From Canyon-Era English Major:
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I work the night shift.
I request it, actually. Charlie shift, 11pm
to 7am. Graveyard, some people call it. The name fits, it works. Not so
much because it’s dead as because it’s… cool. Still, balmy in a way that
has nothing to do with weather. It’s an attitude, something born of the
knowledge that while everyone around you is prancing through the Land
of Nod with the cast of The Tick and Fran Drescher, you are awake and
you are… bored.
Yes.
Night shift is boring. Night shift is boring like Leonard Cohen singing
a capella with no backing would be boring, boring like an infomercial
about how to make a fortune in the stock market is boring. It’s a kind
of tedium few have experienced. I have cable tv, a dvd player, books,
issues of Time magazine dating all the way back to the Reagan era and
a job to do, but still, the specter of being trapped in a tiny office
in the dead of night – eight hours worth of dead, in fact – it’s just
boring. Even if you have four seasons of ER, even if you have a shelf
full of books completely worth reading, even if you are scrapbooking
your entire life story.
There will be that moment of
squirreliness at three in the morning where you stop and look around,
left to right with your eyes only, squinting at empty space, at the
walls and the mini-fridge and the coffee pot and you think, quite
calmly, “Who are you people and why do you all bear a vague resemblance
to Fran Drescher?” And you’re afraid, but quite matter-of-fact about it,
because you know you’re alone, and the moment will pass, and by 7am
when your relief shows up you will have something resembling sanity, if
not something resembling good breath. The state of a night shift
worker’s mouth at 7am, even if they have gum, even if they don’t smoke,
is just shocking. It’s horrifying.
Somehow,
in that convoluted, completely fucked-up circadian nightmare that is
three in the morning, something clicked in my brain and I became…
domestic.
Well, not domestic but I began to share a few too many
traits with upper-middleclass housefraus for my own quasi-butch
self-image.
I swept. I gathered up the crumbs, the dust bunnies,
and the renegade coffee beans, and forcibly ejected them from my
office. A few nights later, the act of sweeping no longer able to
satisfy my reckless cleaning lust, I tracked down the night janitor and
had him bring me a wet mop. I scrubbed that old linoleum until it was
all the same uniform color of old linoleum.
The unthinkable happened next: my boss noticed. And complimented my clean floors.
Oh, no.
It was on,
my friends. It was on like Donkey Kong, like Jedi versus Sith, like me,
my roommate, and only one Voyager Class Optimus Prime left on the
shelf.
El Kato, Domestic Dyke.
And now I am in love with
an inanimate object: The Swiffer Duster. That thing is… amazing. It is a
Dust Magnet. I prowl the office like a lion on the hunt, seeking the
dust with a vengeance I didn’t know existed inside of me. The first time
I did the whole office, it took five of the fluffy “refill” things. I
have never felt so validated as I did glaring in triumph at the
wastepaper basket full of fluffy things and dust.
El
Kato, Dust Bandit. I would call myself Dust Buster, but it’s not only
taken, but is the name of an alternate mode of dust removal, which is
unacceptable. The Swiffer Duster and I are together until the end of
time.
All that cleaning takes up at least an hour of my time if
I’m in full-mania; next I devote at least four hours to scouring
episodes of ER for Maggie Doyle (played by Jorja Fox) and trying not to
hate Kerry Weaver for her fugly 90s wardrobe and generally willful
social ineptitude. I don’t understand why they make her so awful for so
long.
Okay, so I do understand, but that doesn’t make me like
it. I sympathize with her in her solo moments, when she’s practically
orgasming over paperwork. I look at her administrative mania and feel
myself twitch in janitorial sympathy. If only she had a Swiffer, I think to myself, holding my Swiffer close to my chest. A Swiffer instead of Mark Greene. That’s all she needs.
Personally
I don’t think the show would have suffered much without Mark Greene.
But then, I’m a dyke and bald men look like dicks. And he’s just whiny.
Even when it’s all going his way, he whines. He has horrible time
management skills, his wife was totally hot and he lost her due to that
fact that he has horrible time management skills, and as far as I can
tell he never really learns to prioritize.
I mean, just imagine
ER with Kerry Weaver carrying around, like, a Swiffer with some
wire-rimmed glasses on. Making diagnosis’ out of the side of her mouth,
arguing back and forth about patient care, having discussions in the
lounge.
“Oh, this paperwork is such a nightmare. It’s so amazing of you to take it all on, Kerry, and still find time to be such an amazing doctor.”
“Why,
yes, Doctor Greene, it did take me a long time to color code and
alphabetize all of your work, but anything to make this hospital – YOU
THERE, CAROL HATHAWAY! YOU ARE WASTING MONEY! I DON’T KNOW HOW THIS TIME
BUT YOU ARE! – run more efficiently. Now, if you please, I need to
forge your signature on a few things, if you have the time.”
“I always have time for such a fabulous doctor and alphabetizer such as yourself, Kerry. In fact, why not join me for dinner?”
“Well, thank you, Mark, but you’ll be staying in my locker when I leave here today.”
“And what a well-organized locker it is, too.”
