no experience unnecessary: caretaker for morbidly obese man

It's 2am, August 5th, and I've finished my last day with Northwest Airlines. It went okay--I fucked up a bit by switching someone's seat accidentally--but, no real harm done. How many of us, like Rocky Marciano, can retire perfect? Nineteen months with the job and I think I did well enough, all in all. There have been jobs where I've really just divebombed, and this wasn't one of them.

When I saw the last flight I would ever work leave down the runway, I pumped my fist in the air, gave everyone a goodbye hug, and put a Century 21 For Rent sign on my locker. Another chapter complete.

By month's end, I'll be back in JerZ and searching through Craigslist Jobs once again. I'm not the most confident person. I don't have faith in my ability to pick up girls at a bar or my jump shot, but for some reason, I have the utmost confidence that I can do any job in the world.

Oooh! Shoe Cobbler wanted! I'd be perfect for that!
Make Up Artist for Pornos! Just hand me the tweezers!

Don't get me wrong. I've been turned down for plenty of jobs, even jobs for which I felt well qualified. Doesn't matter. I'll be searching online for a new gig to pad my stats. So far, my resume looks something like this:

Dishwasher for a Nursing Home
Food Critic for Local Paper
Karate Instructor
Waiter at Indian Restaurant
2000 US Census Taker/Crew Chief
Lab Technician
Garden Coordinator
Transcriptionist
Freelance Journalist
Program Coordinator for Deaf/Blind Youth Interest Group
Caretaker for Morbidly Obese Man
Tutor
Mad Science (TM) Instructor
Camp In Instructor at Science Museum
Job Coach/Teacher's Assistant
Special Education High School Teacher
Package Handler for FedEx (TM)
Japanese Cook
Customer Service Agent for Airlines

A few months ago, I was at work on my computer and my coworker asked me what I was doing.

"Just updating my resume. You know how that is," I said. I probably threw in some generic "with this job market, you never know" kind of joke, ha ha ha, wink wink. This was before I had made it public that I was leaving Northwest Airlines.

"No, actually, I don't. I've never written a resume," she said. She's been in the job 30-40 years. That's longer than my life span.

Some people stick with a company their whole lives. They know everything about their job. Their coworkers throw them huge 25th anniversary parties. They make friends and feel secure.

Then, there's me. I don't even know the names of all of my coworkers. That's sad. I'm never around long enough to really get good at anything, to really make an impact. I get restless and I move on.

But, if anything, I get good at interviews and I gather a list of experiences that will serve me in some positive way, I hope. If nothing else, I get a funny story out of it.

Which brings me to the actual point of this blog. I'll try to write what i can rememeber about each of my previous jobs in an ongoing series called No Experience Unnecessary. Hopefully, they will not all be as long as this one.

******

Caretaker for Morbidly Obese Man

Soon after graduating college, I moved from JerZ to Baltimore, MD. But my job there as an AmeriCorps volunteer was only a one year contract. I had broken up with my girlfriend who lived in nearby Delaware and all my friends in Baltimore were also AmeriCorps volunteers for one year and were all dispersing. So I had no reason to stick around and began figuring out where to move next. A very long list was shortened to Boston, Alaska, and Key West.

My friends, Ross and Adam, both AmeriCorps volunteers, were planning on doing a second year of service in Boston and were trying to recruit others in our Baltimore clique to come along. I was hesitant because I moved out of New Jersey because I didn't like the cold. I'm no cartographer, but even then I knew that Boston was north of NJ and therefore even colder.

For a while, I was fascinated with the idea of moving to Alaska and working on a fishing boat. I know what you're going to say: Armin, Alaska gets cold occasionally, too. Alaska just sounds so badass, so the cold would have been a cool thing to suffer through, not like the prissy, yuppie cold of Boston where I had to wear my Uggs every day and hope they wouldn't get salted on too much.

This was before the Discovery Channel show, Deadliest Catch, came out, so I was pretty naieve about how difficult it would have been to work in the Arctic Ocean. Again, I have an unwavering confidence in my ability to do any work, that is, until I actually have to do it. It's more a matter of having an active imagination. I can picture myself enjoying any job.

I had believed all those rumors about jobs in Alaska, how they were just dying to find people to work and would pay them a shit load, and how you could work for six months and take the next six months off because you could make that much money in that short amount of time.

Well, it turns out much of that wasn't true. I went so far as to call a charter boat owner who ran trips for tourists to catch salmon. But, there weren't any jobs for me, which is probably a very good thing because otherwise, I would have been decapitated by broken cable on the first episode of Deadliest Catch.

I was really hoping to move to Key West, Florida. I had visited a friend in Ft. Lauderdale earlier that year and we drove down there for a night. I had this incredible feeling of excitement the whole time. I hooked up with a 40 year old narcotics officer named Karen in a club while dancing to Jessie's Girl, watched the sunset on Mallory Square, and ate conch and key lime pie. It was a great time. Add the fact that Hemingway did a lot of writing down there and it was a great fit for me. I pictured myself working, writing on the side, then fishing and frying up my catch for dinner. I pictured rum drinks in coconuts and never having to wear anything more formal than a beater. It was an idyllic reverie.

I had applied for a position on Craigslist seeking a live in assistant for a woman with Alzheimer's in the Keys. The job didn't pay much, but rent was free and i would have had every other week off. I didn't hear back for a long time and eventually, I was tired of waiting and agreed to move to Boston.

No more than a week after making my decision, I got a call from the daughter of the Alzheimer's woman asking me if I was still available. I haven't thought about this in a long time, but I wonder what would have happened had I moved to the Keys instead of Massachusetts. I probably would have taken up the ukulele and started dreading my hair. There's no future in that.

So when I moved to Boston, I secured a job as a caretaker for a morbidly obese man, Johnny. He was about 400lbs and had lost a leg to diabetes. He needed help with daily living tasks including hygiene. He asked me over the phone if I had any issues with sponge baths. Of course not, I thought. I can do anything. He also told me he was gay and asked me if I had a problem with that. Of course not, I thought. I've seen the movie Birdcage.

My responsibilites were driving Johnny to McDonald's for breakfast, wiping his ass when he took a shit, sponge bathing him, making sure to scrub hard in all the nooks and crannies and being careful not the pull at the catheter when I wiped down and powdered his nether regions, spreading testosterone cream all over his acne ridden back, and helping him put on his prosthetic leg so he could do his daily exercise of two laps up and down the hallway.

We took trips to KMart and he would carry a gun in his waistband of his fat man sweats as I pushed him in a wheelchair. He said he used to be a detective and was just in the habit of carrying it. You know, like how contruction workers forget to take off their hard hats in the shower. Just habit.

Also, Johnny told me a friend of his would come over and let Johnny "do things" to him, then would hit him up for money or take his social security check. Thankfully I wasn't around when this was happening, but i did meet the slimeball. He had very creepy eyes and didn't smile at me.

I lasted two weeks in the job. And to be honest, I didn't quit because I was grossed out or because he told me he wanted to marry me after I cooked him pasta one afternoon. I had just realized that in two weeks, I learned everything I was really going to learn from that job. I could picture myself bathing him every day and I wasn't disgusted by the thought of it, just bored. I lied to him and told him I needed to find a new job that provided health insurance.

I thought he would tell me interesting stories about his life as a PI that I could steal for my own fiction. But he was actually pretty boring. When I wasn't scrubbing, powdering, or medicating some region of his body, I was doing the most boring tasks like helping him rearrange his clutter or taking him to the store for lightbulbs. Another issue for me was knowing that I wasn't really helping him get better. Maybe if I thought I was going to save him and he was going to lose two hundred pounds with my support and discipline, I would have felt that I was accomplishing something. But, really I was just helping him survive until mercy allowed him to die. Driving him to McDonald's every morning made me feel like i was Kavorkian.

Also the only thing to drink in his house was Shasta which I find disgusting. You would think that my brief time with Johnny would have warned me to live a healthier lifestyle, but here I am staying up till dawn writing, drinking PBR and eating Last Call Jalpeno Poppers flavored Doritos. Maybe I should start looking for my own care taker now. One who knows how to be gentle but firm when cleaning a testicle.