It Takes Two

As of today, I am no longer working a full-time job. Instead, I am working two part-time jobs. One of these part-time jobs is my old full time-job, which has undergone a change not unlike that of a surfer who gets half-eaten by a shark. The other part-time job is a wholly new job, researching health care issues for a professor up at the law school.

Neither of these two jobs really knows about the existence of the other, which puts me in the difficult situation of having to lead a double life. This is not like taking two dates to the same restaurant, where you have to lie to each of them and pretend to take phone calls from “work” and give yourself an incontinence problem.

No, this is like having another family somewhere and having to juggle two sets of wives, kids, and pets. So whenever I’m telling people that I’m “going to Chicago” on business, it means I’m getting into a town car, switching my lawyer briefcase for my academic briefcase, and pretending the house I walk into is the fountain of my happiness and my one and only source of joy.

Eventually, circumstances will conspire to destroy my happy existence and my disparate families will happen to meet each other, perhaps at a supermarket or country club. At this point, my whole charade will come crashing down like the flimsy house of cards it actually is. The two wives will bond over their common hatred and poison my scotch, splitting my estate down the middle and improbably becoming lifelong friends.

Alternately, my only hope is the two wives like each other enough to smile and consider one of those polygamous arrangements that are all the rage amongst kids these days.

Exhausted from juggling two wives, I will fall over dead on the sidewalk one august afternoon with a newfound respect for Mormons.

In either case, this will not end well.