31 July 2003

Hourly Work

My cracked tooth requires me to attend Navy sick call for (I hope) the last time. I discovered it while flossing vigorously yesterday. The filling on the last upper molar on the right side assumed independent life and I realized suddenly how vulnerable I am to the disintegration of my body. I have a few weeks of active status left, the first of September and formal retirement looming. I have been living in a fool's paradise of separation leave, much of it accrued since the terror attacks in 2001. I have been playing the Senior Executive by day, concealing and active duty identification card in my wallet. The security blanket ends soon and they will cut it up, sever the umbilical to the great haze-gray machine I have served so long.

I am eager to have a health plan that includes some sort of dental co-payments. I don't have one, due to the curious situation in which I find myself. I accepted a one-year appointment in the Federal bureaucracy, just until they work out a few details. The detail comes with a handsome rate of pay, calculated on an hourly basis, but does not include the pension plan, or the health care or vacation. I am an hourly worker. If I do not work, I do not get paid. If I get sick, I must find my own way. For a variety of perfectly good reasons, the details of my permanent position are now stretching out into the middle distance, and my time in the Navy is about to end abruptly. The indecision, the ability to defer decision endlessly is a hallmark of the Government. It is that indecision that will drive the decision I must make as the final separation looms. I must make it in the next week or two. I also need to remember to take my dental record with me as I drive a half hour north of the city to the vast Naval medical complex in the morning traffic.

What to do? I am overcome by ambivalence. Not having leave or dental suddenly has an imperative all its own. I will not be paid for going to the dentist, and perhaps that is unreasonable on my part. But I have no leave and I must have the cracked tooth repaired. I find I must have a dental plan, and I would like to have one that is not provided by the military. Years of Navy dentistry have taken their toll, never seeing the same Docotr twice, each visit an adventure.

I felt the imperative last night after I left the office and was caught in the mess on the 14th Street bridge trying to get out of town. I caught up with K.C. and his Dad at the Rock Bottom just minutes behind the appointed minute. You were with me right to the door and it felt good. But I knew something was wrong- it was Dollar Beer Night. The place was jammed. It is a huge place and I did not make a move to my wallet to show my ID to the bouncer and he did not challenge my rheumy stare. The crowd spilled out into the hostess area and I realized I was never going to find anyone in the din.

The noise and the press of the bodies made the search a challenge. I could not advance to the bar and the slim young women in black with trays filled with tall pints of micro-brew made each move a challenge. I scanned the crowd, bar area to veranda, veranda through the hostess station and down the long shot-gun aisle to the back bar. It was packed all the way. I did not see them there, or on the crowded porch were all the smoking kids were clustered around the tables behind the decorative fence that separates the restaurant from the Ballston sidewalk. The crowd was filled with seekers, pairs of young women looking the best they could and astonishingly tall young men with complexions almost completely cleared up.

Sprinkled in the crowd were a few old dogs like me. Most were in casual clothes, but I saw some still in dress clothes, probably hoping the beer would not slosh down the Brooks Brothers Bureaucrat and mar the shine on the Johnson dress shoes. I still had my collar button in full business mode and bright red cravat fully up. A few of the seekers looked at me slide-long, as if their father had arrived to join the party, but not all of them. I was glad I have given up playing at being young. Some of the other gray wolves in the crowd have clearly not, looking perhaps to cut a likely prospect out of the herd.

I was on the verge of giving up, already thinking of the cool waters of the Chatham pool and the quiet of a tall vodka tonic. I walked down the other side of the shotgun aisle, past the tables filled with people eating to avoid the pack at the bars. There I saw the beefy presence of my friend Pete and a slimmer version of him right beside. It struck me that K.C. is now the same age as Pete was when he came out of Vietnam, the ribbon on the back of his black beret cut in the swallow-tail that means he was a blooded warrior. K.C. is learning the ways of a different jungle, this one being Washington.

I had succeeded in getting K.C. hired as a government temporary employee. He has been here for five months or so. We have the Full Time Equivalent authorization to hire several new people at his grade and experience, but the economic downturn and the general jitters have resulted in a flood of applications for each available position. K.C. is like me, then, a temporary worker. Our hourly wage is just a little different. We reviewed the packages for the available full time positions. There was a Masters graduate of the London School of Economics. She wanted to be a GS-9, and ranked no higher than 13th on a slate of 15 "well qualified."

K.C. was fourth. The way forward to hiring him was blocked by a disabled veteran, a double dipper on the preference scale. My Department is a Veterans Preference participant for hiring purposes, a Congressional add-on from some other time. In the scoring for prospective employees an applicant receives five points for honorable service, and another five for disability. So that position was blocked. The panel interviewed the Veteran and the reports are that he is unsuitable for anything we need but his score is unassailable. I don't know how we will deal with it, and it is quite odd to find myself loathing an ex-soldier who is so adept at gaming the system.

I sat down at the table across from the two generations and we had a dollar beer and some shrimp. We shouted war stories as one another, both of a war long gone and one still in progress. My friend Pete is eager to have me visit Memphis where he lives, semi-retired, as his wife gets a chance to be the primary breadwinner as a Navy civilian. There is talk that they want to close down the Personnel Center there in the backwater of Millington, Tennessee, and move it back to Washington where it used to be. They will have to buy out the contracts of the civilian workers in Tennessee, just as they had to buy out the contracts of the civilians in Washington when they decamped in the night like the Baltimore Colts. The government is a curious and wonderful thing. After nearly thirty years of service I can describe it but cannot explain it. The internal logic is so consistent. It is the external manifestation that is so strange. Like my secretary, who sends me an e-mail on the road with my hotel confirmation number but not the name of the Hotel with which it is associated. She is a nice woman but the job is not the point. Being there is the point. To get the benefits.

We finished the shrimp and managed, at length, to attract the attention of our waitress. We in turn decamped through the throng to the bar of the Macaroni Grill where there was no dollar beer and plenty of quiet. We drank wine and swapped stories. My friend asked me to stay to dinner and I had to regret. I needed to plunge into the cool water of the Chatham pool to wash away the struggle of the day and think through what I am going to do next.

I arrived on the pool deck with fifteen minutes to go, and the cool water washed over me and flooded out the sound of the day in a cloud of bubbles.

I had hoped to talk to you and make the day complete. But I will have to let that wait until later this morning. I have to find a uniform in the back of the closet and pretend to be a sailor once more.

For a little while. For the benefits.