Melissa: We should go together.
Steve: That would be fun. How about your man? Is he going?
Melissa: He doesn’t like them.
The club was packed with sweaty punks, and I stayed close to her thinking she might not be comfortable in a sea of pogoing dudes. I led her to the back of the crowd thinking it would be a safe spot to enjoy the show.
“Want to go up front?” Melissa asked.
“Sure!”
She held on to my shoulders as I elbowed out a path through a swamp of leather and safety pins. A Doc Marten came at us from above, and I swatted it away from her face.
“Have you ever done that?” she yelled and leaned into me close enough that I felt her breath on my ear.
“Back in the day, but my crowd surfing days are over.”
“I’ve always wanted to try it.”
“Want me to throw you up?”
“Yes,” she said.
I crouched down and clasped my hands for her to use as a stepladder. The guy beside me slapped my shoulder. “Does she want to go up?”
“Yeah.”
The two of us launched Melissa on top of the crowd. She raised both of her hands as the crowd carried her to the front of the stage. I lost sight of her, and then five minutes later she was back by my side.
After that night Melissa and I spent hours alone in our separate apartments G-chatting. We’d start talking about writing or books, but it would eventually get more personal. I’d tell her about my most recent OkCupid coffee-date disaster, and she’d reassure me that the right girl was out there and I just needed to give it time.
The dialog box in the corner of my computer became a space where I could be vulnerable in a way I couldn’t in person. There was no expectation that our relationship would progress past friendship since she had a boyfriend, which allowed me to share intimate details I wouldn’t have been comfortable telling a woman I was courting. The stuff about me having intimacy issues because, in sixth grade, a girl pretended to like me just so I’d ask her out, so she could then say no—that doesn’t come until month two when I get drunk and expose the real me at three in the morning while playing a Joy Division record.
Steve: It’s for the best that Ashley and I broke up. I guess I’m just worried I won’t meet someone new.
Melissa: You will. I’ve had those same feelings, but they go away.
Steve: Right now I can’t imagine there’s a girl on this planet I’m compatible with.
Melissa: There is.
Sometimes we brought our relationship out of the chat box and into the real world. On nights when we drank until after the buses shut down, I slept on her futon. Strangers assumed we were a couple, but one of us would correct them saying, “No, we’re just homies.”
I believed her boyfriend must have been the most secure person on Earth because he didn’t appear to have a problem with his girlfriend inviting a drunk guy to sleep over. She rarely talked about him, and I rarely saw him. We showed up to events together so often that our mutual friends were convinced there was something scandalous going on.
“You’re fucking her, right?” my friend Brian said one night after Melissa and I joined him and his girlfriend and another couple for dinner. Our table of six certainly looked like three couples having a night out.
“No, man. I swear. She’s got a boyfriend.”
“Well, she’s at least having an emotional affair with you. I heard about that on Oprah.”
If I found myself imagining her as more than just a homie, I’d remind myself that she was involved with someone and seemed happy. The only times I considered she might share my feelings was when I tried to date her friends.
“Can you introduce me to Renee?” I asked one night as we split a plate of nachos on the patio of a Mexican restaurant.
“You don’t want that,” she said while crinkling her face in disgust. “She’s trouble. You can do much better.”
“Who, then? You’ve got to know some cute single girls.”
She looked up at the sky and thought about it for a moment. “Umm,” she said, now reaching for a chip. “Not really. You need a nice girl. The girls I know aren’t good enough for you.”
“Keep an eye out,” I said as the waiter placed the bill in front of me.
On the day my contract was supposed to end, Bugle Boy extended it for another week because he wasn’t convinced the India team was prepared to take over.
“I have an interview on Monday. Is it okay if I take the morning off?” Baron asked.
“It’d be nice if you could make up the hours,” Bugle Boy said. “Can you work over the weekend?”
“I guess,” Baron said.
Bugle Boy left the room.
“Why even bother?” Google said. “You should just quit. It’s only another week.”
“I want a good recommendation,” Baron said.
“That’s admirable of you,” I said. “I’d be out the door if I had an interview.”
“My student loans are already piling up. I can’t afford to be out of work.”
I’d yet to make any attempts at looking for work because I planned to dedicate my first week of unemployment to writing. I’d been compiling a collection of essays over the years, and with Melissa’s encouragement I was ready to get serious.
Once I got past my initial attraction to Melissa’s clumsy-cute style, I fell for her intelligence. When we met, my prose was exclusively fiction, and even though I enjoyed reading personal essays, I didn’t know how to approach writing one myself. She taught me about braiding an essay and how juxtaposition in the narrative can lead the reader to make connections between two separate stories.
She taught in an MFA program and, at times, I felt like I’d duped the system and found a way to gain all the knowledge that comes with a masters without amassing a huge amount of debt. She’d return my essays covered in red scribbles and long passages would be underlined with “Do Better!” written in the margin. I became so dependent on her feedback that I didn’t submit anything until she’d marked up a couple of drafts and given it a copyedit.
Steve: Do you think you can look over my essay tonight? I want to submit it to Tin House. I’ll never make it out of the slush pile if it’s filled with typos.
Melissa: I have to write a lesson plan after work. Maybe over the weekend?
Steve: Please … I’ll make you dinner.
Melissa: If I have time.
Steve: Thanks! I’ll make a shepherd’s pie.
On what was supposed to be the final day at Amazon, I was watching a video of a drunken raccoon falling down a flight of stairs that Google had sent me. I was typing out “Haha” when Baron walked in wearing a suit.
“How did it go?” I asked.
He removed his jacket and loosened his tie as if he was about to pour himself three fingers of scotch. “I think it went well. There was nothing in the job description I don’t already know how to do.”
“Nice,” I said. I could tell that it wouldn’t take him much time to find a new job. While I gave just enough effort to get by, he always did his work thoroughly and, at the end of the day, was satisfied that he’d done the best work he could. Guys like him could spend forty hours a week for thirty years in the same office and be fulfilled. Employers were always looking for guys like him, unlike guys like me, who spent company time typing Rollerblade fail into the YouTube search bar.
Bugle Boy walked in, and I casually minimized a video of a kid in giant jeans about to attempt a jump across an impossible gap. I opened my grading spreadsheet for the first time in an hour.
“Looking good, Baron,” Bugle Boy said.
I wondered if Bugle Boy owned a suit or if he went to weddings in his wide-legged cargo pants.
“I’ve got good news,” he said and raised his eyebrows. “We’re going to go ahead and extend you guys another three days. India still isn’t quite there. So, I’m going to need you to give them really detailed instructions and make sure they’re experts when
you leave.”
“What are the chances we’ll be extended again after those three days?” Baron asked.
“I don’t make those decisions,” Bugle Boy said.
“I’m trying to find a new job, so it would be nice if I had a sense of my schedule.”
“I’ll see if I can get some information. Hopefully in three days you will have kicked so much butt the India team will be as good as you guys.”
During the workweek my relationship with Melissa resided in a chat box. Neither of us liked the idea of commuting to work from the other’s apartment, and parking was such a hassle that we’d rather be alone than spend twenty minutes looking for a spot.
I would have preferred to spend a few more weeknights together, but I was comfortable with the arrangement. I believed she felt the same way, until one night when we were sitting on my couch drinking whiskey gingers.
I had just read her an essay I wrote about the first weekend trip we took as a couple. I remembered the exact date because when I got home that Sunday night, I learned Osama bin Laden had been killed. The essay detailed the drunkenness of new love and how we’d lost touch with everything in the world except each other. So much so, we missed one of the biggest news stories in modern history.
She stayed quiet when I finished reading. I thought she was pondering suggestions to make the essay stronger.
“Do you ever see us living together?” she asked.
I took a sip of my drink and chewed an ice cube as I thought about her question. I saw her when I looked into the future, but hadn’t given much thought to sharing a roof.
“I’m just curious,” she said. “I think about it sometimes.”
“I don’t know,” I said as I realized we weren’t going to discuss my essay and, instead, were having one of those talks. “I haven’t really thought about it.”
“It would be nice if you did think about it sometimes.”
There were times when I did think about it, but never for too long because I’d already had the experience of a shared lease. My relationship with Melissa was different than the last one, but I still only saw living together as the first step into a pattern of complaining about whose turn it was to do the dishes and whose responsibility it was to clean the shower. All the good parts about sharing a place with someone you trust and are comfortable with were overshadowed by the fact that cohabitation signified the beginning of the end.
“Aren’t you happy with our relationship?” I asked.
“Sometimes I feel like you don’t really care about me.”
“I do!” I said.
“It doesn’t always feel like that.” She pushed her glasses up her nose, and her eyes focused on the ground. She was thinking, as if she was trying to allow herself to express how she really felt. “It’s like we only hang out when you want to.”
As I thought of a response, I realized I didn’t have an argument. Anytime I suggested we hang out, she was there, but if she invited me over and I wasn’t in the mood, I often had an excuse.
“You make me feel like I don’t matter and you don’t really care if I’m happy or not.”
“I do care.”
“You don’t show it.”
I leaned over and hugged her. It pained me that she didn’t realize how much I cared. “I will do better.”
“Okay,” she said.
After a year of Melissa’s and my just being homies, her Facebook relationship status changed to single. I waited two days before contacting her.
Steve: How are you holding up? I heard about the breakup.
Melissa: Okay. It’s tough.
Steve: I know. I’ve been there.
Melissa: Thankfully, I’m about to head to New Jersey for two weeks to visit my family for the holidays. I’ll be back New Year’s Eve.
Steve: We should hang out.
Melissa: Yeah, I’ve got no plans.
Steve: Cool.
Two weeks later I picked her up from the airport. We shared a cigarette while discussing our plans for the following night.
“My friends are going to a bar in Capitol Hill,” she said. “There’s a champagne toast at midnight.”
“I love champagne toasts.”
Neither of us used the word date, but I had a feeling we’d end the night as more than homies.
I pulled up in front of her apartment, and she leaned over the emergency break to hug me, squeezing a little harder than our usual friendly embrace.
At midnight, while everyone else kissed, we threw back our plastic cups of champagne, both chugging while we waited for the people surrounding us to peel themselves apart. When they finally did, I suggested we go back to my place to smoke a joint.
Melissa and I walked ahead of the pack, and my hand hovered over her shoulder. She tripped on a crack in the sidewalk and fell into my arms. She stayed there until we reached my apartment.
The joint burned down to a finger-burning nub, and I hoped my guests would take that as a sign to leave. A few did, but at three in the morning, two people were still sitting on my couch having bad luck getting a hold of a cab. Under different circumstances I would have suggested they spend the night, but it had been a year and a half since that night in the studio apartment when I exposed my potential feelings, and they had finally come to fruition. We’d built a wall between us to block any romantic attraction, and now we’d reach a point where we could tear it down.
The couple waiting for a cab must have felt the tension and at 3:30 decided to walk out to the street and attempt to flag down a ride.
“Do you think it’s a good idea for us,” I said and then stopped myself. For the first time since we’d met, I was shy with my words. I thought maybe I should just kiss her, but had second thoughts. Maybe we were just homies.
Before I could finish my thought, her tongue was in my mouth. I unzipped the back of her dress while she tore at my shirt and belt. We rolled across the carpet knocking over my living room chair. Pictures fell off the bookshelf. It took until the sun rose to release the feelings we’d been suppressing for over a year. We woke in the afternoon and ate Chinese delivery in bed.
Three months later her Facebook relationship status changed again. Melissa is in a relationship with Steven.
At the end of the three-day extension, Bugle Boy stretched it to the end of the week. I spent the final day passing every ticket without checking the work. I figured by then the Indians probably knew the job better than I did, and if they didn’t and did a poor job when they took over, it might cause Bezos to reconsider shipping jobs overseas.
Without knowing anything about the Indian job market, I assumed an Amazon job was middle-class work. My trainees’ grasp of English demonstrated they were educated, and their desire to succeed meant they craved job security. I was happy to hand the job over to them, despite my issue with the exploitation of foreign labor. The Indian employees appreciated the work much more than I did, and I doubted they would ever spend working hours flipping through the sub-Reddit “Canadian as Fuck.”
At the end of the final day, I thanked Baron for his Excel help and wished him luck on his new job. He’d already landed a new contract in a different Amazon department.
“I hope it leads to a full-time job,” he said.
“Just keep showing off those Excel skills, and they’ll make an offer.”
“See ya later, Fight Club,” Google said when he walked out the door. “Maybe we’ll see each other again on a different contract.”
“The odds are good. See you around.”
That night I went over to Melissa’s apartment. We watched a documentary in her bed about J. D. Salinger, and the following morning I left before she had time to make coffee. I said I needed to get home and check job sites, but when I got there and turned on my computer, I opened the chat box instead.
Steve: Do you think Holden would call me a phony?
Greatest Gig Ever
“I just don’t think you’re ever going to change,” Melissa said. We were sitting in h
er parked car after unsuccessfully deciding on a place to eat. Every spot I suggested was too crowded or the menu didn’t offer gluten-free options.
It was a Tuesday, and I had made last-minute plans to celebrate her thirtieth birthday. The previous Saturday we did dinner, cake, and gifts, but after a day of solo drinking, I insisted we do something special on the actual day.
“I don’t think you want to change,” she continued.
I watched raindrops gather on the windshield. When enough collected to cover the glass, they were swiped away, leaving a shark fin above the dashboard. I didn’t know what to say. I was drunk and knew it was best to keep my mouth shut. I assumed we’d work everything out the following day.
I had just wrapped up an Amazon contract the previous Friday and was taking a more structured approach to unemployment than I had in the past. I set up a writing schedule to maximize the time and had woken that morning with my alarm at eight o’clock. I used a self-control app to block the internet for three hours and wrote without distractions. I’d just gotten some attention for one of my Amazon essays and wanted to keep up the momentum.
When the three hours I had dedicated to writing were complete, I had a solid draft of an essay about a time I had worked on an assembly line. I spent the afternoon listening to records and drinking beers until Melissa texted me. She had finished teaching and was headed home, but I suggested we meet up and grab a bite.
“This is so hard for me,” she said. “You’ve been living your life like this since before you met me, and you’re never going to change.”
I glanced over at her. Tears spilled out from under the rim of her glasses. I looked away and brought my focus back to the drops accumulating on the windshield. I could tell she’d been thinking about this for a while—her words felt rehearsed.
“This is working for you. Committing to nothing.” She paused.
“I commit to stuff.”
“Not to me. You have your own life in your one-bedroom apartment. You get drunk alone on Tuesday afternoons. I’m glad that makes you happy, but it doesn’t make me happy.” She put the car in reverse. “I’ll take you home.”
Now for the Disappointing Part Page 16