Overqualified Read online

  This was how I used to think. I spent hours at the library, running risk management statistics on blow jobs. I used to grill girls on their recent sexual history, demand to see STD testing documentation. I was single for a very long time.

  I devoted my time to personal forms of life insurance, to eating well, to making careful decisions, never taking risks. And while I was focusing my attention on the short term, on avoiding clear risks, it didn’t occur to me that I was going to die anyway.

  It didn’t occur to me until a car drove through the front of my house, stopping inches from my head. A hooker stumbled out, a bomb strapped to her stomach, digital clock counting down from five minutes. Lice crawling through her hair as she threatened me with a rusty crowbar that had used needles taped to the end. She tied me down and fucked me without a condom. She wasn’t going to leave until I came inside her, she said, and the clock kept counting down. Afterward, when she was climbing back into the car, I asked her if she was on the pill, and she laughed at me. She backed out onto the front lawn and exploded to death. I got a little cut on my face, from glass.

  There are no contingency plans for old age. My pitch to your customers will be simple. The door will open and I will say, “You are going to die. Why are you wasting your time haggling? Pick a fucking plan and go climb a tree. Learn a new language. Write a biography of your grandmother, even if she insists that she’s never done anything. Go home and tell your wife that you’re tired of watching Martha Stewart every fucking night — some nights you just want to watch girls’ soccer.”

  Joey Comeau

  Dear Royal Bank,

  I was thrilled to read that you are seeking temporary bilingual administrators, and I am applying for the job. I’ve included my resume, and I know that once you’ve taken a look, you will be greatly impressed. But first, let me tell you a little about myself.

  I am an Acadian, with strong emotional ties to the French language, but I am not a native speaker. Since my grandfather’s death, my grandmother is the only member of my family who speaks our Acadian dialect of the language. She told me that she wanted me to learn French, and I promised. I took classes, five nights a week. I threw myself into my studies for months, and after a while I found that I could hold reasonable conversations in both French and English.

  I was bilingual.

  By this time, I was studying toward my Master’s in Business Administration, at the top of every class. When I learned of the opportunity, I decided to study abroad, finishing my MBA at a French university where I could hone my new skill. I believed that my life was starting to find its track.

  On my second day in France, I was knocked to the ground. It was only a Vespa, and the doctors insisted that I wasn’t seriously injured, but after the accident I started to notice gaps in my ability to speak French. The French language I had begun to love was turning back into a hodgepodge of unintelligible sounds.

  It was no longer poetry in my ears. It was noise.

  My sentences became simpler and simpler. My vocabulary began to narrow. And so I threw myself back into the study of the language. It was no use. If I studied the tenses, my ability to remember the vocabulary would all but vanish. If I studied vocabulary, my ability to conjugate verbs would falter.

  I have never been a quitter.

  There is a window of time between when I learn the language rules and when I forget them. If I study all weekend, I can function bilingually for all of Monday and well into Tuesday morning. Sometimes into Wednesday, if I spend my lunch hours reviewing. But then it is gone again.

  This temporary bilingualism has made it impossible for me to find traditional bilingual work, naturally, because most jobs require the ability to speak the language all week long, not just on Mondays and Tuesdays. It has been a curse to me, but —

  Actually, you know what? Fuck it. This is a stupid joke. “Temporary Bilingualism.” I’m sorry. I don’t know what to do anymore. I talk to my grandmother on the telephone, and I try to talk French. She’s the only one left who speaks it. She never taught my father, or my aunts and uncles. She knew that you needed English to get work. When I tell her I want to learn Acadian she shakes her head. She says, “It isn’t proper French. It’s just a patois. You want to learn real French.” But I don’t. I want to learn the language of my family. I try to pick up the small differences in Acadian. “Je sais pas” instead of “je ne sais pas.” It’s hard. And she always switches to English.

  I don’t know how else to hold on.

  Yours,

  Joseph Comeau

  Dear Farmers Dairy,

  Some days I feel like all I do is sit around and calculate odds. What are the odds that this chocolate milk carton I left out overnight has drinkable chocolate milk in it?

  I used to say, “Life wouldn’t be as good without chocolate milk,” and I sort of still believe that. But I don’t know if we measure the goodness of life on some ultimate scale, or the good parts against the bad. If there was no chocolate milk, probably fruit punch would pick up the slack. Or maybe nightmares wouldn’t seem so bad.

  I’m teaching my grandmother to speak Arabic. Here’s a language we’re both terrible at. I can ask her, where is my fork? You have my fork. Do you have my fork? My name is Joey.

  I am teaching her to pick locks. She’s a little bewildered by all this attention, I think. I am living in the guest room. I bought some locks so we can practice. Picking locks is surprisingly easy. She learns quick, too, my grandmother. She’s so sharp.

  This morning she asked me, what next? I told her everything is next. We’ll learn to pick pockets next, to hack computers and telephone networks, to disarm someone quickly and efficiently, to seduce anyone and steal their keycards while they sleep, to live on submarines.

  We’ll wake up every day and we’ll tell ourselves, “Live for today, you retarded little shit. The end is near.”

  Joey Comeau

  the end.

  Joey Comeau lives in Toronto. He co-creates a comic called A Softer World with Emily Horne, which can be found at www.asofterworld.com. That website is also where you can find links to his other work! For instance, there is a story on there called “One Bloody Thing After Another,” if you like scary stories that are also sort of sad.