Jesus' Son

The theme of The Slipperiness of Time continues in “Work,” particularly when F**khead wonders whether he’d simply “wandered into some sort of dream that Wayne was having about his wife, and his house” (50). The tone of “Work” is wistful and melancholic; at the beginning of the story, F**khead goes to a bar because he fought with his girlfriend. However, he’s not characterized in leaving out of anger, but rather sadness. F**khead loves his girlfriend, describing her as “the most beautiful woman I’d ever known,” but at the same time, their Substance Use Disorder keeps them in a constant state of conflict (45). In connecting with Wayne and committing to an honest day of work, F**khead writes that “after all, in small ways, it was turning out to be one of the best days of my life, whether it was somebody else’s dream or not” (50). F**khead’s path to happiness comes through honesty and a sense of purpose, but he can only achieve these feelings with someone else’s help. At this point, F**khead is so far from being or feeling responsible that going through someone else’s path is the only way to access honesty and purpose.

However, this day of honest work can’t last forever, as F**khead and Wayne spend the money they earned on a day of drinking at the Vine. The story concludes with a description and speculative analysis of F**khead’s favorite bartender, who poured drinks “like doubling your money. She wasn’t going to make her employers rich. Needless to say, she was revered among us” (50). In this section, F**khead refers to this bartender as “mother” and “nurse,” demonstrating the way that he and Wayne view the women in their lives. In Wayne’s dream that F**khead also experienced, Wayne first encountered his ex-wife strapped to a kite, furthering the idea of nonreality and the normalization of unusual events, echoing the strange experience of being under the influence. In “Work,” the women are less characters than they are archetypes for the male characters to latch onto—every woman they encounter is defined by how she treats them, and this tends to take the role of a lover or a maternal figure. The latter, the bartender, is identified by her generosity and perceived caretaking in the form of supplying alcohol. F**khead’s love for the bartender is not genuine through this lens, but rather a function of feeling as though she cares for him—a feeling absent in the rest of his life, particularly as he argues with his girlfriend. F**khead’s exaggerated emotions toward the bartender are also an expression of how much emotion he typically represses.