Christina Oxenberg

January 25, 2009

Who goes to the Hamptons for the winter? Me. I recently made a deal with a charming devil and agreed to a house-sitting gig in the Hamptons.To keep myself occupied and out of trouble I started poking about for possible employment. Most of the villages out here have shuttered Main Streets, at least half the boutiques and fancy food shops are closed. The Hamptons are a dismal place in the wintertime. Nevertheless, I thought I?d best find myself some way to pay the gas company, et al.

Craigslist job possibilities for eastern Long Island suggests I might as well kill myself.  I answered the first five listings regardless of type. I inquired after the position of Tarot card reader to entertain at an upcoming charity fundraiser for autism on Staten Island. I asked about a job to play the victim in a TV re-enactment of a true crime murder filming in East Hampton at the end of January.
I heard back from the autism charity and ?Scott? gave me a test and made me do a reading for him. This was all by email so I felt emboldened, at least up until ?Scott? Facebooked me and asked me my age! I gave him some grief about the age question, but mostly because I needed to throw him off his game while I invented some hocus pocus for the card reading. I waited a few minutes and then I wrote him a paragraph on his relationship with his ex making sure to avail myself of all manner of clich?s ?trust your instincts?, ?follow your heart? and other beauties. I sent him my assessment of his romantic status and I never heard from him again.

Of course I got side tracked and checked out the personals. I justified this time wasting/absorbing activity with the fact I need acquaintances in this barren chilly land. There is just one page and I was envious at the quantity of ads for men looking for men attached with photographs of their manhood.  Four listings for women looking for paid interaction.  And ?Ben?, a single dude who was howling at the virtual night sky, pining for his lost lady love. ?Ben? wrote he?d forgo a million dollars just to have her in his arms again. My guess is no one has offered Ben a million dollars, else he?d know better.
Changing tack I looked at other peoples job searches and offered employment to ?famous guy needs work?. I needed to know how he was famous and why he was looking for work on Craigslist. But he turned out to be a fraud just like myself because after a couple of emails back and forth he admitted he was not famous and had been concerned no one would have responded to him if he wrote ?total nobody needs job?. I told him he was absolutely right and to high tail it out of my inbox.