Rock
by Helen — Age 30 — Brooklyn, NY
I promote and book gigs for my friend’s band. I get paid twenty dollars an hour; I exult in the luxury of this pay rate, and feel guilty about it. I print photos at the library, mail press kits at the post office, buy padded mailers at Staples, on my own time. For every inefficient minute I spend on the clock (I reassure myself) I’ve spent at least one worthy minute off the clock, getting things done.
I arranged to be paid by the hour to prevent this job from taking over my life. I’m a writer and a slacker and I don’t want to give those things up. I knew if I continued at a flat rate of two hundred a week, I’d do more, always more, than I was being paid for, to allay my fears of not doing enough.
This job does not define me; it doesn’t even support me. I live with my mother. I buy Internet service, food, Metrocards, gymnastics classes—that’s about it. If this job doesn’t work out I’ll get another one. I yearn to return to farming someday. These are the things I tell myself, when I’m fearing failure.
I have a secret from my friend and her band: I’m terrified of talking on the phone. I can do it—I have done it—I do it most days. But I dread it. I’d send fifty emails, surf a hundred websites, to avoid it.
I used to live in a cult. One of my tasks there was to sell t-shirts over the phone. Some days I made money; some days I didn’t. Not making money meant I was a bad person, and a wishy-washy revolutionary. One very bad day, as I was hanging on the red pasture gate, crying, a comrade in the illusory revolution spotted me and said, “Don’t you know, indulgence in wartime is treason?” I returned to the phone.
There’s no one watching now; I’m free to arrange my days as I please. I do good, steady work, which those who pay me appreciate. And yet I still fear there’s some magic I could be making, some mountain I could be moving, some quick and cataclysmic result I could be getting, if only I were capable of consummate quickness, persistence, wit, charm—with that danged instrument to my ear.
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