a sort of nausea in the hands
As I do not seem to be able to quite escape the matter of money I will indulge in one brief tale of work before moving on to (I hope) finer things. These things happened the same summer as my dream of the cockroach god. Many other things happened that summer: among them, I seriously lost the plot on Life Plan A (which was to secure a PhD in Chemistry by age 27 or so) and my personal accounts went from black ink to red for the first time, a status they have never entirely escaped since.
The science internship I thought I had set up fell through late in my Junior year of college. My growing apathy towards academic science had something to do with this, though the effect went both ways. Going back to my small rural home town to live with my parents and perhaps ending up at the family restaurant where I’d worked many the bar and graveyard shift seemed an invitation to disaster. I moved to the city without prospects or a place to live, just a couple thousand in savings I’d held onto with my full-ride scholarship to college, past part time jobs, and a tiny inheritance from my grandfather. I slept on a friend’s couch until I found my berth in the Roach Motel of infamy. I didn’t know squat about professional work and ended up doing industrial temporary work, pretty close to the bottom of the employment barrel.
On my second or third assignment I worked terrible 10 hour shifts at a microwavable food factory, packing endless boxes of microwave popcorn onto pallets and wrapping them in shrink wrap. The shifts started very early and I couldn’t bring myself to get to bed. One night after being up late at a concert I woke up and all I could think of was the feeling of the shrink roll tube squeaking over the latex gloves we wore to keep our hands from being shredded by cardboard. Like nails on a blackboard. I called in and said I couldn’t make my shift. They asked me when I’d be available and I said I’d call them. I walked to get a pack of cigarettes and my heart filled with a release and utter freedom I don’t know I’ve felt the equal of since. I credit this feeling to ignorance. A few days ago I was listening to my sick child coughing in his sleep and I realized I would never have that feeling again.