Fire-eater

interviews and four-fingered fists

I was trekking home from my second interview for a job at a residential home for developmentally disabled men, when it occurred to me, in the biting wind around the Foster and Powell bus stop, how often I clench my fists. Sometimes out of nervousness, or anxiety. But often, when I hold back or censor myself, or don’t otherwise know what to say, my energy seems to reroute from my mouth to my fists. I can only make a partial fist on my left hand these days, because I lost a finger a few years back. It’s reattached now, and rigidly straight, but that’s for another time.

The residential home in question is a large home in a wooded, neighborly patch of suburb in the area of the Leach Botanical Garden. It’s a beautiful area, if a bit far for a bike commuter in this soon-to-be blustery Portland winter. It also shares the crest at the top of a steep hill with about a dozen other homes all cozily situated on twisty narrow streets.

As I walked up smoking, I was met this time in the driveway by the two middle-aged folks I had spoken with the day previously. One, a bald man who was nice enough, but seemed to dislike eye contact, and a friendly, forthcoming, portly woman who actually made me feel okay. She had a cigarette, too, so I felt a little more at ease about walking up, exposing my own vice. I met the clients of the home briefly the day before and only two of the nine are severely disabled. The rest seem intelligent enough and high functioning, but had absolutely chaotic, wounded, even tragic personal energy that grew incrementally more intense the more intelligent that they seemed to be. It did not help that the home was absolutely awash in gaudy Halloween decorations like a horrid holiday special on the Sci-Fi channel. It looked as if they had possibly spent a thousand dollars at some point on three-foot rubber skeletons, sing-song light-up creepies, hook-nosed laughing plastic witches, and various smirking undead ghoulies, all framed by gauzy, black crepe material draped deliberately and unspookily from corner to corner, wall to wall, camouflaging otherwise conventional curtains, design and decor. It compelled me to snap to, not feel too comfortable, to remember that either motif is very foreign to me, and to act as such. I was still a guest and would need to learn the language before I spoke, and my hands opened and closed nervously.

The man tried very hard to look me in the eye as he spoke, and he got more comfortable as the interview went on. He seemed to belong in the break-room of a factory I had once worked in, or on a stool in a sports bar somewhere, drinking bad beer and yelling at a television. The woman seemed to have a sort of a repressed-hippie vibe that came out sideways on the commercially co-opted pagan festivals, manifesting in this strangely exaggerated home decor like an altar that was liberating to her secret coven of knitters and donning ritual ceremonial garb of puffy-paint holiday sweatshirts. She said she couldn’t wait until Christmas. My hand closed to a loose fist as I smiled at her.

We sat and exchanged brief, acquainted looks in between redundant, banal questions about my work history at the round wooden dinner table and I took them up on their offer of some anemic coffee. I was told they called me back because they liked and appreciated how I carried myself, and liked the vocabulary I used. They said it sounded “grounded”, “healthy” and “conscious”. I was told I seemed gentle and communicative, but was masculine enough to summon respect. Seriously. They said all of this, verbatim. It was kind of weird. Why would I need to do all of this? Whatever. My muted inner dialogue retorted that the reason I picked up their second call is only because I needed a job desperately, and I felt my hand close again, only tighter this time.

After a small pause in which I finished my coffee, the large woman leaned in a bit, and quietly but matter-of-factly told me that the men that I would be giving my attention to were all developmentally-disabled, but also convicted sex offenders. I was asked if that would be an issue. I stopped, and wished I had more coffee in my cup so that I didn’t have to answer immediately. My fist clenched. “Well,” I said, “well… . no, it’s not a deal breaker, but this does change how”… . . how I view them? “how… I would want to”… be afraid of them?… “how…” I would abhor the idea of caring for them? “… comfortable I could be around them.” I asked if any were violent, but of course I knew the answer. She said that some had been “violent”, meaning legally violent, but that they would not be present there if their treatment was not considered effectively making progress. Most that came through the home were “non-violent”, she said. Is there such thing as a non-violent sex offense? Of course there is! Non-violent to helpless people, like someone who is fearful, drugged or to trusting children! By this time my left index finger hurt, being curled again and again like that against its will. I did not like where my mind was going, mouth rerouting anger to my fists, and now, I simply do not know what to do, because they are going to offer me the job, I can tell.

Is this an opportunity to thrust myself out of my comfort zone? Is this something I need? Is this chance a challenge to expand my world view? Fuck, I don’t know. I don’t even have the patience or energy to think about it right now. All I can do is get under the covers with a book, and hope to God this fever only lasts a night or two. I feel awful.

~Danny