What the doctor should have meant: dishery.diaryland.com

Here are some facts about my job interview this morning. They have this stuff down to a science; it was introduction time at 9:00 sharp and I got seen out the door at 9:54. The most technical question anyone asked was one that I answered, "Well, I�d just open up the .css file and change the font size," which struck me as very odd since the job title contains the word "technical." Words the job title does not contain, incidentally, include "administrative," "coordinator," "assistant," and "project." Only thing I�ve ever applied for where I had to take two portfolios, in this case a writing one and a photography one; thank god I am a pack rat and have all my old contact prints dating back to 1988. I wore my expensive black suit, the salmon-pink cotton shirt, pink-and-orange print tights from my sister, and the Franco Sarto pumps. My hair looked good! I could not find the Fearless lipstick � and, yes, there was a stupid dumb part of me that panicked at that, going Is this an omen, is this an omen � so I settled for Hot Cocoa Creme and I think that was just fine. I sat at a table and three people sitting across from me took turns asking me questions, and even though I�d come all loaded for bear, ready to compare the features of various stats-tracker packages and to talk about my principles of aesthetics, habits of office diplomacy and coalition-building, etc., what I got was more like squirrels, softcore getting-to-know-you hoo-ha. How would I respond if my manager told me that I�d really screwed up an assignment she�d given me? Um, I would apologize to everyone whom my crappy job had impacted and then I would work with my manager to better understand the project specs, since clearly I was not doing that if I�d flubbed something so badly, and then I would re-do it as soon as possible? I mean, am I missing something, or is that the only appropriate answer to a question like that? The lead interrogator and the hiring manager I described to Steve this morning on the postmortem tip as grandmotherly yet inscrutable; she was four parts Scully to one part Mulder and I could not even sort of get a read on her or get a read on her read on me. It is the way of that rare beast the career bureaucrat with a three-digit IQ, and I was a little bit in awe of this quality, as nobody comes by it accidentally and to get it you have to want it and work at it in equal parts, and her obvious success in that respect automatically makes her interesting to me. At the end during question-and-answer when they were trying to sketch for me how the position interacts with IT, I suggested, attempting to restate what had come before, "So basically your department makes the trains and his department makes the trains run on time?" and they thought that was clever. Also one of the women remarked that I didn�t look old enough to have grown up, as I said I did, before the age of computers so that I tended to sketch out my task lists longhand. It�s my moisturizer, I replied in a calibrated tone of rueful mordancy, and she seemed to like that. (But see, again � task lists?! Shouldn�t we maybe get down to nuts and bolts a little bit, people? Shouldn�t we get *technical*?) I sat up very straight and also made sure to throw in a few chin-ducks that were designed to advertise good-natured docility. Biggest word I used: "byzantine." And what I was working on most of the day Friday, you have already guessed, was that writing portfolio � I cleaned up some old documents and formatted some new ones and cannibalized the mystery novel I�m editing to make a two-columned display of just how mighty my editorial skills are (*very* mighty; oh and by the way, towards the end of "Bag Men" the typos began to come fast and thick and so did the bullshit � the last few chapters verged on unpardonable and the epilogue crossed the line). Then for each of these, with the invaluable assistance of the bureaucracy-fluent Mrs. Roboto, I made a cover page describing the project and giving a reference contact and any relevant background notes. Totally fucking professional, you should take my word for it.

OK, now I don�t want to write about the job interview anymore. It happened and now it is over, and someone will be getting back to me within the week to tell me what the judges thought. In terms of preparation I did the best I could, and objectively I must say that if you take the Work Classification Document with which they presented me and set it next to my resume, you can pretty much draw lines from one to the other as if it�s a matching exercise in a kids� workbook. And what I have to tell myself is (a) if they can�t do that then there�s nothing I can do about it and (b) despite how disappointed I�d be if that came to pass, I don�t want to work in an office full of people who can�t or won�t draw those lines; if they can�t recognize I�ve got what they want, then it won�t have been the place for me anyway. That may be bullshit, too, but it is also called a coping mechanism.

I read one of the headlines wrong in Slate today. I read "Eros and the culture of correction in American newspapers" when of course it is "errors." I like mine better. I watched "Scotland, PA" last night. I have not yet seen the bird movie � Friday night turned out to be one of those times when not only do your plans fall through but so does what you were supposed to do instead of what you�d planned to do, and then the third thing happens and then you re-evaluate the second one� the second one was a party given by some of Seven Year Wendy�s best pals to celebrate the being-in-townness of some other ditto, and I have to say, since they got me out of anything even approaching an obligation to show up and show myself, the weekend�s round of death cramps were the next best thing to a pleasure. I am trying to moderate my ibuprofen habit, and Friday into Saturday I was awake until daylight, too hurting to stand up for more than a minute at a time. I was in this weird pain-and-no-sleep-and-not-enough-food fugue state, I think (I hope), and a question I found that I was asking myself seemed to have come from someplace external to me so that I felt sickened and invaded by it but I also was obliged to answer (see "good-natured docility," above): What will I do if Steve doesn�t come home tonight? I considered it briefly and I decided � decided! What is wrong with me? � that I would pack up cat and scratching post and litterbox and go home, back to Beacon Hill. It felt good to have a resolution, the sense of my back up against the hard cold steel of the absolute worst possible case scenario was not comfortable but I knew the sturdiness would be enough for me to brace myself against. I saw myself, externally, zipping Marcus into the box and counted the one, two, three trips to the car I�d need to make to haul the detritus of me away. It was almost a sense of contentment, as if anything that could be broken down into numbers like that was, at heart, my friend, something that would not, could never, betray me: addition, subtraction, easy. There was a dreaminess that was all wrong. Then Steve came back. It was extremely late � I�d taken off my watch hours ago, not wanting to know, apparently having given myself permission to be to loyal numbers a fickle mistress � but everyone had sat around finishing the wine and talking about old times, and, fine, some parties with old old friends end up like that and even in that state of mind I wasn�t going to yell at him or anything, he hadn�t done anything wrong and neither of us had any idea when he dropped myself off around eleven that I wouldn�t be able to get to sleep. But I tried to explain to him, almost disbelieving myself because it had faded into preposterousness at the sound of his key in the lock and also I felt like I had to apprehend it for later study and analysis, what I had been thinking. He said I was silly and didn�t I trust him? I said that trusting him had nothing to do with it, and this is not a lie � I do trust him. What did it have to do with, then?

I don�t know. In documenting things to this level of detail I�ve probably given the matter a lot more narrative weight than it deserves. It wasn�t a big deal � he says I should be more confident, and I agree that yes, I should, and I will try, but in the meantime I am not.

Delmore Schwartz got a D in Botany.