Overqualified Read online

  One of us would sit outside and the other would go in, without his flashlight, and see how long he could stand to be alone in that black room. It wasn’t the sort of game that anybody won or lost.

  I’ve thought about this a lot, Paramount. I want to write horror movies that scare you, but leave you with the feeling that your brother is right outside the door, waiting, flashlight in hand.

  Only, when you call out, there’s no answer. And the barn is empty, like your stomach.

  Joey Comeau

  Dear Bell Canada,

  Thank you for taking the time to review my resume. I have to apologize for the bluntness of this cover letter. I need your help. I think the Internet is trying to kill me. It is only through this channel, this job application, that I have any chance of fooling it into letting my message get through.

  I spent six hours online this morning, reading job postings and writing terrible cover letters, and having shallow conversations with a dozen of my friends. They kept asking, “How do you feel?” and posting the little hug icon from instant messenger. When was the last time I really paid attention to a conversation? I have all these old emails from my brother, and none of them say anything.

  He ended every one with, “Love yah, bro.” I’ve read it so many times today.

  I’m multitasking all the time now. I can do a hundred different things at once, and at the end of the day I can’t remember any of them. I honestly can’t remember.

  It’s your fault. The Internet has tendrils in millions of homes, all through the country. You feed it. And I understand why you feed it, why you’re doing this. You get thirty dollars a month for every home, for every connection. You’re feeding it, but you’re getting fat, too. Only, it can’t go on. I can’t let you profit from the lives of my friends and family.

  You have to tell me where it lives. If I can find the head, the heart, the brain, I can destroy it. I can set everyone free with one small act of violence. I need to burn the Internet to the ground. I need to find out if it has had a chance to lay eggs yet.

  Have you had trouble breathing lately? When was your last x-ray? There could be eggs anywhere in your body. I have to tear out its backbone. I have to clean your server rooms with fire. If I am in the computers as an employee, it won’t see me coming, gasoline can in hand.

  Hire me.

  Joey Comeau

  Dear Queen Elizabeth Hospital,

  I’m applying for the position of systems analyst in the Transplantation Services department of your hospital, as advertised on the Internet. I’m currently working as a systems analyst for Ford Motor Company of Canada, but I am looking to make the transition to medicine, and I am including my resume for your review. I have always had a strong interest in medicine, and it is that interest which originally attracted me to the sciences. Circumstances led me to computer science, but it seems that now I am being given the chance to follow my original dreams. I can leave behind the cold and lifeless world of automotive manufacturing, and embrace the emotionally satisfying warmth of health care.

  I know it won’t be an easy transition, and this is why I am applying to your hospital. Your hospital is the perfect balance of medicine and assembly line. I can work with bodies, but won’t be expected to treat them as people. Over time, of course, I might learn to understand human emotion and move on to another hospital where that is more appropriate, but in the meantime I think you will find my qualifications and skills very useful.

  As my resume indicates, my duties at Ford have included leading the programming team in charge of assembly line robotics. My experience taught me about the maximum speed and force with which you could have the robot insert a new part without damaging a vehicle’s chassis. I feel this experience will translate almost seamlessly to transplantation services, and I think you will agree.

  While at Ford I’ve also led a team in designing a system for locating defects in the assembly line vehicles. It is a waste of resources and time to assemble vehicles that are not up to standard, and I wonder if this philosophy might not be something that the medical world is ready to embrace.

  What it all comes down to is this: I am a resourceful and innovative programmer. I am not afraid of learning new things, and I know when trial and error is a faster way to get something done than research. I can be a hard taskmaster to those beneath me in the chain of command, but the results of that show in my production figures.

  I believe that I would make a vital and innovative member of your team. Too often industries are the victims of over-specialization, and I feel that my breadth of experience and attitudes toward transplantation services would give your department the distinction that it may well require.

  Yours in anticipation,

  Joey Comeau

  Dear Goodyear,

  I’d like a job, please. You probably don’t hire strangers. I used to climb mountains of your tires in my grandfather’s salvage yard. My name’s Joey Comeau. There. Now we aren’t strangers anymore.

  It’s Joey, not Joe or Joseph. My grandfather was Joe Comeau, and Joseph is my mother’s name for me, but I have always been Joey. I worry sometimes that it’s a childish name. Would a “Joe” tell jokes in bed, perform puppet shows after sex, and give every body part a different high-pitched voice? It seems unlikely. The names we choose for ourselves aren’t meaningless. They’re self-fulfilling prophecies.

  So, I’m Joey and I will never be Joe. When my grandfather died, I lost my chance to know him as anything more than a kiss on the cheek and a drive to the video store. I remember his oxygen tank, and his chair in the living room. Every night at seven or eight o’clock my grandmother would move to the kitchen and pour herself a glass of wine from a box, because it was time for wrestling and the TV was his for hours. Their furniture was old and dark brown, and it hid dimes and nickels. My grandmother lives in another city now, with new furniture, and I wonder if every night at seven or eight o’clock, she still finds something else to do. She hated wrestling.

  I remember how even after he sold the salvage yard, he ran an alternator rebuilding shop out of the garage. He lost money, and I think it worried my grandmother, but he always had something to do. When we did talk, it was so I could help him with his parts database on the computer. I remember how excited he was with the features, the index and photographs, and how he never seemed frustrated when something went wrong with the program. He would call me and tell me the error message to see if I could help. I was always surprised by the call.

  My brother Adrian lived with them for a while, after he was kicked out of our house. Way out in Dartmouth, an hour from the nearest bus stop. Every day he would get a drive into town, or at least to the ferry, with our grandfather. When he was living there I’m sure that things weren’t perfect, but Adrian formed a closer relationship with my grandmother. That’s what I was jealous of at the time. He told me once that she said he was her favourite grandson. I understand that now. How nice would it be, after your children are gone, to have your grandson living with you?

  My grandfather was driving Adrian into Halifax a few years ago, and it was either rainy or snowy. I can’t remember. A man staggered into the street, drunk, and they hit him. I remember Adrian telling me about sitting quietly in the car, my grandfather crying, while they waited for the ambulance.

  What a strange thing to be jealous of.

  Joey Comeau

  Dear MIT,

  I am writing to apply for a position as researcher in your Linguistics department. I would like to focus on language and memory, specifically the language of nostalgia. I have been trying to write down my memories and it’s all such bullshit. Is nostalgia like kittens? Does it make our language stupid? OH MY GOODNESS YOU’RE A KITTY!

  I remember the woman with brown hair who taught me grade four; she left halfway through the year. I loved her. Her name started with an M. Mrs. Munroe? I can’t remember. I can remember the shape of that room, and the view from my seat out the window. That window had a grate on it, and all class I w
ould just stare. Focus on the trees, focus on the grate. Focus on the trees, focus on the grate. Back and forth. I remember sitting in the back of her classroom and reading science fiction books. I almost failed that year. I almost failed every year. I can’t remember her face.

  It doesn’t really bother me that I can’t remember, though. It was a long time ago, and it’s not important. Sometimes it’s nice to look back and only remember little bits. My memories of that school, of being that young, are like a weird slideshow.

  I remember how excited I got when the Scholastic book fair came to our library. I went through the catalogues again and again, noting which books I wanted to buy. Then, when the day finally came, I would spend forever going from table to table, trying to choose.

  I remember the girl’s bathroom and not the boy’s. I only went in once. The showers had seats. I remember that my best friend waited on the field behind the school for another friend of mine, and he hit him in the leg with his baseball bat. This was elementary school.

  So much violence.

  I remember both their names, but not their faces.

  There must be a way we can talk about the past so that it’s more than just the past. Everything that has happened or will happen exists together. Just at different times. People die, but that isn’t any different from the edge of a table. The table is still there. It just doesn’t stretch that far.

  I am not saying any of this right.

  I remember we went on a camping field trip and I was sent home. I remember screaming and kicking while someone carried me. I remember my brother got his foot crushed in a gate out behind our school. It was recess. He always wore that red sweater. I remember how quiet everything seemed and how nobody would let me near him.

  Joey Comeau

  Dear New York Times,

  Thank you for taking the time to review my resume. I am writing to apply for the position as editor, and I’m certain that upon closer examination you will find that my enclosed resume demonstrates my ability as an editor perhaps more accurately than it describes my experience in the field. I mean simply that any difference between the results of a background check and the employment history I have delineated should be taken as an example of my skills.

  My skills as an editor extend beyond my job history to encompass the whole of my past. A stint in juvenile hall adds a much-needed bit of excitement to a childhood I can barely remember. I don’t mean to imply that I’m a revisionist. I was never a revisionist. I won awards. I dated the prettiest girls.

  Like, once, in college. I met a pretty girl who was a lesbian. Everyone told me that it would just break my heart to fall in love with her, that I was wasting my time, that I was asking for trouble. Well, within a week she had fallen for me. And there was no trouble at all. Her love for me overwhelmed her and she forgot all about her distaste for the immediate facts of the matter (if you will). We’re still happily married. We have kids. Two, I guess. A boy and a girl. Handsome and pretty. It wasn’t even hard.

  My brother was never hit by a car, and the last time we spoke (just this morning) he said he loved me, and that he’d had a nightmare where he told me to go fuck myself over something as stupid as a rent cheque, and then died before he could apologize. He said that when he woke up he felt really bad about that, and I said, “It’s okay, man! The important thing is that we love and respect each other and that you’re still alive! I love you, bro.”

  We had a pretty good laugh about that, and then we got wicked drunk. I will make a very good editor for your company, whether you hire me or not.

  Joey Comeau

  Dear Mister President,

  I would like to apply for a job as your Chief Environmental Advisor. Everyone is so afraid all the time. Of dying. The world is running out of oil, or ozone, or patience. We’re all doomed. I can’t read the newspaper anymore. I like to listen to stories about cats with one crooked fang that sticks up, about dogs who drool when they’re happy. Why don’t they have that in the newspaper? Why don’t they have stories about drunk drivers who hit young men, and afterwards everybody laughs with nervous relief. They say, “Man, that could have gone much worse! Haha, we dodged a bullet there. Can I buy you a drink?”

  Sure, everything falls apart. Love is like that, too. Even family is like that. But I’d like to quote Mr. Mitch Hedberg, if I may: “A girl asked me if I drink red wine. I said yes and she asked, ‘But doesn’t it give you a headache?’ And I said, ‘Sure . . . EVENTUALLY.’” Pause for effect. “‘But the first and the middle parts are amazing.’”

  Everything falls apart, and it fucking sucks and we’re all going to be in those wooden boxes eventually. Pause for effect. But the first and the middle parts are amazing!

  Yours,

  Joey Comeau

  Dear Nintendo,

  Thank you for taking the time to consider my resume. I am writing to apply for the position of game designer. We have a chance here to help children experience games that are more true to life than ever before. Computer graphics have improved and improved and improved, and some day soon we’re going to have to ask ourselves where we can go next in our search for realism.

  We need virtual pet games where you clean and feed and love your furry little friend, but where that car still comes out of nowhere so smoothly, a god of aerodynamics and passenger safety. Where your mother says, “Good thing we kept this.” And she takes a shoe box down from your closet. Where you hear your father’s quiet joke that night, when he thinks you are asleep.

  We need an airport simulator, where the planes carry your whole family from A to B, job to job, and dad still drinks in the shower when you have to pee. Your older sister still comes home at three in the morning and wakes you up so she can sit on the edge of your bed and cry. Where you try to make friends faster at each new school, so you tell jokes even though you don’t know anybody and nobody gets them. Everybody says you’re the weird new kid. So at the next school you don’t say anything at all and then you’re the weird quiet kid. The plane touches down and you all lean forward in your seats because of inertia, and again and again someone says, “I hate to fly.”

  We need a new Mario game where you rescue the princess in the first ten minutes, and for the rest of the game you try to push down that sick feeling in your stomach telling you she’s “damaged goods,” a concept detailed again and again in the profoundly sex-negative instruction booklet, and when Luigi makes a crack about her and Bowser, you break his nose and immediately regret it. Peach asks you, in the quiet of her mushroom castle bedroom, “Do you still love me?” and you pretend to be asleep. You press the A button rhythmically, to control your breath, to keep it even.

  Yours,

  Joey Comeau

  part two.

  Dear Apple,

  I am writing to apply for a position with your company, and I am including my resume for your review. It outlines my experience as a computer programmer in the field of natural language processing.

  Late at night, drunk, our language changes. In the day, I simply eat a piece of fruit, but late at night, while my girlfriend Susan sleeps, I tell another woman how I am piercing the skin with my teeth. Then I am cutting flesh from it and laying those pieces on my tongue. I am imagining that its flavors are hers.

  We can train the computer to recognize these changes. Your connection can be suspended for your own good, long before you hit send. Txt Msging and email are the new drunk dialing, and we can help protect users from themselves. We can protect them from their own natural inclinations to lewdness, regret, longing, desperation. Imagine a robot operator listening to your calls, robot finger at the ready, waiting to disconnect you when you call at 4 a.m. to say you should never have let her go, that you think about her breasts sometimes, about that hollow where her neck cups up behind her ear? I’m sorry that I let you go. I should have followed. I can’t bear to think of you with him, piercing and laying his flesh on your — DISCONNECT.

  There are reasons why we can’t just do what we want. Some
times, in the middle of the night, I am suddenly certain that I will die. My brother was a year and a half younger than me. He was charming and all of the girls loved him. Now he’s dead. A drunk driver came out of nowhere and he is dead. And I will die. I will die and Susan is the last girl. I sit on the bed beside her while she sleeps and I think, “This is the last girl.” But that’s not as scary as it seems, is it? Love is important. But this is the last girl I will love, too. That’s scarier. My mind goes in circles, and then I go and sit down in front of the computer, Apple. That’s where I need your protection.

  We can make the world a better place for the broken.

  Joey Comeau

  Dear Credico,

  I am writing to apply for the position of Sales Rep. I’m located in the city of Halifax, where your ad says you are currently recruiting, and I am including my resume for your review. My resume details my sales experience, and I assure you that I am the person for this position.

  Sometimes I think dent-resistant side panels are a waste of money, but then I remember ladies be always throwing them selves at my car, and titties can wreak havoc on a paint job. When it’s warm, women like to take their titties out for a walk. You never see them in the winter, but in the hot months I guess their titties just start scratching at the door and yowling, and they need to be appeased.

  Titties can be like rabid fucking animals, man. They claw at the carpet and they tear shirts down to the navel. I am an animal too. I can’t stop thinking about them. Their titty pheromones get stuck in my head. They get in through my face. What I am supposed to be thinking about? A house? Two and a half children? A nice quiet family plot on a hill down at the graveyard?