Career, future, going away party, 401K... now is the time to begin thinking about... black socks, water cooler, is this chair ergonomic?... I thought so... otherwise... workers comp... premium and deductible, lawsuit, discrimination.... Vacation.
Purgatory is a windowless library turned intern cave on the 14th floor of an office building in sunny downtown Portland. As an intern, my responsibilities are to maintain the defenses on a two front war. In the west, I battle to keep my eyes from glazing over. The moment I step into the flouro-halogen dungeon I am met by my 75 Hz. monitor that flickers on and off (intern equipment), and the pulsing fluorescent lights. I bite on a rag when I can to mitigate the seizure risk. In the east sits my dungeon mate, a recent grad from U of O, an actual employee with actual paychecks who actually just sits and chats all day... after a few weeks she has yet to receive an assignment (they know she is there - I checked),
- Hey Brian, what did you do last night?
- Oh ya know, went out for a bit with a friend from school and went to bed early.
- Did I tell you I went to the zoo?
- Ya, you did.
- Oh.... Well ya, it was just like I was sooo sick of walking already and then someone was like "lets go to the zoo," and I was like "I really do not want to go." But I am such a push over sometimes so I went anyway cuz they were like "it is a small zoo," but it isn't that small and I was sooo tired, and I could not touch anything there because you know how all those kids are there, everything is so slimy. But I will let you get back to work.
- Uh Huh.
- Ya, and what pissed me off was there was like this zookeeper there, and we were all talking you know, I was like I bet that elephant is a girl and she was all no that's a boy, and I was like... was I even talking to you, just leave us alone Miss Zookeeper, we were just like talking about it I don't like actually want to know.
- God, Wikipedia is so sweet.
- Dude, I know it.
My dungeon mate, Jessica, is uninteresting and far from attractive. I wouldn't say she is ugly, ugly is interesting, ugly can be sexy, she is plain. Plain plain, as in tattooed sunburst on her lower back plain. I imagine that she goes home at night and eats a box of Nilla wafers while staring at the wall; sometimes turns off the light to spice things up.
The single most interesting thing about her isn't even about her at all. I guess another student named Jessica Brown at U of O drew a controversial cartoon for the college newspaper. It depicted Jesus making out with a man while sporting an erection of messianic proportions. Awesome. Some Christian "pro-family" groups got all pissed off and Mom, Dad, and little Billy McBiggot started making threatening calls and emails to Jessica Brown - Nilla wafer Jessica Brown, not Fag-lover, Jesus-hater Jessica Brown.
It is hard to say if it has affected her too much. She is scared to go to the store. Or walk outside. You know, because of the people. And though I am dying to come in every morning and put some LSD in her coffee I restrain myself and we have fun together. Actually, for all my complaining, I think about half of my time at work is spent thinking about sleeping with her. Proximity is such an attractive quality, though difficult to write love letters about. "Baby you are the sexiest thing within reasonable walking distance."
Sometimes I can escape it all, I put on headphones and shut my eyes, I try to imagine I am sitting on a beach somewhere in the flickering fluorescent sun, but my imagination is stubborn, and I end up in a bunker or control room in Chernobyl, control room computers buzz, and the concrete walls close in on me. Occasionally, I strike a compromise with my stubborn imagination and end up on the Marshall Islands.
If you don't know about the Marshall Islands I can sure tell you a thing or two, one of my main "job responsibilities" is to explore the "world-wide web" for things that interest me. Oh boy, gee whiz isn't this the cat's pajamas, there is so much to learn and explore on this so-called "internet." I feel like an astronaut first landing on the moon. Thank you internship for exposing me to this exciting "cyber world"...
I actually do learn a lot. Did you know that the equivalent of 7000 Hiroshima bombs were dropped on the Marshall Islands before WWII after relocating the people/locals/natives/savages/people-beasts? Needless to say much of the islands were vaporized, as in cease to exist, as in are probably the dust collecting on our stack of old Core books. Hell, we have probably all eaten a bit of the Marshall Islands over the years. But, it turns out those pesky locals want compensation for their lingering health problems, the costs of relocation, and the vaporization of their homeland. Or whatever. That is what I learned today.
At the end of the day us strangers pack together in sterile steel elevators politely pretending one another do not exist. Buildings depress their 5:00 PM plungers and we shoot life into Portland's veins. I often meet a friend of mine from Whitman who has an internship as well. Together we recount our workdays.