Should I Quit This Job Because I Am A Starfruit?

PART ONE: Before I get to the job dilemma, let me talk about last night's Memorial Day dinner party. It was an extremely enjoyable time, punctuated by many games, and being a game geek (any game except Monopoly brings out the hyperactive, hypercompetitive 12 year old in me, which I find fun to connect with every now and again), I was really in heaven. We played Mafia and no one got in any vicious fights and then we played some parlor game that was called "Jenny Hodges' Game" after a woman we've all gone to school with for the past couple of years. Anyway, the rules of Jenny's game is that one person leaves the room, and while they're gone, the rest of the room chooses someone whom everyone knows (including the person who left the room). Then, the room calls back in the person who left and the person who left has to then guess who the chosen person is by asking questions like, "If this person was a designer shoe, what would it look like?" Or, "If this person was a color, what color?" Etc, you get the point. Anyway, my main dude D (known as the Mayor to some) left the room and the room, all girls at this point, decided it would be fun to make ME the chosen person. (Yes, it's fair game to pick someone in the room, but let's admit that this is TOTALLY the kind of thing a roomful of women would do, you know, just to see if he REALLY knows his special Margaret Louise.)

So, D leaves, comes back to a roomful of goofily grinning women and asks:
If this person was a fruit, what kind?

The ladies eventually settled on a starfruit, though there were a few votes for mango and kiwi. All agreed I was "something tropical."

D: Ok (confused). If this person were an instrument, what kind?

Heavy debate ensued. A said definitely something bad-ass, like a guitar Joan Jett would use. L said yeah, but crossed with a violin. Definitely a violin. G said what about an electric fretless violin used by a jam band? (I contend with any description of me using the words "jam band" but I like the spirit of a fretless violin... wait, do they have frets?) M said "A lot of cymbals." Huh?

D: (really really clueless) Ok, if this person were a state, which one?

Now, I really hated this question because most everyone knows I'm from Chicago, and I've been thinking lately I shouldn't talk about Chi anymore because some of my friends, esp. the people who I went to school with, I think they think I'm obsessed with the place because I bring it up a lot, but ONLY as a visual and geographical cue. Anyway, I've been feeling like it's time to can the Chi talk but this game made me POSITIVE I should shut the *f* up.

L said with tired determination (maybe even a touch of pity?), Oh, Illinois. N said, Illinois? No, what about Paris, I know it's not a state but... G said, yeah, I'd go with Copenhagen, if we're talking cities. The fact that N & G said this helped a lot but the damage was done. Illinois was agreed upon, though reluctantly by some. I held my head in my hands.

D was still confused. He asked if it was a friend of ours. Laughter ensued, mainly because the friend he named also shares a name with another person who'd been at the party earlier and who is, let's just say, decidedly not like me.

You're supposed to get only 3 questions but another was permitted.

D: If this person was a movie star, or actor, who?

Redeemed! The ladies said perfectly nice and flattering things like Claire Danes and Rosemary's Baby-era Mia Farrow. (I have short hair right now, otherwise I don't really look like Mia F. though I have heard the CD thing a couple of times.) Better than Janeane Garafolo whom one of my old coworkers said I resembled, blech! She's funny but not really cute, I don't think.

ANYWAYYYYYYY.... D finally guessed correctly, to which all us ladies clapped like the sly chimpanzees we are. And I think he was a tiny bit embarrassed about the whole thing, though he denied it.

PART TWO: So, this fucking job....

A few months ago, I was working at this vintage clothing store, and I was decently happy there. Everyone I worked with was nice, though the boss is a little wiggy but nothing catastrophic. I've certainly had waaaaayyyy worse, like the boss who referred to black people as "chocolates," and the boss who once hid an apron of my own money from me (long story, ask House of Dum). So, even though the job was OK, I quit because I got a bunch of writing assignments and I thought to myself, I want to write for a living, not sell clothes, right? Well then, quit.

So I did.

And then a week later, I get this call from a woman about a Craigslist Ad I applied to months ago for a writer's assistant. She asks me to meet her on a Sunday morning so we can talk about the job. I agree because I'm curious. Who's this writer? Maybe it'll be someone amazing. Maybe the job will be fascinating and open some doors and blah, blah.

Saturday night comes around, the night before the interview, and I embark on what I think will be an average, reasonably calm night of drinking with friends. By 3am the night has revealed its true colors--turns out we're all on a one-way street towards Drunkenpartyallnightville. Six or so of us are sitting around my kitchen table, crowded with beers, and we're smoking in the house (I don't allow smoking inside--we got a balcony--till I'm ripped to the tits, so, clearly, my tits were officially ripped.) The whole table is laughing uproariously every three minutes, the way drunk people do. Someone says one thing, and THE TABLE ROARS! Someone says something else and THE TABLE IS IN STITCHES! And while I recognize in the moment that we're all just drunk, and nothing said is as funny as we're all making it, it still feels good, excellent, to just laugh with abandon, a fun way of shooting the whole world the middle finger. People don't leave till 5am. In my bed, with dawn cresting and birds hopping from branch to branch outside my window, I curl up and think, I'm FUCKED.

Next thing I know, it's 10:23am. My interview is in ten minutes--seven, actually. Across town.

I fly out of bed. I examine myself in the bathroom, swearing, freaked, OH shit, OH shit, Oh shit. I have a slightly burst blood vessel beneath my rheumy looking eyes. My face looks melted, everything sagging downwards like some basset hound. My mouth tastes like the floor of a forest after a fire; my hair gives off the stench of American Spirits while my skin emits a toxic load of alcohol.

I throw on a dress, apply foundation, mascara and tear out the door. I am now 15 minutes late for this interview and I haven't even gotten in my car. I stand in the outside hallway of my building, the Hollywood sign visible but mostly obscured by smog, and I leave a message in a calm but raspy-morning voice for S, the woman whom I'm supposed to meet. I say, "Hi, S? This is Margaret Louise, we had an interview set up for 10:30am and I just want to let you know that I'm running late. I got into a minor car accident on Melrose and we're exchanging insurance information. Everybody is fine. See you in a moment." I hang up. For a moment, I think. Should I just not go to this interview? Too late. I've already left this wacko message, now I gotta go live up to it.

I interview with S, who asks nothing about the message or the car accident until the end of the interview. She says, So what happened with your car? I say, Oh, not much. No real damage on my car, but the other person's car was damaged and she was upset about it. S says, Oh. And there's this moment where we both know without a shred of doubt that I am a complete liar. But then she also says, So when can you start?

I've been working for S ever since, three days a week, four hours each day. It's not a lot of hours, clearly, but it's smack dab in the middle of the day and that's what is messing me up. 11am-3pm is when I need to work, not be typing in a novel for some Luddite. Allow me to explain further:

S has written a few nonfiction books, but this is her first novel. But here's the problem for S: she's around 60 and she doesn't type. By way of explanation, she once offered, There's something about my brain that doesn't allow me to learn how to type. I don't know what's wrong with me, and I don't want to know.

Um, OK. So she hires lackeys like me to listen to her write the novel outloud and type what she says into the computer. I agreed to do it because I thought it was interesting and it is. She often stands up and physically acts out scenes while she writes them. Like, she'll pantomime combing her hair and will say, "Lucille brushed her blond hair back into a ponytail," or whatever. It's inspiring to watch. It's also been encouraging for me to observe another person write a novel. Watching S get frustrated sometimes, but still get her work done reminds me that everyone suffers and gets annoyed while writing, but that's no reason to quit.

So, there's pluses about this job, for sure, but there are a few minuses. One, she's kind of a nutcase. Totally functioning and smart, but just kind of a pill. For instance, when she doesn't want to answer her business phone (she runs a photo archive business), she answers it but pinches her nose shut as a way to disguise her voice. You've not lived until you've seen a 60-year-old woman talk to another business person while pinching her nose and saying things in a highly nasal voice, things like, "No, S isn't available right now. No, this isn't S. Call back tomorrow." Click. I mean, WTF?

She's also the messiest eater I've ever fucking seen. And I used to serve frat boys burritos at 3am in Missouri. She's so messy she literally gets lettuce caught in her hair, dressing dripping down her chin. All her clothes are stained because she flings food around like a 3-year-old as she "eats." Have I mentioned that one of my pet peeves is people who eat with their mouths open? This is above and beyond a little flapjaw.

And finally, she's rather selfish and always changing my shifts at the last moment, or asking if I'll work extra days. I always have the option of saying no, and she's pretty reasonable about not pushing me to do anything I don't want to do, but I have to admit just being asked kind of stresses me out, especially since I've told her repeatedly I have my own freelance career that demands a lot of my time. And that leads to another problem. Every minute I spend dicking around with S, I could be using to get more freelance work, which is more lucrative, and personally, emotionally rewarding.

But, the job itself is cool. I get to do things like research carnies on Coney Island, and I get paid for it (though not much).

Augh, anyway, you've got enough information to advise me. I call out to the blog world: Show Me Your Wisdom!