Week 1: Answering the Ad

It was my first winter in New York and the habit was to wake up in the morning and first thing activate my computer a notebook model designed to fold up and carry on the train. Mine however enjoyed a stationary life on my desk because it was too heavy to ever lift. The purpose of the machine was to search for jobs. Jobs would come in on the wire plugged into the back of the machine. Not the wire carrying the electrical power but another wire, reserved for job postings and what else I can't imagine. The wire had been getting heated up lately from so much use, which was to say I was desperate to find a job. I was running out of money by the hour despite never leaving the house except on windy days when the green building I lived in would sway in the wind and my roommate and I got out of there before it fell down. The jobs that I concentrated on were not just any. They were all split up into categories and the category which most interested me was called "part time." One day this job came down the part time job wire right into the back of my computer and almost gave me a shock. It said these following words exactly like this when I read them:

• DI need help building wood stuff. (college guy)little experience ok,,owntown Manhattan or Williamsburg>>it is a part time job for a cool and friendly college age boy with a good sense of humor..it is not a job for an experienced carpenter. I design and build loft bed habitats and other cool wood stuff. it is a small hands on business.i am looking for a helper who has some experience with tools and working with wood. helping you dad build stuff when he new what he was doing (or thought he did) and you following his direction by sawing, drilling what he needed, could be enough experience for the job. the only difference is that i won't call you a jerk if you screw up. it's a do this do that sort of thing. most important is you being reliable, easyto work with, have a good sense of humor. studying in the arts would be a good thing (conversation wise). all work no conversation is not my way of working. most of the jobs are one day projects in downtown manhattan and the williamsburg . i have lots of projects over the holiDAZE. good pay on the spot (cash).flexible hours. part time or more.over the holidays or longer. tell me about you and get my attention.. you ? living in or near the village or in williamsburg would be best. most of my jobs are around there and along the L line thanks, Ronnie

The spelling was a little off. Probably the man had not been born in this country but another. But either way he was an employer not a spelling teacher. And who was I to judge? I had just finished making my own tuna fish sandwhich out of only a can of diced tomatos, bread and salt. I answered the ad as fast as I could logically type or faster. And I knew spelling was not important to the man.

• "Dear Ronnie, I read your ad on craigslist. The job seems like perfect for me. As a kid... etc. "

I went on to explain the pertinent details of my life so far. I said how my father was a car mechanic and implied that I could fix cars myself. I told how my parents built their own house so I was practically born with a hammer on my back. I said I studied the arts which was true in some kind of broad sense if you include taking drugs and watching some movies in different languages. And I closed with a plea to hire me; something to grab his attention and demonstrate that my sense d'humour was intact since that seemed to be important to the man.

• "...furthermore if you don't hire me I'll probably die and you'll feel guilty someday. MAN ON TELEPHONE: Cause of the death officer? Joblessness sir. He didn't have a job. I know sir. No he didn't kill himself. Not exactly. Well I don't know what the doctor will say but I think it's too late to try giving him a job at this point." Then I signed it, "Sincerely, xxxxx."

But where it says xxxxx I put my name, Halifax, or Hal and with it came my computerized mail address so he could write back to me which he did. Actually he called me but in fact not for the entire coming week.

Coming Next Week: I meet him at a coffee shop and we get along like a pair of teenage friends. I get the job on the spot but the next day, our first day of work together, he's twenty minutes late and scrambling through his own pockets like a badger. He thinks it's a good thing that he's replaced the need for both a credit cards and a cell phones with small, soon lost pieces of paper where he writes down important monetary information and telephone numbers. He also thinks it's better that we don't have a van. All his tools fit in one of those airport suitcases that roll along. He makes sure all the wood is cut in the shape of a taxi's trunk; our method of delivery and arrival. When we get there we take breaks like I've seen before or in the time since; smoke breaks, coffee breaks, let me tell you a long story full of sexually explicit details breaks. Nobody could accuse him of being a slave driver. But clients could and did accuse him of taking weeks and months to finish jobs that should have taken one day(s). He let me keep track of my own $10 per hours and when he dolled out the handful of cash at the end of the week he'd always warn me not to spend it all on blackberry brandy. About 4 months into working the job I run into an old friend from back home at a coffee shop, someone I haven't seen for up to 10 years and after telling him I work for a carpenter he tells me he did too. Turns out it was the same Ronnie but this old friend's story is darker than the coffee left undrank in my cup. He was working for him just like me then Ronnie got evicted and needed to move in to this kids apartment as-an-emergency-only but ended up staying forever and then ended up confessing his love and stalking him from within the apartment. I quit working for him the next day. Too quick really because he never paid me the $400 he owed me. But before I got out of the cab on the last day, he told me one last joke:

• "Three guys are standing at three urinals. The first guy finishes, tucks in his dick and goes to the sink to wash his hands. He then proceeded to dry his hands very carefully. He used paper towel after paper towel and ensured that every single spot of water on his hands was dried. Turning to the other two guys, he said, 'At Yale, we are trained to be extremely thorough.'
  
  The second guy squeezes out the last few drops of pee out of his tubes then goes to the sink himself. This guy uses just one paper towel and eventually dried off all the water on his hands. He turned to the other guys and goes, 'At Harvard, not only are we trained to be thorough, but we are also trained to be efficient.'
  
  The third guy walks out finishes and walks straight for the door, shouting over his shoulder, 'At Stanford we don't pee on our hands.'"

I wanted to ask him, before I closed the door of the cab, why the first and the second guy both stuck around in the bathroom after peeing just to hear what the next guy would say but I didn't.