Graduates in Wonderland

by Jessica Pan

  I can’t believe I’m turning twenty-­three this month. One year closer to death. This is the novel year. I have to write it. My therapist says that this is not a healthy attitude toward either my career or death; we shall see.

  I’m so glad I’m almost done with this job.

  I want to call you, but you gave your American phone to your mom. And what would I say to her?

  Love,

  Rachel, Who Is No Longer a Slave to the Gallerist from Hell

  NOVEMBER 17

  Jess to Rachel

  Congratulations! Did you punch him in the face? Did you swipe all of his mail onto the floor? Did you slide a piece of paper across the table that said, “This is all your fault”?

  By your mother’s definition, I will also never be an adult.

  You’ll have to tell me all the devastating details, and you can call my American phone—­because I’m home in Amarillo for Thanksgiving. I flew in last night. I’m in America, land of drip coffee and reality TV!

  I’m trying to distract myself here, because I’m still unemployed. I did not get the PR jobs. I blame the blazer. My bank account is still slowly dwindling.

  I’ve realized since I’ve been home that I like being away from Astrid. It’s a relief not having to invite her everywhere I go or having to plan my day around her. This isn’t healthy. I’m going to have to move out of our joint apartment, and I just have to figure out how I’m going to tell her.

  So I’ve been secretly perusing the ads for new apartments. I think I’m going to try to break the news to her as soon as I’m back in China. She’s the longest relationship I’ve ever had. Advice? You’re the only person who knows her like I do.

  Anyway, it feels like I never left—­Amarillo is still full of white people, flat plain lands, and mom jeans. In Beijing, I’m usually the whitest person on the street. In Amarillo, I’m the Chinese girl. In high school, whenever I would go into department stores with my mom, the saleswomen always thought I was a random Asian girl asking a white lady for things.

  Maybe you’ll go through this strange feeling as well when you go home for the holidays. You will wake up in your childhood bedroom and think, “Was it all a dream? When am I going back to Brown? Or am I still in high school? Omigod—­did I even get into college yet?” And then you’ll blink a few times, reach for your glasses (because you’re old), and realize the truth.

  I always regress to my seventeen-­year-­old self when I visit home. My childhood best friend, Paige, is back in town as well, and we’re doing the same nonsense we always did: driving around aimlessly, staking out various coffee shops for old acquaintances to see who is balding and who got fat and who has babies, and raiding our parents’ refrigerators just because we can. Whenever I run into my old boyfriends, they are inevitably still driving the same pickup trucks that I made out with them in six years ago. (Forget this information, immediately.)

  I’m back to living with my parents, which feels strange. For example: In Beijing I cycle home alone at 3 A.M. I eat almost exclusively street food from vendors who have no qualms about spitting on the ground as they hand me my food, in a country where food safety standards are shoddy at best. On the other hand, here, my mother is telling me to please be extra careful when driving to Paige’s house (which is three blocks away) and to hold a hot baking sheet with both hands. Little does she know that I drank three shots of questionable alcohol the night before I flew here from a country that doesn’t seem to know about the seat belt.

  My dad is testing my Mandarin to see if it’s as good as his yet. He left China when he was eight, so he has perfect pronunciation, but is stuck with the vocabulary of an eight-­year-­old. I’m still hovering at the vocabulary of a five-­year-­old, so maybe in three years I’ll catch up. Once he tried to tell my Chinese grandmother we were going skiing, and all he could say was, “We’re going down a big hill with two sticks. There will be snow.”

  He keeps reminding me, “It’s never too late for Caribbean medical school.” Caribbean medical school is where you go when you can’t get into medical school in the States, and he says this to me every time I leave (for the record, I never applied to medical school in the States, but I’m ignoring the implication that if I did, I wouldn’t get in. However, I would definitely not get in).

  With that nugget of confidence, I will board the plane back to Beijing in a week.

  Love,

  Jess

  P.S. I ate a whole box of Pop-­Tarts this week. But it’s okay. That’s okay, right?

  NOVEMBER 22

  Rachel to Jess

  Wait. You used to make out with guys in the backs of PICKUP trucks? And you never told me? Friends tell friends when they make out with hillbillies!

  You, my friend, are dead to me.

  Fine. I’ll take you back, but honestly.

  When your number showed up on my phone the other day, my heart leapt. I miss talking to you every day.

  Since you called, I’ve had two real job interviews and about six billion meetings with people who can in no way, shape, or form help me find a job. It’s harder to choose now that I know how temperamental employers can be, even if they seem nice at first (in order to lure you into working for them). I still don’t know whether Vince is the exception or the rule to the art world. I’m looking now at less traditional art jobs and nonprofit work—­those people seem like they have more potential to be friendly and welcoming. I’m still applying for assistant jobs, but at least now I know how to be an assistant.

  The first interview, at this very fancy performance space, did not go well. When I arrived, the door was locked, and I could see through the frosted glass that there were a bunch of big objects in crates—­they were doing some kind of installation. I knocked. I knocked again. Finally, a janitor let me in, and I asked for Bettina.

  He did not reply, but just left me there. In this big white room full of strange objects. I just had to wander around, timidly crying out, “Bettina? Um...Bettina?”

  Finally she emerges. I am dressed entirely in Brooks Brothers clothing and look like a banker. She is wearing a short Marc Jacobs dress and huge pearls, long red hair teased up in a bouffant. We sit down on a crate and I pull out my résumé to give to her, but she shakes her hands like, “Don’t give me your filthy résumé!”

  The hardest questions she asked were these:

  “What were your three favorite performance pieces of this past year?” and “How much money do you think you could make here?”

  The first one was the worst, because I could not say, “I find performance art ABSURD.” The only pieces I could remember were from my feminist art class, and all took place in the 1970s. The more the interview went on, the worse I knew I was doing.

  Finally, she slaps her hands down on the crate. “Look, I’ll tell you right now. You’re not getting this job.”

  Punch in the gut.

  “Do you want to know why you’re not getting this job?”

  NO! I never want to know shit like this—­you know this about me. Don’t tell me why we’re breaking up! Don’t tell me what’s really wrong with my outfit! DO NOT CONFRONT ME IN ANY WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM.

  “Um...yes?”

  “You come off as very shy. You shouldn’t have your previous job on your CV at all, because you were only there for three months. Your salary expectations are absolutely ludicrous.”

  I had given $25–$30k as my salary range.

  “You would be lucky to be earning twenty thousand in this environment, and the fact that you don’t know that tells me that you don’t know this world well enough.”

  I know she probably meant the performance-­art world, but it kind of felt like she was talking about the world in general. I slunk away with my tail between my legs.

  I have now been trying to network (I know) with tenuous connections, and so far, everyone says pretty much the same thing, t
hat it sucks to work in any kind of creative industry because you always have to start at the bottom as a PA or settle for something that only marginally represents what you actually want to be doing, like an entertainment lawyer, or a guy who writes jingles, or a medical illustrator.

  On the plus side, I’ve gotten a lot of free coffee. And I’ve met a lot of interesting people, but I hate being in a position where I’m asking for favors I haven’t earned. But it’s finally paid off.

  I interviewed at a nonprofit art gallery, which I loved. The two women, Joan and Sally, who interviewed me were nice and laid-­back. The job was “office administrator,” and as long as I don’t have to be somebody’s personal assistant, I think it will be better than my last job with Vince. Besides, I still get to be around art. Still, one week later, and I hadn’t heard back. So I called them...and e-mailed them...and basically had to act aggressive, which Bettina could tell you I am not, just to get another meeting with the codirector, Sally, who told me that they are hiring an assistant next month—­me!

  So that is my biggest news—­I am employed! It’s over in Chelsea. So far, my boss is kind and encouraging. There are also interns and artists coming in and out all day.

  Best thing? I can wear jeans to work. And I get a real lunch break! What could be better than this?

  I cannot convey what a big deal this is for me (job, not jeans).

  In the meantime, I still have not heard from Bill about meeting up again, but he e-mailed me to tell me he’s going back to Providence today to figure out what he wants to do with his life. I’m fine with that, as long as it involves staying in New York and dating me. But maybe you’re right about this one. I always give guys so much credit for things they haven’t even remotely demonstrated, such as empathy or kindness or...liking me. But I really don’t know.

  As part of my “new things” initiative, I applied to a writing group that meets in Park Slope once every two weeks. It seemed like it would be a good way to make friends who didn’t go to Brown and who don’t work with me. However, I submitted my story and made it up to an interview with the leader of the group—­it’s a “free” group (as in, open to all, though it costs twenty dollars a session), but it’s competitive. It was definitely insane to be applying to a writing group like a job.

  The first thing he does is describe the group to me.

  “We’ve been going for ten years; I have three different groups a week meeting at my apartment.”

  Let’s do the math. Three groups, ten people per group, twenty dollars a time = six hundred dollars a week. More than my salary—­to work three hours a week. Out of his apartment. What does that job description look like? “Serve wannabe writers Trader Joe’s wine in plastic cups”?

  Am I just bitter that I didn’t invent this job first?

  In any case, it didn’t feel right for me. I guess that’s what I get for trying to make friends on Craigslist.

  Meanwhile, Rosabelle took a job as a copy editor for a free newspaper here, which is better than making soy lattes for yuppies. She’s also baking a lot of pumpkin treats that I try to get to before Buster devours them. I do have the advantage, though, because he gets scolded when he doesn’t use a plate, and I don’t give a shit if Rosabelle scolds me.

  Also, they pulled down the shower curtain bar while having an erotic shower the other day. I walked in to find the shower curtain folded neatly over the shower drain. Rosabelle’s like the Martha Stewart of breaking things. They may not work, but they definitely look nice when she’s done with them.

  I can’t believe Rosabelle’s shower curtain drama took precedence over this, but are you really leaving Astrid? Well, at the end of the day, it’s your life and you have to do what’s best for you, not her, as long as you don’t overtly go out of your way to hurt her. I am thinking about this the way I approached leaving my job—­as much as it was terrible and hard and horrible, you have to just have faith that something better will come along and it will.

  Living with Rosabelle has also been so different post-­college—­Buster’s so much more important to her now, and with her real job, she’s so unavailable. Time is just more precious now...or maybe we’re all just changing.

  My advice: Don’t live with a couple. Especially a couple of assholes.

  Love love love,

  Rachel

  DECEMBER 3

  Jess to Rachel

  I thought performance art was miming. Maybe you didn’t get the first job because you spoke at all. But congrats on the second one! That’s great news!

  I’m back in Beijing and arrived still looking for a job. I think it’s depressing that most people our age want exactly what I want: to be journalists. They really need to stop making TV shows and movies about the thrills of being a reporter—­it’s setting up entire generations for extreme disappointment. A friend put me in touch with someone who graduated from Columbia Journalism School two years ago. She wrote me a really nice e-mail about how she was taught by Pulitzer Prize–winning reporters and how she landed great unpaid internships at magazines and how she started her own pie business because she couldn’t find a paying journalism job in New York.

  I wish everyone would stop telling me to start a blog. Meanwhile, I can’t just sit around doing nothing.

  I applied for another job that seemed vaguely related to public relations. I put on a boxy blazer and stupid work pants that swish when you walk and went to the interview.

  The job was at a small, private Chinese PR firm run by a really aggressive woman, Blair. For the interview, she left me inside a boardroom and asked me to write five hundred words on what it means to be effective at public relations.

  Um, what?

  I know nothing about PR except that it involves pointy shoes and pearls, so I had printed out a lot of information on successful PR campaigns so that I could review them on the ride over. I made sure the door was closed and used my cheat sheets on my surprise essay. It felt like a teacher was going to walk in and suspend me. Afterward, Blair glanced over it, looked me and my blazer up and down, made sure I was fluent in English, and hired me on the spot. Then she ushered me over to some Chinese girls in the office, named Candy and Coco (these are the kinds of English names cutesy Chinese girls pick for themselves).

  Blair sat me down and told me that her firm was making a pitch to represent the biggest music and arts festival in China and that I would be responsible for editing the Chinglish for every document in the office. She gestured to a mountain of paper. And I would be paid by the document, which, if I worked extra hard, would end up being the equivalent of six hundred dollars a month.

  My first reaction, inside my head, was, “Hmm, no, thank you.” But I’ve been unable to find a job for so long that I decided to go with it.

  Instead, I said, “Sure!” and then had a silent, secret heart attack (I clutched at my blazer but no one noticed).

  I turned to Candy and Coco and asked them how long they’d worked here. They started last week. I remembered seeing ads for a vacancy at this PR firm nearly every month, so I’d figured that they had a lot of employees, but from what I can tell, it just has three people. Three different people every week.

  I thought about your old boss Vince.

  Blair informed me that she had a woman cook lunch for all of us every day, so there was no reason to leave the office, ever. Then I really thought about Vince.

  Then, Blair had me edit bad Chinglish for nine hours and said I could go home at 7 P.M. I did not come to China to do this. I saw my life if I stayed at the PR firm, and the dread and fear of that life. That same day, an editor at an expat magazine contacted me about an interview for a job I’d applied for weeks ago. The magazine is distributed all over Beijing, and I stayed up all night prepping for the interview because I couldn’t bear the thought of spending the rest of my days editing Chinglish for Blair.

  The next afternoon, I snuck out of the P
R office for my magazine interview. If it sounds like I’m going crazy, that’s because I am—­the pace of life in Beijing is absurd. Even I can barely keep up with what I’m doing from one day to the next.

  When I showed up at the office of the expat magazine, everyone was young and wearing jeans. I was asked to write and edit a few articles and interviewed with the director of the company and an editor. I felt so much more competent at these tasks than faking public relations skills. I thought I had a decent shot at the job, but I needed to make sure I was the clear choice. The editor asked me to e-mail some ideas to pitch for the magazine and so I sent her two hundred.

  I got the job!

  You are now reading the words of a deputy managing editor. I’m responsible for editing each article, coming up with headlines, arranging photo shoots, and basically helping out with everything else because we have a small staff.

  My boss, Victoria, is a sassy Chinese-­American from New York who also writes for Slate and the Wall Street Journal. I want to be her when I grow up, although she scares the shit out of me.

  And so, I’m fully employed for the first time ever—­finally. No one ever tells you how strange it is to actually get paid for your labor. After having so many internships, the money just feels disconnected from the actual work. I’m finally getting paid for my editing, writing, and ideas.

  And, just like that, my life is completely unrecognizable from what it was last week. I wake up (always late) in the mornings and I have somewhere to be. I pick up a vegetable bun and hop into a cab, where I apply smeared eyeliner during the bumpy ride before I enter a buzzing office, where I have a desk.

  It’s not perfect, though. Did I mention that I am the deputy managing editor for an expat FAMILY lifestyle magazine? Yes, yes, I am. It’s not cutesy or annoying—­the layouts are glossy and beautiful, with travel features, recipes, restaurant reviews, and some really great articles. But still, there is a lot of focus on kids, which is not exactly where I saw my career starting. It’s strange that I’ll be writing about children when the only one I know is my four-­year-­old nephew, whose favorite thing is to play with my makeup and who once asked for a purse for his birthday. I’m not sure if this case study can be applied to the general kid population.