The call had almost made me late for work, but I made it to the
supermarket three blocks over with a minute to spare. For a year I had
worked there, organizing shelves and manning the registers. It was the
longest I’d stayed with the same job, but I continued to circulate through
ventures on the side like they were candy. I was trying to find something
that I couldn’t name, trying to find myself.
Since I got my first job at Pizza Hut, it had been that way.
Nothing felt right; it seemed like that was the excuse every time. When
I graduated high school I tried a semester in college, sure that a career in
social work—my mom’s trade—would be perfect for me. It just didn’t
feel like the right place for me. I worked for a gas station after that.
Didn’t feel right. Answered the phones for a law firm after that. Felt
wrong. Answered telephones for customer service. Felt awkward. Made
milkshakes. Wrong. For one afternoon, worked as a phone-sex operator.
Super wrong. At twenty-five I had powered through more occupations
than I had fingers and toes; I shivered at the thought of the—apparently
sexy-sounding—appendages inside my shoes and returned to reality.
That day I would be working the registers, as I had done for the
entire week. I mentally thanked my manager, who happened to be the
closest thing I had to a friend; he knew I started to go crazy working
with stock for more than a few days at a time (these life-changing tidbits
came out during the meals we’d occasionally eat together in the employee
lounge). I took my time flipping on the light above my register—number
two—and the moment the light flickered on a woman hopped into my
line. My breath caught somewhere in my chest.
When I was twelve and a half, Mister Dylan—tall, brunette, and
fresh out of college with a degree in graphic design—gave me my first kiss
in his messy downstairs studio, and I liked it.
My mother had signed me up for lessons after Mrs. Neuman, my
beloved art teacher, suggested the idea. She didn’t know why she hadn’t
considered it before; I had taken over the task of creating our annual
Christmas card the year after we lost my father to cancer (I did a pretty
good job), and I caught the art bug then. My mother didn’t mess around,
either. She found the closest teacher to us within a day or two of the
suggestion, and the long drive to lessons began a week later.
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