Fantasy Receptionist

My favorite television shows now are Mad Men and The Office (if you consider the Daily Show in its own category). These are both good shows and nicely made and obviously someone put lots of talent and work into making these so very lovely. But I suppose some amount of my ravenous consumptions of these fantasy worlds—one in which everyone is elegantly fashionable and self assured in their discontent and racism/sexism and the other in which everyone is exquisitely absurd and thoroughly bathed in the light of pitch perfect witticism—is my fantasy to be a receptionist.

In this other life, I am a very happy secretary/receptionist/personal assistant. I bathe not to make up for lost hours of sleep but so I may smell fresh and brighten the office. I wear heals. Rather than scrubs and awkward ratty student white coats I wear clothing that comes with a waistline. I have a bee hive and in this fantasy world, I wear long bright red false nails not outlawed by the CDC. They only mildly hinder my typing speed and make a pleasant clackety tip tap noise.

As a receptionist, I am hot. This is helped by the fact that I don’t have to arrive anywhere at 530 am. Nor do years of cortisol overload lead to peculiar weight distributions, terrible skin, and a diet consisting of vending machine products. I don’t worry about getting sued if my cleavage shows, and I don’t have to worry about offending people by putting my boobs in their face while I examine their ear wax and nose hairs. This is because I will not be examining their ear wax and nose hairs. I can wear short skirts and offensively ugly earings that will not get caught in my stethescope. I will not have a stethescope.

Instead of 2 years of pre med, 4 years of medical school, 4 years of residency required for training, not to mention the additional 2-6 years spent discovering genes, reconstructing the health systems of small nations, and dicking around to salvage one’s mental health, I can get pretty good at a particular office space in less than 1 year. I can already type very well you see. My handwriting is very good. And I am excellent at filing, especially when stoned.

At 5 pm, I depart and arrive at my single young woman urban apartment, and I kick off my heals and lounge on a luxurious piece of furniture which I have purchased with my single young working woman salary (which is actually a positive rather than a negative number). I sensuously pet my cat and speak in a deep throaty voice to this creature of my day’s adventures. I am allergic to cats, but in this other life I may as well eliminate other burdensome details of this one.

A girl friend calls, shall we get cocktails and pick up handsome men, and I will say no dahling I must finish my novel tonight. I make dinner or someone makes it for me, and it has real vegetables in it. I drink an after dinner brandy, since in this other life I am mentally healthy and I do not worry about a single drink dissolving my threadbare semblance of sanity and wildly sobbing for the next several days. I type. In my underwear. What the hell, I am so mentally robust I have a beer. I have 2. I smoke a cigarette, which in this other life is sexy and not so bad for you and does not prompt me like a little seal into reciting cardiovascular outcome statistics and mortality rates for small cell lung carcinoma. I fall asleep in soft sheets.

On the weekends I attend a vigorous pilates class, followed by a bloody mary. Followed by another one. I sit around in my underwear some more, typing, scratching my belly, smoking drinking napping. I have a boyfriend and he is actually something I have kept from this life. I call him poopsie, but in the other life he permits this. We have a wild and exotic love life and frequently fly to tropical islands

Of course, in this other life, I would not be a particularly good secretary, as the same things that offend me about being a medical student would persist: being bossed around. Detail orientation. Doing meaningless work. I would forget things. I would stare away into space. And it is true, I would dearly miss being up to my elbows in intestines. I would miss poop jokes. Would miss being a voyeur of birth, sickness, triumph, death (so that i may remain a philosopher). The novel i will write in this life will be less boring. I can wear the heels tomorrow.