The Apple of My Eye

Working Class Hero

I had been out of a job for a number of months now. I was down in the dumps. And not just because I was out of work and was not bringing home the bacon, which should have been reason enough. I had just been turned down for a job for the first time ever since I started out in the language teaching business a couple of decades before. And it wasn't just your regular turndown either. It was pretty traumatic. The sons of bitches had gone to the trouble of interviewing me, had had me take an examination of sorts, and then had let me start the two-week training program. It was only after the first day of said program that it happened. One of the women in charge of running the thing called me at home just as I was getting ready to sit down for dinner, and told me, in no uncertain terms, that I was not to return the next day. Aghast, I asked her why, and she explained that I had not made a very good first impression on her, on the other instructors, or any of the people participating in the process, for that matter.

I was devastated. What? First impression? What the fuck did she mean by "first impression"? I took a deep breath and managed to pull it together just about enough to thank her for her time and her trouble and wish her all the best.

What a pussy I was turning out to be, right? What I truly wanted to do was let her have it. Tear her a new one. I wanted to tell her to go suck a bag of dicks or something. But I didn't. I just couldn't muster up the courage for that kind of profanity. It just wasn't who I was back then. I put the phone down and went back into the dining room. Then I told Chloe I was not getting the job after all.

She wasn't mad or anything. And she knew better than to be mad or to bombard me with questions. She just sat there and ate her food, interrupting her meal every time Victoria seemed to have had enough of hers and needed some motivation to keep going.

Chloe had never tried to help me find a job before. She had recommended my English teaching services to the occasional private student in the past, true, but that was a practice she had ceased altogether when, a couple of years earlier, one of her coworkers had welcomed me into her apartment for the first of several private classes wearing nothing but her hottest hot pants and a tank top. Oh, and she was barefoot the whole time, too, mind you. I knew better than to try any funny business with anyone that close to my wife, but that didn't mean I didn't want to. She had started it, I kept repeating to myself, as if that alone was all the permit I needed. I don't understand why certain women will behave that way toward the boyfriends and husbands of their colleagues, friends, and even relatives sometimes. But I don't need to understand that. It's just the way of the world, I guess. And as much as I love to observe and study the nature of human behavior, that is one of the things I won't ever be able to comprehend.

How did my wife find out, you ask? Well, given her penchant for intense questioning every time I returned home from any activity, it was hard not to look lost for words when she asked me what the girl was wearing. Chloe didn't make me discontinue the classes immediately, as in her mind this would probably constitute socially unacceptable behavior, but she did eventually make up an excuse or other as to why I was never to set foot in the girl's place again.

But I digress. I was explaining how Chloe had never tried to help me find a job before. She simply had never needed to. Now, a couple of days before the Easter weekend, she came across this classified ad in the newspaper for a position as branch coordinator in a small ad agency not too far from where we lived. However, in view of the fact that I had never worked in advertising before, I wasn't all that excited. But because I had never heard about the place, and because it was located too close to the suburbs to amount to anything of much repute, I figured I might just have a chance, and went there to check it out anyway. As I had expected, the place was modest. A little too modest for my tastes. And it looked a little on the rundown side, too. But the guy who was running the show, a middle-aged fellow who looked like Jafar from Disney's Aladdin, only with no turban, took a liking to me. Either that or he was running out of options—which was much more likely. He hired me on the spot.