Indy Dyke

Job Board Loser

Today started with me opening my eyes to Tooth staring at me like a magical element she has traveled far and wide to find. As if my lifted lids, completed her life’s journey. I pet her tiny head and tell her she is the best girl that has ever been. Getting her purr in agreement. I rise from my soothing pillow’s smell. Blankets falling to my waist as I sit up in bed, staring out of the large rainbow window that floats in front of me. I look down to my right and see George has melted into my sheets. He opens one eye and peeps to acknowledge that the human who feeds his kibble addiction has not died in their sleep. Hooray. 

We all slink out of bed and drift our way to the kitchen. Time to feed these fur monsters and myself. This morning, much like the last 6, I began to make my matcha from the white ceramic bowl my mother bought me. A fresh routine I partake in before deciding what to eat. First, I think about what in the hell do I make. Making sure that all the supplies needed are in-house. Dishes needed to make this breakfast are clean. Get everything, I need for that meal out. Cook it. Sit and eat it. Knowing that if the meal doesn’t hit the spot, that will piss me off. Then clean your mess, no matter how large or tiny. 

Kill me. That is too much for me first thing in the morning.

My go to is to find one meal that I will make for as long as my body will allow me to eat it without wanting to imagine it turning into bugs (so normal of me). For the past week, it had been an extra-strong matcha, a bowl of yogurt with mixed unsalted nuts and honey, and water. The cats got clean water and their expensive, as shit all-natural chicken wet food. In the middle of my ritual, I have this overwhelming feeling of being a loser. Today marks 54 nights of being unemployed. I have not been unemployed (sans COVID, stupid ho) since I was 15. I am 27 now, and with every passing day, I can feel myself coming closer and closer to madness. With these emotions, I knew that I had to get out of my house or I would willingly fall into a depressive state. I needed a place to go, and it needed to be free.

I knew what must be done. 

Looking around my angular room, I settle on today’s look for my avatar. I grabbed the clear long bin shoved under my bed. My eyes wandered over all the pants that lay waiting to be chosen. I snatch my white painter’s pants, looking over the beautiful mess I had made of them. When I bought these pants, they were only adorned with varying shades of white paint along the knees. Lightly used painters’ pants to some may not seem worth $54. To me, it was a pair of pants used for its intended purpose, and that life was cut short. Tragic. I decided I had a life that they would benefit from. They now hold colors from all over the wheel—smears from many colorful pieces I have made over the years. On the back I made sure to draw all over them. Making it seem like green goo was oozing from the pocket seems, eyeballs staring back at you when you dare glance at my ass. They hang slightly lower than most of my pants, leaving me with the pleasure of allowing my briefs to show slightly. To pair with them I had my stark white cotton t-shirt on with large bold, black ink across my chest reading, “weed.” This was a gift from my father when he went to one of his first ever legal dispensaries. Slay dad. I pulled it up over my naval and tied it into a knot. Why? Because you can still see the scars of my tubal ligation and I like showing them off. My bulky white tennis I got from Walmart about a decade ago found themselves on my feet and my most favorite pair of “don’t talk to me” sunglasses atop my nose. 

First stop in order to not fall into the hole of despair, the post office. 

I like to walk to the post office as it’s only a few blocks from my appartment. Plus, this allows me to take in my neighborhood and the folks I share it with. Stores of carnival stuffed animals for sale, barber shops, beauty salons, and your random hole in the wall tacorias that should be awarded one of those yummy stars. Kind Abualas sitting in soccer chairs selling flowers, flags, and snow cones. I always make sure to smile and say hello to them. Something in their aura tells me they are protectors of so much and the strength of so many they deserve at minimum recognition paired with a smile and a real greeting. Sometimes if I am feeling vulnerable enough, I try to say my greetings in Spanish, they smile and giggle with their replies. This makes me feel gitty and wonder how bad my Spanish truly is. Finally, I go to a very familiar window. One that reads in the only american red, white, and blue I like to see, “United States Postal Service.”

Do you remember way back in the day when you began to go to school full time. Your teacher was always there when you get there early in the morning, and they would wave goodbye to you while you headed back home with no signs of heading home themselves. We thought these crazy people must sleep here at the school because our little brains had yet to understand they had free will to go home and this was just their jobs. Unless you had ties to a teacher outside of a school setting, I refuse to think this was not a universal thought we all had at some point. Anywho, the lady who works the front desk of the post office is the only soul in that building, is the only soul I have ever seen working there (I mail a lot of handwritten letters) and she secretes this power from behind her throne that airs a no nonsense tone. I swear she sleeps there, this store front is her domain, her layer, hers, all hers. Everyone who came in was a visitor and you were lucky you didn’t have it take your shoes off at the front door before entering. I smile and say it’s nice to see her again as I saw her yesterday and would probably see her in another day or two. I mosey over to the blue outgoing slot in the wall and plop my letter to Claude in. Wishing the flimsy paper good luck and to remain dry. 

When I turn around to head out, beads of sweat begin to form on my upper lip. My hands go clammy and my knees hesitate slightly. I was going to rob this post office, and I was not mentally ready to do so. What I didn’t tell you was on my way here I sucked on a cig and thought about how I have no income at all and it’s been almost 2 months with no job leads at all and over 100 submitted applications and follow up emails sent out. I saw online that this person was using the address stickers for USPS boxes as tools to create stickers to sell or place around town. The stickers were free beacuse you are supposed to buy a box to go along with it and pay to send it out to the waiting receiver. I knew if I could get my hands on them and sell 2 for $5, I could at least have some money to buy food here and there. As a frequent flyer here, I knew the kiosk that held varying sizes of boxes and the address sticker that were to go with them well. My money opertunity stood between me and the door. 

All I had to do was take like 20 and I could make $50 easy. The lady of the post sat behind me; her energy linked to all that lay in her realm. She would know I stole. She would think I don’t respect this place. BUT I DO! I just need some income, Paper Princess; I will repay you! I will buy stamps and stop asking my mom to send me stamps in the mail, so I can use them to send mail to people without paying to do so.  I put one foot in front of the other and before I was ready, I stood looking down at the stack of address stickers. I reached my hand down and out of nowhere the lady of the post cleared the waist heigh desk and advanced towards me. Good gods, what will she do when she reaches me? Arrest me, can she do that? Take my picture and hang it on the wall so all who enter know I defiled the post office and was no longer welcomed? Would she lock me in the basement and force me to lick every letter that failed to pass the test? 

I closed my eyes and willed away the daydream and decided I was being so dramatic that I now look like I was actually going to rob the place. I claimed 4 stickers and walked out of the space and didn’t stop until I was sitting at my bus stop. The 72 was my semi dependable getaway ride. After about 5 minutes of regulating my breathing the bus screeches to a halt in front of me. I climbed aboard and chose a seat in the aisle next to a kind older woman. I had my headphones on and searched my albums until I found Buddy Guy’s “Feels Like Rain” and punched it into my ears. I allowed this amazing man to drift me off into the smoggy Chicago streets. After about 10 minutes of his guitar rocking my world, I hear a lifted voice coming from the back of the bus. I turned off my Guy and switched over to transparency mode on my noise canceling controls. Goddess save whatever nosy person who made this option on headphones available. This man’s monotone, elevated, empty voice is reciting bible verses. Whether they were real/ accurate I have no idea, but I decided on listening to him and shifting through how his words made me feel. 

 First I focus on what his voice means to me. There is no love, no might, no damnation, no faith behind his recital. Just blanket statements and quotes. Like he has switched to autopilot and channeled another being through him. It was not long until my brain began to wonder. Now the fun begins. First I am stunned at how cool it is for folks to be able to remember and recite on command versus/ quotes like that. I am not able to recite most songs I have listened to on repeat for years. Pretty much just Kesha songs live in my head rent free but still I need the music to be able to proceed the scripture accurately. After thinking about Kesha for a bit my next thought comes in unrelenting. “How in the hell do people still recite bullshit words, lost original meanings over centuries of telephone, drowned in personal bias, ego lodged words of god.” Like dude, an old man said this to another old man, who told a young man, who beat his wife as she tried to speak it in a new way. She then told her sister who told their father who hit her before he went to tell the village men at the local tavern an old wives-tail he heard. Now these words can be found in a huge book with whisper thin pages that so many have devoted their minds and souls too. I used to be one in training. Until my 7th grade year. I was so pissed that preacher Larry told us all that God hated gays, and they were to all burn in hell. I walked home from church crying with confusion and never wanting to go back there again.  

Now here I am on the 72 mad at men and wanting to read the Bible to keep my enemy close. Then maybe burn it in a ritual of destroying the worthless lore. Lore that has poisoned the world to bend to its will, plot holes and all. I am only three stops away from my destination now. I am all riled up due to Christian’s blind faith in the unknown and my mind goes to the closest thing I can equate to religion. Sports. I stop myself right there. I am not going to go there or I will inevitably want to bring it up to my butch sporty wife and she will not like what I have to say and I am trying to learn soccer right now for her. Choose your battles I tell myself.

Whatever. I finally got off the mobile chapel and stormed into the sun with Buddy in my ears once more. Before I knew it, I reached my hand out to open the door of the literature maze that lay ahead of me. I make sure to switch from my “don’t fucken talk to me” face and place on my “happy to be here, I love how it smells in here” face. The bookstore that I now stand in, has four floors of makeshift book shelving, platforms hanging in the air to hold more books and man-made wooden shelf caves lined with novels and novels and novels. Not once have I gotten anything from here. It’s so jam packed with books that my mind is not able to rest enough to look around. But the air in here is heavy with drying pages, old ink, and the oil from the hands who owned these spines long before they ended up here. 

I climb my way to the fourth floor and see the X that marked the end of my journey. One large wooden table sits in the center of the high ceiling book packed level. Perpendicular to a curved wall of large windows edged in heavy red drapery. This place has no WiFi for the public meaning I knew this glorious space would be void of humans. I take my place on the end of the table nearest the windows. I grab my phone to change to music to a riot girl mash up list and flick on my hotspot. It’s time to do the thing I set out to do for the day, sit and scroll through job boards to see what I can find. Gross. Throw up. Slip in it. Die. Roll credits. 

After countless jobs that would make me crave torture as reliefe I found a few I could see myself doing. I applied to 6 of them with La Tigra blaring in my ears. Kathleen keeping me from crashing out. With the rush of productivity in my veins I ride the wave as long as I can. When this type of determination shows its face to me, I use it for all its worth. I am lucky today because it was aimed to the exact thing I needed to do. Find a job in 2025. I put my whole pussy into those applications willing and ready to sell my soul for some income that wouldn’t make me want to run into oncoming traffic. Once my task was complete, I closed my laptop, stopped my music, and took a deep breath. I had not realized I was shallow breathing the past 2 hours. It actually hurts to fill my lungs with the book-stained oxygen. 

I felt accomplished enough to return home. Sitting looking out the pair of storybook windows knowing I was never a loser. Instead, I am someone who is feeling as if I was winning at that moment. Pride flooded through me, hunger gnarled inside me, and exhaustion waiting on the sidelines. I got up and stretched out all the hunching I had been doing over my laptop and made my way on uneasy knees to the stairs. I wonder who will be on the bus this afternoon? What will they be talking about? Will I care enough to choose to listen to them over reading my Sarah Shulmen novel? I was soon to find out.