Fall 2009

Upon Being Turned Down for a Job

Driving the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile

by Corey Ginsberg

It was one thing to be denied a spot
in the depression study:
no reason given other than your profile isn’t a good match.
Or the focus group on low sex drive
and accompanying $75 gift card to Target.
To be left wondering:
Am I too depressed? Not depressed enough?
How little sex is too little sex?

It was one thing to be rejected by 89 editors
in the past five months, turned down for 62 jobs
in a span of weeks, to be told by the invention company
no sane person would ever use a rotisserie tanning machine.

Even my blood’s not good enough
to be donated—the little red dollop always comes belly-up
in the iron-testing tube, and the dreadlocked man on the red bus
sends me away
with a Band-Aid and cookie.

I eventually got past my upset with the hot guy from the gym
who asked me out
then never called, the one I’ve fantasized about
for two years, the only guy I’ve given
my real number to since I’ve been in Miami.

Even my fantasies end
with failure: signing the book deal, first public reading,
but where are my pants and why is my novel in Spanish?
Marrying the hot guy from the gym only to find
he’s a robot from the future—his six-pack is synthetic
protein skin covering an atom bomb programmed to explode
on our first anniversary.

I learned to accept
my dog won’t come near me
after I’ve eaten my mid-afternoon
I-live-alone-and-don’t-give-a-shit-about-my-breath-
raw-garlic-hot sauce-and-tomato-sandwich,
that I use ice cream, horror movies, Facebook,
and sixteen-ounce cans of Natural Lite
to buffer the echo in the void.

But having my application turned down
to drive the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile
is its own horrid genus of failure,
the climax of a botched parade of sexual shortcomings,
job-market inadequacies and dozens of false starts
leading to the abyss of apathy and eventual acceptance.

To be a broke graduate student writer vegetarian
terrified of driving, unable to read
a road map or tell southeast from northwest,
willing to whore herself out
for a six-month joyride in a frank on wheels—
a testament to pop-culture gluttony, ground meat
and crackpot consumerism—
makes the previous litany of deficiencies
seem like background noise at a demolition derby.

If I listen hard enough, I can almost hear
The Real World laughing out a chorus
of I told you so’s beneath the chaos and explosions
that blanket the otherwise unremarkable night.