Baby Oil and Body Glitter

I blame my parents.

When I was growing up, we only had the four television networks available for the advancement of our social education. My parents just wouldn't spring for satellite! As a result, fully one fourth of my childhood normative influences came from FOX. No, it didn't make me a Republican, at least not for long. Instead, I was routinely introduced to capable, intelligent women who danced erotically to put themselves through med/law school. "I needed the money," said these women, and they were summarily redeemed by the end of the two-hour television event.

When I came to Seattle, I anticipated finding a job in chemistry, probably washing the glassware of some socially inept med school dropout/former exotic dancer. Instead, after a depressing two months of finding my business cards used to floss, squash a bug, or contain exhausted chewing gum, I accepted a job pushing furniture around a warehouse. That's the job description I was given, anyway, and I gratefully accepted because, after all, "I needed the money," and I was almost certain to be redeemed by the love of a decent-looking but troubled Richard Gere before the end of the third act.

I quickly discovered that my co-workers were hired to "build a ship," "paint the Q.E. 2," "develop important skills while creating art," or "revitalize the waterfront retail corridor." After 7 months, the frustrated chemist hired to push furniture around a warehouse is installing 30-foot false smokestacks and guywires on the exterior of the building, while the artists and architects were kicked to the curb when their furniture-pushing skills proved inferior.

Like most stories I tell, this isn't a happy story. Truthfully, the person captaining this herculean effort has mismanaged his resources and staff so severely, I ran out of even the most obscure of my impressive battery of coping mechanisms. To get ideas of how to find peace in spite of his irresponsible, short-sighted, unilateral decisions, I asked everyone I knew who lived in the U.S. between 2000 and 2008.

I'm really just working there for a while, because I need the money. Someday, I'll get a real job and hang up these platform shoes and sequined boyshorts.

And when my children are growing up, I'll make certain they have at least basic cable (if not pay-per-view!) so they can see what real people do for money.