Overqualified

Joey Comeau

Copyright © Joey Comeau, 2009

Published by ECW Press, 2120 Queen Street East, Suite 200,
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
M4E 1E2 / 416.694.3348
/
[email protected]

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any process — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without the prior written permission of the copyright owners and ECW Press.

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Comeau, Joey, 1980–
Overqualified / Joey Comeau.

ISBN-13: 978-1-55022-858-8
ISBN-10: 1-55022-858-7

I. Title.

PS8605.O537O94 2009    C813'.6    C2008-905429-6

Editor for the press: Michael Holmes
Cover images: Joey Comeau (front); Russell McBride / iStockPhoto (back)
Production: Rachel Ironstone
Printing: Coach House Printing

This book is set in Janson and Love Letter.

The publication of
Overqualified
has been generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested
$20.1
million in writing and publishing throughout Canada, by the Ontario Arts Council, by the Government of Ontario through Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit, by the OMDC Book Fund, an initiative of the Ontario Media Development Corporation, and by the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program
(BPIDP).

PRINTED AND BOUND IN CANADA

For Maggie Dort.

Dear Irving Oil,

I am writing to apply for a job with your company, and I have included my resume for your review. You will find that every reference and each previous job will check out as valid, but I think that it's important to be honest: my assigned mission is to take you down, from the inside.

Little things, you know? I'm supposed to fudge your tax records a bit, leave you open to audit. Misdirect shipments. Eat away at your profits. I'm here to speed up the peak oil problem, because after that the world starts getting better.

And it gets better and better, Irving. By the time I'm born, a hundred years from now, there's no crime. There's no pollution. Human beings are living to almost two hundred. Every year that number gets bigger. Scientists say my generation might live forever.

I volunteered to be sent into the past. How could any kid grow up in a perfect world, hearing about crime and violence and war and sexually transmitted diseases, and not think, “Fuck, that sounds exciting.” My mission is sabotage, but that does neither of us any good. I want to help you. I don't want to live forever, Irving. I want to live fast and die young. That's a thing, right? I want to be injured in a daring rooftop escape.

I spent seventy years sitting around in classrooms, just learning. Oh, how can we live longer? Oh, how can we make
ourselves more perfect? Oh, we're all very wise. But I want to kill something. I want to get drunk in a bar and take a pool cue and fuck up a dude with a scar down the side of his face. I want a scar down the side of my own face. I want to get an alcoholic woman pregnant, and when that little freak squirts out, nine months later, I want to tell him, “Live for today, you retarded little shit. The end is near.”

Joey Comeau

Dear HBO,

I want a job fighting professional boxers on your cable network. I have no training. I have no resume. I am small but I am nearly invincible, HBO. Ask anyone. My brother Adrian is in the hospital. He got hit by a drunk driver, and our doctor put a hand on my shoulder and said, “We have to stay optimistic.” My girlfriend Susan told me, “He's going to pull through,” and my mother keeps saying, “A mother should never have to outlive her children.” They've been watching too much daytime TV, I think. Everyone dies in daytime TV. In the movies, the hero lives forever. My brother and I have always lived in a buddy-cop movie. Like good cop bad cop, only we're both the bad cop.

Sometimes my phone rings in the middle of the night and it's John Wayne, crying. He's afraid, and he needs me to tell him everything will be okay. There's a beep and I switch over to the other line and it's Bruce Willis and he's heard that I have a good heart. Maybe I can help him get through this rough patch.

Clint Eastwood is at the door, and he's fallen off his bike. Have I got a Band-Aid? I don't have time for this shit, man, because I've got a train to stop. I have to bring down a madman. I have to unmask the president. I have to punch holes in manholes. I have to tear up payphones like they were phone books.

I don't make collect calls, I make the operator pay.

“Motherfucker,” I tell him.

Joey Comeau

Dear Xerox Canada,

Thank you for taking the time to consider my resume, even though I don't have one.

MICROSOFT CANADA JOB HISTORY IBM

I have been programming Perl for eight years, on every business-appropriate platform there is, and I've been around long enough to understand that there are no human beings reading this.

PENTIUM APPLE PARAMOUNT STUDIOS GENERAL MOTORS ENGINEERING

You're a room of machines looking for keywords, the same way that my ISP searches for flagged keywords in my emails and lets the authorities know if I talk about certain subjects.

PERL, UNIX, LINUX, WINDOWS, PRIME MINISTER, PONY, MY PET MONSTER, MIKE DOUGHTY, DANCE, DANCE, DRUNK DRIVER, REVOLUTION, COBOL, PASCAL, ART, DECO, ADRIAN

So I could write anything I want, and your warrior robots will kindly index me because I mention HARVARD, because I mention MIT RESEARCH LABS, because I mention the YALE KNITTING CIRCLE. Your lead robot will look over the lists that the lower robots are churning out, and say,

“There are too many, motherfucker! Sort them by year of graduation, and we'll take the youngest into consideration. They'll work for peanuts.” All the robots will laugh in that horrific robot voice. And as long as I get the most hits from the search engines, you'll hire me.

GRADUATED IN 2004 GRADUATED WITH HONOURS JENNIFER LOPEZ HOSPITAL TERROR SUSAN GIRLFRIEND $insurance-name $3psn-vb-pst

So, I'll just load up this email up with keywords RELIABLE PERFECTIONIST LIAR LIAR PERL C++ C# C*&%^$^ VISUAL BASIC AUDIO BASIC JAVA BeOS GENTLEMEN'S SOCIAL and in amongst all the keywords, will your robots find the real message?

I'm coming down there. I have a hammer and I'm going to use it to crack your robots' heads. I'm going to bust open the sides of your machines so that YALE PRINCETON NO CRIMINAL HISTORY BACKGROUND SEXUALITY CHECK RESULTS VOTED WHICH WAY spill out all over your shiny marble floor.

Joey Comeau

Dear Absolut Vodka,

I am writing to apply for a position in your advertising department. I have included my resume, which outlines my extensive experience with marketing campaigns, and with the development of brand initiatives for alcoholic beverages. These materials should give you an adequate overview of my professional experience, so I would like to use this cover letter to tell you a story.

When I was eight, my brother and I used to fight to the death on the roof of the barn. There wasn't much else to do out in the country, with those fields and that one red road. Not red like blood. Red like clay. Red like the desert cliffs in western movies. We rode our bikes on that red pavement. We swam in the warm water. We fought to the death.

It wasn't a tall barn, maybe twelve feet high, with old farm equipment laid against the side, rusted spiked ladders for our small hands. We climbed up and stood on that roof. In our heads this was the climax of an action movie. We'd never seen an action movie that took place above a vineyard, but that was okay. This wasn't a vineyard. It was a lost temple, overgrown in the jungle. We made up characters for ourselves. We hummed our own fight music.

Adrian was always a better fighter. He knew how to make me angry, and being angry made me sloppy. I lunged. I tried to shove him and he spun around, throwing me off balance. I fell off the edge, backwards, Adrian laughing. I hit the
ground hard and my lungs went empty. Grass in my mouth, mud between my fingers.

I climbed back up, tearing my hands on rust and too angry to care. Adrian laughed until I was right there, until I was up on that barn again and I almost had him, and then he turned and leapt. He never looked first.

I learned that from my younger brother. You don't look first. You jump and you trust that your body knows what to do. You don't know what I mean, do you, Absolut? Your commercials are all pretty pictures and clever design. They're very attractive. I am applying for a job, because I don't think you understand what it means to be cool or strong or invincible. You of all people should know. That is what alcohol does. It makes you strong. You can fight anyone. You can seduce any woman. You can drive faster than death.

Joey Comeau

Dear Levi Strauss & Co.,

I am writing to apply for a retail position, as advertised on your website. I have managerial experience, and I recognize that I am overqualified for sales, but I want something simple. I want to find sizes for cranky customers. I want to come back late from my lunch break, and I don't want to bring my work home with me. I have my own life. Like tonight.

Tonight at dinner my mother showed me three photographs from when Adrian and I were young. In the first, the three of us are sitting in the cage of a fair ride called “The Spider.” My mother has huge punk rock hair. Adrian and I are wearing ugly sweaters and grinning because we won. We fought and fought to be allowed on the ride and finally my mother relented.

In the second picture, the ride is in motion and my mother is holding onto the bar, smiling while our little faces are twisted with confusion and horror. Our grins are gone. This was not what we expected. We made a mistake.

In the final picture, Adrian and I are not visible at all, hiding in her lap, crying. In the picture, my mother is laughing, hard.

Anyway, as long as I come to work and do my job, what do you care?