Days of Distraction

by Alexandra Chang

  Now here he is again, talking about a Facebook phone and something called Chatheads. Or Chat Heads. Whatever they are, you can chat with them—that’s the gist. And here I am typing like a maniac. It does not look like a terrible phone, but who will buy it? He has a deluded sense of his audience’s relationship to his platform. Nobody loves Facebook like that. It’s more of a shameful and sickening addiction, like eating scoops of jam directly from the jar.

  On our afternoon walks, Jasmine smokes. I cross my arms. Sometimes she takes a photo of me with her phone. I try to shield my face. I tell her I don’t like the way I look in photos, uncomfortable and upset. “That’s who you are, though,” she says. “Trust me, at least when I’m holding a camera.”

  I tell her about an idea I have. I want to get all the contract permalancers together and write a joint letter to the EIC—and all those who are in charge—and tell them we want to be converted to full-time employees. We want benefits. We want job stability. We want scheduled evaluations and clearer processes for pay raises. We want transparency. I say there are so many of us, if we all voice our dissatisfaction together, it has to do something.

  “Interesting,” she says. She hesitates. She corrects herself. “Yeah, it’s a good idea. I just don’t think it will do anything.”

  “But shouldn’t we at least try?”

  “It will be a lot of work for nothing.”

  “What are you worried about?” I ask, surprised and hurt that the one person I thought would support the idea 100 percent is flinching.

  “I’m not worried,” she says, stomping on her cigarette butt.

  J is stoned and listening to me vent. He is baking a dozen cookies and saying, “If anyone can rally them, it’s you,” and “Ha ha, this cookie looks like a dolphin,” and “Do you think my calves are getting bigger? I’m doing calf exercises just to make them bigger for you!” and “Aren’t you glad that you won’t have to be in that office much longer?”

  “Yes to all of the above,” I say.

  “I love the sentiment,” says a copyeditor. “But I’m grateful to even have a job here. I applied for years before I got in.”

  “Now just seems really unstable. People are being fired, and I don’t feel comfortable asking for more,” says a video editor. “Maybe after things settle?”

  “Have you talked to contractors at other publications who’ve tried to do the same?” says a fact-checker. “Could you gather more information before we decide what’s next?”

  “I’m totally on board if others are on board,” says a home page editor.

  “If you’re so unhappy, why not leave? Wait, are you doing this because you’re leaving soon?” says a Business reporter. “Some of us actually want to stay on, you know. We aren’t in the same position as you. Don’t drag me into this.”

  If there were an app that let me see the world as J sees the world, I’d pay more than two dollars for it and would give it five out of five stars. I would become one of those people who walk around with their phone always out, pointing it in all directions, looking through the screen to see how differently J and I perceive the spaces around us. How augmented is his reality from mine is the question I would like answered.

  Stressful events occur in groupings. At least that’s how it feels now, my mom on Gchat:

  Your father called me five times yesterday!

  why?

  I had to call him back to make him stop calling

  He says Didi told him he got MIP again

  why would Didi tell him that?

  Who knows. Didi doesn’t think

  so what did daddy say about it?

  why was he calling you?

  He says now he has bad dreams about you guys

  He worries Didi is going to get arrested or worse

  And that ling ling is doing badly in school too

  Hanging out with wrong crowd

  Always with negative thoughts

  He thinks everything is negative

  He lecture me to lecture them

  Do this do that. He drives me crazy!

  ok, so he just had bad dreams?

  so he’s fine otherwise?

  Yes, he’s fine! I’m the one not fine

  Tell him not to call me

  Call you if he has these thoughts

  You need to take care of him, not me

  ok ok, i’ll talk to him about it

  Why does he call me?

  We are divorced TWELVE YEARS!!!

  OK I SAID I’LL TALK TO HIM

  Good. Thank you.

  And now a senior editor is telling me that she knows the tech industry has a diversity problem and that tech publications, too, have a diversity problem. But what can they do when so few women apply for the jobs? Women need to try harder, just put themselves out there, do well in the interviews, not be their own biggest obstacle. Like you and me, she says. Like Sheryl—Lean In™! Once you start hiring based on diversity, everyone in the newsroom is going to feel uncomfortable, like women are only diversity hires and not the ones who deserve the job based on skills and abilities. And where does it stop? Will we need to start hiring Asians and African Americans and Mexicans just because they are Asian or African American or Mexican? What about gay people, who are also sorely underrepresented? Will you ask them if they’re gay during the interview? You could get sued! And who will you hire if you have a bunch of diversity candidates—the woman or the minority or the gay guy? What do people want when they call for diversity? Wasn’t trying to find good people in itself good enough?

  I don’t know what to say. I shake my head and drink my tea and point to the kitchen door, like I’ve gotta go. She stares at me. Finally, I come up with “It’s complicated.”

  “So complicated,” she says, nodding.

  I walk back to my desk. I wonder what it is about me that makes her say we are alike, as though our experiences are one and the same, and how she expects me to respond, and if I have met her expectations. A dark feeling spreads its fingers inside me. Have I made myself this accommodating? A harmless vessel for their confusion and rage? They must see me as soft and small and unthreatening, because I have never suggested otherwise.

  I’m having dreams about my teeth falling out again. In my dreams my teeth hang on by a little piece attached to the gum. They are a bit painful, but mostly uncomfortable. I try to shove them back in place and hope they heal, but I end up spitting them into my palm. They’re cracking and crumbling and I worry that no dentist will be able to glue them together and put them back in my mouth. And yet, I am relieved because the pain and discomfort have ended. I hold all of my broken, rotten teeth in my hands, mildly sad to have lost them.

  According to some Chinese interpretations, this means misfortune will strike my family, or I will have a long and happy life, or I will soon acquire land. According to teethfall ingoutdreams.org, these dreams symbolize anything from “feelings of insecurity or vulnerability regarding a recent event that disrupted your life” to “an indication that you’re in the process of growing, discovering and developing aspects of yourself that were previously hidden or neglected.” Or there’s Freud: it’s about castration and anxiety around sexual performance.

  Jasmine says nobody would say shit like that to her, she’s made herself very, very clear to everyone. She fights with people at work. She yells at them if she is upset or annoyed. “The point is to make them scared of you,” she says.

  It occurs to me that Jasmine is more talk than action, but I try to suppress the thought. We do not address my failed attempt to get people to write a letter or petition, or whatever it was, although I’m sure she’s heard. Instead, we talk about how she’s been seeing a therapist to deal with her anger issues. Her therapist suggested that during moments of feeling ungrounded, she start describing the physical characteristics of her surroundings. For example, the desk is made of wood; the keyboard of this computer is white and gray; there are three pens—one black, two blue—on the table; a notebook is open to a page of n
otes written in blue ink; the carpet is gray with flecks of red; there are one, two, three, four . . . eight windows in this room; my shirt is army green; Tim is typing next to me; his shirt is a medley of bright colors in triangular patterns; he is looking back at me with his clear-framed eyes—

  “Are you okay? Are you crying?” He is rolling over in his bright blue office chair, yet again.

  “No, I’m fine.”

  I look back at my computer and do not wipe my face, so he rolls back to his side and leaves me alone.

  I apply to other jobs, without disclosing the specifics of where I’m moving. “New York,” I say. One place says they’ll hire me for the SF or NYC office. I clarify. I meant upstate New York, would that be okay? They say absolutely not and tell me I’ve wasted their time. Guilt-ridden, I start including Ithaca in my cover letter. Out of the dozen or so jobs, two places get back to me. One offers an even smaller salary than what I am now making. The other offers a negligible pay bump, but is a super-niche site very few people have heard of, let alone read. That seems more embarrassing than doing nothing at all. I despair.

  J rubs my back, tells me it will all be okay.

  Every day I play out the “if . . . then” game with myself. If I impress the editors, then I will get the raise. If I get a raise, then I will stay at this job. If I move to the middle of nowhere, then I will have no leverage. If I get my raise before I move, then they can’t take it back. If I stay at this job, then I might hate myself. If I leave this job, then I might also hate myself, plus no money. If I don’t move wherever J goes, then I am abandoning him. If I abandon him, then all I will have is this shit job. If all I have is this shit job and no raise, then I might as well follow him and have no job and no raise. If I move to the middle of nowhere with no job and no raise, then . . . what?

  Tim asks me to get coffee again. He says that I might be the luckiest person in the office. I feel very far away from the statement. The new managing editor is, listen to this, from Ithaca. My first thought is Too late.

  Corey, who has somehow gotten promoted amid the newsroom turmoil, takes me to a conference room and tells me he’s heard. Nothing is secret in the newsroom. He only wishes I had said something to him sooner. He is my boss, after all, and we need to trust one another. I try to look calm. It occurs to me that I might lose my job for rabble-rousing. Part of me would be relieved. I steel myself for the blow. I wonder what Kevin said when he was let go. “Totally get it”? “No problem, bro”? “It’s cool, it’s cool”? I try to come up with a more dignified reply. Another part of me wants to cling to what I know: Please, please, please don’t make me go.

  And as though he’s in a cliché-ridden movie, he says there’s good news and there’s bad news. But then he doesn’t pause to ask which I want to hear first. He just keeps talking.

  “So. I know you’re moving. The good news is that the new managing editor really likes the idea of having somebody in Ithaca. Who knows why. Guess he’s attached to the place. You can work remotely with the East Coast team. You’ll be a one-person Ithaca bureau,” he says, and laughs like I’ve won a prize.

  I say I still want a raise. I try to be firm, like my dad said. I tell Corey about my other job offers, but my voice comes out splintered. I am not convincing.

  “You’re incredibly valuable to us as a reporter,” he says, as though some supportive words are equivalent to concrete change, money, and power.

  I tell him that if I don’t get a raise, I may consider going freelance or just leaving, period.

  “You know we don’t have piles of money lying around,” he says. “This is journalism we’re talking about. This isn’t the kind of job where you make piles of money. It’s about loving the work, putting your heart into it.”

  What about the piles going into the remodel of the office? What about the piles used to hire all these new people from other places, assuming they all got pay bumps to come over here? What about the piles used for his raise? What about the piles . . .

  “Let me get back to you. You take this time to think things through, too.”

  “What was the bad news?”

  “The bad news was that I wouldn’t be your editor anymore.”

  I leave the room.

  “What about this?” J holds up a pot I’ve never seen. “Will we use it in Ithaca?”

  “No. Delete it,” I say. Delete, delete, delete to the years of collected crap.

  We pack the necessities, belongings with which we can’t part. Boxes of books for me. Bigger boxes of bike stuff for him. We both look at each other’s possessions and ask, Are you sure? Yes, we’re both very sure.

  The rest, nearly all of it, goes to Goodwill or on Craigslist. More people have entered our house in the last two weeks than in the last two years. No fewer than three times, I locked myself in the bedroom while J handled the sale. A woman named Diva took the dining room table. “Beautiful! What a steal! What a find!” I heard through the wall.

  Now there is a box of leftovers. We discuss its fate. The garbage can is overfull; the lid hovers precariously over our trash.

  “Somebody might like this stuff,” says J. “I’ll put it outside.”

  “No way. Who?”

  But he doesn’t listen. He is stoned and writes ads under the Free section.

  Old corkboard, one crumbly edge but still functional. Comes with a secret message!!!! For the stunning price of $0, get it today. Drive up to the FREE box at 10th and Moraga.

  Have you ever wanted to own an XXL Microsoft Phone branded baseball-style shirt? Never worn, very stylish. Comes with a shitty matching baseball cap for the truest Microsoft fan.

  Greasy stovetop teakettle, black. It boils water even though it is not clean.

  Never before used . . . PAPER! Only a little yellow from age, this lined notebook paper is available to the lucky first caller. (But don’t actually call, just pick it up.)

  I laugh and laugh. I tell him he could have a great career in copywriting.

  We watch from our window the people who come to take our stuff. In two hours it is all gone. And I feel a little sad to see it go, all the accumulated items that added up to make this place what it was, a home.

  The last few weeks pass without progress. People are fired, including two contractors who wouldn’t get on board with organizing. I try not to gloat in public. New people enter. I don’t bother getting to know them. The office layout is shifted. Everybody is moved across the hall, except me. I lose my desk. I work alone on the couch in the spare-gadget room. A leftover employee among leftover devices. I find it funny and sad that this is where the publication began, where my time at the publication began, and where it all ends. Sometimes I get visitors, like Jasmine and Tim. But even they, in this climate, are trying to prove themselves to whoever is paying attention. I do very little writing. Nobody seems to notice. Sometimes, in the afternoons, I sit with my laptop on the floor of the corner office that once belonged to the deputy web editor (since let go). I imagine how it would have felt to step into this office each day. Probably very exciting and empowering at first, then normal and comfortable, then like it wasn’t enough. I stare out the window at the passing cars and people. They look like they’re busy. I find a sublet in Ithaca. I map out our cross-country drive. Back in the gadget room, I spend hours organizing the shelves of gear and smartphone cases. I put a bunch of cases in my bag, thinking: They owe me.

  On my second-to-last day in the office, Corey comes in.

  “Wow, it looks way neater in here.”

  “I’ve been busy,” I say.

  He tells me he’s gotten approval for a 4 percent raise. “That’s all we can do,” Corey says. “It might be a different story if you stay in town, but I know you have your mind set on going.” He says we’ll check in again when I get to the Ithaca bureau. (“L-O-L,” he says out loud without laughing.) “And to clarify and reiterate, we’ll have to hold your pay until then.”

  After he leaves, I calculate what this 4 percent “raise” means
for me, then spend all afternoon sitting on that couch, wishing they would have let me go with severance instead. Then I remember I would not have gotten severance—that is a benefit limited to full-time employees, which I am, infuriatingly, not.

  We sit on the fake wood floors of the empty house and eat sandwiches from the market down the street. J spills crumbs everywhere, but it doesn’t bother me. We brush them out the front door. I remember one more thing. On the bottom of the wall, where it meets the floor, in the smallest print I can manage, I write: JJ was here. Like I have in each of the houses I have left before—the first one in SF, the two in Shanghai, the two in Davis, and now here.

  “Those are my initials, too” he says.

  “I know.” We smile at one another.

  “What if it gets painted over?”

  “Doesn’t matter. They’ll still be there, underneath.”

  II.

  Road Trip

  What one carries from one point to another, geographically or temporally, is one’s self. Even the most inconsistent person is consistently himself.

  —Yiyun Li, Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life

  In Davis, his parents give us one of their cars, in better condition than our old car (also from his parents) and roomier, for the cross-country drive. A box-shaped car that we fill to the brim with boxes.

  Each day I’m home, my mom talks about my leaving. The anticipation of it—of my being across the country—bears down on the time we have together, now.

  “When will you come home? Thanksgiving?”

  “Probably not. The flights are too expensive.”

  She reminds me that she’s going to Australia in December to visit one of her sisters. Will I come home or stay in Ithaca?