Upon Being Turned Down for a Job Driving the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile By Corey Ginsberg It was one thing to be denied a spot in the depression study: no reason given other than your profile isn’t a good match. Or the focus group on low sex drive and accompanying $75 gift card to Target. To be left wondering: Am I too depressed? Not depressed enough? How little sex is too little sex? It was one thing to be rejected by 89 editors in the past five months, turned down for 62 jobs in a span of weeks, to be told by the invention company no sane person would ever use a rotisserie tanning machine. Even my blood’s not good enough to be donated—the little red dollop always comes belly-­‐up in the iron-­‐testing tube, and the dreadlocked man on the red bus sends me away with a Band-­‐Aid and cookie. I eventually got past my upset with the hot guy from the gym who asked me out then never called, the one I’ve fantasized about for two years, the only guy I’ve given my real number to since I’ve been in Miami. Even my fantasies end with failure: signing the book deal, first public reading, but where are my pants and why is my novel in Spanish? Marrying the hot guy from the gym only to find he’s a robot from the future—his six-­‐pack is synthetic protein skin covering an atom bomb programmed to explode on our first anniversary. I learned to accept my dog won’t come near me after I’ve eaten my mid-­‐afternoon I-­‐live-­‐alone-­‐and-­‐don’t-­‐give-­‐a-­‐shit-­‐about-­‐my-­‐breath-­‐ raw-­‐garlic-­‐hot sauce-­‐and-­‐tomato-­‐sandwich, that I use ice cream, horror movies, Facebook, and sixteen-­‐ounce cans of Natural Lite to buffer the echo in the void. But having my application turned down to drive the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile is its own horrid genus of failure, the climax of a botched parade of sexual shortcomings, job-­‐market inadequacies and dozens of false starts leading to the abyss of apathy and eventual acceptance. To be a broke graduate student writer vegetarian terrified of driving, unable to read a road map or tell southeast from northwest, willing to whore herself out for a six-­‐month joyride in a frank on wheels— a testament to pop-­‐culture gluttony, ground meat and crackpot consumerism— makes the previous litany of deficiencies seem like background noise at a demolition derby. If I listen hard enough, I can almost hear The Real World laughing out a chorus of I told you so’s beneath the chaos and explosions that blanket the otherwise unremarkable night. Corey Ginsberg recently graduated from Florida International University, where she received an MFA in creative nonfiction. She currently lives in Miami with her dachshund, Joey. Her favorite writer is Kurt Vonnegut.