A Note on Rejection

     It was three in the morning and my phone started buzzing on the dingy nightstand I’d scavenged from the curb of a suburban household. I smacked the top of it a few times to find and locate my phone before lazily dragging it to my ear. 

     “Hello?”

     “I didn’t get it.”

     “Get what?”

     “I’m going to do it.”

     I sighed. “No, you’re not.”

     “I’m really going to.”

     “No, you’re not. You say this every time.”

     “I’m really going to do it this time and you’re not going to stop me.”

     “Fine, but if you kill yourself now, you’ll NEVER get an industry job.”

     “...fuck, you’re right.”

     Then he hung up. I placed my phone back atop the nightstand and watched the lights from the window dance upon my stipple ceiling as I waited in vain to fall back asleep. 

     He had always been a touch dramatic about these kinds of things, even back in college. On the first shoot of the semester, he wanted to be a Director of Photography and when he was assigned to be a boom operator, he was so sullen he’d become non-verbal until the shoot was completed and, to really twist the knife in the wound, the editor assigned to the project forgot to list him in the credits. We had both dropped out of college after a year; Him feeling his genius was being trammeled by community college and me because of burnout, dwindling finances, and a fear of failure.

     I finally rolled over and fell back asleep.

     Eight hours later, he was still alive and agreed to meet me at a Flying Star Café for a game of chess just like the old days. We were seated in a corner booth enclosed by dark blue walls with wooden trim. A plastic chessboard I’d been gifted from an uncle sat between us and our various pieces had become sparsely scattered across the board. Any of my pieces he’d captured sat neatly beside his left hand, subconsciously organized by rank and board position, while any of his pieces I’d captured sat in a pile beside my plastic tray formerly host to a burger and fries that was now the home of no more than a few traces of ketchup among loose crumbs set about the criss-cross basket liner.

     While I pondered my next move, my opponent told me that the office he does janitorial work for has a production office on the sixth floor that had put out a job listing looking for additional talent in the writer’s room. The secretary, having known about his background in film, encouraged him to apply for the job before closing time one night. He applied for the job and two months later finally received a rejection email that’d clearly been taken off of a template. I moved my white pawn from B2 to B4 to block one of my knights from an incoming attack by my opponent’s bishop as he asked “Jake, do you think we’re ever going to be successful?”

     “Well, that depends on what you consider success. If you enjoy dead-end jobs with no benefits, then we’re already living the dream.”

     He scoffed and rolled his eyes as his bishop captured my pawn.

     “Sorry, sorry.” I moved my king to the left towards the corner where I might be able to shield it with other pieces in a few moves. “Well, Bukowski worked in the post office until his 50s and McCarthy didn’t sell more than two thousand books for the first thirty years of his career, so never say never.”

     “You’re not answering my question.”

     “Well, shit. Do you want me to just lie to you?”

     “So no?”

     “Well, clearly not in the traditional method, no. We’re a pair of film school dropouts with no real degrees. We’re sure not at the top of the food chain.”

     “I guess…” He went silent and stared at the board for a moment, deep in thought about his next move.

     I scanned the board for a moment and asked “Hey, I ever tell you about my gig map?”

     He looked up at me with a raised eyebrow. “No?”

     “Oh, man. Back when I still had the band, I would call and reach out to venues all over the country and I’d always get one of three responses. Either ‘we’re sorry, we no longer host performances,’ ‘we’re sorry, we’re booked up for the month,’ or ‘the number you have dialed is no longer in operation.’”

     He chuckled softly at that as he haphazardly moved a pawn forward.

     “To keep track of where I’d called, I bought a map of America from Dollar Tree and started putting X’s on any city that wouldn’t book me. I’ve got about ten X’s in New Mexico, four in Oklahoma, five in Texas, twelve in California, two in Florida, and one in Hawaii.”

     “Hawaii?”

     “Well, that one was for shits and giggles.” I captured his pawn with a spare knight I still had. “There was this one club I called in Las Cruces that actually said ‘yeah, we’ve got some availability. Do you have any video of you guys performing live?’ I said ‘no, but we have a demo tape’ and he hung up on me. Anyhow, the bottom line is you can’t take rejection seriously. Most rejection letters you get are automated and it’s not because it’s YOU, it’s because the system said you’re not what they want, like how you applied without a full degree on your resume or how I had a demo tape instead of a performance video.”

     “That’s a fair point. I don’t know if I can keep waiting for an opportunity, though. At this point, I’d take any offer that comes my way.” He moved a bishop a few spaces forward, away from the safety of a pawn.

     “Well, maybe don’t do THAT.” I captured it with a rook. “I told you about the location job I almost got, right?”

     “You might’ve. Was this after college?” He tossed a pawn forward to keep the game moving along.

     “Yep. Basically, a show was filming across the street from the office one night, so I walked up to a PA, asked for a job, and three days later, I got an interview. At the interview, the PA I spoke with directed me to his supervisor, who happened to be his best friend. They mentioned they’d both never worked in the industry before until the PA’s uncle gave him a supervisory position for his location scouting company. So I had to interview with the uncle next, he liked me, and they put my name on a corkboard that showed the hierarchy. They put me at the very bottom right next to someone that the supervisor pointed at and said ‘oh, and that’s my cousin! I just got him this job and you two will be working together next week.’ I realized then that I’d have to be fighting against nepotism, so I just quit the job saying I had other obligations I needed to worry about. Stephen Dorff almost mowed me down on a scooter as I was leaving the studio.” I moved my king a space left and backed him into the corner with only a pawn for protection.

     “Oh, right. You told me about that one. Good on you for walking away like that. I don’t think I could do that, though. I’d take anything that comes my way at this point.”

     “Yeah, but that kinda unchecked hunger ends up being exploited labor.”

     “Hm.” His queen crossed the board and took my knight. “So do you think there’s a chance for us?”

     I thought about it for a moment. “Well, I’d hope there is, but wishes don’t always come true, you know?”

     “What do you mean?”

     “Well, I’d sure like to live off this writing thing, but like I said, Bukowski had been writing poetry and short stories since he was 24 and got published in magazines all the time, but he never saw any real success until his fifties. Otherwise, he was always working menial jobs culminating in being a mail sorter at a post office. You ever read that copy of ‘Factotum’ I loaned you?”

     He shook his head.

     “Anyhow, he was a mail sorter until the manager of an office supply store read his columns, loved his material, and started a publishing company just for Buk’s poetry and novels. The moral of the story is while there’s a big factor in ‘it’s WHO you know,’ the underlying moral is ‘you have to keep trying and pursuing, otherwise you won’t have ANY chance.’” I moved my bishop to a vantage point to capture his queen if it took my knight.

     “Do you think YOU have a chance?”

     I shrugged. “I sure hope I do, but hell, I don’t even know where people read stuff anymore. The old-fashioned literary magazine went the way of the Dodo years ago. I think at this point, my only hope of success without an agent is if I get an article featured on BookTok.”

     He looked up from the board at me disgusted. “BookTok? Jake, don’t stoop to THAT! Never compromise your art just for the sake of--”

     “--yeah yeah yeah, artistic vision and all that shit. I’m not saying I’d change how I write just for success, I’m just saying I’d like the money sooner rather than later. Look, I’ll just button this by saying don't always listen to your heart. Listen to both the heart and your gut. Desire will lead you down the darkest paths where you think you see light, and when all is dark, only then do you realize the light was merely a glimmer in your eye.”

     “...thanks?” His queen ignored my knight and crossed the board parallel to my lonely king with only a pawn for protection and a rook too far away to do anything. “Checkmate.”

     I examined the board and saw the queen was staring down at my king that’d been gradually shoved into the corner. The queen was parallel just a few spaces away, meaning she had a straight shot for the king. If I tried to move the king upward, he’d be captured by a nearby bishop and I couldn’t move him diagonally since the pawn was blocking his way, and the king must move since the queen was right on his heels.

     I softly smiled and said “Not bad.” I reached over the board to shake his hand and say “good game.” He grabbed my hand and shook before I swiped the board and its contents into the cardboard box it came in. 

     I asked him “You gonna be good?”

     “Yeah… yeah.”

     “You sure?”

     He nodded as I closed the box.

     “All right, well just gimme a call if you need anything.”

     “I will. Thanks.”

     “Take it easy, amigo.” I pulled my green Army jacket back on and headed for the exit, stashing the box under my left arm as I pushed the door open. I was greeted by a crisp fall breeze as I wandered onto the sidewalk and did a loop around the building.  The leaves on a nearby hackberry tree had turned a jaundiced-yellow and were flying away in the wind like they always do, to die and decompose before the next generation would take their place in a few months to flourish in shades of green and dangle in the Summer breeze before it was time for them too to turn and fly away like their nameless predecessors.

     It was another day just like any other and I had to go to work in a few hours, but I’m still alive, aren’t I?