he Bossman pulled me into his office. "The last thing in the world we need right now is another staff writer," he told me. The Bossman kind of growls when he talks. As my colleague Kate Messer used to say, he's like a straight Harvey Fierstein, or a Jewish and bearded Danny Devito. "But we love you and we want to find a job for you."
I appreciated it. I had come back to the paper with big eyes and promises. I would do whatever, I was proud to be a part of things - and it wasn't some line I was selling. I was eager for steady work, I was eager to contribute, and I was so, so, so unemployed.
"You know they complain and they make fun of us," the Bossman had said when he first saw me sniffing around the office, "but they all come back eventually."
"I never complained or made fun of you," I said.
"Well I never caught you," he said.
"Fair enough."
The Bossman and I have a lovingly contentious relationship. Once, for a gag gift, he gave me one of those hard hats with a plastic straw and two cupholders for beer. "I heard you were having some trouble drinking enough at work," he said. The Esteemed Publisher plopped two Lone Star tallboys in either side, and I walked around entertaining the staff until I nearly choked on a mouthful of hot foam. During the year and a half that I wasn't drinking (and really, was it any wonder I needed to stop?) the Bossman would come up to me at parties and grouse, "You know, this party would be a lot more fun if you were wasted." Then he would shake his head as he walked away. "I can't believe you stopped drinking."
So there I was back in Austin, broke and broken, looking for work. The Bossman and the Esteemed Publisher had been hedging, and I was nervous. I would never let on as much, but I was prepared to say yes to almost anything.
"So here is the job," the Bossman continued. "We want you to cover Visual Arts and Dance."
Rrrrrrr?
I crunched my forehead. Or maybe I nodded and smiled. Or maybe I laughed out loud.
Visual Arts and Dance? Did they know how little I knew about Visual Arts and Dance?
They did.
One percent, maybe. Two percent max.
They did.
But they wanted profiles, not scholarly criticism, and they had a long and storied history of plopping people in the deep end and watching them bob. The idea is growing on me, actually - the challenge of not only learning the forms and the local scene but also presenting it in an interesting and accessible way - although God knows if I'll actually be working in this capacity. Sometimes I think the Bossman and the Esteemed Published are kind of bluffing, like when they first hired me at the office under the title "Copyeditor," a position which hadn't previously existed and never would exist, since I was taken off of it a week later to become Listings Editor. (At "The Weekly Cynical" we have Proofreaders not Copyeditors, lest you think we don't check that copy at all.) But don't get me wrong. I'm grateful to them.
Later that afternoon, the Esteemed Publisher, known for his stoicism, made a little ballet leap in the air.
"What's that?" I asked, laughing.
"Don't you know? That's dance!" he said.
I got a lot to learn.