Generation X (4 page)

you see driving a sports car down to the financial district every morning with the roof down and a baseball cap on his head, cocksure and pleased with how frisky and
complete
he looks. I was both thrilled and flattered and achieved no small thrill of power to think that most manufacturers of life-style accessories in the Western world considered me their most desirable target market. But at the slightest provocation I'd have been i willing to apologize for my working life—how I work from eight till five in f r o n t o f a s p e r m-dissolving VDT performing abstract tasks that in -I directly enslave the Third World. But then, hey! Come five o'clock, I'd g o nuts! I'd streak my hair and drink beer brewed in Kenya. I'd wear bow ties and listen to
alternative
rock and slum in the arty part of town."

Anyhow, the story of why Dag came to Palm Springs runs through my

brain at the moment, so I will continue here with a reconstruction built o f D a g ' s o w n w o r d s , g l e a n e d o v e r t h e p a s t y e a r o f s l o w n i g h t s tending bar. I begin at the point where he once told me h ow he was at work and suffering from a case of "Sick Building Syndrome," saying,

"The windows in the office building where I worked didn't open that morning, and I was sitting in my cubicle, affectionately named the veal-I fattening pen. I was getting sicker and more headachy by the minute as the airborne stew of office toxins and viruses recirculated—around and a r o u n d —i n t h e f a n s .

"Of course these poison winds were eddying in
my
area in partic-ular, a i d e d b y t h e h u m o f t h e w h i t e n o i s e m a c h i n e a n d t h e g l o w of the VDT

screens. I wasn't getting much done and was staring at my IBM clone s u r r o u n d e d b y a s e a o f P o s t-i t N o t e s , r o c k b a n d p o s t e r s r i p p e d o f c o n s t r u c t i o n s i t e h o a r d i n g b o a r d s , a n d a s m a l l s e p i a p h o t o o f a wooden whaling ship, crushed in the Antarctic i ce, that I once found in an old
N a t i o n a l G e o g r a p h i c .
I had placed this photo behind a little gold frame I bought in Chinatown. I would stare at this picture constantly, never quite able to imagine the cold, lonely despair that people who are g e n u i n e l y t r a p p e d m u s t f e e l—i n t h e p r o c e s s t h i n k b e t t e r o f m y o w n plight in life.

"Anyhow, I wasn't going to produce much, and to be honest, I had decided that morning that it was very hard to see myself doing the same job two years down the road. The thought of it was laughable;
depressing.

So I was being a bit more lax than normal in my behavior. It felt nice.

It was pre -quitting elation. I've had it a few times now.

"Karen and Jamie, the "VDT Vixens" who worked in the veal-

fattening pens next to me (we called our area the junior stockyard or the junior ghetto, alternately) weren't feeling well or producing much, either. As I remember, Karen was spooked about the Sick Building

b u s i n e s s m o r e t h a n a n y o f u s . S h e h a d h e r s i s t e r , w h o w o r k e d a s a n X-ray technician in Montreal, give her a lead apron, which she wore to protect her ovaries when she was doing her keyboarding work. She was going to quit soon to pick up work as a temp: 'More freedom that way

—easier to date the bicycle couriers.'

"Anyway, I remember I was working on a hamburger franchise

campaign, the big goal of which, according to my embittered ex-hippie boss, Martin, was to 'get the little monsters so excited about eating a burger that they want to vomit with excitement.' Martin was a forty-year- old
man
saying this. Doubts I'd been having about my work for months
VEAL-FATTENING PEN:

were weighing on my mind.

Small, cramped offi ce

workstations built of fabric-

"As luck would have it, that was the morning the public health covered disassemblable wall

inspector came around in response to a phone call I'd made earlier that partitions and inhabited by junior

week, questioning the quality of the working environment.

staff members. Named after the

small preslaughter cubicles used

"Martin was horrified that an employee had called the inspectors, by the cattle industry.

and I mean
really
freaked out. In Toronto they can force you to make architectural changes, and alterations are ferociously expensive—fresh air ducts and the like —and health of the office workers be damned, cash signs were dinging up in Martin's eyes, tens of thousands of dollars'

worth. He called me into his office and started screaming at me, his teeny-weeny salt and pepper ponytail bobbing up and down, 'I just don't understand you young people. No workplace is ever okay enough. And

you mope and complain about how uncreative your jobs are and how

you're getting nowhere, and so when we finally give you a promotion you leave and go pick grapes in Queensland or some other such non-s e n s e . '

"Now, Martin, like most embittered ex-hippies, is a yuppie, and I have no idea how you're supposed to relate to those people. And before you start getting shrill and saying yuppies don't exist, let's just face facts: they
do.
Dickoids like Martin who snap like wolverines on speed when they can't have a restaurant's window seat in the nonsmoking

section with cloth napkins. Androids who never get jokes and who have something scared and mean at the core of their existence, like an under-fed Chihuahua baring its teeny fangs and waiting to have its face kicked in or like a glass of milk sloshed on top of the violet filaments of a bug

barbecue: a weird abuse of nature. Yuppies never gamble, they calculate.

They have no aura: ever been to a yuppie party? It's like being in an empty room: empty hologram people walking around peeking at them-selves in mirrors and surreptitiously misting their tonsils with Binaca spray, just in case they have to kiss another ghost like themselves.

There's just nothing
there.

"So, 'Hey Martin,' I asked when I go to his office, a plush James Bond
EMOTIONAL KETCHUP

number overlooking the downtown core—he's sitting there wearing a

BURST:
The bottling up of

computer-generated purple sweater from Korea—a sweater with lots of opinions and emotions inside

texture.
Martin likes torture. 'Put yourself in my shoes. Do you
really
onself so that they explosively

burst forth all at once, shocking

think we enjoy having to work in that toxic waste dump in there?'

and confusing employers and

"Uncontrollable urges were overtaking me.

friends—most of whom thought

' '. . . and then have to watch you chat with your yuppie buddies

things were fine.

about your gut liposuction all day while you secrete artificially

BLEEDING PONYTAIL:

sweetened royal jelly here in Xanadu?'

An elderly sold-out baby boomer

"Suddenly I was into this
tres
deeply. Well, if I'm going to who pines for hippie or pre-quit anyway, might as well get a thing or two off my chest.

sellout days.

' 'I beg your pardon,' says Martin, the wind taken out of his sails. ' 'Or
BOOMER ENVY:
Envy of

for that matter, do you really think we
enjoy
hearing about your material wealth and long-range

brand new million-dollar
home
when we can barely afford to eat material security accrued by

Kraft Dinner sandwiches in our own grimy little shoe boxes and we're older members of the baby boom

generation by virtue of fortunate

pushing
thirty?
A home you won in a genetic lottery, I might add, sheerly births.

by dint of your having been born at the right time in history? You'd last about ten minutes if you were my age these days, Martin. And I have
CLIQUE MAINTENANCE:

to endure pinheads like you rusting above me for the rest of my life, The need of one generation to

see the generation following it

always grabbing the best piece of cake first and then putting a barbed-as deficient so as to bolster its ire fence around the rest. You really make me sick.'

own collective ego:
"Kids today

"Unfortunately the phone rang then, so I missed what would have
do nothing. They're so

apathetic. We used to go out

undoubtedly been a feeble retort . . . some higher-up Martin was in the I
and protest. All they do is shop

middle of a bum-kissing campaign with and who couldn't be shaken off
and complain."

the line. I dawdled off into the staff cafeteria. There, a salesman from the copy machine company was pouring a Styrofoam cup full of scalding
CONSENSUS

TERRORISM:
The process

hot coffee into the soil around a ficus tree which really hadn't even that decides in-office attitudes

recovered yet from having been fed cocktails and cigarette butts from and behavior.

the Christmas party. It was pissing rain outside, and the water

w a s drizzling down the windows, but inside the air was as dry as the Sahara from being recirculated. The staff were all bitching about

commuting time and making AIDS jokes, labeling the office's fashion victims, sneez-

ing, discussing their horoscopes, planning their time-shares in Santo Domingo, and slagging the rich and famous. I felt cynical, and the room matched my mood. At the coffee machine next to the sink, I grabbed a cup, while Margaret, who worked at the other end of the office, was waiting for her herbal tea to steep and informing me of the ramifications of my letting off of steam a few minutes earlier.

' ' W h a t
d i d
y o u j u s t s a y t o M a r t i n , D a g ? ' s h e s a y s t o m e . ' H e ' s just having
kittens
in his office—cursing your name up and down. Did t h e h e a l t h i n s p e c t o r d e c l a r e t h i s p l a c e a B
h o p a l
o r s o m e t h i n g ? '