Into That World Inverted

because that guarantees that we won’t get a main couple in the show that is either

an interracial couple not involving a white person

a same sex couple not involving a white person

At the start of my employment, my boss showed me videos of people stealing, and we both had a chuckle about it. How silly they were! There was a camera overhead, and it’s not to watch the shoppers. See, we can’t actually stop shoplifters. They get away with it maybe nine out of ten times. But we, who are watched and tallied and witnessed? We are always caught.

At first it was hard to hold one hundred dollars bills. An amount I had never seen before. An amount that didn’t exist in my household. It’s normal now. Here is something that is not for me.

“What the hell, I’ll take another,” says the man, pondering our 200 dollar watches. What the hell. Total comes to 580 and not even a flinch in his face. I have been working for 11 hours today and made only 110 dollars. It will go to my rent. Today I work for free, it feels. When I get my check, I will have 35 dollars left for food and saving.

The six hundreds he hands me go into the cash register. For a moment, I imagine having money. Then I put it away, counting out his change.

I know for a fact we sell our products for double what they are worth. That I could be making commission. That they could hand me those 580 dollars and change my life and not even mark the difference in their checkbooks. He’s not the only sale they make today, but I am the reason they made it. He’s not the only one spending 600 dollars, but if I hadn’t spent two hours with him telling me about his life, he wouldn’t have spent any. I go home. I don’t own a watch.

I have watched and rewatched a video on how to make salmon four ways. My shopping list is always the same. Pasta. Rice. Tuna. If I can afford butter it was a good week. I dream of the world I will never walk in, where I can throw the best fish fillet in the cart with a shrug. I hold hundreds in my hand and look up at the camera. I put them under the cash drawer.

I go to work. I scrap together my savings. I eat my bowl of rice slowly. My manager takes a paid week off from work just for his birthday. He owns a yacht. 

i was part of their college program. i moved to the state for it. they legally owned the building i was living in and still charged me rent. i ostensibly was being charged to work for them. it was a 2 bedroom apartment and they placed 6 adult women in it in forced triples.

as many as one in ten disney employees have experienced homelessness while working for the company. despite huge efforts to unionize, strike, or otherwise demand fair treatment; disney has refused to increase employee quality of life.

disney admits publicly that a good portion of their success is because the employees (“cast members”) are dedicated, passionate, and selfless. this is never reflected in pay. even “face” characters (ie those that are princesses etc) make barely above a minimum wage.

at the time that i worked there, i made $8.50 an hour. at one point i was asked to create a human shield around a bag because a bomb dog had alerted to it. for eight fucking dollars an hour.

i now work a very cushy office job. i have bought the salmon and cooked it all four ways.

i go to the store. i am nice to the person behind the counter. she looks up at the camera while she counts out my change. there is nothing fundamentally different about her and i.

happy pride month!

“If you’re not the beautiful one, the quick-witted one, or the ones that are good at games and full of youthful energy, then who are you? And what can you do if you’re the odd one out? Is it possible you’ll ever find a way to fit in?”

I saw a TikTok last night made by a woman who was sharing some memories of her late husband on his birthday, and right at the end she acknowledged that she has been lucky enough to find love again with her new partner. Her husband died six years ago, when she was thirty. The comments are filled with people telling her she betrayed her husband by falling in love again.

There’s this pervasive idea that the greatest act of love is living in your grief forever, and never letting yourself find happiness again. That you should piously suffer in sadness for the rest of your life, lest you should betray the memory of your late partner.

People who loved their deceased partner will never forget them, or stop carrying that love with them. It’s not romantic to never process your grief and learn to carry it with you.

Life after the death of your partner looks different for everyone, and may or may not involve falling in love again. But falling in love again isn’t betrayal, and a lot of complaints about Francesca’s story are revealing that people don’t understand that.

By Joke Amusan, 2023

60cm x 53cm