Guinea
by Christina—Age 30—Graz, Austria
After college ended, I didn’t want to get a job, so the next best thing was participating in a sleep study at a research hospital. I got a couple thousand bucks for staying in the hospital for two straight weeks; I slept a little over four hours a night, was required to do performance tests every two hours to gauge my reaction times, all the while with a flexible wire thermometer up my ass that supposedly measured my core temperature, which was recorded in a little electronic device I wore on my wrist like a wristwatch.
When that money ran out, I got a job in a video store, the main store of a local chain. The store had a reputation based on the diversity of the arts and foreign films and the staff’s knowledge base, and a number of the employees worked on film and arts projects in their time off. In spite of this reputation, the store made most of its revenue from late fees and gay porn rentals. While I was there, I became friends with Robert, a wry, thoughtful, bookish fellow who loved opera and shared my abiding fondness for the porn titles. During this time, Robert produced and directed a play about Mary Stuart and her relationship with Elizabeth I, written by Italian feminist playwright Dacia Maraini. For Robert’s birthday, I took the store’s only copy of the film “Elizabeth” (a popular rental that Robert despised) and, blocking my action from the surveillance cameras with my body, chucked it down a heating vent while Robert looked on. Many months later, after I had a new job, Robert reported that someone had found the DVD while cleaning. We were both disappointed.
This next job was at a non-profit devoted to the history of chemistry. I “worked” there for two years, doing some historical research and administering a fellowship program, but I also spent a lot of my time using institutional resources to fax and mail letters to my elected officials. I remember making a lot of phone calls to Arlen Specter’s office.
Now I’m in graduate school and I study and write about people’s relationships with technology. It would not be inaccurate to say I am a “scrivener of geeks.” I am really broke all the time but I like to think about technology and beards and the weird, purposive things people do with their lives, so I wouldn’t trade it yet.
Robert is still a good friend of mine. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and he is in graduate school too.
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