I Am So Popular: Welcome To Wal-Mart, I'm Spike!

People? My career of choice is GOING AWAY. Pffft. Up in smoke. Free content is king, for now anyway. And there is very, very little work out there. I do have some, at least for now. I spend my days mostly procrastinating and then occasionally actually writing a history of quilts from around the world throughout all time and eternity.

It might amuse you to know that I am not a quilter (sloppy experiments notwithstanding), I hate sewing, and I am not a professional historian (at least I wasn’t when I got the contract). So how did I get the gig? I am a great researcher with a knack for sniffing out and interviewing preeminent experts around the world. I work fast. I don’t miss deadlines. And so my publisher knows that in the end it will be a very good book, one procured at an incredible bargain price.

Because once I’ve put in the hundreds of hours it’ll take me, I will have, at best, netted maybe $20 per hour. Unless you figured in the hours I spent just trying to get my ass in the chair to work on the project, in which case we’re talking about 75c for hour at the very most. Please also factor in that I had to sign a no-royalty agreement to procure this contract AND, on top of that, the other day a Dutch quilt expert sent me an email in which she basically suggested I am nothing but a stupid hack and no way is she partaking in my book, how dare I even write it. So if you also factor in the bizarre shit I have to put up with, and come up with a way to translate that into the financial equation, then I’m pretty sure I’m paying them to “let” me write this book.

So you can see some of the inherent headaches I’m facing (and trying to hide from) over here. But I took the contract, all pain is therefore self-inflicted. On the other hand, I felt like I couldn’t not take the contract. My last boss laid me off without warning, unable to give me $5,000 in back pay, and no amount of pleas to rectify that situation, even in small, monthly increments, has helped me recoup this loss. I don’t know about the rest of you, but $5,000 is one big ass chunk of change in my world. And I have, indeed, suffered in the face of that gaping hole, grateful to some friends who stepped up and literally paid my utility bills while I stood wondering how I might find some other work when I was let go sans fanfare, at a time when I was still recovering from major surgery.

When you’re in a spot like that, getting offered 75c an hour to undertake work, which you know you’ll come to regret sooner rather than later, can nonetheless manage to evoke a feeling akin to winning the Miss American Pageant, the Texas Lottery, and the church raffle in one fell swoop. You convince yourself you’re going to have nothing but gratitude and enthusiasm and a very good attitude.

Then you wake up, and some Dutch bitch is in your virtual face calling you a hack, and you’re daily fantasizing how to get out of the contract. Though the advance wasn’t enough to live on for three months, it was more than I could pay back if I quit the project. At times I’ve begged Warren, offering to quit hounding him for sex if only he’ll buy me out of this contract. (Warren likes to call this offer “A Decent Proposal.”)

But I can’t quit. I cannot. There is no backup plan, no trust fund waiting in the wings. There are my side jobs—the camps, the tutoring, the workshops, the weddings—and these help a lot. But my main gig, the one I chose allegedly to sustain me at least as much spiritually as financially, has done left the building.

Yesterday’s procrastination found fuel in my insatiable need to fashion creatively descriptive sentences, a drive I think will never leave me, no matter how much it doesn’t pay. (What do they say about the difficulty of exiting an abusive relationship?) So I engaged my veterinarian’s assistant in an ongoing exchange of highly detailed electronic epistles regarding the shitting habits, of late, of Princess Bubbles, my favorite dog (shhhhh, don’t tell the others). I’ll spare you the full spectrum of details, but suffice it to say that what’s been exiting my dog’s anus in the past week is, in color and consistency, not unlike the red Jello so popular in school and hospital cafeterias.

It could be that she has some intestinal parasite. It’s also possible that this is anxiety related as, ever since some motherfucking assholes broke into Warren’s house and turned it upside down and smashed a huge window and stole a bunch of shit, I’ve spent a number of nights over there until we can get a security system put in. That means, on these nights, my own security system (aka the dogs) don’t get to sleep with me, which stresses out Bubbles to the nth degree, so attached are we and so accustomed is she to having me around day and night. Thus separation anxiety sometimes prompts bloody stool— which might gross you out but, you know, I try to look at it as a manifestation (albeit a curious one) of her love for me. So sweet!

Anyway, about six emails into my exchange, I finally wrote something I’d been keeping to myself—that the assistant sure had some kind of a curious job, fielding graphic dog shit letters all day long from neurotic clients.

This in turn got me thinking about some of the less savory jobs I’ve had which have included, among others:

•Lawn Nurse—when I was around 15 I sat in a basement and cold called people in the phone book offering them “free lawn evaluations” from the “Lawn Doctor.” I got 10c for each lead and an ongoing opportunity to immerse myself in tame heavy petting fantasies involving the “Lawn Intern.” It did not dawn on me until many years later that some guys kept me on the phone a very long time not because they really wanted to know more about the services, just because they wanted more time to service themselves to the sound of my teenage girl voice.

•Carnival Barker on the Jersey boardwalk and in front of the Velveeta Room in Austin.

•Chicken Fat Ripper Offer—as the assistant to the cooks in my college cafeteria, despite the fact I am a non-chicken eater, I was required to rip globs of fat off of hundreds of pounds of chickens on a regular basis.

•French Fry Fraulein at McDonald’s.

•Food Service Slave. (Fifteen years.)

•Term Paper Writer for UT Students.

The list goes on and on, but you get the idea. Having had so many jobs, I used to be very cavalier about my freelance writing, saying that if things ever got really bad, I could go back to waiting tables. But the truth is, I cannot. Partly because I am, literally, crippled in my right foot and left shoulder (possibly related to those years of carrying heavy trays). And mostly because I would probably hit some shithead customer in the head with a coffeepot the first time he made a stupid crack.

So I’ve been trying to think of what I actually can do—I mean really do—to make a living. And I am coming up blank. I keep joking that I’m going to use my knitting skills to make myself a Wal-Mart greeter vest to give myself an edge over the other applicants for that job. But I’m sure I’ll be competing with former Wall Street moguls so then what?

It’s a really odd place to be in. And yes, I’m taking notes. Just in case, you know, writing for pay comes back into fashion. I want to be ready.

Spike Gillespie wants to rip the fat off of your chicken if you know what she’s saying. She blogs at www.knitbuzz.blogspot.com and www.spikeg.com