My autobiography will read: I am hired. But no: I am still here, in this little office, where the fluorescent light surrounds me like cloacal fluid. The personnel manager's eyes are dark and dilated, without visible irises, whether from the peculiar quanta of the overhead light or the cocaine of my need, I don't know.

She is self-satisfied and content now, self-consciously busy, and she preens herself with papers on her desk. She is almost ready to talk to me. I wait like a dog who has not been walked for a long time.

Finally, she turns her attention to me.

Why do you want this job? she asks.

I'm desperate, I reply. My unemployment checks ran out two weeks ago and I have no money. I've been on unemployment a lot these last few years and I have no reserves; in all senses of the word, I have no reserves left. You see, I have a manic-depressive illness, a very severe one, not just a few moodswings here or there, or a common cold-type depression, but grand mal mania with delusions and all, and I've lost a lot of jobs. I don't get fired per se - they just eliminate my position and this way, they don't get sued. But I did sue one place, not for firing me because I was a manic-depressive, but because I was a manic-depressive. Is there a difference? I don't know.

I got unemployment that time, and then again when I danced over where the AIDS orphans were buried. I was coming late because I had to dervish over their corpses, the corpses of unburied dead. I was dancing to mark the spot. Perhaps, I thought, perhaps, they would see and understand, but they fired me. I was coming late a lot. They eliminated my position - they were glad to give me unemployment. Really, they would have done a lot more just to be rid of me, I was a disturbance after all. I thought I was a breeder in a satanic cult and that all the ghetto youth with light skin and blue eyes were mine, biologically mine.

I take medication now. It makes me slow, but I can still do this work. Not with any enthusiasm - I am no longer sharp. I'm burnt out as you can imagine from so many illnesses. Sometimes my thinking is fuzzy, and I simply don't have the fire any more. I used to be quite good, quite an overachiever. I worked long hours and slaved to make everything perfect. Now, I just rewrite the old. It's all old.

With supervision, I know I will be okay. I'm hoping for a boss who is indecisive and a little lazy, and if we can pass letters back and forth for endless time-consuming corrections, it wouldn't bother me at all. That would be just fine. Bureaucracy and indecision used to bother me, I worried about my brilliant career and how the slowness and incompetence and stupidity of my boss would hold me back, but then I became a poet and didn't give a shit anymore. I once cared passionately about poetry, too, but now I don't worry about that much, either. I just want a paycheck and a place to go during the day so I don't crawl into bed and piss on the sheets. The only thing I have to keep me occupied right now is walking my dog and interviews like these. And I don't even walk my dog too well: I just take her out for one piss and one shit once a day and that's it.

You know, a job like this one wasn't good enough for me once, but now this really is the best I can do. I would be delighted if I got this job. If I could do it. If I could show up. If I don't just crawl back into bed. But you see I live entirely on the charity of my mother. The alimony runs out soon. I signed this separation agreement from my second husband on the eleventh anniversary of my first husband's death. It was suicide, maybe; maybe an accident. I really don't know. He drowned on our honeymoon. I was nuts, and signed, you see. Because then, I was confident. I was always so confident, confident in my ability to take care of myself, to come back from any disaster. That's gone now, you understand, completely, utterly gone... I used to think I could change the world; now, I don't think I can change my sheets ...

But I'm pretty sure I can still do this job, as long as I don't have to create anything. If I can copy a template, I know I'll do fine. I was once creative; I was a bright, no, brilliant kid, but I drank a lot, spent a lot of time on psych wards, and it started to catch up with me. There's only so many times you can get really manic before the permanent damage sets in.

Anyway, my psychiatrist says I need some structure, and I agree, and a job would really help. Does that answer your question?

You know, your pupils are so dilated. It's an interview, a two-way street. Have you seen into me? I can't see into you. Maybe you're a manic-depressive, too. Maybe you rush out from here every day to the office of a waiting shrink to weep and scream your despair, to say, I can't go on, it hurts too much...

I see your irises now, blue like mine, and know you have lived without sickness and without despair, and your normal life of normal frustrations and no huge events looks at me without a trace of pity. This interview and our interaction is the worst thing that will happen to you this month I know you've had your troubles, too. It's just that I have to come back from a place that doesn't even exist to sit here today, and I'm so tired I could just die. If I could do it, I would, but I'm afraid to jump and the pills just don't work. I know, I've tried a dozen times.

I come from a place that doesn't exist. In my madness, I live there and when I am sane - and I am sane now, not nuts, just desperate - what you see here is not insanity but the loss of hope...when I am mad, I may not be happy, but at least I have a place to go, and now, I am sane, sane and battered, sane and worn out, superceded and completely out of place in the world.

I have a lot of talent, my psychiatrist says, and I honestly don't know how to turn it into a check. Will you help me? This is my best shot I can no longer compete with kids out of college. I can come in third or fifth, but there's only one job here, and I have to be first I used to be first in a walk. I could effortlessly win. I got 800's on my SAT's, you know, had job offers up the wazoo; like I say, just five years ago, this job wouldn't have been good enough for me and now I need it like blood.

If this were the thirties, you would give me a break. Back then, no one pretended that things were just fine. People liked homeless people, called them hoboes, gave them jobs. I gave my diamond engagement ring to a homeless man last year, I gave all my clothes away to the poor, because I was confident back then. Do you know what I would do for one ounce of confidence today?

I stopped and the fluorescence ate my words. The papers on her desk absorbed the sounds, and around me like sewage my cheerful interview self returned, and I answered the other questions as anybody would, and she pretended that she hadn't heard a word of what I had said.