NAKED AND UNEMPLOYABLE
Please send cash
Picture the scene. I’m naked in a small, steamy hut. A man, also naked, stands before me. He grunts as I strike him repeatedly with a bunch of twigs. His wife enters the room. She looks at him, looks at me, and sighs. “Okay,” she says at last. “Okay.”
It is, in fact, okay. Because we’re in a sauna, and hitting each other’s naked bodies with leaves and twigs is a perfectly okay thing to do in that context. It’s better than okay, in fact. For me, it’s like finding my vocation. I realise that there is nothing I’d rather do with my life than beat naked people with birch twigs and eucalyptus leaves. Indeed, it rapidly becomes apparent to everyone there that I am naturally gifted at facilitating and conducting these beatings.
“You should do this for a living,” they say.
And they’re right. Except for the fact that there’s no money in it.
Of course, I understand that whatever money might be on offer for such pursuits is all tied up in the kinky end of things, so to speak. But I’m not interested in that. Apart from the fact that the whole idea fills me with a grim loathing for all mankind, it’s just not the same thing. Anyone who’s ever spent time in a traditional Finnish sauna will know that there is nothing remotely sexually appealing about bodies that have been heated to 120 degrees celsius. Basically at this point, everyone looks like a boiled ham.
British people in particular (who often start out looking like boiled hams) are a little uneasy about the idea of taking their kit off and prancing around in the nude. Personally I have no problem with it, but then again, I have a cheat code, which is to take my glasses off. Aside from the fact that I have to take my glasses off, lest they become permanently welded to my face, this gives the advantage of rendering me barely able to see anything at all, let alone the finely etched flaws of another person’s body. When someone’s crotch swings into my face, I can usually just about tell if it’s of the male or female persuasion, and that’s it. And I work on the basis that if I can’t see you, you can’t see me – flawed logic, perhaps, but it means I can hang around in the nude with no shame whatsoever, almost as if we never Brexited and I’m really a European after all.
But all of this lovely freedom and lack of inhibition doesn’t pay the bills, and it’s starting to very much look like I’m going to need to find a proper job. This is extremely daunting, because, in the absence of a thriving UK sauna scene, I don’t even know where to start.
It’s not like I don’t have experience. The problem is, I have too much experience. There’s barely any kind of job I haven’t done. Teaching, writing, typing, factory work, bar work, cooking, care work, retail, cleaning, telesales, customer service, literally dancing on tables… I’ve done everything and consequently my CV makes me look like a drunk schizophrenic person who’s going to turn up at your business, photocopy my butt, and blow up a few desks before demanding a reference and storming out with half the contents of the stationery cupboard.
My CV is misleading, though, because I’ve nearly always been an exemplary employee. I’ve only walked out on one job, and that was in response to the boss throwing a jug of milk at my head. (He missed.) And yes, I’ve stolen things from the stationery cupboard, but who the hell hasn’t? Those tiny little post-it notes have to find a home somewhere.
Despite my myriad work experiences, I have very few skills. I know how to teach and write and beat people with sticks – none of which practices are much in demand. I do not know how to do any of the more useful things in life, such as making a website or assessing the structural integrity of a bridge. Even the formerly useful skills I do have, such as touch typing 90wpm, can be done faster by robots now. What’s more, I have no real ambition except to somehow manage to live a life of ease and art-making without ever having to wear a pencil skirt.
Plus I’ve left it too late now to learn a new set of marketable skills. None of this stuff mattered when I was a young person - or perhaps it’s more accurate to say, none of it mattered to me. I assumed that with my exceptional writing talent, I’d be able to make a living selling the occasional short story and writing an article here and there. Then the internet turned up and fucked all that. Now there’s a glut of writers churning out content for free and the only potential for money-making is scamming other writers by selling them your writing courses.
And none of it, as far as I can tell, can be done naked.
This ought to be the point in the essay where I come to a pithy and/or hilarious conclusion. But unless you’re actually paying me to do that, why the hell should I? Come to your own conclusions. And put your bloody pants back on.
It's slightly terrifying how much I relate to this (okay not the beating people with sticks bit but the rest of it, especially "my CV makes me look like a drunk schizophrenic person who’s going to turn up at your business, photocopy my butt, and blow up a few desks before demanding a reference and storming out with half the contents of the stationery cupboard.") It was charming pre-middle age, you know?
Teaching and beating people with sticks used to go hand in hand, but there are laws against it now. Also laws against taking your pants off. Why must all the fun be taken out of everything?