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| Bentzman |
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Suburban
Soliloquy #44
THANK
YOU, GERALDINE
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There are
trade-offs to working the graveyard shift.
One gives up the normal social life; I have
adapted to living out of touch with the
cycles of a normal world. When others are
engaged with friends and family, I am trying
to catch some sleep (while the neighbour's
kids are screaming and there is the buzz and
blurt of power mowers). The pleasures of
being alive, of enriching the experience of
existence, of having relationships, amounts
to stealing time away from less agreeable
chores and duties. I have to select days to
go without sleep. I have to organize
missions, plotting my routes, rushing from
place to place, and leaving errands that are
too far off the path for another day.
Because this essay is due by the end of the
month, an allotment of time that can now be
measured in hours, I must compose it here at
my job. I have learned to do my reading and
writing in snatches both at home and at work.
Oh, sometimes I am good and get the essay
done early. Sometimes I even get to compose
the first draft with a pen. Right now a
keyboard and word-processor are expediencies.
I work every other weekend and this weekend I
am not off. Without this computer there would
not be time for me to have a second
(preferred) career as a writer.
Blessed is the summer when many of my clients
are on their vacation and not tampering with
the network. Few things go wrong with the
service when thecustomer isn't mucking about.
This is the payoff for having to work the
graveyard shift, that there are quiet nights
when the workload permits me to accomplish
other things, like this essay. Such a quiet
night as this is a perquisite that justifies
the sacrifice of a normal life, the hardship
of giving up society and continually trying
to function on sleep deprivation, so the
company always has a Communications
Technician (me) available for their customer.
I have cultivated a comfortable life of
dressing in loose clothing. A typical day,
which for me is almost every day, I wear a
pair of soft jeans and an oversized cotton
shirt that is never ironed. This being
summer, I usually have sandals on my feet. It
is what I wear at home and it is what I wear
at the office. Because I work the graveyard
shift, I am not in the public's eye. My
clients never see me; I'm just a disembodied
voice on the telephone.
Ah, but tonight I am wearing a dark-brown
herringbone suit of wool. Despite it being
July, it is unexpectedly cool. I removed the
silk tie I was wearing earlier in the day.
The reason for dressing up this night is
because Ms Keogh and I went to the opera. It
was all quite by surprise and sudden. A
manager, who left this office years ago,
remembered that I liked opera. She had
tickets for the opera, but was unable to use
them. These things happen. In the morning,
she sent an email inviting me and my wife to
take the tickets which were waiting at the
box office.
It has been several months since I last wore
socks and so my feet feel constrained inside
these hard leather cap-toe shoes. Still, it
is fun to dress up once and awhile. Ms Keogh
wore a celadon dress overlaid with white
lace, a string of pearls, and her velvet
opera cape. She used the occasion as an
excuse to buy a new pair of shoes in the
afternoon, which at the last moment she chose
not to wear, switching to an old pair of
black sling-back heels. Those shoes are
standing right now by my desk with no feet in
them. Ms Keogh, who formerly filled those
shoes, is sleeping on the couch in a
supervisor's office. It is Saturday night,
actually Sunday morning, and so we have the
building to ourselves.
The opera was Mozart's The Magic
Flute performed by a competent
Opera Festival of New Jersey and sung in
English. The performance was at the McCarter
Theater in Princeton. "When was the last
time we went to an opera?" Ms Keogh
asked. It was the 7th March 1997, our tenth
wedding anniversary, when I took her to the
Metropolitan Opera to see Aida.
It was the last time I wore my tuxedo. We had
parked in the pricey lot beneath the opera
house, ate dinner at the Vilar Grand Tier
Restaurant. Inside the opera house, we had
seats somewhere in the stratosphere, and I
merited a speeding ticket during the
seventy-six mile drive home from New York. In
all, that was a very expensive event.
The McCarter Theater is not the opulent hall
that is the Metropolitan Opera House. There
are no chandeliers looking like bursting
stars that rise out of the way before the
performance begins. The McCarter does not
have a façade of marble, graced with
sweeping columns. But the McCarter is cozy. A
building of red brick braced by gray stones,
it is the size of a large house. Every seat
can clearly see and hear the stage. Once
again Ms Keogh and I thought how sweet it
would be to live in Princeton, having the
McCarter Theater within strolling distance.
We could attend the opera tonight because the
McCarter Theater is in the heart of the
university town of Princeton, New Jersey and
the office where I am working is located very
close by, less than ten minutes away by car.
This office building is just outside the
border of Princeton in South Brunswick, but
for a little extra money the location gets to
use a Princeton address, which is classier.
The opera concluded at eleven o'clock and we
incorporated a stop at a supermarket to buy
dinner before I had to be at work by
midnight. We shared a dinner of precooked
roasted chicken, sitting at adjacent desks,
while Ms Keogh played hearts on the computer
terminal and I caught up with work. We
discussed the talented baritone Joseph
Kaiser, who had the role of Papageno. In the
penultimate scene, he came bursting out of
the doors at the rear of the auditorium and
dashed down the aisle in his search of
Papegena, looking for her among the
theatergoers.
This special night at my job, I am delighted
in having the company of the person I love
most, and because I have succeeded once again
in stealing happiness out of a life that is
usually routine and stifling. This will be
one of the very few days at my job that I
will always remember. The opera, her shoes
beside my desk, the impromptu dinner,
composing this essay, these elements and
others will combine in the creation of a
memorable event that will distinguish this
night. Hundreds of other banal nights at this
job will be forgotten, but on this night my
soul has been fed and I feel expanded.
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