“I’m an international jewel thief”.
That’s what I tell the 6 foot blonde eight I’m chatting up on the dance floor of tonight’s Interchangeable Trendy Nightclub, located in a fashionable neighborhood of Manhattan that traditionally had a tough reputation and up until very recently was infested with Latino heroin dealers and Ukranian gangsters. Now it’s infested with rich white kids from the burbs. Whether they can swing the rent in one of the luxury high rises springing up like weeds, or bridge and tunneled it in is irrelevant. They’re all from the burbs. It’s something we have in common.
I tell her this because that’s what she wants to hear. I know this because that’s what we all want to hear. We don’t want to hear that the person we’re chatting up sits in a box and stares at a computer and moves paper from one side of the desk to the other all day. Even though there’s a 90% chance that that’s exactly what they do.
We want to hear something different. We want to hear something original. We want to hear something exciting. Because we want to be different and original and exciting; if only by vicarious association. International jewel thief sounds like a pretty exciting job to me. So I keep it going, piling on successive layers of bullshit, until it becomes so astoundingly ludicrous, that only one with seriously compromised mental faculties would fail to pick up on the joke.
“You get to travel around the world, go to all the hottest cities; the work assignments are constantly changing, it’s highly lucrative, if, albeit irregular, so the trick is to occupy your time with hobbies and interests. I enjoy open ocean, Catamaran racing. The best part is, you get to stay in the house of whomever it is you’re robbing. For instance, right now I’m staying in this great penthouse on 5th, looking right out over the park. I’m not sure exactly who she is, I just know she’s got a ton of jewels, and very tacky taste in interior design. The pillowcases say Ivanka, so, that’s a start….etc. etc.”. They always get excited when they hear the name Ivanka. They all know her. This one chuckles and throws back a witty response. We’re on.
It’s a pleasant enough evenings entertainment, however with the rising sun comes the obligatory subway ride in to the sweatshop. The existential express flies along delivering the dharmatically challenged to whichever is their station in the apparatus. We are not international jewel thieves. We do not live in penthouses on 5th. We do not travel around the world. We go to work, grind out a day, go home and pass out in front of the television, then wake up and do it all over again. The days fly by very quickly, and before you know it, you’re XYZ age, an age you never thought you would be, and you haven’t done jack shit with your life. You’ve never been surfing in Thailand, or had that kinky threesome you always wanted to do; you’ve never been arrested or gotten a tattoo, shit, you’ve never even been to California. So, what the fuck have you been doing with all the time?
And so it was I found myself on the eve of my 30th birthday, running quickly through my days but with no specific destination in mind…just running. I found myself somewhere I never thought I would ever be – progress completely paralyzed by dissatisfaction as all available options were in direct conflict with an identity defined by integrity. Life has been generous in delivering the unexpected. I came to understand that these limited options, these restraints, were entirely of my own creation. Rather than myopically concentrating on the ground, all I had to do was redirect my focus. Really, what was stopping me from becoming an International Jewel Thief?
When my uncle lost his job as a young man, he maintained the ritual of leaving for work every day at the same time. It was so embarrassing, he felt the need to maintain appearances; as if there’s something shameful about getting laid off through no fault of your own. He didn’t want anybody to know he wasn’t working, so he’d get up, and get himself together, and get out the door, and… who knows what he did all day. The senior generations are fond of telling us about how the best way to get a job is to “get out there, and pound the pavement”, so I guess that’s what he did. Unfortunately, times have changed, and it would be hard to find a place of business without multiple layers of security between the front door and reception. So it was when I let it be known that my company was moving the entire department upstate to a rusted out hunk of a former industrial town that I was met with reactions of pity, and sympathy more commonly reserved for terminal patients. Some even said I should take the job, and move up to a barren wasteland – as if having gainful employment is the most important thing in the world, and environment, or future opportunity, or ability of the place to support a preferred lifestyle, all the factors that contribute to quality of life, are totally irrelevant. As long as there’s a job, living in an economic sinkhole is just peachy. Everybody was concerned, and worried, and anxious, and neurotic; Everybody, except me.
“What are you going to do?”
“Where are you going to get money?”
“How are you going to pay your rent?”
“Are you getting COBRA? Because you need health insurance!”
“What are you going to DO?!”
I never really liked that job, and every day that passed by, my happiness increased because it was one day closer to the day I wouldn’t have to come in to a place I despised anymore. You see, I could tell by the second week in that only about 10% of the staff had any idea what was going on, and that 0% of the staff cared. People will overcompensate for the intense insecurity that comes with incompetence, the frustration accompanying the inability to change that and the sheer hostile indifference of an organization, in many different ways. Some project a demeanor of urgency where none truly exists, others a pathetically degrading subservience, another still through sadistic domineering. Most though descend into temperamental, agitated ennui. By the end, I was positively bursting, and it is no exaggerated hyperbole to say it was the happiest I’ve ever been. I achieved a perfection of harmony and balance. I was a freaking Zen master. You know that state of immaculate calm religious folks have on their deathbed after they’ve passed through the first 4 Kübler-Ross stages and finally get to acceptance? Fucking amateurs.
I ran in to a coworker in the elevator right before I left. She asked me the questions listed right before the immediately preceding paragraph. Here’s what I told her:
Nothing.
I’ve got enough.
I have a very frugal lifestyle.
Yes.
Ride across country and spend the winter in Mexico.
We ran into each other in a bar a couple weeks later after I’d left. She told her husband all about the trip I was going to take, and asked why they couldn’t do it.
Why indeed.
In 6 weeks I’m leaving on a transcontinental motorcycle trip that will go from NYC to Nova Scotia, to Alaksa, and then to Punta Arenas in Chile, and back home along the east coast. I’m taking this trip alone. The group I ride with are starting a pool with serious odds against, and I’m taking all the action.
