Exile on Maine

I wake up to a green-foam pool-noodle in front of my face.  It cushions a wooden board from the top bunkbed and prevents me from hitting my head.  Someone from seasons past has drawn a picture of a fat cartoonish man on the noodle next to Sharpie-inscribed Walden excerpts and summer quotes about fleeting moments.  I slink out of bed horizontally and shower while listening to someone else’s music.  The bathroom’s ceiling tile is loose, and a pinky-nail-sized spider descends from its spool and dangles in the air.  During the breakfast rush-hour there is a line for the toaster because only two out of four slots work.  My commute to work is a walk through the woods, and I am careful not to step in the mud.  A logical question to ask is:  How did this happen?  (The entire morning routine, not the toaster malfunction.) Guests always ask me the same questions:  How did you find this job?  How did you find housing?  So is th...

Every new job starts in a sea of strangers.  Some of us are timid and vulnerable.  We shake hands and ask what is expected of us before we use our phones to shield us from prolonged eye-contact.  Half-hearted small-talk ensues, and we discover our mutual fondness for Mexican food.  Inevitably the alphas emerge.  They spill their guts or gloat in high-decibel voices and bray with laughter without fear of judgment.  Somewhere along the way bonds are formed.  They are sparked by shared hobbies or like-mindedness, and they are perpetuated out of convenience and proximity. This is my fourth seasonal job while working and living on-site with fellow employees, and I’m careful when I throw myself into an unfamiliar population.  My biggest concern is that I’ll misjudge someone who appears cheerful and decent at conversation or basketball only to discover a darker side prone to selfishness and brooding.  I once befriended a man because he cou...

When you were a baby, you could be fooled by a game of peekaboo.  This is because you had no sense of object permanence.  If your mother hid her face behind a blanket, you thought she was gone.  In the same manner, you did not think of the room behind the wall.  You only saw the wall.  This type of thinking doesn’t last very long.  Quite soon we learn all the rooms in the house, and then we may feel stuck and want to leave.  We no longer see the wall like we did with our infant eyes.  We are looking into the next room hoping that one will be better.  I spent much of my winter in a Texas house where I imagined what my future in Maine would look and feel like.      When I opened the door to my dormitory, I assumed I would find much of the same I had in the past.  There would be a bed, a table, a toilet——no unfamiliar furniture.  First, someone had to show me to my room.  None of the rooms were decorated....

I woke up in a shabby hostel in Boston and watched the morning news with the volume cranked up too high.   A city councilman named Wayne drove me to the bus station in a kidnapper’s van.   He was bald and sported a gray-haired pencil mustache.   The engine sputtered.   Along the way, Wayne pointed out where the Bruins play ice hockey and where the Boston strangler claimed his first victim. “You see them boarded-up windows?” he said.  “Right there.” He rolled the windows down, lit a cigarette and blew the smoke out the window.  We passed a panhandler with a limp arm.  Wayne slowed down and greeted the man.  Then he turned to me and said the panhandler suffered a motorcycle accident.  “Poor guy,” he said, shaking his head. Wayne dropped me off two blocks from the bus station, and I slipped five dollars into his tip jar.  He shook my hand and said I was the customer of the month.  He probably said that to a lot of peo...