Not long after I quit my job to become a writer, Victor quit his to be an executive at a medical software company. This was awesome, except for the fact that now both of us worked at home and constantly wanted to murder each other. I took a lot of freelance writing jobs to pay the bills, including one where I was paid to review bad porn. Victor would walk around the house in his Britney Spearsesque hands-free headset, making business deals and screaming things like “BUY! SELL! WE NEED MORE ELEPHANTS ON THIS PROJECT!” Or something like that. Honestly, I wasn’t really listening. I just know that nothing is more distracting than a man wandering aimlessly through your home while yelling to himself about spreadsheets and investment returns while you’re trying to write a satirical article about the eternal cultural relevancy of Edward Penishands.
Inevitably Victor would wander blindly into my office as he walked around the house, looking as if he were screaming about project management to the confused cats hiding under my desk. I’d glare at him, but he would never get the hint, so instead I’d pull up a work-related porn clip from my computer, skip to the money shot, and turn the volume to eleven. Victor would look at me in horrified panic as he’d cover his mouthpiece and run from my office, desperately hitting mute and whisper-screaming to me about being on an important conference call. Then he’d ask—in his professional telephone voice—whether everyone was all right, as it sounded like someone was hurt, and I had to hand it to him, because that was a pretty good recovery. Then he’d come back and explain the importance of silence on his serious conference call, and I would stress the importance of staying in his own damn office. Then he’d stress the importance of my “doing some real work instead of just watching porn at three in the afternoon,” and I’d stress that I was not “enjoying” the porn and that I was merely “reviewing” it. FOR RESEARCH. Considering that we spent a majority of our workday in pajamas while porn played in the background, there was a surprising amount of stress in that workplace.
Eventually Victor would stalk off, muttering about ethics and courtesy, and I’d scream down the hall, “THIS IS MY JOB, ASSHOLE. STOP HASSLING ME OR I WILL STAB YOU IN THE EYE,” and then he’d put his call on mute again and threaten to poison my coffee. It was a lot like working in a regular office, except that there were cats there, and also you got to say out loud exactly what you would have just said in your head if you worked in an office that had cubicles and security guards.
Before, when we both worked out of the house, we used to come home and bond by complaining about the moronic people in our respective offices who were obviously trying to destroy us, but now we couldn’t even have that conversation, because, as we were the only ones there, it was perfectly obvious that the only moronic coworkers now trying to destroy us actually were us. After many months of near stabbings, we finally agreed that we needed a house where our offices were farther apart, and we realized that there was nothing tying us to Houston any longer. We were free to move anywhere we wanted. Victor suggested Puerto Rico, but when I looked in my heart I knew where I wanted to move, and no one was more shocked about it than myself, because it went against everything I’d promised myself years earlier when I had Hailey.
When Hailey was born my first thought was that I needed a drink and that hospitals should have bars in them. My second was to assure myself that Hailey would have an entirely different childhood than I had had. I looked at her little face, and I promised to never throw large, dead wild animals on the kitchen table, or set cougars loose in the house. Victor seemed confused but agreed, as he assumed that the drugs were still in my system. They were, but it didn’t change the fact that I was determined that Hailey’d have a life of ballet lessons and museums, and would never wander into the backyard to look at the caged bobcats, only to find a pet duck whose beak had been eaten off by a wild raccoon.