By Joshua Ryan

Chapter 7: Carefully Review Your Vocational Options

Next morning, I dunno, I actually felt better about goin to class.  You know when somebody says you should “get a life”?  But now it was like, yeah, I do have a life.  You can’t see it, cuz it’s outside of all this annoying shit I’m doin around here, but I do have it.  And my life could actually end up in a different place.  It probably won’t, but it could!  Just reading that SLP stuff—that was so hot!  In high school the English teacher talked about “escape literature,” which was supposed to be bad, but I didn’t think so.  Would I like to escape?  Hell yes!  Give me more of that stuff to read.

So that night I started reading through the Volunteering thing again, and doing it real slow this time, just to enjoy all the fantasies.  I noticed a lotta shit that I didn’t see before.  Like in the INTERVIEW step, when you read over what they said, they didn’t say they’d be asking what was your opinion about anything.  They didn’t say they were gonna “counsel” you or “advise” you or make some “suggestions” to you, the way people always did with me.  Especially my dad.  Have I told you I wished he’d been more of a man?  But anyways, they were inviting you to the interview so they could find out whether you would fit in, and then they would TELL you.  Also, when you got to the end of a Step where you were supposed to click the button to submit whatever kind of stuff they wanted from you, there was something like, “You will be notified whether you have permission to advance to the next Step.”  In other words, you weren’t in charge, they were.

Then there was another new thing, that I found on the REPORT step: “When ordered to report, you will be provided with a remittance for the full cost of air transport (coach, one-way) from your location to the Dominion of St. Bevons.”  Which was a BIG fantasy item, because I could picture myself just leavin the dorm and hoppin the airport shuttle, and the next thing I know, I’m landin in Wellington, ready to put on my browns!  That would be one vacation my parents didn’t need to finance!

I got several jerks outta that one.  Then I decided, I might as well fill out the Application.  After all, I could do one Step without going on to the next one.  But it would be interesting to see if they let me go on.  Also hot!  If you’re really into the fantasy, why stop at just reading the instructions?  Fill the thing out!

So here I am, I did my fuckin Chem report, I’ve had my cheeseburger and fries for the evening, and now I’m ready to do my Application for the SLP!  Of course, I’m gettin stoked just puttin in my name and my email address.  I’m thinkin, this isn’t a joke, somebody’s gonna read this!  Some guy in, I don’t know, a cop uniform!  So I’m goin through it, height, weight, education, “employment history,” and I get to “Skills,” and it has a little parenthesis that says “Manual Labour Only.”  So that tells you what they want out of you, once you’re a slappie!  They want you to do MANUAL LABOR.  They want you to go to the place of horror where members of your tribe are forbidden to go, and if you go there, you can never return, and your name is never mentioned again.  Which would make a good movie, lol!

But the problem was, what should I say about my manual labor—sorry, labour–skills?  I thought about it and I said, “Played on all the sports teams in high school.”  Which wasn’t totally true, cuz who knows how many teams there were?  I mean, I didn’t go out for fuckin golf, ugh.  But Patrick and Dobie had taught me that being an SLP widget isn’t about total honesty, dude.  I guess “sports teams” was pretty lame; I just didn’t have anything else.

Then there were these two questions about any serious illnesses or any run-ins with the law, and that was easy because there weren’t any.  And if they wanted to get fine-grained about illnesses, I already knew that would come out in the Documents Step.  If I got there.  I do have this acid reflux thing when I’m anxious.  Guess what, it was happening a lot lately!  Any reason to mention that?  No.

But anyhow, the last two things on the Application were more “challenging.”

First, they wanted you to check a box about where you’d prefer to work, or like they put it, “perform required labour service.”  The boxes were: “Hospitality (resorts, hotels, food services, transportation, tourist accommodation and assistance),” “Commercial (stores, shops, messenger and delivery services, office services),” “Domestic (cleaning, household maintenance and service, personal service),” “Common Labour (construction, commercial maintenance, agriculture, yard and garden work, manufacturing and warehousing).”  There was a note that said, “Prospective participants are advised that recording their preference does not constitute an indication or guarantee that the preferred assignment will be made.”  But you had to fill out all the parts of the form, so I got to imagine what kinds of “required labour” I might do.

Lots of them were hot!  I could certainly picture myself bein another Patrick or Dobie, workin the resorts.  Although it didn’t mention “sex”—lol!  And I could certainly see myself shuttling around in my little brown shorts delivering stuff, or even asking people, “Will this item suit your needs, sir?”  That would be funny!  Or “food services”–I just hoped there wouldn’t be flaming dishes involved!  Maybe I was less clear about “household maintenance and service” or whatever, unless the owner was a hot young dude!  And hot young dudes don’t usually have “households,” right?  But “Common Labour” was what I’d seen from the terrace back at Explorers Bay, and that was the hottest one for me.  So my hand was sorta shaking, but why?  It wasn’t as if this was actually gonna happen!  So I clicked “Common Labour.”  Gulp!—no more Patrick and Dobie for me, I guess!

Then I went on to the other thing that was really challenging, which was the place where they asked you WHY you wanted to “serve in the State Labour Program.”  I suddenly realized—I’d never been asked a question like that before.  I’d been asked about my “opinions” or my “feelings,” but I’d never been asked to say why about anything—such as why I wanted to go to college or be a doctor or even go on vacation to St. Bevons.  Of course, those were things that I hadn’t wanted to do, although the last one turned out pretty well!  But still–everybody had been so “concerned” about how I “felt,” but nobody had ever come right down to it and wondered what I really wanted to do and why.  Maybe you could get one chance in your life to say it.  Funny if this was my chance—the chance I got on the I-want-to-be-a-slappie form.

So I was excited!  I sat back in my chair and I was thinking about this incredibly hot dude that I always tried to sit next to in Physics, God he was hot, and he had a TOTAL meltdown when he got his midterm back and there was a B+ on it.  I saw the whole thing!  Here’s this great lookin guy and he sees that mark on a piece of paper and at the end of class he goes out the door and his BF is waitin for him and the guy says hey, what’s up, and he says, “FUCK! I am totally FUCKED!” and he RUNS off with his stupid BF runnin after him.  So was that because he had this deep inner feeling about how he had to get top grades?  If I asked him that question, I knew what he’d say.  He’d tell me to go fuck himself.

But what would I say?  What was I gonna say?  “200 words maximum.”  I was so horned up, I decided I’d have to tend to my other business and return to that question tomorrow.  So next day, while the profs talked about whatever, I thought about that.  And when I got back to the dorm, I wrote:

“I have been to St. Bevons and I like what I saw about the SLP and the servants.  I can see myself being one of them.  I don’t have some big purpose of my own in life, and I am used to being controlled (family, teachers, etc.).  I am in college so I can go to medical school, but I do not want to go.  Part of it is that I am not really disciplined enough, although my grades are all right.  I just do not think it is the kind of structure and discipline I need.  I would like to work with my hands or whatever—I have a good body and am healthy and strong–and not need to worry about any decisions I would need to make.  I know I would have a good life if it was the SLP giving me orders.  I’m pretty smart, and I know what I think.”

So there it was, only 155 words, even though I tried to avoid contractions.  Probably that was a plus—the shorter the better.  Besides, I liked the idea of limits.  Tell me what to do and I’ll do it, but don’t just say to “discuss,” which means that you never know when to stop.  But I hoped they wouldn’t think I was just trying to escape from my life as it was.  I could have put in a bunch more stuff about my need for orders and discipline, but I didn’t actually understand that very well, and I didn’t want to get anybody thinking about the leather and rubber and doms and subs and so forth that I saw online, cuz I didn’t understand that either.  I knew that what I wrote could probably still use some improvement, so I sat and looked at it for a while, but I couldn’t think of anything except what I was told I should say in my college applications: “I am very excited about this opportunity.”  So I added that.  Then the sentence seemed too short, so I added “of serving in the State Labour Program.”  OK, “labor” with “ou,” 169 words.  That would have to do.  I went to the bottom of the form and found the Submit button, and I pushed it.  So now I had applied to be a slappie!  I don’t even need to say “you know what I did afterwards.”

When I woke up the next morning I remembered what happened, and I was thinking, well, that’s the end of that.  No more jerkoffs about the SLP!  You didn’t really mean to apply, and now you’ve sent the kind of application that’s just gonna get them to say go fuck yourself, we don’t want you, you’re the boy next door.  So no point in thinking about this anymore.  Life is gonna be a lot less interesting now.

I wasn’t even waiting for a reply.  But four days later I looked at my inbox, and there was an email from something called SLPOUTREACH (huh?), subject line “Personal.”  You always see “personal” or something like that in spam, so I went for the “delete” key.  Then I put it together: SLP . . . outreach . . . .  I’d better open this!  The message said, “Joel Barlow: Your Application has been accepted.  You are now permitted to proceed to Step 2.”

So, HEY!  I finally did something right!  But Step 2 . . . that was a big deal.  You had to send them a buncha stuff.  What was I gonna do about that?

I didn’t know, but I did know that now I wanted Step 3, the Interview.  I wanted to see what the guys who ran the SLP were like.  P and D hadn’t said anything about that.  They’d just said that training to be a slappie was “a defnit experience mon,” meaning “harsh as hell mon.”  But I got the impression that slappies ran most of it.  Or all of it maybe.  But I’d like to find out where all this stuff was coming from.  And actually—I guess this was the real thing–I’d like to find out what they thought about me.  Nobody ever told me what they really thought; they were just nice to me.  But if I ever had a chance to get it from someone who was, like, the observing Martian that had no reason to lie, this was it.  It was even worth what would happen afterwards.  Because either way, it was gonna be a let-down.  If they rejected me, it would be the Big R–Rejection!  If they accepted me, I’d have to turn them down, and that would be the end of all these hot fantasies of mine.

Nobody was around to “counsel” me, so I went with my dick, which was yelling Go to Step 2!

But how was I gonna get a “physical examination conducted by a licensed physician,” without my parents knowing?  Because their insurance would have to pay for it.  I’d been around the hospital and I knew what those things cost.  Then I had another one of those Realizations that seemed to keep coming to me: Go to the Student Health Service, stupid!  You’re so STUPID that you deserve to be a slappie!  So, good idea.

I never thought that going to the doctor was cool—although I’d been told that I wanted to be one, and why would you want to be something that you don’t think is cool, duh!  But this time, it was kind of OK.  The doctor did all the usual things, and he said I was perfectly healthy, except I should start taking Pepcid for the reflux.  What I should do, I thought, is start taking less advice, but I didn’t say that.  He did ask why I wanted a physical, and I told him, “It’s a prospective employer.  Said I had to get one.”  “Oh,” he said, “what kind of a job are you looking for?” Meaning, what kind of a college job needs a whole fuckin physical?  “Basically,” I said, “it’s a job digging ditches.”

NOT expected!  I had a lie prepared about working in a disease lab or something, but he turned out to be sort of a semi-hot young doctor and I guess I wanted to shock him.  “Right,” he said, and I could tell he was thinking “either this kid is a terminal smartass or he needs to see a guidance counselor.”  So before he could get into any of that I asked him what shots I needed and he said tetanus, and I got a tetanus shot and when I was leaving I told the lady at the desk that I wanted the results and the records and so on to get sent to me so I could send them to my employer, and she said “Doctor will need to send them himself,” and I said it’s my fuckin body—although I didn’t say “fuckin”—and I own my medical records, and she called the doctor in and he was wrinkling his brow and so on and then he said, “OK, send it to him,” and so I got a lot of dirty looks but so what, I won.  Never did anything like that before, but fine, it felt good.

Then I went back to my room and spent the afternoon getting a picture of my driver’s license and taking selfies in the mirror and thinking I looked better than I thought I did.  Lots better!  Especially after I had some weed and decided to do the pictures without my shorts.  I checked some boxes about how I didn’t have any legal problems.  Then I sent everything right to the SLP.  Step 2 completed, sir!

So what were they gonna do with me now?

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