I Am So Popular: Break Up Camp For Big Girls

Published Feb. 5, 2010 at 5:01 p.m.

Paul Krugman, NYT columnist, recently wrote about Obama’s refusal to spend time continuously (and rightfully) bashing the shit out of W. Maybe Obama thinks it would do no good. Maybe he’s trying to be Mr. Let’s Look Ahead Not Back. Unfortunately, by refusing to get all New Jersey on Bush’s ass, he’s inviting more and more blame on his own administration. But let me remind anyone dumbass enough to actually believe that all this bullshit just happened in November of 2008. No. Bush ruined this country. He broke it beyond repair. It’s a fucking mess and the worst of it happened during those eight absurd Big Brother years that left us enmeshed in two wars that have cost over 4,000 US troops’ lives, god knows how many bazillion lives in Iraq and Afghanistan, a housing market that is an utter disaster, and a job market that’s leaving a lot of people wishing they could get a foot in the door at McDonald’s.

Not Obama’s MamaDuring the State of the Union, Obama’s job was to talk about jobs. To give folks some false hope that this will all be sorted out. And that got me thinking about his job. Which in turn got me thinking about my job(s). I don’t envy Obama his job. It is impossible. On par with walking into a room full of piles of tangled yarn and mountains of burnt hay and being told he has fifteen minutes to sort through it all, straighten it out, and knit enough sweaters and spin enough gold to provide for several hundred million people. Oh, and he has to do this while Sarah Palin sits in the corner, talking on her cell phone to a bunch of tea baggers who are plotting to takeover in 2012 and mandate moose meat sloppy Joes in school cafeterias, outlaw the teaching of evolution, and jail rape victims for provoking their attackers. I don’t care if Obama was parented by Mother Teresa and Ghandi, and if Winston Churchill was his godfather. There is no way—no way—he can do the job he signed up for.

I, on the other hand, have an easier time of it. Oddly enough, I happen to have more work than I can possibly handle during this time in history when so many people have no work at all. Often, I work seven days a week in an effort to keep up. For the first time in my working life—which started when I was fourteen—I am actually turning down gigs. Initially, superstition cautioned against this, as I feared that issuing a single “no thank you” might mean the gods would punish me by making all the other jobs disappear.

Not Obama’s GodfatherBut no. For the time being, things are chugging along. Not only that, I actually have a really, really awesome main gig— blogging for JetBlue about how fabulous Austin is. Yes, it is my paid duty to eat good food, get massaged, attend shows, and shop at boutiques, so I can report back to the masses just how fantastic this town is. When I’m not doing that, I’m joyfully performing weddings or working on a novel. I am not pressed with ending wars or fixing an unfixable economy or demonstrating that the insurance industry is a huge fucked up cruel entity that must be overhauled. I just eat gourmet meals, type up a few nice thoughts, and move on to the next topic.

But I am not an idiot. I know that this gig, like all the ones that have preceded it—good and bad—could dry up and disappear overnight. Thus my brain remains in hustle mode at all times, and I am forever contemplating what comes next, once I get word it’s time to move on. I must never forget that there could well come the day when I am thrusting my twenty-page resume into the hands of a twenty-five year-old Walmart manager, competing with four hundred others for the role of minimum-wage greeter.

To keep from totally falling apart at this specter, I like to play the Fantasy Job Game. This is one perverse plus to living in the times in which we currently live. Since freedom is a word for nothing left to lose, those of you with no job, as well as those of us with jobs that could go away at any second (which is pretty much all of us) are free to dream up what we’d actually like to be doing, if we had the luxury of doing what we truly loved for a living. They say times like these are ripe for the expansion of the Creative Class, when folks unceremoniously laid off can take their buy out package, buy an Airstream, and start selling glitter-covered cat turds on South Congress to tourists impressed with a unique product proffered by a go getter. (I actually read an article about folks having “too much” success at Etsy.com, overwhelmed by the six-figure incomes commanded by the overpriced and often useless crafty products they create—and yes, these bitches are complaining about it.)

I am currently fantasizing a position that, in my imagination, just never stops being fun. It’s very much like another job that I imagined for myself decades ago, when I took my first internship out of college. Back then I was cranking out copy for Veterinary Practice Management Magazine (yes, that’s the real title). I advised vets on things like how to give good driving directions to the office (Turn left at the fire hydrant!). But what I really wanted was a role as company cheerleader.

She Listens to HimAs I saw it, I’d just pop around from cubby to cubby every day, tell a few jokes, freshen up coffee, admire someone’s outfit, cheer up bummed coworkers. I actually did this anyway, but that was in addition to my writing duties. I don’t know if I ever sent it to the CEO, but I’m having this memory of drafting a letter to him, offering my services as resident happiness creator. Now, that may sound trite, but if you think about it, what I was proposing was that I would be the official company listener. Because everyone needs to be heard and these days, most everybody is feeling not heard at all.

So my latest dream scheme is start Break Up Camp for Big Girls, aimed at a perpetual audience of brokenhearted women crippled by the emotional fallout of another relationship gone bad. Inspiration for this gig came from a report I read about some thirtysomething self-styled gurus. I do not want to be a guru. But hearing what these women are doing I see, clearly, that what they are doing is listening. That’s it. They cheer people up and they do it with no credentials. Shit, I can do that.

Break Up Camp for Big Girls would involve meetings where we sit around making arts and crafts and I listen while the deeply sad and wildly furious pour out their hearts. And camp would serve the added benefit of giving the friends of the recently brokenhearted a break from hearing the story of the bad ex over and over and over again. For me, it’d be a chance to knit a lot more, serve up a mountain of wisdom gained at the hands of so many cruel exes, and pay my mortgage while I’m at it.

It’s a variation of the job I imagine Michelle has those nights she has to reluctantly set down her little dumbbells and console the man who has assigned himself, among other impossible tasks, the job of acting unflappable. Because we’re all flappable. And every one of us needs somebody at some point to hear us out. Not always an even-keel therapist, at the ready with pathologized diagnoses and calm advice. But somebody who will stomp and scream with us, and offer a ready chorus to our complaints. Yeah, fuck that fucker! It’s all his fault!

That would be a great job. I could handle that.

Spike Gillespie blogs for JetAustin, KnitBuzz, and occasionally herself at spikeg.com. She’s hosting Free Sex In Public on February 14th at BookPeople at 8. Email spikegillespie@gmail.com if you want to come to Break Up Camp for Big Girls.

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