretending to care that we made it to
jobs. The dispatchers canceled everything they could. The techs, we
didn’t talk much. Every so often someone would mic their Nextel to
scream: “This is bullshit! They’re going to get us fucking killed!” And
someone else would say, “They don’t care, man. They won’t have to pay
anyway. They’ll piss test your corpse and say you were high.
Motherfuckers.”
“They’ll fucking care when I plow my van through the front of their building.”
“Dude, I’m gonna ram the next little Ford Ranger I see.” Supervisors drove Rangers.
“Fuck that. I’m ramming a cop.”
“Bitch, how you gonna know what you’re ramming? Can’t fucking see the snowplow in front of me.”
I
couldn’t respond. My voice would stand out. We had to hope for the
humanity of others, the customers, because corporate didn’t care. They
didn’t have to drive through a blizzard. The blizzards, I remember.
The
other days, they all blended together. Let’s go back to imaginary day.
Maybe next I had the woman with the bull mastiff named Otto. I don’t
remember much about her because I like bull mastiffs with their giant
stupid heads. I told her I needed to get to her basement. She said, “Do
you really? It’s just it’s a mess.” (That’s never why.) I explained the
signal behind her television was crap. The signal outside her house was
great. With only one line going through the cinderblock wall, there was
probably a splitter. She was taller than I am. That’s something I
remember because, like I said, I’m tall. And probably a useful trait for
her considering what I found next. I told her what I told everyone who
balked about their privacy being invaded: “Unless you have a kid in a
cage, I don’t fucking care.” Kids in cages were an unimaginable horror
then. A good place to draw a line.
This
is a good time to say, if you’re planning on growing massive quantities
of marijuana, look, I respect it. But don’t use a $3 splitter from CVS
when you run your own cable line. Sooner or later, you’ll have a cable
tech in your basement. And you’ll feel the need to give them a freezer
bag full of pot to relieve your paranoia. Which is appreciated, don’t
get me wrong. Stoners, I adore you. I mean it. You never yell. I can ask
to use your bathroom because you’re stoned. You never call in
complaints. But maybe behind the television isn’t the most effective
place to hide your bong when the cable guy’s coming over.
Anyway,
Otto’s mom laughed and said, “Not a kid.” It took me a second. She went
down to get his permission. And I was allowed down into a dungeon where
she had a man in a cage. I don’t remember if she had a bad splitter. So
that was probably early on. After a few years, not even a dungeon was
interesting. Sex workers tip, though.
Maybe
my next job was a short little fucker who walked like a little teapot
and who beat his kids. Sometimes you can tell. Some of us recognize the
look in their eyes, the bite of fear in the air. He followed me into the
office. And he rubbed himself against my ass when I leaned over to
unplug the modem. I let it happen that time. Sometimes you know which
guys you can’t fight back against.
There
were a lot of those. Those I never forgot. They seep into your skin
like cat piss. But you can’t shower them off. It’s part of why I didn’t
mind most people assuming I was a man. Each time I had to calculate the
odds of something worse against the odds of getting back to my van.
One
of those creeps, his suit cost more than my car. I can’t fathom what
his smile cost. He had an elevator in his three-story McMansion. Maybe
he thought he owned me, too. I broke his nose with my linesman’s pliers.
Nice heft to those linesman’s pliers. He’d called me a dyke. I hope I
ruined his suit. I lost the points.
I made it
back to my van. My van became my home, my office, my dining room. I was
safe in my van. In my van, I could pull off near a park for a few
minutes, smoke a cigarette, read the news, check Facebook, breathe until
I stopped shaking, until I stopped crying. That’s only if there was
someplace to pull over, preferably in the shade. We were monitored by
GPS. But if I stayed close enough to the route, I could always claim
traffic. This was Northern Virginia. There was always traffic.
Maybe
that’s why I was running late to the next job, and my dispatcher, my
supervisor, another dispatcher and the dispatch supervisor called to ask
my ETA. No, that job canceled.
Irate
doesn’t always mean irate. Sometimes it just means he’s had three techs
out to fix his internet and not one has listened to him. They said it
was fixed. He was bidding last night on a train. It was a special piece.
He’d seen only one on eBay in five years. One. He showed me his
collection. His garage was the size of my high school gym. But his
sensible Toyota commuter box was parked out front. His garage was for
the trains. He had the Old West to the west. And Switzerland to the
east. But the train he wanted went to someone in Ohio because his
internet went out again and he lost the auction. He wasn’t irate. He was
heartbroken, and no one would listen.
I
remember he started clicking a dog-training clicker when I said the
signal was good behind the modem. He said he was sorry. The clicker
helped when he was feeling overwhelmed. I said I should probably try it.
My dentist didn’t like the way I clenched my teeth. He said, “They all
come here and say it’s OK, but it goes out again.”
This
was probably around the time my supervisor realized I was pretty good
at fixing the jobs the guys couldn’t, or wouldn’t. And really good with
the customers who’d had enough. The guys looked at cable as a science.
Name a channel, they’d tell you the frequency. They could tell you the
attenuation per 100 feet of any brand of cable. The customers were just
idiots who didn’t know bitrate errors from packet loss. I looked at
cable like plumbing, or something like that. I like fixing things. Some
customers were idiots. Most just wanted things to work the way they were
promised. This guy’s plumbing had a leak. I didn’t pay attention in
class when they explained why interference could be worse at night, or I
forgot it soon after the test. I knew it was, though. So when he said
the problem only happened at night, I started looking for a leak. One
bad fitting outside. Three guys missed it because they didn’t want to
listen to him. Because he was different. Because he was a customer. And
customers are all idiots.
I remember
training a guy around the time I was six years in. He’d been hired at $5
more an hour than I was making, 31 percent more. I asked around. We
weren’t allowed to discuss pay. But we weren’t allowed to smoke pot and
most of us did. We weren’t allowed to work on opiates either. We were
all working hurt. I can’t handle opiates. But if I’d wanted them, there
were plenty of guys stealing them from customer’s bathrooms. I could’ve
bought what I needed after any team meeting.
That’s
the thing they don’t tell you about opiate addiction. People are in
pain because unless you went to college, the only way you’ll earn a
decent living is by breaking your body or risking your life — plumbers,
electricians, steamfitters, welders, mechanics, cable guys, linemen,
fishermen, garbagemen, the options are endless.
“Ivan
came back and opened his paw to show me a gram bag of coke. He’d
helpfully brought a caviar spoon. He said, “You must taste.””
They’re
all considered jobs for men because they require a certain amount of
strength. The bigger the risk, the bigger the paycheck. But you don’t
get to take it easy when your back hurts from carrying a 90-pound ladder
that becomes a sail in the wind. You don’t get to sit at a desk when
your knees or ankles start to give out after crawling through attics,
under desks, through crawl spaces. When your elbow still hurts from the
time you disconnected a cable line and your body became the neutral line
on the electrical feeder and 220 volts ran through your body to the
ground. When your hands become useless claws 30 feet in the air on a
telephone pole and you leave your skin frozen to the metal tap. So you
take a couple pills to get through the day, the week, the year. If
painkillers show up on your drug test, you have that prescription from
the last time you fell off a roof. Because that’s the other thing about
these jobs, they all require drug tests when you get hurt. Smoke pot one
night, whether for fun or because you hurt too much to sleep, the
company doesn’t have to pay for your injury when your van slides down an
icy off-ramp three weeks later. I chose pot to numb my head and body
every night. But it was the bigger risk.
I probably
should’ve stolen pills. It would have made up for the fact I was making
less than every tech I asked. They don’t like you talking about your pay
for a reason. Some had been there longer. Most hadn’t. I was the only
female tech because really, why the fuck was I even doing that job?
Because I didn’t go to college. I joined the Air Force. They kicked me
out for being gay. I’d since worked at a gay bar, Home Depot, Starbucks,
Lowe’s, 7-Eleven, a livery service, construction, a dog groomer and
probably 10 more shitty jobs along the way. Until I was offered a few
dollars more, just enough to pay rent, as a cable guy.
My
supervisor hadn’t known, said he didn’t know our pay. But he said he’d
take care of it, and he did. He said the problem was my numbers were
always lower than most of the guys. All those points I mentioned. So my
raises over the years had always been lower. The math didn’t quite work.
But it was mostly true. My numbers were always lower. Numbers were
based mostly on how many jobs we completed a day. On paper, the way we
were rated, I was a terrible employee. That I was a damn good tech
didn’t matter. The points were what mattered. The points, I’m realizing
now, were why I spent the better part of 10 years thinking about
bathrooms.
The guys
could piss in apartment taprooms, any slightly wooded area, against a
wall with their van doors open for cover, in Gatorade bottles they
collected in their vans. I didn’t have those options. And most
customers, I wouldn’t ask. If I had to pee, I had to drive to a 7-Eleven
or McDonald’s or grocery store, not all of which have public bathrooms.
I knew every clean bathroom in the county. I knew the bathrooms with a
single stall because the way I look, public bathrooms aren’t always safe
for me either. But they don’t plant a 7-Eleven between the McMansions
of Great Falls. One bathroom break and I was already behind.
The
guys could call for help on a job. No problem. If I called, some of
them wouldn’t answer. Some I’d asked before and taken shit for not being
able to do something they couldn’t have done either. One of them told
me my pussy smelled amazing while he held a ladder for me. One never
stopped asking if I’d ever tried dick. Said I needed his. And for the
most part, I liked to tell myself I could handle their taunts and
harassment. But I wasn’t calling them for help. Sometimes I’d have to
reschedule the job because there was no one around I could ask for help.
Rescheduling meant I’d lose even more points that day.
So my
numbers were lower than the men’s. I never had a shot at being a good
employee really, not by their measure. Well, there was one way.
I
worked with an older guy, a veteran like me. I usually got along with
the veterans. He was no exception. Once, after I explained why I called
him for help, he told me that he understood. He said he found vets were
less likely to treat him like shit for being black. Higher odds they’d
worked with a black guy before. That made sense. But when I asked him
how he kept his points up, seeing as how he worked slower than the other
guys, he said he clocked out at 7 every day. Worked the last job for
free. It brought up his average. I wasn’t willing to work for free.
One
year, though, the company tried a little experiment: Choose a couple of
people from each team, let them take the problem calls, those jobs a
couple of techs had failed to fix, and give them the time to actually
fix the problem.
Time
was the important thing. Time is why I can’t tell you what day or week
or year a thing happened. Because for the 10 years I was a cable tech,
there was no time. I rushed from one job to the next, sometimes typing
on the laptop, usually on the phone with a dispatcher, supervisor,
customer or another tech. Have to pee, run behind, try to rush the next
so the customer doesn’t call and complain you’re late, dispatch gives
the call to another tech, lose the points. The first few years, I was
reading a map book to find the house. Then crawling down the street,
counting up for 70012 because I needed house number 70028 but no one
else on the street thought it important to put numbers on their house.
They’d tell me I needed to pick up my numbers. One more bad month and I
was out of a job. Maybe you can understand why I avoided canceling
anything but the most dangerous jobs.
After
a few years, I spent most of my days off recovering. I’d get home and
couldn’t read a page in a book and remember what I’d read. I was
depressed. But I didn’t know it. I was too tired to consider why I
couldn’t sleep, why I stopped eating, why I was so ashamed of what my
life had become.
Sometimes
at night, when I couldn’t sleep, I’d think of the next 10 years doing
the same fucking thing every day until my knees or ankles no longer
worked or my back gave out. I thought maybe the best thing that could
happen was that if I got injured seriously enough, but not so seriously
I’d forget the synthetic urine I kept in my lunch cooler, I could maybe
try to survive on workers’ comp. Most mornings, I woke and it took a
minute to decide. Do I want to die today? I guess I can take one more
day. If I just make it to my day off. I tried to go to school for a
while. But I was too tired to learn coding. And anyway, I missed most of
the classes because I’d have to work late.
That
one year, though, being a cable tech wasn’t all that bad. I’d start in
the morning with a couple of jobs. And the rest of day, they’d throw me
one problem job at a time. And I had all the time in the world to fix
them. It’s how I became the Cheneys’ tech.
My
supervisor called and said, “Look at the work order I just dropped you.
You’re gonna thank me.” I recognized the name: Mary Cheney, the former
vice president’s daughter. I didn’t know why he thought I’d thank him. I
called him back. “What the fuck are you doing to me here?”
“I thought you’d be happy. They’re lesbians.”
“Dude. They’re married.” He didn’t say anything. I said, “Google her and tell me you still think you’re doing me a favor.”
He said I
was just pissed because they were Republicans. I said I was pissed
because Dick was a fucking war criminal. He called me a communist. Said a
couple of guys had been out. Internet problem. Read the notes. I didn’t
actually have a choice. But with the pressure off to complete 12 jobs a
day, I found I could actually have fun at work, joke with my boss about
whether or not the Cheneys constituted a favor just because, hey, we’re
all lesbians.
Mary
Cheney wasn’t home. Which was good. The further I was from Dick, the
more likely I was to keep my mouth shut. Her wife was friendly and
talkative in the way old people are friendly and talkative because they
haven’t had a visitor since Christmas. The house had a few problems. I’d
fix one. She’d call my supervisor and I’d have to go back to fix
another. But I finally got it fixed.
A few months later, my boss called and started with, “Don’t kill me.” He was sending me to Dick Cheney’s. Dick was home.
He
had an assistant or secretary or maybe security who followed me around
while I checked connections and signal levels. I’d already found a
system problem outside. I just wanted to make sure I never had to
fucking set foot in that house again. Dick walked into the office while I
was working. He was reading from a stack of papers and ignored me. I
told the assistant it would probably be a week or so. I’d put the orders
in. He had my supervisor’s number.
He said something to the effect of, “You do understand this is the former vice president.”
I panicked
and said the first thing that came to mind: “Yeah, well, waterboard me
if it makes him feel better. It’ll still take a week.” And I walked out.
It
was my last call that day. I drove the entire way home thinking of a
hundred better things I could’ve said. Finally, I called my supervisor
and told him I might’ve accidentally mentioned waterboarding. He laughed
and said I’d won. He’d stop sending me to the Cheneys’. I don’t
actually know if they ever complained. If they did, he never mentioned
it.
That was the year
I met a Russian mobster whose name was actually Ivan, a fact that on
its own made me laugh. There were rumors of mob houses. The guys said
they’d been to others. My original trainer pointed one out in Fairfax
and said, if you have to go in there, just don’t try to see shit you
don’t want to. I pressed him for details. But he wouldn’t tell me. I
thought he was full of shit.
The
Russian mob house was off Waples Mill Road. It was a massive McMansion,
looked like a swollen Olive Garden. I parked behind a row of Hummers.
Ivan
was a big kid with cauliflower ears. He met me at the door. Told me,
“Please follow.” I followed him to an office. Same collection of
leather-bound books on the shelf in most McMansions. I think they come
with the place. The modem was in the little network closet. The signal
looked like they had a bad splitter somewhere. (Remember what I said
about cheap splitters?) I told Ivan I thought there was a bad splitter
somewhere. I needed to check the basement. He said, “Is not possible.”
I said, “I
can’t fix it then.” He didn’t say anything, and I wasn’t clear on where
we were with the language barrier. So I added, “No basement, no
internet.”
He seemed
worried. Kept looking at the door. Looking at me. Like a puppy trying to
figure out where to pee, a large, heavily tattooed puppy. I said,
“Look, unless you’ve got a kid in a cage, I don’t fucking care.”
He
nodded and said, “You stay. I ask for you.” I told him I’d stay. I
heard him down the hall. Heard Russian, garbled words. A couple of doors
opened and closed.
Ivan
came back and opened his paw to show me a gram bag of coke. He’d
helpfully brought a caviar spoon. He said, “You must taste.” I actually
laughed. He seemed sad that I was laughing. I told him: “Look, I can’t.
I’m at work. I’ll take it home, though, for tonight.” This was one of my
first jobs that day. I did not want to find out what climbing a
telephone pole felt like on cocaine.
He
said, “No. You must taste.” This time he emphasized the word “must.” I
told him I get sinus infections. (This is true and extremely annoying.)
He didn’t understand. I pantomimed and explained a sinus infection in
words like “nose, coke, bad, no breathing.” This made him happy. It was a
problem he could fix. “Stay.” I was the puppy now.
He came back
with a little round mirror and a little pile of coke. He said, “This is
better. No cuts.” I was just standing there. I really couldn’t figure
out what to do. I hoped this was some weird mob thing like when every
Russian I’d ever met forces you to do vodka shots and then you’re
friends. But I’m not great with vodka. And I’m really not great with
coke. Drugs affect me.
He
stepped closer and he looked older and very sad. He said, “I am trying
to say, is safe for you if you taste. You do not taste, is maybe not
safe for you now.” I figured it was probably his job to kill me and he
honestly felt awful about it. I took a bump.
He
was visibly relieved. He smiled all goofy and lopsided and said, “OK.
Yes. This is smart decision you make.” And he took me to the basement.
I
think my heart attack started on the stairs. It was good, though. Best
heart attack I’d ever had. I could hear it. I didn’t know my eyes could
open that wide. Which didn’t help me see.
They
had a bunch of sweet gaming computers lined up on a table. But with no
internet, all the guys were hanging out on a couple of sofas watching
soccer. The World Cup was on. One of the guys pointed at me and asked
Ivan something. Ivan said, “Yes, of course.” I understood that much
Russian. And the guy gave me a thumbs up, said, “Good shit, yes?” I
agreed that it was good shit. And I changed their splitter and got the
fuck out of there.
We got a new
regional manager after that. He called me “young lady.” I told him not
to. My old vet buddy said he’d called me an entitled dyke after I left
the room. The company was bleeding money with the whole “no one fucking
needs cable anymore” thing. And I was back to chasing points.
Eventually, my ankle went out.
I
remember my last day. There was a big meeting. I hated these. The only
potential good part was that they’d play happy messages from happy
customers about their cable tech. If you got one, you got a $20 gift
card to Best Buy. I got lots of calls, mostly because little old ladies
liked me. I programmed their remotes. They never played mine in the
meetings because no one ever figured out what to do about customers
thinking I was a “nice young man.” That last meeting, they gave a guy an
award. For 10 years, he’d never taken a sick day, never taken a
vacation day. He had four kids. I thought maybe they’d have enjoyed a
vacation. But that mentality is why I was never getting promoted in that
company.
I couldn’t
go back after surgery. My ankle never healed right. I needed a letter
from HR to continue my disability. Just a phone call. But they moved
their HR team somewhere else. They never answered my emails. So I work
at a gay bar. The pay is shit. But I like going to work. I don’t spend
my nights worrying about where I’ll pee. And no one has called me Larry
in years.
Lauren
Hough was born in Berlin and raised in seven countries, and West Texas.
She’s been an Air Force airman, a green-aproned barista, a bartender, a
livery driver and, for a time, a cable tech. Her work has appeared in
Granta, Wrath Bearing Tree and The Guardian. She lives in Austin, Texas.
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