Roland Topor
The other day, while logging something on Letterboxd, I noticed a commonality between my top 4 films: all of them are about Work.
They’re about other things too, like motherhood and bears and the devil, but each of them deals with people at work, the violence and the joys of it, where we spend our time and on what. If I had room for five, I’d probably add in Broadcast News, which, surprise surprise, is also about what we do and who we are at work.
I wasn’t always lucky enough to sustain myself through writing. In fact, this is the first time in my thirty-five years that the income I make from writing, from Substack, is almost covering my rent, and it took about a year to get here. I still need side gigs (editing, etc.) to round things out, I’m still in debt without savings, but writing has become my main source of income, somehow, and it feels like an absolute privilege.
Because it is.
Most of my life has been spent working and commuting to work. I’ve been a dishwasher, a prep cook and garde-manger, a reluctant server (unsurprisingly, I was terrible), a receptionist at a driving school (which is funny, because I never learned to drive), an assistant chocolatier (I have rarely known anything as peaceful as rolling truffles all day) as well as worked in the small factory the chocolatiers owned, packaging orders in the basement, keeping my coat on most of the day. I loved that job the most, even if the commute required me to take three different buses.
At some point, I worked at a retirement home, another job I enjoyed very much. One of the residents, a retired English professor, had incredibly juicy gossip about (and slightly racy photos!) of Leonard Cohen, who had been her lover back in the day. I was also the only employee a notoriously grumpy resident trusted, and she asked for me and me alone, time after time, until her death, which was touching and felt like some kind of impossible accomplishment, having earned her trust somehow.
Later, I worked as a personal chef for a woman from Ghana and her mother, who required a specialized diet for her pancreatic cancer. This was one of the more interesting jobs I’ve had — I learned so much from both of them, knowledge I cherish and keep with me to this day, like how to wash dishes in cold water or with no soap, how to spice things correctly or how to use everything; learning to waste less. There was always tea and sourdough toast; there was always a chat.
The last job I had was at a high-end doggy daycare and spa. The clients were surgeons and lawyers, and all their credit cards were heavy. We opened at 7 AM, so I’d leave my apartment at the other end of the city around 5:40 AM and make it there about an hour later. A physically and emotionally draining job, I did everything from reception and booking to helping bathe and blow-dry dogs, running the daycare, doing overnights, and janitorial-level cleaning. I also learned to pill dogs and give injections and other medications. I kept track of allergies and dietary restrictions; I handled raw meat and picked up dog shit: a lot of it and every single day.
It was a small business run by an absolute maniac of a woman, a Capricornian workhorse, who eventually drove me to my breaking point, but only after four and a half years of service. For much of that time, I worked for her 50+ hours a week while also running the two magazines I founded and edited. Somehow I found the time to write poetry, too.
Working has never been a choice for me, and I’ve never been picky; just mentally ill and broke enough to try to do everything, the creative and the not-so. After all, what working gives us is an acute awareness of time, how it slips through our fingers and ends up eaten by someone else’s hunger. I somehow managed to keep my time away from their teeth.
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“ After all, what working gives us is an acute awareness of time, how it slips through our fingers and ends up eaten by someone else’s hunger”
Ooof.