The Wikiness

So much great culture was happening for me in 1981. My high points:

• Starting Gravity’s Rainbow (1973)–this book challenged my powers of attention and my notions of what a novel could do. I took a year to finish it.
• Seeing My Dinner With André–a film that both of my parents (divorced) enjoyed with me.
• Great albums that I soon knew by heart from constant play: Wild Gift by X; Joe Jackson’s tribute to the music of my father’s youth (and which dad and I enjoyed on a road trip together through Wisconsin) Jumpin’ Jive; the Pychedelic Furs (1980), which introduced me to harmonic drone in pop music; and the Brian Eno/David Byrne collaboration, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, which expanded my understanding of recorded music in general.

But my memoir prompt–to describe a summer job in 500-ish words–limits me. So as I was enjoying the culture above referenced, here’s my chapter:

I was 20 years old the summer of 1981, living rent-free with dad in his two-bedroom apartment off Swift Road and North Avenue. Dad had downsized recently, entering his late alcoholic phase. He was employed selling chemicals to car washes, and was gone for days in his company car, seeking out and servicing customers in rural Wisconsin and Minnesota. 

Dad wasn’t always the best provider, but he often gave what I could use. In this instance, he gave me literal “keys to the highway,” gifting me his 1973 two-door Malibu for $1. It was needed in that part of suburbia–no sidewalks meant you had to drive to get anywhere.

I drove it west down North Avenue a mile where a large Venture, a discount department store slightly classier than Kmart, anchored a strip mall on the south side of the street. I applied there for a job, and to my surprise, got hired as a security guard. For some reason, they didn’t drug test me. 

My duties included manning a post at the entrance door, dressed in a bright orange vest over a collared shirt and dress pants. Here, I greet customers bringing in packages and enforce the no-bags policy. Unless they’re headed to Customer Service, their package remains with me at the desk until they’re ready to leave, or it’s sealed with color-coded security tape for them to carry into the store. 

Even on the busiest day, few customers brought their own bags, so I would spend long hours just standing there at my desk, with my stapler, special tape, pens, and bag claim receipts. These long periods allowed time for observation, rumination, and reflection. 

I know all this in 2025 because in 1981 as I manned my Venture post, I also wrote down my thoughts on the back of those receipts. On one side they read, “STAPLE THIS STUB TO THE CUSTOMER’S PACKAGE.” On the other, they held blank space for my mind’s and heart’s expression.

I wrote down improvement ideas for the campus radio station, recorded conversations with Venture employees, and poured out my tortured heart on the subject of no girlfriend! And I used my liberal arts education, making poetic observations on the scenes passing before me. 

At Illinois Wesleyan, I had just finished the second year of a French-English double major. I led a druggy lifestyle there, self-medicating several times a week with marijuana and alcohol. Moving to dad’s unsupervised apartment, I adopted a perhaps 25% version of my college routine. For instance, after a long shift, I enjoyed nothing more than a cannabis-infused hour or two of channel 11 nature programming. And though I wasn’t yet a coffee drinker, at least once a week, I would dose myself after breakfast with a bit of pot, and then report for my shift. It made everything more vivid, and boring things intriguing–exciting, even. 

I marveled at the clothing of customer’s, the “psudo-silk swish[ing] past,” their “Intense new-age, nuke-age colors: /Fireball reds, omnivorous oranges, searing yellows, and this/ blue–vestigial, fire-doomed blue.” Somehow these observations led to thoughts of “ever-silent space” and “the timid wail of universal moaning.” 

“Who is this poetic young man?” part of me thinks in 2025.

Another part of me wants to embrace him as a friend, tell him it’s going to be OK, that he doesn’t need all the extra stimulation.

Yet another part of me knows such advice wouldn’t have worked. He had his own path to learn from, in his own time.