Chapter 7 

One day in class, Dave asked for volunteers to go to the local CBS affiliate with Bill Sanders to watch him tape an SSA public affairs spot for TV. The only two who raised their hands, surprisingly, were me and Carrie. I'd always been interested in technical stuff, and Carrie just wanted to get out of the class. About 11 AM we left in Mr. Sanders' car. He was a tall, thin man with glasses, not too old, who had an easy conviviality

Channel 3 was in a low building along the Beltline Highway. Carrie and I didn't speak much as we were led through the administrative offices into the studios. While Bill was being wired for his spot, the noon news started on the other side of the studio. The set looked smaller and meaner than on TV, the harsh lights almost unbearable. The two cameras dollied in and out while shadowy figures in the control room gave orders. It was fascinating to watch. I noticed one guy in the booth who spent the whole half-hour watching an All in the Family rerun on the network feed.

Bill, meanwhile, was struggling to get his shit together. Time after time the tape was rerun and the spot started over. The director kept asking for different inflections on some words, and Bill had a tendency to talk faster as he went on. It took about 15 takes until an acceptable commercial was completed. On the replay, Bill earnestly spoke of the benefits of SSI and urged those not covered by Social Security to drop on by the office on Odana Road. The spot wasn't bad.

That night at Bud's, Alan Andich and I were playing pool, and as usual I was losing badly as Alan ran the table. I leaned up against a wall and sipped my beer, watching my 50 cent stake go down the drain.

A young lady came up to me. She was . . . quite something. Fluid and curvy, with long black hair and cat eyes, she was wearing skin-tight black jeans and a camisole top that bounced delightfully with her step. She slid to a stop next to me, took my arm and started to whisper in my direction. Startled, I turned to look at her and saw nothing but endless longing in her eyes. I was momentarily speechless. Dimly, I perceived she was talking to me.

"Huh?" I leaned closer.

"Hi," she breathed. She smelled incredible. "My name's Lisa. What's yours?"

"Uh . . . Scott," I wittily replied.

Her eyes momentarily widened flirtatiously. "Hi, Scott." She moved across me and wrapped her free hand around the back of my neck. Slowly, as I stared at her like a rabbit caught in headlights, she pulled my head down and offered her full glossy lips.

What the hell is this? My paranoia kicked in. Why is she doing this? As her lips neared mine, I glanced over her shoulder and saw, in the far-away gloom at the end of the bar, a beefy, crew-cut man who seemed to be taking a sudden interest in me.

Our lips touched, but I wasn't paying attention any more. Bells were going off in my head. Danger bells. Claxons. General Quarters!

Just at that moment, Alan, who had been watching the events, came to the same conclusion. Having seen a lot more of the world than me, he knew what to do.

He slammed the pool cue down on the table with such force that all small talk within 50 feet came to an abrupt halt. All eyes turned to him.

"Cook!," he yelled in an evil voice. "Goddamn you, Cook, that is the last time you are going to pull that shit on me!" He shook a finger at me from across the pool table. "I am going to pound the crap out of you!" Pounding his fist into his other hand to emphasize the point, he headed for Bud's front door, away from the bar. "Outside! Right now! I am going to beat the shit out of you, you little pudknocker!"

Quick as a wink, Lisa faded away into the gloom beyond the shaded pool table lamps. Alan and I were out the door before anyone moved. It was about 5 degrees out, but we were too wired to notice.

"What the hell was that?," I said, gesturing back in Lisa's general direction.

Alan shook his head. "Jesus, you are one lucky asshole, Scott. Did you see that fucking Marine in there?"

"I sure did. His girlfriend?"

"Yeah. She tries to play some kind of head game on the guy, hoping he'll beat you up for her. Christ, I hate women." He shook his head. He seemed genuinely incensed by the whole thing.

"You saved my life, Alan! That guy would've killed me with one shot!"

"OK. Buy me a beer." We went back in, skirted the pool area and spent the next four hours recounting the story to our classmates.



******************

As the course wore on, I started wondering about more general topics. Looking around the office one day, I was struck with how . . . non-tacky everyone looked. Despite the preferred SSA dress code of non-threatening casualness, the office radiated youth, success and culture. The reason, of course, what that SSA required all the CRs to be white-collar college graduates. But why? I was coming to learn that there was nothing terribly academic about SSA's operations -- in fact, the job required very little in the way of actual knowledge. You took the claim, you handed it to a DRT for transmittal to Baltimore, you took a break. For this you need a degree? In addition, strictly from a career standpoint a CR wasn't all I'd hoped it would be. We all started as GS-5s, $9,959 a year (except Carrie and Laura, who had previous Government experience and were hired as GS-7s). The highest you could go as a CR was a GS-10, or a GS-11 if you were an office manager. Considering all the training and time that went into each CR, it didn't seem to be worth it. Back in Washington, which was afflicted with headquarteritis, a GS-10 was a Xerox operator. My dad was a GS-15 with GSA, and he didn't have to talk to crazy people about the value of their TV sets.



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Steve was always rambling on about starting a magazine. I was never clear what the magazine should be about, but I suspect that was the last thing Steve was worried about. He had an amazing ability to string completely non-related words together to form quasi- coherent, screamingly funny sentences about nothing in particular, an almost Monty Pythonesque surrealism.

During a hazy night at a Greek restaurant down by the University, Steve broached his plans. We would start a newsletter for the CRTs, ostensibly reporting on the class activities "with my special features."

"What should we call it?," I asked.

"This is great. Get this. Mirage!"

This was actually a fairly neat play on words, as the monthly SSA magazine for employees, a deadly listing of retirements and office reunions, was called Oasis, after the original name for the Title II side of the house, "Old Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI)."

That night at the Greek restaurant, like all our nights out, seemed more isolated vignettes than narratives. We often found ourselves in the middle of a situation with no idea how we got there. I looked up at one point in the conversation and found a tall, deadly serious young man sitting with us at our small table. Nobody had noticed him arrive. He had a short black beard and a smudge of ash on his forehead.

"Oh, yeah, Ash Wednesday," Steve commented. He was a still-in-the-fold Catholic. "I forgot to go."

"You didn't miss anything." The stranger had a weird, mechanical voice about three octaves too low. Everybody looked at him. Steve, ever the host, extended his hand.

"Hi! I'm Steve, and this is Scott, Dave, Alan, Skip and Bill."

The stranger shook his hand. "My name is Beelzebub."

"Pardon me?," Steve said, his smile fading a little.

"Beelzebub." He looked meaningfully into our twelve drunken eyes. "I am the Devil incarnate."

This was something new. The Devil sat with us for about an hour, sipping a glass of water, answering our questions about Hell. ("Where is Hell?," Bill asked. "Buffalo," the Devil replied.)


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