Ever come across one of those people who just won’t throw you a goddamn bone on the conversation front? You’re doing all you can to try to make the best of an uncomfortable situation, usually a work-related one, but they just won’t fucking budge. That’s what I had been subjected to ever since this little bitch that started working “with” me about two weeks ago revealed herself to be utterly impenetrable (not a sexual innuendo). She was more of a cipher than Don Draper. Plus, at least Don Draper was nice to look at. This puta doesn’t bother to put on the ritz in any way, shape or form. In fact, you could say she was both shapeless and formless. That’s what most people were these days—and no, that’s not some kind of dig at the pervasive nonbinary identification among “the kids.” 

I couldn’t quite explain it, except to say that there was something far more off than identity politics about this “co-worker’s” aura. Like the body snatchers had swept through and left behind nothing but another emotionless replica of a human. That’s what this girl seemed like to me, a pod person. But the worst kind: someone who probably thought they were interesting and unique just because they had moved to the big city. 

Of course, in my cursory knowledge about her, gleaned solely from knowing her area code after our boss distributed each other’s numbers via the creation of a group chat (the worst creation that can ever be made), I tried to relate by talking to her about being from San Fernando Valley. Big mistake, huge—as Vivian Ward would say. I mean, the first mistake was probably trying to make the Valley relatable, especially since I had never lived there. Instead, I had lived in “real” L.A., on Sepulveda Boulevard. The part that intersects with Venice Boulevard. So Culver City(-ish), I guess you could say. Some would argue that’s not “real” L.A. at all. But then, the argument always also goes that Los Angeles isn’t a real place in any respect. Just a series of backlots and a projection of a dream. 

But this person, who I shall call Stoic Cuntface going forward, seemed to have never had a dream in her life. How else could one explain being twenty years old and being so passionate about managing the inventory in the supply closet? Something that, technically, I was supposed to be responsible for, in addition to other assorted administrative duties. But ever since she came along, I’ve had even less work to pretend to do. Honestly, I didn’t think youths had gotten so nerdy and virtuous. Not to say I considered myself “aged,” though I’m sure that’s how she saw me, being a generation above her and all. At first, I thought maybe that was why she didn’t think I was “worthy” of engaging in conversation with. However, as I continued to observe her from afar, it seemed she interacted this way with everyone (“interact” perhaps being too strong of a word). Except for the boss. With the boss, she was animated, interested. It was almost too predictable. Like Eddie Haskell acting one way in front of Mrs. Cleaver, and then becoming his true mischievous self when no adults were around. 

Thus, as soon as the boss was offsite, it was straight back to her being Stoic Cuntface. And, for me, foolishly, straight back to trying to fill the silence between us. After all, we were forced to “work” in the same space together. And certainly, I can understand not wanting to talk all the time, but shit, this hostile silence was killing me. Not to mention the job itself, which was quintessentially nebulous in title and the expected duties associated with it. So I made the mistake of trying. And to do that, I tapped into the San Fernando Valley area code (818) I saw in the group chat. I had always referred to San Fernando as SFV. It was just easier. Besides, that’s how Craig’s List characterized it (and, likewise, San Gabriel Valley was SGV). Being a seasoned troll of that website, whether being irrational enough to still look for jobs on it or trying to find free furniture, I couldn’t imagine calling it anything else. Yet from the way Stoic Cuntface reacted to me calling it that, you would have thought I had called San Francisco “San Fran” (something notoriously hated by “true” San Franciscans). 

Before I knew I was making a terrible error in “daring” to refer to it in such a manner, I asked, “So you’re from SFV?”

She turned her head toward me with a bovine glaze over her face. “Huh?”

“I just, uh, noticed your area code.”

She blinked at me for a few moments before finally responding, “Oh, I didn’t know what you were talking about. No one calls it that.”

Her assertion was clearly meant to make me feel out of touch and like a freak. Unashamed, I persisted, “Oh no? What do people call it?”

“The Valley.” And, with that, she turned back to her so-called work, not allowing me any further entrée into her “life.” Which was perhaps too fuckin’ pitiful for her to bother continuing to discuss. After all, as I mentioned, people like Stoic Cuntface tend to think that they don’t need to do anything else “great” or “significant” after the move to a metropolis. It’s as though that’s all they have in them after “going the extra mile” of leaving their small town. Needless to say, she was convinced she was hot shit not just because she was in her twenties, but because she had possessed the “courage” to leave “the Valley.”

Part of me was almost masochistic enough to want to ask her if she had ever seen Valley Girl, but I thought better of it. Either she wouldn’t know what the fuck I was talking about or she would have said, yeah, she’d seen it and it didn’t impress her much. I bet her unknowledgeable ass had never seen Reality Bites either. Which was too bad, because maybe I could have explained to her how she was making me the Michael Grates to her Troy Dyer. It is Troy who refuses to act anything other than rude and aloof toward Michael when he comes to pick up Lelaina Pierce for their date. On their way out, Michael finally has to say, “Excuse me if somebody doesn’t know the secret handshake with you.” Troy rebuffs, “There’s no secret handshake. There’s an IQ prerequisite, but there’s no secret handshake.” 

Later, this insult comes up again when both men find themselves chasing after Lelaina. Michael chastises Troy for hurting her feelings with, “Oh, nice job. Very well done. Really good.” Troy replies, “I don’t want to hear it from you.” Michael retorts, “Yeah? Well, I forgot I’m not qualified to talk to you.”

That’s how this whole dynamic with Stoic Cuntface was going down. Except I was well-aware of the fact that the truth was, she wasn’t qualified to talk to me. Yet here I was trying to do some proverbial dance to establish even the most ersatz sense of “rapport.” Which is what you’re still expected to do in the workplace so that you can help delude yourself into believing it isn’t ultimately a glorified gulag. Because you can’t strike up something like “affinity” in the gulag. 

After an entire month of this, she was driving me insane. Making me want to quit more than I ever had before. And that’s when it occurred to me that I ought to pull another maneuver from a classic of cinema and Lloyd Dobler this shit with a boombox. Except rather than playing Peter Gabriel, whose music I’m sure she had no awareness of, I would play something she could understand: Billie Eilish. Specifically, a particular verse from “Happier Than Ever.” Because if people couldn’t communicate intergenerationally through music, then I truly didn’t know what hope any of us had left. 

I could tell I was already biffing the operation though, because I hadn’t queued the music up in time (thanks to my determination to use a boombox instead of a phone) and when she walked in, she looked at me and my antiquated apparatus like we were both foreign enemies invading her hallowed realm. Her judgmental, disgusted look was all it took for me to simply belt out the lyrics I had been intending to play: “I don’t relate to you/I don’t relate to you, no/‘Cause I’d never treat me this shitty/You made me hate this city!” Except the city I was probably referring to wasn’t the one we were currently in, but rather, SFV. Because she had made me feel old and irrelevant in response to how I had chosen to nickname it. I suppose there are worse cities to cross off one’s list though. It’s not like she took away Paris from me or something.