Watusi! Sells Out

He plays the fat guy on Lost.
San Francisco, California - February 2005

I suppose I could have titled this post "FREE SEX!" and made it seem like the big telephone pole-stapeled flyer that it is. Actually, it's a pathetic cry for help, as I stand screaming out for anyone who happens to type a couple of what i'm sure are the internet's most popular keywords into their favorite web search-o-tron.

Now that I've got your attention, this has been troubling me for over a month. I've thought about it from different angles. I've asked a couple of friends who might know. I've mentioned it in my carpool. I've done what I can. No one knows. So I wonder if someone out on ye olde internet can help.

A couple of months ago, I was sitting on an Emery-Go-Round Powell-Shellmound bus waiting for my inevitable waste of day at work. It was one of the bigger busses, more like a school bus that had spent a little too much time in the drier than the usual moving-truck-with-seats style. I was sitting oppoosite the rear door, proud of myself for having finished the previous day's crossword when I noticed two people talking. They were old friends who hadn't seen each other in a while, and were catching up on old times.

"Do you work in Emeryville now?" he said.
She nodded and answered, "Not yet, but if this interview goes well...."

They go on for a while talking about the job she's interviewing for and how she'd love to be an expert in organic, free range, fair trade plastics or whatever it was, when he asked, "What time is the interview?"

"8:30. Early for me." She was calm, unconcerned, cool.

Silence. He looked at his watch, "it's ten after nine now," he said. I laughed to myself, wondering what was going on here, and how she thought that it was reasonable to be 40 minutes late for a job interview, calmly waiting for a bus that'll take at least another 15 or 20 minutes to get her to wherever she needed to be. I know the job hunting process works differently than what I'm used to in the bay area. I've been told by friends that the reason I didn't get a job I interviewed for was because I had the nerve to wear a tie (but that's a different post), but still, I couldn't believe that it's also considered bad form to show up on time to an interview.

"What happened?" Clearly, he didn't think so either.

She took a sip from her double-half-soy-non-caf-venti-non-fat latte, "Oh, you know, Burning Man."

Burning Man.

The doors closed, we pulled away. I noticed her friend not saying anything for the first couple of seconds before he started talking again, and then we were gone, turned around the corner.

I've never been to Burning Man, and with any luck, I'll manage to continue that streak for some years to come, but I've got some friends who have gone and they've told me some things about it. From everything they've said, I haven't been able to piece together at all what might have been going on relative to that thing that would have allowed her to short circuit logic and show up an hour late.

Had she been up all night working on her camp for this year's? Did she just get home, nearly six months afterward? I figured it out--even if she walked home from there she still should have been home sooner.

I tried to imagine the interview when she finally waltzed in, nearly an hour late. She'd be asked by a confused but grinning and polite receptionist to wait in a conference room. When her future boss asked her where she'd been, she'd again, say "...oh, you know, Burning Man," the same way other people admit to wearing pants.

This is followed in the movie in my mind by quick close up cuts of the interviewer and interviewee's faces staring straight at each other, expressionless, wordless, until the future boss jogs some papers on the conference table, gets up from her chair, and says, as if asking for the check, "Well, I've got all I need. We'll be in touch."

But maybe that's too... East Coast of me. Surely, what'll actually happen is the scene will fade from her saying "...Burning Man..." into a long, liltingly-scored, sepia-toned montage of scenes from their trips to paradise, riding bikes and wearing sheer scarves and talking about how much living in a gas-powered tent with internet access and expensive, well-refrigerated red bull and designer vodka coctails in the desert is a hard life, and they're better for having had the opportunity to live it.

I can't say, but like I mentioned, I'm stymied. So, I'm asking, begging for help from someone out there who can figure out what this woman was getting at, and tell me. Someone must know.

Sentences

Smile but deep inside crying.
San Francisco, California - February 2005

Dude I'm like totally stoked.
The most exotic SUV on Titan.
Robots robots obey the robot.
This orange peel is leathery.
Hey stop yelling you asshole.
We could go to Massachusetts.
Another one about loneliness.
San Francisco's oldest hotel.
Got to go to the post office.
I hate hate hate James Kelly.
Oh shut up Mr. Complainpants.
New boss old boss same idiot.