The rad thing about this fugue that’s become my new life over the last four weeks is that I get to work with two of my love muffins and a boss who’s one of the smartest, funniest, weirdest people I’ve ever met. And I say that with complete and utter respect. I worship the keyboard this guy types on, and he knows it. The Comedy Central-worthy stories with which he regales my coworkers and me make the daily grind both entertaining and highly unpredictable. But don’t get me wrong, learning the copywriting and editing ropes is not all fun and Battleship Down.
While my editing guru is hilarious, he’s also no chewy Chips Ahoy when it comes to catching compound adjectives in need of hyphens. In fact, his editing style is painfully similar to one of my former journalism professor’s. Yeah, the crazy old bat who, in just one semester, compelled me to incur a hefty Xanax addiction, invest in a $500 nightguard, and remember that you can NEVER, EVER, under any circumstances, use the numeral form to represent the spelled-out version of any number under 10 that is not referring to an age, address or monetary figure in a news story…unless…you…want to endure the public wrath of the AP Style nazi from hell. Queue the “I am Legend” special effects as she bursts out of her human cocoon and morphs into a zombie, hurling my body across the classroom and into the overhead projector using only her fiery breath that is screaming the words, “ALWAAAAAYS SPELL OUT THE NUMBER EIGHT IN THAT KIND OF SENTENCE, YOU BRAIN-DEAD F*CKTARD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Of course it was slightly less traumatic than that; though it didn’t exactly feel like it for many of us at the time. And while I never would’ve thought I’d go on to say it, despite all the Xanax, I still remember most of what she taught me. The fact that I survived the hell that was her class without tarnishing my nerd-status GPA made it all worth it.
While he’s far more patient and unlikely to scream obscenities at me in front of a room full of people (so far), he knows and will catch every single grammar rule that is ever broken. I’m talking third person past participle appositive gerund shit that Agatha Christy had never even heard of. So, while my reawakened phobia of turning in work with style errors often causes me to consider pulling a Kevorkian on myself in my cube, I have to admit I’m pretty damn lucky that the dude is taking the time to “Stand and Deliver” his mad skills to me. I mean to say I feel incredibly lucky and grateful that I’m getting to learn from this dude. You couldn’t ask for better characteristics in a boss: more knowledge than even my horrifying former professor but also the ability to stifle his outrage over my rookie mistakes.
The only trouble with all this ─ besides my raging stress that’s serving as catalysts for an ever-so-attractive predilection to gnaw blue Bic Ultra Super Grips into the kind of nubs that call to mind the blown off arms of war vets in need of hook hands and my exploding constellation of lady acne ─ is that I don’t have much of a creative outlet anymore. Because I’m still new and learning so much, the only writing I have time to do is for work, and as exciting as intellitech celeron processors are (actually, they are kind of exciting when you start to understand that they’re not just magical beans that live inside laptops), I find I’m experiencing a sort of hunger for creative articulation that I’ve never really felt before. And I’ve gone through some long bedazzling dry spells in the past.
Yes, this new lack of time for engaging in imaginative self-expression is manifesting itself in strange compulsions, namely: a nascent fascination with the George Kastanza-style male-baldness pattern. I just have this need, this raging desire lately, to draw little faces on men’s “skin yarmulkes,” as I tenderly refer to them. They’re just the perfect canvas to try out new designs for the upcoming pumpkin-carving season.
I’m not trying to be all sick and twisted about it, either. This does not involve taking the next step into Crazyville that would be channeling my inner Hannibal Lecter to pop the top off and stick a candle inside; I just want to trick it out a little with my masticated pen nub, maybe a fresh Sharpie, you know, put a little pizzazz on that clean piece of scalp. That round, open plane looks as smooth and inviting as a freshly waxed seal dipped in oil ─ not BP oil, but like, really expensive olive oil from the prize-wining orchards of Sorrento, Italy. I just want to caress it ─ it looks so slick and supple.
And then I want to sketch a gnarly ass Halloween-gourd face on the thing. It’s just begging for a jagged vampire-toothed grin and I can guaran-goddamn-tee you that if I don’t find a way to finish my work faster, so that I can get back into book writing before my futon time each night, I’m going to get slapped with the weirdest HR violation of all time. Luckily, everyone’s scalps that I’ve seen around the office are hirsute in the backhead region. But the day Jason Alexander seeks gainful employment as the cubemate in my double-wide, I may be in trouble.
