The People Who Report More Stress Read online

  I hadn’t seen Quimby for almost twenty years when I ran into him at (W)hole Glory one Friday about fifteen months ago. The red-bulb lighting made it difficult to be certain, but when he walked past the first time, I knew I knew him. The second time, I knew it was from college. The third time, a rush of blood inspirited me. “Quim!” I shouted. He stared at me momentarily, then a moment longer. “Wednesday afternoons,” I said. “Your basement office … ‘NAFTA, Schmafta, Can you hear the world’s Lafta?’ …”

  “Charles in Charge? Is that you? Holy shit. I barely recognized you with that mustache. How in the heck are you?”

  Before I could respond, Quimby set his pint down onto the small table and joined me. “It’s been ages,” he said with a glassy stare. “What a truly magnificent surprise, Charles in Charge. Fine as ever, you are.”

  * * *

  Carlitos is my given name. “Carlitos Doritos,” the other kids used to call me—one more undesirable way in which I stood out. In middle school, I began demanding that my family address me as Alex P. Keaton, but my dad kept mispronouncing it Alice, which my siblings seized upon, so I settled on Charles in Charge. This was the title of a sitcom that starred Scott Baio as a young heartthrob who nannies three children while going to school and juggling a prolific love life. I was drawn to the show because of Charles’s (Baio’s) relationship with his best friend Buddy (Willie Ames), a one-dimensional, albeit oddly sagacious, buffoon. Their camaraderie and affection were genuine and subtle in ways that none of their other acting ever was. The slapstick humor struck me as either repressed or coded desire. Frankly, I didn’t understand how the show made it onto network television.

  “Carlitos?” Sister Susan, my sixth-grade teacher, called out. But instead of “Present,” I responded, “Charles in Charge!”

  “Is that Mexican?” she asked, peering up from the attendance sheet.

  “No,” I said, “it’s syndicated.”

  * * *

  “Are you visiting?”

  “I live in Brooklyn. Near one of the bridges,” Quimby explained, looking even more like the dads of my youth than he had twenty years earlier. “I work for the Irish Mission to the UN,” he continued. “I’m seeing someone. He’s French. Divides his time between here and Paris—filmmaker. How about you?”

  “I’m also in Brooklyn. I work at the Health Department. I’m single.”

  I explained to Quimby that after college I’d taken a stab at an acting career—some theater, a few clown parties, and a couple of television commercials. In fact, one toilet paper ad paid for all of graduate school. I studied public health, specifically the effects of hierarchies: Does pecking order predict health outcomes? (Well, yes.)

  “Fascinating,” he said, and reached across the table to squeeze my forearm.

  Quimby and I exchanged numbers and had sex once, for old time’s sake, a few weeks later. Afterward, he asked me if I was looking for a new job. “The UN relies heavily on health data. You could find work rather easily,” he explained.

  I wasn’t unhappy at the Health Department, but I found the idea of the UN intriguing and romantic, like Juliette Binoche and Naveen Andrews in The English Patient, so I followed up.

  * * *

  My official position was Health Researcher (Category IV) for the United Nations Human Rights Council (UN HRC). In brief, I was a summarizer tasked with taking complicated research and reducing it to talking points—bulleted lists, fourteen-point font. Vis-à-vis the HRC, most of the nearly two hundred member states wanted me to build a bulwark of data against my own country. Anything to get the United States to come to its senses was the popular sentiment throughout the UN.

  At first, I felt strange about working for the world and not my country, like the orphan athletes who carry the nondescript flag at the opening ceremony of the Olympics. But Quimby explained that we had no choice. “Convincing the US to do no harm is the full-time job of many, many people,” he said. “What did you think happened here?”

  The truth was I hadn’t given it much thought. Also true: it didn’t matter. My questionable influence peddling didn’t influence shit. In a short period of time, I learned that the United States was immune to easily interpretable, common-sense data on everything—pollution, tuberculosis, birth control, abortion, breastfeeding, war, rape, white phosphorous, blue phosphorous, red phosphorous, lithium, PTSD, GMOs, slavery, winged migration, lions, tigers, polar bears, grizzly bears, panda bears, capital punishment, corporal punishment, spanking, poverty, drug decriminalization, incarceration, labor unions, cooperative business structures, racist mascots, climate change, Puerto Rico, Yemen, Syria, Flint, Michigan, women, children, wheelchairs, factory farms, bees, whales, sharks, daylight saving, roman numerals, centimeters, condoms, coal, cockfighting, horse betting, dog racing, doping, wealth redistribution, mass transit, the IMF, CIA, IDF, MI5, MI6, TNT, snap bracelets, Pez dispensers, Banksy. It didn’t matter what it was. If the Human Rights Council (or Cuba) advocated one way, the United States went the other.

  I kept at it anyway. This was, after all, what I was paid to do. And a few times, human rights did line up with US interests. AIDS initiatives, for example, were well funded as long as they didn’t include mention of sex work, harm reduction, or anal sex. Also popular: eagles and pharmaceuticals.

  * * *

  Charles in Charge, take this report to the top was my primary directive. “The top” meant the penthouse floor, where the United States set up its operations. No other member state had its own floor, but the United States had threatened to leave many times during the George W. Bush years, and since it gave more money to the UN than any other state—although it gave less in proportion to its GDP than most wealthy nations and several of the poor ones—the international community, in an effort to placate, offered the United States the most prime of its already circumscribed real estate. Never mind that the United States was 146th in terms of population density, 83rd in peacekeeper contributions, and that what it did contribute was always late, less than what they’d promised, and came with a bad attitude.

  The penthouse elevator, a refurbished contraption with 1970s maroon carpeting and a bright, LED control panel, made only two stops (top and bottom), slowly. On the way up, the trip lasted six minutes; the reverse was four—something about gravity, I was told. The silver lining to all of this elevator travel was that most of the sex I had in the first six months retained an air of privacy. The remainder transpired in the middle stall of the nineteenth-floor bathroom, not far from the Hall of U Thant busts.

  I wasn’t alone in slipping skins at the nexus of global diplomacy. The UN functioned essentially as a sex club with simultaneous translation. And although everyone kept a shroud of decorum about it, it was frequent, widespread, and usually peaked after voting days. The musty aroma didn’t supplant the fetor of failure and futility that hung in the air and along the corridors, like inert gases or the ghosts of the League of Nations. But it certainly helped.

  Betwixt the sex, I worked. On Mondays, I gathered and synthesized the relevant research pertaining to a Friday vote. Tuesdays, I delivered the one-pager to the penthouse. Wednesdays, I dropped off a shorter version with larger font. On Thursdays, but sometimes Friday mornings, I received a “We don’t understand” memo, occasionally with a list of questions. Often, however, the sheet was blank but for the header (“God Bless America”) and footer (“God Bless America”).

  In a place where the United States had so much power, hope was naïve.

  “This is the netherworld between possibility and delusion, but we continue to give it our all,” said my supervisor, a soft-spoken Tamil and former resistance fighter who wore pantsuits, shiny scarves, and flats. Jaya rarely interfered in my work, only occasionally suggesting that I add one more bullet point or that I indent my sub-lists. She also never left her office and always brought her lunch from home. If there was a warrior in her, it lay in repose beneath a passive, perfunctory veneer. The Sri Lankan government appointed her to the Human Righ
ts Council during a temporary ceasefire, as a form of exile, Quimby explained. “She hasn’t a passport—not an uncommon predicament here.”

  Each morning, upon entering the main building, my first stop was the second floor, where all of us were required to leave our phones in personalized lead boxes that fit seamlessly into a floor-to-ceiling wall unit composed of thousands of cubbies. The unintended side effect of being phone-less was that cruising happened the old-fashioned way. No dating apps or text messages or semicolons. Just eye contact. Corridors and bathrooms in the UN were how all streets and bathrooms used to be—namely, gay and closeted. The dalliances were too. Discretion, after all, wasn’t only the mode at the UN; it was the guiding principle, for both policy-making and fornication. Over time, I inferred that divulging anything might be grounds for termination.

  “Yes, it’s wise to be circumspect,” Quimby said, after another day of deflating No votes and a few pints. “On the other hand,” he added, with raised eyebrows and a subtle hunch of his back, “some people have found innovative ways to use these encounters to their benefit.”

  “Do you mean blackmail?”

  Quimby scanned the main room of (W)hole Glory for anyone who might be “earwigging,” as he put it. “Not blackmail,” he said, leaning in close, “but yes, blackmail.”

  In addition to being a warren of workplace inappropriateness, the UN also served as an asylum of sorts for people facing all manner of discrimination in their home countries. Discrimination that could easily be weaponized here too.

  Quimby must have seen straight through my eyes into the place where the gears had begun to turn, because immediately he switched into a severe tone. “Take heed, Charles in Charge. Once you’re caught in the web, it is near impossible to become unstuck.”

  I nodded.

  Quimby drank half of his beer in one go. Then he patted down the drops that had spilled onto his shirt. “Richard’s in town,” he said. “You wanna come back to ours for a roll in the hay?”

  “Another time,” I said. I had had a quickie with a Senegalese tourist before leaving work.

  * * *

  It was common knowledge that Saudi Arabia wanted to maintain the practice of beheadings. And since the king and his princes had been, for years, disbursing low-interest gold ingots to the world’s most unsuccessful businessmen, no one on the Security Council, neither permanent nor temporary members (except for Venezuela, Vietnam, and Uruguay), was eager to support an upcoming resolution calling for a worldwide ban.

  “You will have to give this report more oomph,” said Jaya and halfheartedly curled her fingers into a fist that resembled that of a gambler and not of a freedom fighter.

  Apart from the usual mix of statistics and boilerplate pith, I included evidence of how the practice of beheadings was applied discriminatorily in the few countries in the world where it remained common practice. I also appended proof of their barbarity—testimonies of loved ones, pictures, verses from the Bible, and a copy of Braveheart.

  Somewhat surprisingly, no one responded; not even the usual fax from the Americans.

  The Saudis, like the Israelis, Egyptians, Russians, and Liechtensteiners, were known for playing rough. Upset them even a little and an onslaught of press releases questioning the very legitimacy of the UN appeared swiftly, which in the case of Israel was uniquely frustrating because the UN had legitimized its existence in the first place. (Periodically, a cartoon drawing of the Israeli ambassador pulling the rug out from under himself circulated the General Assembly.) If I were going to do anything more to give this resolution a chance, I’d need to be cautious.

  Quimby lent me his camera—a slender, 007-like device that he kept taped under his desk—which I used to record myself with Mo, the special assistant to the special assistant to Faisal, the Saudi ambassador. Mo was a small fry, physically and figuratively, but he was the closest I ever got to Faisal—the spoiled, third-born son of a very powerful businessman who’d been incapable of putting out the fires his son habitually started back home. (In addition to refuge and asylum, the UN was a rehabilitation camp for those with too much privilege to face consequences.) After arranging the camera on a shelf of the Dag Hammarskjöld library—“the Old Jag-off Hammar library,” Quimby called it—I made my way to the halal cafeteria on the thirteenth floor, where Mo tended to have lunch on Wednesdays. From there, it wasn’t difficult to lure him into the stacks. The hard part was making sure we stayed in the camera’s field of vision. Mo kept whipping me around in overwrought gestures that suggested he wanted desperately to be good at something he hadn’t practiced enough.

  Ironically, it was Mo’s aversion to being decapitated that ultimately led to Saudi Arabia’s support for the resolution against beheadings. “I need to show you something,” I said to him the day after our gambol in the library.

  “Yes, of course. Shall we go back to Jag Hammar?” he asked.

  But I pulled us into a nearby office-supply closet instead. When I held up the camera, he began to cry. I was completely unprepared for his reaction. Usually stoic, Mo cried several viscous tears that hung from his chin for a small eternity before free falling toward his wingtips. I felt shitty but didn’t know how to recant. Just kidding seemed a foolish and insufficient way forward. It didn’t matter. Before I could say anything more, he wiped his face with his tie, crossed his arms, and disappeared.

  Rumor has it that Faisal rejected Mo’s harried request for reconsideration on the resolution and threatened to have him sent home, but instead of folding, Mo threatened back with a video of his own—one he’d been keeping for just such an occasion. Faisal grabbed Mo by his tie and leaned into his face, screaming, spittle flying. “My pet tiger will eat your spleen alive for this,” he said. That Friday, Faisal lobbied for an amendment to the day’s agenda so that he could speak before the Security Council vote. Saudi Arabia would not oppose the resolution. The surprising reversal led to a brief recess, during which Australia and the United States regrouped with their allies and decided to support the resolution.

  “Congratulations,” Quimby said at happy hour on the evening of the vote. “Now, lay low. Don’t get greedy.”

  A few days later, I had a romp in the Kofi Annan Memorial Lounge with Robin, the spokesperson for the Swedish Mission. Afterward, he shepherded through the resolution against Iranian sanctions. Next, it was Wojciech, a cultural attaché from Poland, who, after an elevator ride, helped to maneuver a condemnation of the Brazilian president’s fascist rhetoric. Then came Joe, the King of Thailand’s valet plenipotentiary.

  His real name was Apichatpong, but Joe was easier in this country, he told me. At his insistence, we went to his office. The room had no windows, and my repeated attempts at turning on the lights were met with resistance. Eventually, he pulled away and buttoned up his shirt. “I know what you are trying to do,” he said, as he re-looped his belt. “That will not work with me. The king cares nothing of what I do. He cares nothing about anything. Try instead to ask me directly for what you need.” Joe was a slight man with a shaved head, faint mustache, and rimless eyeglasses. His sincerity embarrassed me. I zipped up my pants and walked toward the door. “Charles in Charge, your way is not sustainable,” he called out.

  After that, I took a break from sex altogether. I focused instead on writing reports, which proved easy because everyone seemed to be nursing cold sores in those cold months. Herpes, for me, was old hat, but I didn’t want to risk co-infection with another strain or a superinfection.

  * * *

  I was on my third gin martini and ninth olive when the stool next to mine crashed onto the floor. I turned to find a contorted figure trying to pick up his mess. It was Brad. Red-eyed, upper-middle-class, youth-adjacent Brad. Drunk but full of vim, vigor, and, as the girthy silhouette in his pants suggested, virility. That night, he fell asleep during sex, and I wasn’t able to wake him. The following morning, I fried eggs and bacon and toasted week-old sourdough. It’s what I would have made anyway, but since I had a compan
ion, I prepared twice as much. I’d half-expected him to play the role of aloof straight man with amnesia, but he was polite and, generally, quite genial. He was also the first UN coworker I’d ever brought home.

  Over several cups of coffee, I learned that Brad was a trust fund kid with an almost undetectable lisp and half an MBA. On the surface, he reminded me of all the guys in college who’d never given me the time of day. His father had been a vice president at IBM in its heyday, and his grandfather had been a well-known confidante of Ronald Reagan, as well as Nancy’s paramour throughout most of the Cold War. In fact, Brad appeared in the annual extended-family photographs of several prominent political families. These connections had marked his life—a warm welcome into Exeter and Yale, then Harvard, then out of Harvard, and, finally, into the UN. I’d known him simply as one of the quiet Americans who waited at the penthouse elevator bank to receive my reports. Once, maybe twice, I’d flirted with him, but he’d been unreceptive, and, to my credit, I hadn’t insisted. A younger version of myself would have set aside dignity to pursue him—rejections from white men have always come across as institutional or systemic, serving only to invigorate me. But my adult self met his disinterest with my own.