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2001-11-01 || 10:23 a.m. || the geiger counter measures radiation and love. || my sister and i worked at a nuclear power plant one summer. she called every day from her bosslady's office, always empty, always piled to chin level with e.p.a. documents and papers, to tell me the door was closed and she was working on the new world record for most spins in a swivel chair in under a minute. her feet were propped on the bosslady's desk. she had her hands up behind her head, elbows out. if she smoked there would have been a cigar in her mouth and if she had a beer belly it would have been bouncing from well-rehearsed bureacratic chuckles. sometimes we escaped and grabbed the keys to a utility truck to drive along restricted government roads (we had laminated badges with our photos displaying punky color-dyed hair and mischievous smiles) and listen to the roar of power mix with a.m. radio. kelly spent a lot of time with the hazmat team, learning dirty jokes over card games and commands filtering in through the intercom propped on the wall in one of the aluminum bunkers. i tape recorded scientists in small rooms speaking in acronyms and terms full of numbers and equations, making them nervous with reassuring smiles and the scent of college and late nights spent out of doors, to bring back to my desk and listen to over and over in the desperate quest to decipher their meaning and spit them out into feature articles for the weekly employee paper. the woman in the cafeteria took a strange interest in us, 'you are sisters! look at your hair!' (kelly was in the platinum/fluorescent yellow streaked phase then) yelled in broken english over our orders of cheese sandwiches. we revelled in it. middle-aged men everywhere, ties flung over shoulders so as not to get them in their soup, feigning interest in newspapers and safety posters on the cafeteria walls while they listened to our conversations. we spoke loudly. we made things up. we entertained them with our stories of young girl-ness and staying out late and sneaking off to the beach to see if kelly's surfing friends were there. there were others like us. 98% boys, also in college, suspiciously placed in the more 'meaningful' better-paying positions. they got to wear yellow space suits. they got to look at the spent-fuel tank. they didn't have devilish urges to steal the utility truck keys. sometimes they ate lunch with us outside on picnic tables. they shared in our half-hearted plots to paint elaborate pictures on the reactor domes. they laughed into their shirt sleeves at us, at our lack of decorum and respect for our heavily secured surroundings. they had plans to become the men with the ties flung over their shoulders. we had plans to get the hell out. guestbook || notes || archives || profile || photos || d-land |