{"id":73258,"date":"2014-06-27T12:37:07","date_gmt":"2014-06-27T16:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=73258"},"modified":"2014-06-27T14:01:09","modified_gmt":"2014-06-27T18:01:09","slug":"house-sitting-and-other-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/27\/house-sitting-and-other-work\/","title":{"rendered":"House-sitting and Other Work"},"content":{"rendered":"

Precarity and creativity in other people\u2019s homes.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Charles_Demuth_-_Modern_Conveniences_(1921)\"<\/a>

Charles Demuth, Modern Conveniences<\/i>, 1921.<\/p><\/div>\n

When I moved back to Portland, Oregon, in 2010, after four years away in New York and Arizona, no one would hire me. Not Whole Foods, not the local New Seasons market, not the upscale Zupan\u2019s chains. \u201cThanks for your interest in the Deli Service Clerk\/Courtesy Clerk\/Cashier\/Meat Cutter – Back up position,\u201d an automated email said. \u201cIf your skills match up with the requirements of the job, we\u2019ll be in touch to arrange an interview.\u201d No one got in touch. Trader Joe\u2019s wouldn\u2019t even respond to my inquiries. If I, a thirty-six year old with college degrees and retail experience, couldn\u2019t get hired to work a register, what hope could I feel in anything?<\/p>\n

I subsisted on egg dishes and microwavable food. Whatever canned soups were on sale I bought by the armful. In lieu of a \u201creal\u201d job, I made it my job to spend very little money. Portland is a tough town for good employment. It has a glut of eager applicants and limited industry. Our main commercial offerings are arguably food, advertising, and stylishness. Combined with our large artist population, that means that countless musicians, writers, and painters are cooking and serving your meals.<\/p>\n

Hope came from a local landmark, Powell\u2019s Books, which hired me as a temp cashier in the summer of 2011. I\u2019d worked at the flagship store full-time between 2000 and 2006, and the intervening years seem to have erased my employer\u2019s memories of my often gruff customer service, my habit of sleeping on the lunchroom couch, and my tendency to use the company Xerox machine to photocopy material for whatever I was writing. That summer, by the large windows along Burnside Street, I stood at the cash register and pushed keys for four to nine hours a day. But when the season ended, the store created a few permanent part-time cashier positions, and I didn\u2019t land one. \u201cWe\u2019re sorry to say we\u2019ve found somebody else,\u201d my manager said weeks after my interview. He wasn\u2019t as sorry as I was\u2014he, with a job to cover his mortgage and health insurance.<\/p>\n

I was back where I started. I struck out on my own and became a house sitter. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s misleading. It wasn\u2019t really my doing.<\/p>\n

An ex-coworker from Powell\u2019s emailed asking if I wanted to watch her dog. Technically, this job qualified as house-sitting, since it involved sleeping at her house, but Diane was more concerned with her dog than her property. A devoted animal lover, she\u2019d adopted this friendly mutt named Jasper from an organization in Utah and doted on him like a son. It was impossible not to. Jasper was adorably sociable. He loved long walks, chasing squirrels, and sitting by your feet when you sat at the kitchen table; that\u2019s how his Canine OkCupid profile would have read.<\/p>\n

Diane is tall, in her fifties, worldly and intelligent, with the sort of dry humor I always find amusing. She had out-of-state family affairs to attend to and would be away for a few weeks. Free food, free lodging, free Wi-Fi, and some cash\u2014for someone scraping by, this was the perfect gig. Clearly it was an act of philanthropy and pity, knowing, as she did, that I had no work other than writing small, irregular freelance pieces for even smaller checks. She also wanted to give me a quiet place to write in a remodeled two-bedroom house far roomier and more comfortable than the cramped, gloomy one I shared with two other ex-Powell\u2019s coworkers, their dogs, and their newborn daughter.<\/p>\n

The idea of house-sitting had never occurred to me, but the prospect was exciting. I wrote back immediately with a simple \u201cHell yes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her generosity lasted for more than two years. She\u2019d go on vacation and I\u2019d watch the house. She\u2019d visit her aging father in Los Angeles and I\u2019d watch the house. She\u2019d meet her sisters in California and take care of family obligations, sometimes for days, sometimes for weeks. She was retired. She could do what she wanted. For some reason she chose to help me maintain my tenuous, creative existence; in return, I made sure her dog and home were safe. I only made a little money, but it was often enough to pay rent. I also got tons of writing done at her place, which also helped cover rent. When the room you rent only costs $250 a month, and you eat lots of tacos and Trader Joe\u2019s gluten-free Pizza al Pollo Asado, you can do that.<\/p>\n

A writer needs other skills than \u201ccraft.\u201d You need to be industrious, flexible, and humble. You need regular work. The list of famous writers\u2019 day jobs is familiar: Dr. Seuss the adman, Herman Melville the customs inspector, T.S. Eliot the banker, William Carlos Williams the doctor. William Faulkner famously got fired for reading the magazines in the Mississippi post office where he worked. Franz Kafka took a job at an insurance company and hated it.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s your profession, and then there are the odd jobs and one-offs you do to fill revenue gaps. As odd jobs go, mine are unremarkable. I painted a house once. I made sandwiches at Subway, tended the bar at a Christmas party, managed files on a college campus, tried to find work as a tutor, and did clerical work at my dad\u2019s construction business after college. Safe and easy, these did the trick, though I\u2019ve also sold my own chapbook on the streets<\/a>, and I trimmed weed in a basement for two days; that hurt my wrists.<\/p>\n

At Diane\u2019s, I collected the mail, took out the trash, and greeted landscapers when they arrived. In the morning, I\u2019d walk Jasper. After that, I\u2019d cook breakfast without my shirt on and wander around in my boxers, the damp air of another person\u2019s home cooling my skin as if it always had. Nakedness feels more naked in someone else\u2019s space. Most times that sense of exposure made me feel at home there. Sometimes, it made me uneasy. When I hung my clothes in the closet, they hung beside Diane\u2019s. When I took them out, some smelled like her. It wasn\u2019t sexual; it was intimate. House-sitting is a collaborative, trusting act. There\u2019s a sweetness in protecting someone\u2019s belongings that is equal to the assorted kindnesses the homeowner affords. There\u2019s also a sense of trespassing.<\/p>\n

Diane always left me clean towels, but sometimes I needed a Band-Aid or lotion, so I had to search. Her bathroom had many drawers which made it hard to resist snooping, but I did, as a matter of respect. Some people I know said that when you hire a house sitter, you should expect the house sitter to go through your things. Whatever the homeowner\u2019s expectation, though, I believe it\u2019s my duty to respect people\u2019s privacy. No snooping, no rummaging, no copping\u2014or even searching for\u2014pills. On the other hand, I didn\u2019t respect Diane\u2019s ice cream. \u201cI ate all the pistachio and coconut gelato,\u201d I wrote her in a text. \u201cI couldn\u2019t stop! I\u2019ll leave you some cash.\u201d She texted back: \u201cNo worries.\u201d That was what I wanted to provide her: no worries.<\/p>\n

Even though Diane\u2019s neighborhood is filled with night life, traffic, and freaks, nothing ever happened. Nobody tried to break in. During the day, I sat at my computer. At night, Jasper and I sat on the couch, his face draped across my thigh as I read. I enjoyed the time so much that I barely thought of it as work, but these creature comforts were borrowed comforts, and the transaction reminded me of all that I wanted and lacked in life. I was at home here, and also, a drifter.<\/p>\n

During this period, a few other generous souls offered regular house-sitting gigs, some of which paid in cash and writing space, and one of which paid in solitude and peace. Mary, a friend of Diane\u2019s and another previous Powell\u2019s coworker, let me hang at her house when she and her boyfriend went out of town. A witty, vocal Texan with long hair and an iced coffee habit, Mary\u2019s generosity and progressive politics had won me over at Powell\u2019s as much as her fire and temper had. She was passionate and authentic, her charm inextricably linked with her loyalties and blemishes. She\u2019d left Powell\u2019s to work with unions, and she extended me the same empathy that she\u2019d extended to the miners and laborers she\u2019d advocated for.<\/p>\n

Mary\u2019s boyfriend is a musician. They live in a small green house in a walkable neighborhood, and their basement is filled with records, CDs and instruments. In one corner stands a small recording studio, in the opposite, a washer and drier. When they were on tour, I parked myself at their kitchen table under a painting Billy Childish made,\u00a0and I wrote for days and days, shoveling chocolate and tea into my mouth while guarding their house and equipment with my life.\u00a0It energized me to know that such a talented person recorded demos under the same worn roof that I composed essays, to know that, in the damp space beneath my feet, he played late into the night, working out the melodies that he turned into songs. When I fetched my laundry from the basement, I passed a hanging garden of tour lanyards. They draped over rafters, the plastic badges listing the band names and year, and together composing a record of all the places he\u2019d visited and people he\u2019d entertained.<\/p>\n

What you might call an invisible economy of house sitters exists across the country.\u00a0Untold numbers roam our city streets, leaving their familiar bedrooms to stand sentinel over strangers\u2019 homes while using them as getaways, weigh stations and de facto offices. As one\u00a02006\u00a0AARP Magazine<\/em>\u00a0article<\/a>\u00a0describes house-sitting: \u201cImagine staying in some of the loveliest locations on earth\u2014and all you have to do is feed the cats.\u201d Websites like\u00a0HouseCarers.com\u00a0and\u00a0Luxury House Sitting\u00a0have emerged to connect homeowners with sitters, yet as\u00a0Airbnb\u00a0thrives and\u00a0CouchSurfing.org gains millions of members\u00a0worldwide<\/a>, house-sitting goes relatively unnoticed as an industry. This is partly because it\u2019s a cash economy, partly because it, depending on the client, bears such close resemblance to what you call \u201ccrashing at your friend\u2019s place.\u201d Don\u2019t be fooled. The arrangement may be casually intimate, but it is business. Imagine what would happen if the house got robbed because the sitter failed to lock the back door.<\/p>\n

If a novel depicted house sitters\u2019 lives, its scenes would depict the complex relationship between the homeowner and sitter, the way trust is built between strangers in such an intimate setting as a home: how\u00a0house keys are swapped, free food is provided or withheld. They would depict the life spent in that stranger\u2019s house, including how much or how little house sitters snoop. The story would address the question of origin: How did this subculture start? And what did homeowners do before house sitters? Were there historical antecedents, or did people just leave their porch lights on to deter thieves? In the process, the story would illustrate how this group represents the face of what economists call precarity, or America\u2019s new\u00a0part-time economy, a place where increasing numbers of people have multiple part-time jobs with no health insurance, rather than a single full-time career.<\/p>\n

To reduce costs and avoid paying for insurance, many companies have replaced full-time with part-time employment. Sadly, Powell\u2019s does this. Other companies, including Starbucks, now cap workers\u2019 hours under full-time, or change schedules week to week. House-sitting provides a way to earn supplemental, tax-free income, as well as the additional benefit of enjoying a higher standard of living in a nicer house and neighborhood than part-timers\u2019 income can often afford\u2014a welcome balm to one\u2019s imperfect work life.<\/p>\n

Although I still think of myself as a house sitter, I no longer am one. When a set of house-sitting offers conflicted with my day job, I had to decline, and the offers eventually stopped coming. In 2012, I landed a regular job: twenty-two hours a week at a tea shop. The tea is top-notch, and the shop is free of pretension and doilies. Customer service gets me out of the house and socialized enough that I don\u2019t become feral, and for three of the four days that I\u2019m not at the shop, I write.<\/p>\n

Yet I revised this essay from another person\u2019s house. A couple of talented writers just moved back to town this month, and they needed someone to watch their rental and dog while they attended a wedding. Was I available? I didn\u2019t know. I hadn\u2019t house-sat for over a year. I\u2019d sold my car since then. I have that work schedule. And now that I live with my girlfriend in a well-lit apartment across town, I no longer need to escape to other people\u2019s homes. Even if I did, long stays wouldn\u2019t be easy without a car. But for these two, I agreed. I like them. I like their dog. I like quelling their worry by making sure they know everything\u2019s taken care of while they\u2019re away. The extra cash sounded nice. A few days walking a sweet dog in a different part of town also sounded refreshing. So here I am, out of retirement and writing at their kitchen table, and eating their food as usual. I may have outgrown the need to house-sit, but the benefits are evergreen.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019m thirty-nine. My girlfriend and I want to buy property someday. We want to take more vacations. Maybe one day we\u2019ll have a kid. The wages of the part-time retail clerk-writer won\u2019t let me contribute as much as I would like to financially. The question that looms for many people in my position is: What to do? For now, this.<\/p>\n

Aaron Gilbreath<\/a>\u00a0has written for <\/em>Harper\u2019s, the<\/em> New York Times,<\/em> Vice,<\/em> The Awl,<\/em> The Believer,<\/em> and<\/em> Narratively, and he wrote the musical appendix to <\/em>The Oxford Companion to Sweets. Find him @AaronGilbreath<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Precarity and creativity in other people\u2019s homes. When I moved back to Portland, Oregon, in 2010, after four years away in New York and Arizona, no one would hire me. Not Whole Foods, not the local New Seasons market, not the upscale Zupan\u2019s chains. \u201cThanks for your interest in the Deli Service Clerk\/Courtesy Clerk\/Cashier\/Meat Cutter […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4393],"tags":[9486,7947,8949,4901,14437,4306,3861,14436,14438,14439,12807],"class_list":["post-73258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-person","tag-homes","tag-houses","tag-housesitting","tag-jobs","tag-odd-jobs-2","tag-oregon","tag-portland","tag-powells","tag-snooping","tag-the-economy","tag-work"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHouse-sitting and Other Work<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Aaron Gilbreath on precarity and creativity in other people\u2019s homes.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/27\/house-sitting-and-other-work\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"House-sitting and Other Work by Aaron Gilbreath\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"June 27, 2014 \u2013 Precarity and creativity in other people\u2019s homes. 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