Undiscovered Gyrl

by Allison Burnett

  I’ve been out of school for five months now and I still haven’t found a full-time job, this is mostly due to the fact that I have never looked for one. Why, you ask? Why have I not looked when I promised my mom that I would? Well, first I graduated from high school and I wanted to have fun with my friends before they left for pre-college vacations or started boring office jobs in the city, then I met Rory on the Fourth of July and thought I was in love. Since I still had some money left over from the $5,000 my grandma left me when she died (she left the rest to the Catholic Church to pay their molester bills), I decided to take it easy until the end of summer when I would begin life as a responsible adult. But by the time Labor Day came, I was in the habit of being a lazy loser, and then I met Dan, which was another thing to distract me.

  Anyway I’m now broke off my ass and my mom says she’s going to kick me out December first unless I start “fending for myself.” She wouldn’t really do it, of course. I am the light of her life. But she’s right. It’s time to get serious.

  I would have gone job hunting today only I have terrible PMS. I’m not like Dan’s girlfriend, Martine, who turns into the devil incarnated every month. I just get very, very sad. For example tonight I started sobbing during Dancing with the Stars (italics!) even though it’s the most heinous and appalling program in the history of television. Then I missed Dan so badly I talked to Rory on the phone for almost two hours. He wanted to come over but I said no. I’m about to break out on my chin. The last thing I want is sex.

  I have very few friends these days. Rory and Jade are basically it. My friends who are away at college hardly ever email or text anymore. It’s natural that people grow apart once college starts but when it happens this fast, you’ve got to think maybe you weren’t that close in the first place. A lot of it’s my fault. Often my sense of humor gets out of control and I hurt people’s feelings. Worst of all is my power over guys. When my friends and I go out, I am always the one guys talk to. It’s not just my looks. It’s everything. I know how to get guys to like me. It’s been my genius since I was little. It makes my friends insanely jealous. I don’t blame them. I’d hate to be in their unloved shoes. But what am I supposed to do? Gain weight, stop showering and act like a dyke just so they can get some play? The only reason Jade has stayed my friend is because she’s as hot as I am and the guys she’s attracted to are not my type and vice versa.

  Wednesday, November 7, 2007

  I felt like killing myself all day. Now I am too sleepy to do it.

  Thursday, November 8, 2007

  Dan moved today. He called to say goodbye but I was still asleep. When I listened to his voice mail, I started bawling. Is it because I’m in love with him or is it just hormones? A deep and difficult mystery for a gyrl to answer. Probably some of both. I’m hungry. I wish I had a car. Boo hoo!

  Friday, November 9, 2007

  This morning as I was leaving to job hunt, my mom’s boyfriend Mark Aubichon said “Good luck finding a job, hotshot. And if you do, good luck earning more than minimum wage.” He’s always telling me how shitty my life is going to be unless I do exactly what he thinks I should do. Right now he believes that me deferring college was supremely dumb.

  “Thanks for the support,” I said. “I’m touched.”

  He patted the egg yolk off his ugly mouth. Not only is he a negative arrogant person but he has no neck. He looks exactly like a bullfrog with a mustache. And hairy knuckles.

  He replied “Facts are facts. Without a college degree, be prepared to work like a slave for the rest of your life for very little compensation.”

  I squinted at him with hate. “You underestimate my powers, earthling.”

  My mom laughed and said “You’ve got to love my kid’s confidence!”

  “No I don’t,” Mark replied, chewing turkey sausage with his mouth open. Smack, smack, smack.

  At the door I turned around and said “If you’re right and my life sucks, I’ll just have to marry an ugly, old billionaire. The first time he sees me naked, which will be on our honeymoon, he’ll have a heart attack and die. I’ll inherit his entire fortune. You can be my chauffeur.”

  Door slam.

  Walking down the alley I could still hear my mother laughing inside. She loves when I give Mark shit. Maybe because she’s such a doormat.

  Once I entered the house late at night and overheard Mark and my mom having sex by the fireplace. She was moaning like she was flying on a magic carpet. I almost puked into the kitchen sink. I would give anything for her to dump him. Jade’s mom says it will never happen because women over 45 have a better chance of getting blown up by a terrorist than finding a man. Haha! If I ever get that desperate, I will buy a giant vibrator and never leave the house.

  By the time I reached Main Street I was dripping sweat. Just my luck I didn’t bring sunblock and I was too broke to buy any. I walked around for like two hours, stopping at every halfway decent store to see if they were hiring. They weren’t, so I tried the lame stores. The managers were all really nice to me, especially the guys, but what could they do? You can’t invent a job if there isn’t one.

  I started thinking “Oh man, what if Mark Aubichon is right? What if all I can get is some fast-food job and when everybody comes home for Christmas break they see me sitting in the drive-through window? I’ll be a laughing stock!” I imagined them holding up their phones as they drove by, taking pics to post online.

  I got so depressed I started thinking maybe it was good that it was so hot out in November. Maybe we deserve global warming. It will put mankind out of its misery. I pictured the planet with everything baked to death. Nothing left but miles and miles of sand and thousands of camels. I imagined their funny faces and silly humps and that made me feel better.

  Just when I was ready to text Rory and order him to buy me lunch, I saw a big burly man standing inside the front window of the Corner Store, taping up a help wanted poster. I ran over and screamed “Hold it right there, mister! I’m just the girl for you!” Pretty stupid considering I didn’t even know what the job was. But I knew he would think it was adorable. He smiled and waved for me to hold on. As he climbed out of the window, I could see his butt crack and that the store had totally changed inside. All the cute gifts were gone and there were piles and piles of old books. When he came outside I was nervous, maybe because I knew I looked like shit, all sweaty and sunburned. I started blabbering about how when I was a little girl I bought all my Christmas presents at the Corner Store and that I had no idea it was closing.

  He said “Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but John died of prostate cancer a few months ago.”

  “Oh, no! That’s so sad!”

  I had no idea which of the two gray-haired homos was John but either way it was sad because they were both extremely nice.

  “Lee sold me the place a couple of months ago and moved to Arizona.”

  “What’s it going to be now?”

  “Elysium Used and Rare Books.”

  “Awesome.”

  “Are you a bibliophile?”

  “A what?”

  “Book lover.”

  “Oh, yeah. Definitely. I adore reading.”

  He smiled like he knew I was lying. Wouldn’t that be the worst? A boss who could tell every time you were lying? The only thing worse would be a boyfriend who could tell.

  “Well, I used to,” I explained. “Lately not so much. Too many distractions. You know, being a teenager and everything.”

  I gave him my sweetest smile. I could tell he liked me. He reached out a giant hand.

  “Glenn Warburg.”

  “Katie Kampenfelt.”

  I gave him a good firm shake. My dad says this is essential if you want men to respect you.

  Glenn Warburg isn’t the kind of person you would picture owning a book store. He looks more like a retired cop. He’s tall with a big balding head, semi-potbelly, heavy legs and acne scars on his cheeks. I’m not sure how he usually dresses but today he was wearing
a red sweatshirt, acid-washed jeans and big brown boots. His only nice features are his perfect white smile and twinkly blue eyes. He also wears a diamond post in his ear, which makes no sense, as he is not the gay or groovy type. He just moved here from Chicago. Since most of his business is online, he figured why pay big city rent? Standing outside on the sidewalk he told me all about the job except the most important thing.

  “How much does it pay?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. What’s the going rate around here?”

  “I get fifteen an hour to babysit.”

  This was technically true. The one and only time I ever babysat that’s what I made. It was just this past summer. My mom’s best friend Cynthia Crowder was visiting from Atlanta. Her son Chase didn’t really need a sitter because he’s in junior high, but Cynthia knew I was going broke fast.

  “How about twelve?” Glenn said.

  “Off the books?”

  “Sure.”

  “How many hours a week?”

  “I don’t know. A minimum of thirty. Maximum of forty. Make your own schedule. Start Monday.”

  Done! Not even an application. For all he knows I could be an illegal alien. From Sweden. Ha! And the best part of all is that the job is butt-easy. All I do is help customers out front while Glenn’s in back working on his computer. When there’s no customers, I’m in charge of shipping books. When there’s no books to ship, I can do anything I want. Or as Glenn put it, “You’re free to get lost in the stacks.” Stacks must mean shelves. Anybody know for sure?

  You should have seen the look on Mark Aubichon’s face when I told him my good news. His eyes bugged out like he’d swallowed a horsefly. Ha! My mom tried not to laugh. How pathetic that he couldn’t just say congratulations. Instead he started asking me all these questions about Glenn, like he didn’t believe he really existed. Like I’d made the whole thing up! What a sore loser. Lawyers suck. They’d rather die than be wrong.

  Once I convinced him Glenn was real, Mark thought for a second then asked me if he was married.

  “I find that question really insulting.”

  “Why?”

  “You think the only way I could get a job this good is because of how I look. You think Glenn wants to bone me. That is so sexist. He happens to think I’m brilliant!”

  I shoved back my chair and threw down my napkin. I wasn’t really pissed at all. It’s just that my mom hates it when I leave the table early and I wanted to IM Jade in Manila before her day started.

  • • •

  I wonder if working around books all day will get me inspired about learning so that I will want to go to college next year? Sure hope so. Good night!

  Oh, I asked Glenn what Elysium means. He said it’s the ancient Greek version of heaven, a beautiful happy place where good people go after they die. He said he named his shop Elysium because when you disappear into a great book that’s as close to heaven as life gets.

  Monday, November 12, 2007

  Even though Veterans Day was yesterday, it was officially celebrated today. Most stores were closed but Glenn said he had no choice but to open up, because his flyers were already printed and they said today was the grand opening. He predicted that we would still get many customers and he was right. Unfortunately we weren’t fully ready for them. There were a lot of books still in boxes and the credit card machine didn’t work.

  “Grand openings never run smoothly,” Glenn said.

  When things finally slowed down around 3:00, we ate yummy fattening deli sandwiches in the back room. (I had corn beef and he had egg salad. He’s a vegetarian.) Glenn did most of the talking, not because I was shy or anything but because I love listening to him so much. He’s so fucking smart. He told me all about a writer named Norman Mailer who died recently. He called him a “hardworking brilliant buffoon” who wrote “one very good novel about war and fifty other books about himself.” Then since he mentioned war, I asked him about Veterans Day and what it meant.

  He explained that Veterans Day was created at the end of World War One, the worst, most tragic, bloodiest war ever, which ended on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918. Glenn says what most people don’t know is that when the sun rose on that last morning, even though all the officers knew the war would be officially over at eleven o’clock, many decided to go right on fighting until the deadline. Some did it because orders are orders. Others did it hoping for last-minute medals. And others did it, believe it or not, because they didn’t want to lug all those heavy bombs back to headquarters. I know, I know! I couldn’t believe it either. Anyway, guess how many soldiers were wounded or died that last morning? Eleven thousand. Creepy, right? Can you imagine being the mother or father of one of those soldiers who died that last morning for nothing? I’d be so mad, I’d probably go berserk and kill a general with my bare hands.

  I liked learning this because Veterans Day has never meant anything to me. I don’t know a single person in the army. Glenn knows four soldiers in Iraq right now and one in Afghanistan. Three are sons of old friends and one is a customer’s daughter.

  Walking home I was really happy not only because I have a wonderful new job but also because it was cold out and I could finally smell winter. Just thinking about Christmas makes me want to cry with joy. It reminds me of being a little girl. Of the time before my mom kicked my dad out, back when I thought we were a happy family. He moved out a week before Christmas, the day after my seventh birthday party. What’s weird is that I have a genius memory and remember many things from when I was just a baby, but I have no memory at all of him leaving. I hope we get snow early this year.

  All the way home I couldn’t stop thinking about Dan and how much he would love what Glenn taught me about World War One. You should see how many books Dan has in his apartment. The first time I came over I said “Have you actually read all these or are they just to impress people? He replied “Both.” At least he’s honest.

  Dan would be so proud I’m working in a bookstore. Once we were watching a brilliant film called All About Eve, which is about Broadway theater people and I said that maybe I would become an actress one day and he said “Don’t even joke. You have way too good a mind to waste it.”

  I squeezed one of my boobs and made a cheesy Maxim pose and said “But what about my body? Wouldn’t it be a shame to waste this too?”

  He said “Beauty’s commonplace. Intelligence isn’t.”

  A pretty big compliment, right? I think so.

  I feel like calling Dan right now and telling him that before we officially never see each other again we should make love. Just once. How could he refuse that? Impossible.

  Knock on my door. Somebody bothering me. Stand by.

  LATER: 11:58 p.m.

  I’m so disgusted. It’s one thing to enjoy a bad movie because you know it’s bad and another to enjoy it because you actually think it’s good. Rory brought over a movie tonight that was awful to the extreme, like it was written by a retarded man on the toilet. I already forget what it’s called, but it starred Adam Sandler. Rory loved every asinine minute of it! Watching him laugh his ass off while he crammed cheese popcorn in his mouth made me hate everything about him. I could not believe I had ever made love to this red-haired dope. Usually I think his freckles are adorable, but tonight they looked like giant flakes of fish food. Thank god he brought some beer with him, because it was the only way I got through it without strangling him.

  As soon as it was over, I kicked his ass out. He couldn’t understand why I was being such a bitch. He was baffled and bewildered. I told him that I am a mysterious gyrl. That’s the problem with dating somebody you’re not truly in love with. Every few weeks the pressure builds and you turn into a monster. You’re not sure who you hate more for the lie you are living, him or yourself.

  Dan says people who cheat these days almost always get caught off their cell phones or cell phone bills. He says it’s the modern-day version of lipstick on the collar or the motel receipt i
n the pocket. That’s why I’m not allowed to call him ever. And I can only email if absolutely necessary. He’s afraid Martine will be looking over his shoulder when it arrives.

  “Just tell her I’m one of your students,” I said. “Too risky,” he replied. “She’s paranoid by nature.” I’m going to email him right now and tell him I found a great job but I won’t say what it is. (Just so he’ll know I’m not trying to get him in trouble, I’ll write “your last lecture” in the subject line.) Maybe he’ll be so curious to know what my new job is, he’ll write back or call.

  Just sent it. 12 seconds ago. No answer yet. Hahaha!

  My whole life, my father promised to buy me a car when I turn 18. That’s 33 days away. If my dad ever kept his word, I would soon be able to drive over and see Dan whenever he wanted. How amazing would that be? With my new job and Jade getting back from Manila soon, I would have the ideal life.

  Tuesday, November 13, 2007

  No call or email from Dan yet but I did get a voice message from a kid named Joel Seidler who was two years ahead of me in school. (When I was a sophomore, he was my geometry tutor. After he went off to Princeton, I never saw him again.) The message he left was friendly but weirdly intense. He always had a crush on me but he never told me about it because he assumed I would never like him back. He assumed right. Joel is scrawny with a gigantic nose, big black-ringed eyes and hips wider than his shoulders. Oh, and he’s bow-legged. Next!

  On the other hand, Joel is really smart and funny and loves to talk about serious things. He’s back from college for some reason and wants to hang out with me. I would love to see him but if Rory found out, he would go ballistic. It’s not worth the stress. I swear, there is no worse quality in a guy than excessive jealousy. Except maybe cheapness. Rory is cheap too.