Girl on the Brink: Surviving Desperate Times with Desperate Measures

I have a few deep dark secrets about some of my jobs. I interviewed for a position as a masseuse and learned that I’d need to give happy endings to the guys. I didn’t stick around. Most of my other jobs were mundane, typical college-girl jobs—waitress, bartender, secretary.

After college, I was the weather girl for a TV station in Naples, Fla., but that didn’t last very long because it was always sunny and warm, and there were only so many ways to say it. I also read wire copy for a Miami radio station. I progressed as a journalist with a few setbacks along the way but nothing as serious as what I’m experiencing now. The most startling was when I ignited myself while making Irish coffees at a restaurant in Coconut Grove.

The waitresses had to wear fancy clothes and a hat, which could be liberally interpreted according to our own preferences. One night I wore a chiffon veil, which did me in when it got too close to the flaming coffee I was swirling before my patrons. If you ever smoked and used Aqua Net hair spray, you’d know what I mean. Hair-sprayed hair shrivels instantaneously upon contact with high heat; the veil reacted as if it were hair.

My restaurant career ended when I got a job as a researcher for a regional Florida magazine edited by George Hunt, a former managing editor of Life magazine. Working for George was great, but the magazine folded a year later when the country experienced another recession.

I moved to Washington, D.C., and ended up working as a bartender—on Super Bowl night! I had to give change for beer when the Redskins won. What an awful experience.

To bring in a few extra bucks, I wrote dirty greeting cards. I sold one, for $50. The outside of the card read, Talk Dirty. On the inside: Give a Cerebral Sex Massage. I also tried songwriting, but that’s hard to do when you can’t carry a tune. I gave that up, the songwriting. But I did write more greeting card verses in my career but not the dirty kind.

My ex, I think, has had much more interesting jobs tailgating his career. He’s worked in a sprout factory, picked grapes, drove a cab and assumed the role of French political thinker Alexis de Tocqueville for a performance at a theatre in Rancho Cucamonga, a city east of Los Angeles that comics make fun of.

My ex was not nearly as amusing.