For the first year we lived in Lemoore, and Ross was learning to fly the Super Hornet, I was a free agent when it came to wives’ club membership and responsibilities, though not by choice. After waiting weeks for an official welcome e-mail, I gently broached the topic of a wives’ group with a woman I met at a party, who told me point-blank that I should run the other direction, that the group was toxic and that no new members were being contacted in an effort to quarantine the dysfunction. I asked Ross if I shouldn’t perhaps contact someone else, someone more impartial, and he cocked an eyebrow at me and asked, “If someone told you a whole room full of people had the stomach flu, why would you keep trying to get in?”
“Fine,” I said, “I know how to be the new kid. I’ll just find my own friends.”
Step one: get a job. Tomato inspector, prison librarian, community sexual health educator, and college English department secretary. These were the four jobs on my short list of careers in central California, culled from the local newspaper and a methodical search of the HR sites of companies within my area, a broad swath of rural farmland just south of Fresno. As Ross turned his attention to his training, I polished four wildly different cover letters and resumes. I was familiar with the drill by now—focus on skill sets learned and play up the words “adaptable” and “versatile,” glossing over the short tenures and telltale locations that might out me as a military wife likely to relocate on short notice. By now I had decided that my writing career might always be something totally separate from my job. I could earn money anywhere doing anything and then live and write in the margins.
After two bleak months in which I heard nothing back from anyone and came up with an even weirder list of B-string careers, Planned Parenthood offered me an interview. A three-person panel explained to me that the job required a certain “social ease,” a general comfort with people that allowed one to stroll up to strangers at bus stops and community events and start conversations about sexually transmitted infections and the ease and convenience of getting tested. The tall Latino man at the end of the table suggested I role-play a conversation with him where I would approach him at a city park and open a dialogue about chlamydia, incorporating some of the bullet points from the fact sheet he slid across the table. The only ones that jumped out at me were: (1) the Central Valley had the highest rate of the infection in California and (2) the test no longer required that a tiny bristled brush be inserted into the head of the penis. I spread my fingers on the table, noticing that the lube from my condom demonstration question was still making my hands sticky, and finally confessed that I had no idea how to start the conversation, but if they could teach me a skill like that, I would consider it a huge character strength. I didn’t get the job.