Communications Coordinator

You need to find a new career. Adjunct pay sucks, and you want out. You’ve been teaching since your MFA and hardly write anything anymore. You’re thinking of going into the private sector, so you take a selfie in front of a bookshelf for your LinkedIn page, which you started about six years ago and I haven’t touched since. You read somewhere that you should update it—that employers actually give a shit about LinkedIn. So you do.

Two days later, you start getting spam emails from LinkedIn. Just notifications. It’s like you woke it up, and now it remembers you exist. Tips for Writing the Perfect Resume. The whole thing kind of makes you want to barf.

A few days go by, then you get a notification that hits you hard. Congratulate Aaron McGuiness on 17 years at Monk’s Tavern. At first, you laugh because who makes a LinkedIn page for being a bartender? Graduated from Shitbag University. Then you get that heavy feeling in your gut. You remember the last time you saw Aaron in the hospital. The sparse patches of hair— the grey, sagging skin. You never knew anyone who’d had cancer before, let alone someone only 42 years old. You remember the day he told you, “I’m done, man. I’m done,” and you just stared at him, dumbstruck. It’s still too much to process, even though he’s been gone a year now.

You go back on LinkedIn and start looking for entry-level “communications” positions. You read somewhere that it’s a job you could use that useless MFA to get. It’s the twenty-first century for fuck’s sake. If you could go back and slap yourself for studying poetry instead of computer science, you would. You scroll down a few posts as that heavy feeling returns.

You try to be realistic. No “director” positions — something with “associate” or “coordinator” in the title. Something that will give you fifty grand and benefits. You quit bartending to work as an adjunct 6 years ago; now you’re somehow making less money and still haven’t finished your book yet.

You’ve been scrolling on LinkedIn for hours, and you can’t keep track of companies and positions anymore. It’s just a blur of responsibilities and preferred qualifications. You get up and grab a beer. When you come back, a little message window has popped up. It says it’s from Aaron McGuinness.

Sup, dickhead?

You laugh for a second, then stand there confused. A moment passes, then get really angry. You click the window, and it minimizes; then, click it again to bring it back to full size.

What the fuck? You say to yourself.

It must be some kind of joke. Maybe someone at LinkedIn had a bad day and wanted to fuck with you. Then you think it must be Aaron in some kind of postmortem prank. Like a scheduled email or something.

Who is this? You type.

No reply for a few seconds.

One and done? He replies.

You don’t understand. It doesn’t make sense yet.

Two and thru?

It starts to dawn on you. This is what you and Aaron would say to each other after your shift at Monk’s ended. Every time, you goaded each other to have another beer instead of going home.

That was a long time ago.

Three and flee?

Fuck you. I can’t even imagine the hemorrhoid of a life you must lead to think this is funny, you type.

It’s me, boo.

Bullshit…

You launch into an avalanche of invectives at whoever is on the other side of this chat box. There’s back-and-forth. So much so that you start asking it questions that only the real Aaron would know. Not because you want to believe, but because you want to catch the asshole on the other end in a lie. But after a while, he starts to convince you. He starts answering in the way that Aaron would answer. At first, you feel a sort of prickly rage. Then he reminds you about the time you told him what your dead father said to you when you were a kid. That time, you found him drunk and crying in his car. You never talk about that. Not to anyone. You spent two years in an MFA program writing poems about your dead dad without ever actually talking about it.

How is this happening??? How do you exist here?????? You type.

We exist everywhere, dude.

You spend the next few nights chatting with Aaron in the LinkedIn messenger. It is exhilarating and sickening at the same time. He tells you about the afterlife, or at least the parts that he can put into words. For everything he can’t, he just says beyond, dude. He doesn’t ask any questions. He seems to not be concerned with earthbound matters, which is comforting somehow. It feels so good to talk to him. You cry constantly and feel the warmth that comes from an enormous and unexpected sense of harmony. You can hardly leave the house. You spend most of your time in a comforting glow, waiting to reach out and to be reached.

---

After four days, Aaron informs you that this will be the last time he will reach you in this form. He also says that he doesn’t know if you’ll ever find another channel so clear as this one. Before he leaves, he says he has one more thing to say.

Communications Coordinator? Seriously?

It takes you a second to realize what he’s talking about.

What’s wrong with that? You respond.

Sounds lame. Thought you were a poet.

A tinge of rage sparkles in your chest. You pause for a moment.

I need a job, man. Poetry doesn’t exactly pay the bills.

Would Bukowski write emails for corporate America?? Don’t try, bro.

Bukowski, you say with a small chuckle. That’s who you read back at Monks. Before grad school and before teaching seven sections of freshman composition at two different community colleges every semester. You and Aaron used to talk about Bukowski as some kind of mythical beacon of language and life. A guidepost for the underclass bohemian. That was so long ago. Now, you actually have to think about things like retirement and health insurance and somehow finding the will to shoehorn five minutes of mindfulness exercises into your day. It’s a lot. Aaron never left the Monk’s Tavern bubble until he got sick, at least. Those things didn’t exist there. At Monk’s, there were no 401Ks, and you could show up to work wearing the same Melvin's hoodie for 8 years straight, and nobody cared. But that isn’t sustainable. Aaron would know that if he’d survived. He never had to grow up. Never had to try. That is your lot, for better or for worse.

Buk didn’t live in late-stage capitalism, bro. Hommie’s got loans to pay off.

Aaron doesn’t respond. You type a few more lines, but still, no response. He’s gone again, you realize. It feels like another kick to the stomach. A second death. But the overriding joy of having a few more conversations with Aaron chases some of the pain away. You close your laptop and take a few days off from the job search.

---

Maybe you’ll eventually land that communications coordinator position at a mid-sized tech company. The pay will be better than you ever got teaching or bartending. It’ll be a little lame, and you probably won’t write anymore, but it’ll be nice to have steady work and health insurance. Aaron will never contact you again. Not in a way that you’ll notice, at least. You’ll wait for him, thinking that if he ever does make contact, you’ll tell him you’re still working on that book of poems. You just need to settle into the new gig for a while, and then you’ll be able to finish that book of poems about your dead dad. It’ll happen, you’ll promise him.

Or you take Aaron’s advice. Fuck coordinating communications. You’ll pick up a couple of shifts at the bar and start publishing some poems in online journals. A path will appear before you. Not the lighted path you’d hoped for, but a darker one. This path will probably not end much differently from Aaron’s, hopefully a few decades later than his did. Getting laid while you are still able to get laid. Drinking most nights while your organs hold up their end of the bargain. Drifting slowly into a kind of isolation as your remaining friends peel off into the void. Endlessly seeking noise and light for companionship. It won’t be that bad, though. It’ll only look that way from the outside. All you have is your body and an unknown quantity of time. Everything else is bullshit. You wouldn’t be able to see that if you were a communications coordinator. That’s why he showed up there after all. To try and explain it to you.