My NRFU Diary - Day 5

My favorite part of my second day in The Field as an official, badged Census Worker was meeting and “interviewing” Ms. Valeree P—, [number withheld] [street withheld], over in [town withheld]. Hers was the only door I knocked on yesterday opened by an apparently Filipino houseboy who introduced himself as Ferdinand. When I told him what I wanted and showed him my badge, I detected the beginning of a sneer on his little brown face, but then I heard a throaty female voice call, “I’ll attend to this myself, boy,” in an accent that I couldn’t quite place, but had no trouble at all finding bewitching.

She didn’t walk toward the door, but glided, as though on a dolly. My nostrils filled with the smell of her perfume. There are those who believe that our olfactory memories are keener than all others; I was transported instantaneously to an elegant department store in Paris in 1987, where I was transfixed by the spectacle of an inconceivably gorgeous young woman offering to spray the wrists of jewel-strewn matrons as they headed from one designeer collection to another. I stood watching her, probably open-mouthed, until she noticed me and made the face of someone who’s just tasted something acrid.

“My name,” Alfred’s mistress purred, “is Valeree, with three e’s, as mentioned earlier in your reminiscence, and I recognize it as my duty to cooperate fully with the Census Bureau, however inappropriate or…intrusive their demands may be.” She switched her rhinestone-bedecked cigarette holder to her left hand and extended her right. I have always had a…thing for women who wear black satin opera gloves to lounge around in their own homes on a Sunday afternoon, and for those able to pack so much innuendo into three syllables, as she had into intrusive.

She pouted at me cinematically and flared her nostrils in the manner of Chrissie Amphlett as she let me slide her negligee down her gorgeous narrow shoulders. It fell like petals around her feet. Noting with delight that she was wearing stay-up black stockings, I kissed her neck. She shuddered. I unhooked her black lace brassiere. I poked her in the tummy, but not with my hands. She moaned as my lips found their way to her left breast. She grasped me; oh, did she! Her tongue flicked at my own. Our hands explored each other.

She asked if I had protection. I admitted I did not, having anticipated nothing like what was going on between us. She let go of me and whispered, “Then I shall send Ferd to the convenience store to get some, though he’s been beaten comatose by local roughnecks each of the past four times I’ve sent him there.”

I told her it was more than I could bear to have on my conscience. She asked how much the Census Bureau paid. When I told her, she guffawed, but then immediately put her fingertips to her mouth and said she was sorry. She said she would pay me twice as much per hour to be her love slave, and that I wouldn’t have to worry about strangers’ dogs, as her poodles weren’t biters. I heard Ferdinand clearing his throat pointedly, and wondered if she were painting a realistic picture. I told her I was deeply flattered, but that I’d sworn an oath to the Bureau, and was a man of my word.

Her expression turned to one of tart petulance. She cared no longer if the smoke of her cigarette got in my eyes and nostrils. I sighed and asked if someone usually lived in the apartment, or if it was a vacation or seasonal home. I could see in her remarkable teal eyes that I’d hurt her terribly. Another one lost, and this so soon after the worst one.

The sacrifices we make so that no state sends to Congress either more or fewer representative than its population warrants, there to be given money and oral sex by corporate lobbyists, the scourge of our democracy!

NRFU Diary - Day 3

I wouldn’t have imagined it possible, but it got even worse yesterday. But that particular cloud had a thin silver lining.

It turned out that Ellen wasn’t the only attention junkie in our group of 15; several other women had only been hiding their neediness lights beneath bushel baskets. As the day progressed — glacially, except not quite that fast — at least four of them seemed to be trying to come up with more intricate hypothetical situations we could ponder and ponder and ponder. Eddie, the boorish fat latino, continued to blurt things about his Extensive Experience in the Field at random moments in between doing the most hideous doodling I’ve ever seen. And we’re not talking about demure blurting, but sharp, canine blurting that on at least three occasions rudely shattered the trance I’d managed to go into.

Then it got worse. They decided it wasn’t enough to dream up ridiculously intricate hypothetical situations in which we census...enumerators might be at a momentary loss as to which little box to put a X (not a check!) with our No. 2 pencils. They began cracking jokes too, not a one of them far below my own lofty standard of excellence.
One of the few pleasures of being ancient is coming to understand how we age, and how very little we really change. One member of our group, a dour, rotund little woman of late middle age, is forever finding in our many workbooks and manuals exactly the arcane bits of knowledge our instructor needs to make a definitive ruling on some tricky issue. She is absolutely joyless and nearly inaudible as she advises the instructor of her discovery, and every time she does it I picture her at seven being praised as Daddy’s Perfect Girl because she never raises her voice above a murmur and can spell words you’re not supposed to be able to spell until middle school, or name all 50 state capitals.

So here’s the thin silver lining. Being around these people raises my self-esteem. I’m (silently, except here, in the privacy of my own rantings) arrogant, but not boorish or needy. Where others are forever desperately cracking stupid jokes, or blurting, or posing complicated questions just for the joy of having the instructor’s attention, the worst I do is mutter, “Oh, for crying out loud!” or even, “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” occasionally when, for instance, Ellen yet again derails the train, if you will, to complain about the clumsiness of the prose in one of our manuals. I dare to imagine that I look pretty good in comparison.

My NRFU Diary - Part 1

I got a laff yesterday at the first day of training for my new career with the Census Bureau. Everyone had to stand up and introduce himself, specifying whether she had ever before worked for the government, revealing what had attracted him to censusing. I have often found it effective in such settings to stand up and say, "My name is John, and I'm an alcoholic," and this was no exception. The neediest member of our...crew of 17 — the one who's forever asking questions just for the joy of getting the instructor's attention — said, "Hi, John," which was a nice piece of work. Those not acquainted with the protocal of 12-step meetings are probably scratching their heads at this point; trust me, though: it was hilarious!

I confessed that I had indeed worked previously for the government, but said that if the other 16 were to know more, I'd have to kill them. When the gales of appreciative tittering died down, I finished by claiming that, while other boys had dreamed of becoming cowboys or firemen or astronauts or Dallas Cowboy tailbacks, I'd always dreamed of being a census...enumerator.

Elsewhere, the laffs were few and far between. Our crew leader is an attractive young woman with the intonation and manner of a kindergarten teacher you'd want your child to have. She revealed sheepishly early on that federal guidelines, or whatever you call them, compelled her to read everything she said to us out of a book, and spewed acronyms. We learned, for instance, that our mission is to conduct NRFUs — Non-Respondent Followups. That is, we're to track down those wanton scofflaws who didn't fill in their census forms earlier in the year and get in person the information they failed to provide the easy impersonal by-mail way.

We learned that PII stands for personally identifiable information, which we are forbidden by law to divulge. We were issued attractive shoulder bags bearing the Bureau of the Census logo and containing pencils, a ballpoint pen with which we were to fill out the never-ending paperwork to which we devoted our morning, pencil sharpeners, erasers, paper clips, and a bunch of informative books. We swore to preserve and protect the Constitution, and were fingerprinted.

It wasn't as glamorous as I've made it sound. It take forever to get that black stuff off your fingertips.

I was reminded of the early summer of 1982, when, just back from three months in the UK and Italy with my future first bride, I — the former king of Los Angeles, the rock critic all America most loved to loathe, a former Warner Bros. recording artist and confidant to the stars, a universal object of female desire — took a job typing forms at UCLA just to get a little (a very little!) money coming in. 'Twas awful and demoralizing then, and it's no more pleasant now, though probably even less so for the out-of-work financier I chatted with during one of our breaks. Life has a knack for teaching a person humility.