by Susan Juby
We went to this diner-type place with these blond waitresses who were way older than my mom, even. They called us honey. It all felt very American truck stop.
Anyhow, I think Aubrey might be a sociopath. I mean, he is very confident for a seventeen-year-old. He wants to be a “low-fi musician,” which I think means that you don’t have to know how to play your instrument that well or be a very good singer. He said he “revels in misanthropy, but in a wholesome way.” I couldn’t help thinking about Ted Bundy. I guess that not all sociopaths are serial killers. I read somewhere that sociopathism can be very good in certain kinds of careers. And Aubrey isn’t necessarily a sociopath—I just sort of wonder why he would want to have coffee with me. He said that he doesn’t often get to meet people who think like he does and he could tell I do. He feels the same way about head bangers that I do about hippies. He said that hardly anyone buys Thrunge’s cool clothes except him and the other guys in his band. I think Aubrey may have cultural critic tendencies too.
It was kind of shocking to meet someone as maladjusted as me. Mom always says my tendency to focus on the worst case negatively impacts my experience of life. Translated into English, that means she thinks I should be more positive. She may be right. It probably isn’t normal to think that having coffee with a boy is automatically going to turn into a murderous spree. I guess deep down I think that most boys might be killers. Especially ones who dress like some kind of head-on collision between the fifties and the seventies.
Anyway, Aubrey assumed we had the same “worldview” based on my nodding head. I have never felt so sick in my life. I don’t care about this stuff. I’m not even sure I’m a girl. I’m an eye in the sky. I am detached. I’m an idiot.
For a while I thought I was going to throw up. Was this a date? Was I dating? Have I headed out into the sexual marketplace? I have nothing to sell.
I pulled it together when Aubrey asked for my phone number. He said he might cruise down to Smithers in his Pacer. By now he was calling me his soul mate in a totally over-the-top way. I was wondering if we were going to head off on a rampage, but he just grabbed my hand and walked me back to Thrunge. I may never recover. It was like an out-of-body experience. I’m an alien trying on human rituals.
I think I love Aubrey. I know I love my hair. I may even be a girl. The rituals of humans are very odd.
We got home at about nine o’clock at night. I am still changed. I didn’t talk to my mom much on the drive back, but this time it wasn’t because she was irritating me—I just had things on my mind. I think I’m radiating a combination of coolness and confidence. People are sure to notice the difference in me. And not just in my hair. I was feeling so alternative and mature on the drive home, I finished almost ten pages of Fellowship.
MINIMUM WAGE AT MOUNTAIN LIGHTHOUSE
August 17
I’m so depressed I can barely move. I don’t think we natural depressives should get happy. It isn’t good for us in the long run. My hair still looks great, though.
At the risk of sounding like an eighties hair band, I think this might be love.
Later
It’s a good thing we weren’t in Prince George any longer. Half the angelfish babies died while we were away. I guess they changed from eggs to little fish while we were gone and Dad didn’t know how to handle it. They are still so small that you can hardly see them without a magnifying glass. They aren’t swimming around or anything yet. They are still stuck by their tails to the leaf. Dad didn’t know what to do, so he fed them brine shrimp (which MacGregor hatches in plastic jugs all over the basement). They were too young to eat the brine shrimp and the water got polluted and a whole bunch of the babies died. MacGregor got the nursery tank cleaned up, and now the rest of the baby fish look okay. He told Dad not to feel bad, that a certain amount of any hatch usually dies. Dad still feels bad. Luckily MacGregor doesn’t go away that often. It’s stressful on everyone not to have him running things.
Mom got a call from work tonight. She is the assistant manager at the local New Age/secondhand bookstore. Apparently one of the work study students walked out in the middle of her shift this afternoon, saying that she couldn’t take another inane conversation about a bad writer with the local literati. I guess she was a student at the community college, or maybe even the University of Northern British Columbia, so she was quite intellectual. Anyway, the store needs someone to take her place and Mom asked me if I would like the job.
The store is called Mountain Lighthouse Brambleberry Books. The owner is seriously into the principle of prosperity and loses no opportunity to save money, so she always hires the maximum number of summer students because the government pays most of their salaries. The fact that the store doesn’t really need any help, which makes the summer students a pointless waste of money, even with the government subsidy, seems to have slipped under her prosperity scanner. Mom says that the idea is to help young people and give back to the community. I’m sure.
So it looks like I have a job. You have to wonder if they heard about my great haircut and stylish new clothes and thought I’d be good for business. I am knocking off items on that Life Goals list at an unbelievable rate. Maturity Indicators R Us over here. Just call me Alice Well-Adjusted MacLeod! I’m probably going to be the most mature person there when I go back to school. Yeah! Mom said I can take time off work to go for my counseling sessions. At this rate, who needs counseling?
P.S.
I wasn’t going to mention this, since this is a journal of career exploration by a dynamic young person with limitless potential and an accounting of valuable Life Experiences, not the lovesick diary of some teenager, but Aubrey called today. We talked for over an hour. That is the longest I have ever stayed on the phone (not liking people and all). I think my parents were starting to worry that I’d had a stroke and was suffering some kind of paralysis.
Parts of the conversation were actually quite interesting. During other parts I read a bit of MacGregor’s Book of Amazing Animal Facts. Aubrey is into conspiracy theories, and he said he won’t be able to call for a while because “they” are going to cut off his phone service. I bet his marathon long-distance calls don’t help. Probably the phone company doesn’t accept paranoia about multi-nationals as an excuse for not paying your bills. I guess his parents got him his own phone line after their phone service was cut off a few times because Aubrey racked up huge bills calling Texas to hear some crazy guy’s theories on phone company corruption.
Anyway, Aubrey’s theory about AIDS (the CIA let it loose in humans after finding it in monkeys while researching biological warfare) is fairly interesting. Almost as interesting as the fact that the average mosquito has forty-seven teeth, or that the male duckbill platypus is the only venomous mammal in the world. In my only contribution to the conversation I told Aubrey I was reading all three books in The Lord of the Rings. He said he has them all more or less memorized and that he’s heard that some people only ever read The Hobbit, if I could believe that. He laughed scornfully. So did I.
I haven’t yet told my parents that he is coming to visit next weekend. I can barely deal with the idea myself. I’m sure we will have to have several embarrassing conversations about boys and girls, which, great hair and all, I’m in no mood for. Maybe Aubrey could stay somewhere else, and I could meet him there. Too bad I don’t have a peer group.
August 18
Well, that wasn’t so bad for a first day of work and everything. I mean, working in a bookstore isn’t exactly a strain. The books don’t need much attention, and if you pretend you can’t hear the customer’s questions, they just move on to the next student clerk.
Corinne, the owner of Mountain Lighthouse Brambleberry Books, trained me for about five minutes. Then she had to go and look after her chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, and multiple chemical sensitivity disorder. Unfortunately for someone who owns a bookstore, Corinne is allergic to books and just about everything else in her store, including her customers and the native arts a
nd crafts in the corner (the tanned rawhide makes her wheeze, and even the sight of feathers makes her swell up).
Fortunately, Corinne’s husband is a doctor and they have quite a lot of money, so they built a huge special environmental house for her out of rare hardwoods and imported marble and special organic paints, which Corinne is able to tolerate very well.
My mom makes a big show of being very supportive of Corinne and all her illnesses, but I can tell it really burns her up that Corinne only works about an hour a week and she (my mom) has to do everything but is still only the assistant manager. I can see her point.
Today Corinne was wearing one of her see-through outfits. She has this collection of non-offgassing plastic jumpsuits tinted different colors, like purple and pink and green and such. Underneath she wears all-natural organic cotton pajamas. Mom says they aren’t pajamas, but I know sleepwear when I see it. Apparently, the pjs cost $250 a pair and the jumpsuits are at least $500 each. Corinne has the jumpsuits made specially for her by the environmental materials unit at NASA. She wears the plastic suits only when she is feeling particularly “poorly,” which is pretty much all the time.
Corinne also wears this Muslim veil-type thing with a floppy white hat. It’s supposed to be some kind of all-natural face mask—air filter. She looks like an International Woman of Intrigue or one of the medical personnel from Alien Autopsy.
I guess the Mountain Lighthouse Brambleberry bookstore customers must be used to Corinne’s problems, because they mostly stay away from her. If anyone gets too close, to ask a question or whatever, she starts to wheeze and holds out an arm and asks them to please step back. Then, with the back of one gloved hand against her veiled mouth, she gestures frantically like some futuristic Bedouin traffic cop for one of the other bookstore employees to come and help. Understandably, Corinne tries to avoid the part of the day when customers are in the store. She just basically shows up to count the cash float in the morning and then again at night to take the deposit.
Corinne showed me how to use the cash register and make change, and where the staff washroom was (right next door to the management washroom, which only Corinne can use because the organic cotton toilet paper and biodegradable, extra-pure, all-natural soap are so expensive). Then she rustled out the door to go home, which she refers to as “my cherished safe haven,” and the most experienced work study student, Margaret, took over my training.
Margaret is very competent, you know; she really seems to know what she’s doing. She is taking Native Studies at the college. Margaret is Native herself and very in touch with her heritage. To be totally honest, Margaret seems almost offensively together. She is relentlessly positive and political, but in a solution-oriented, win-win sort of way.
When my mom first started at the store, she was always coming home spouting the gospel according to Margaret. So I wasn’t expecting to like Margaret. After all, my mother’s taste is generally quite bad. And Mom doesn’t just like Margaret; she treats her as if she’s got a direct line to God. Margaret told her the distinctions between First Nations vs. Indian vs. Native vs. Aboriginal and what term can be used by who when. That kind of stuff is incredibly important to my mom. The funny thing is Mother can never quite remember the things Margaret tells her, so in an argument she always ends up getting all angry and frustrated and tongue-tied and saying, “It would make sense if you talked to Margaret—I can’t explain it.” And it’s not just Mom who worships Margaret. Everyone does. Dad says that Margaret is making a play for model minority status, but Mom says he’s just cynical and possibly racist.
Much as I usually dislike nice, positive people, I have to admit that Margaret isn’t bad. She has a decent sense of humor and everything. She showed me all the different sections in the store and cracked a few jokes about some of the flakier books. She even noticed my hair.
“That’s a great haircut,” she said. “I bet you didn’t get that around here.” And she said my Italian housedress was cool.
I hardly had to deal with any customers, partly because I avoided them and partly because they all wanted to talk to Margaret anyway. Most of the customers were long-hairs and quite of few of them carried big bags. I suspect that they were thieving from Mountain Lighthouse Brambleberry. They all looked pretty shifty to me, so I kept a close eye on them, except when they needed help. Then I pretended not to see them.
The best part of the day was when this young white guy with huge, long, clumped-up hair came in and was trying to impress Margaret with his First Nations know-how. He kept picking up stuff in the arts and crafts section and saying its name out loud in English and then in some Native Indian language that sounded like it was all vowels and qs. Then he chuckled to himself in a very self-conscious, knowing sort of way, obviously hoping that Margaret was getting a good look at his action. Anyway, because of his huge hair, when the object fondler walked underneath the dream catcher display, speaking QuuaQzluaa or whatever it’s called, his hair got caught in the lowest dream catcher. The dream catchers are hung from the ceiling with fishing wire, so the one he was hooked on didn’t fall off the ceiling when he got caught. Instead, it jerked him back by his hair and he gave this little (English) scream, and everyone, including Margaret, turned around to look at him, trapped by his hair. I almost felt sorry for him. Almost.
It was definitely my favorite part of the day. To get him untangled, Margaret had to cut off one of his two-foot-long braids. She assured him that people got their heads stuck to the dream catcher display all the time and that his braid was now a very special spiritual dream braid. And the object fondler left feeling very authentically Native and not all that much of an idiot. Margaret is the master, I have to say.
She laughed about it afterward, but not in a mean way. Her being so excellent makes me want to stop all the hippies from stealing. It’s one thing to steal from Corinne, but ripping off Margaret is not okay with me. If she was to get disillusioned, it could be a blow to her morale and devastating to her community and everything. I want to do my part for race relations in this town.
So far the whole job thing is working out well. A boyfriend, school, a job—I’m not sure it’s possible to get much more well-rounded. A few minutes operating a moving vehicle and I’m practically normal for my age. Take that, Mrs. Freison!
August 19
I got some visitors at work today. The boys who attacked me and my hair in the parking lot, Kevin and Jack, must have seen me here, because they came in to tell me that Linda would be out of treatment soon and she planned to kill me and my psycho mother.
Jack and Kevin are just lucky my mother was in Hazelton today buying more arts and crafts to litter the store. She would have kicked their asses. I didn’t look up from my Spy magazine when they first walked in. That is my firm customer-service policy. If you start looking up, they start asking questions.
Kevin walked up to the counter and said, “Excuse me, Miss, but do you have any books about losers?”
I scowled at him. I also came up with some pretty clever replies, like “Yeah, in the section on your family history,” but by that time he had been gone for about two hours so it lacked impact.
Jack snickered, and Kevin said, “I can’t believe you have a job. You’re too ugly to work.”
I mumbled something about having to know how to read and they wouldn’t know anything about that, but the words got tangled up and it just sounded like I didn’t know how to talk.
Margaret must have been keeping an eye on them, because she came over and asked if she could help them find anything. Kevin said, “Yeah. Sure. We are looking for some books on, like, violence and death.” Margaret just looked at them steadily and said, “No. No, I don’t think we have anything like that.”
Then she turned to me and asked, “Everything all right?”
Margaret really is very cool.
Kevin and Jack looked sort of embarrassed and backed off, but before they left, Kevin told me that I was “dead meat” and that “no one is going to help
you next time.” Jack gave me a look I couldn’t figure out.
After they left, Margaret asked me what was going on, and even though she is nice, or maybe because she is nice, I couldn’t tell her. I said they were just some guys I knew and it was nothing. She said I could come to her if I ever needed to talk.
God, I hate this stuff. Maybe a career in the public eye isn’t right for me. I just pray that, like Linda, Jack and Kevin have been kicked out of school forever too. There’s no way I want to risk running into them at school.
Other than the touching visit by Kevin and Jack’s Welcome Wagon contingent, work wasn’t too bad. I almost caught a couple of people stealing, I think. One woman got all the way to the rebirthing section before I got her bag from her. She looked startled when I grabbed it, almost like she was going to put up a fight. Then for sure I would have known she was stealing. But Margaret came over and got her calmed down, and then asked me to go to the back and count the Stephen Kings, so I wasn’t able to do any more theft prevention.
August 20
My career as a critic is poised to take off. All the pieces are in place. I have different clothes than everyone else, my hair looks great, and I am a disaffected-observer type. The problem now is what to criticize. I mean, it’s not like there’s any big lack of targets or anything. I could do music videos, monster tours by the oldsters of rock, the general horribleness of the taste of everyone in this town—you name it.
I’m a bit nervous about writing music criticism. I like alternative music, although I have to admit that I’m not a hundred percent clear on what it is. I think it means anything that isn’t too successful. Aerosmith is not alternative. The Ass Ponys are. It’s a little hard to keep up with it all while living in Smithers. The local Sound Man outlet only carries new country, Top 40, and the dregs of the sixties. Another obstacle to becoming a music critic is that I don’t have any money for CDs. So basically I’ve just read about the music I like. I say I hate all the mainstream stuff, and I do, but mostly on principle. I assume that if a band is commercially successful, it must suck. Critics agree that the musical preferences of average people are terrible.