Joshua Davis’ Small Victory

Joshua Davis is a magazine writer and documentary filmmaker who’s put himself through a lot of interesting paces for his first book, The Underdog, traveling around the world to compete in unusual athletic competitions. What’s so unusual about sumo wrestling, you ask? Nothing…unless, like Davis, you’re 129 pounds soaking wet. (As for the photo at left, that’s Davis after he snuck into Iraq as a war correspondent for Wired.) Anyway, in this essay he tells Beatrice readers about the rather unathletic experience that propelled him on this journey.

Some people are attracted to success. I’m not one of them. I spend most of my time thinking about my failures, which is why, after a series of disastrous business decisions in my early and mid-twenties, I ended up working as a temporary data entry clerk at the local phone company. It gave me plenty of time to mull over the negative turn my life had taken. I’d show up at 9:00, pick up a giant box of Universal Lifeline reduced phone fee applications, put on a pair of headphones and have the pleasure of torturing myself for eight hours while my fingers flashed across a numeric key pad.

The applications were sworn statements by people saying that they were poor and shouldn’t have to pay full price for their phone service. It was a parade of poverty and rich misers but deciding whether they were lying or not wasn’t my job. I simply typed their phone number into a computer to signify that they had applied. What started to get to me though were my mistakes. If I mistyped the phone number, the computer would beep at me and reject the number. This opened up a world of possibilities. Did the computer already know the numbers and if so, why did they need me? Was this all a giant psychology experiment? Were they trying to see how long it would take before I went mad?

If it was an experiment, then Christopher was the star research subject. He had recently moved to San Francisco to embrace the gay pride movement, and, after dropping a few tabs of ecstasy, had face planted while roller blading through the Castro. He’d lost most of his teeth and all of his sanity. He listened to techno remixes of Dianna Ross songs at full blast while keying so many universal lifeline forms that his left hand couldn’t flip them fast enough. I could hear the thudding beat from where I sat, ten feet away and was continually distracted by the violent shaking of his head as he thrashed and keyed to the beat.

It pissed me off. Every day, this shell of a human being beat me in the daily tally of forms processed. It gave me a new failure to obsess over and I decided that my goal would be to beat him. I would become the best keyer on the third floor of the company’s rear annex. I would be great at something.

I tried for weeks. Christopher didn’t even register that I was competing with him. He was in a different league, as if he had been born to process universal lifeline forms. He burned through 2000 forms on a bad day while I barely broke 1500 at my best. I thought about poisoning him. I thought about stealing his Diana Ross mix-CD.

And then my big break came. One Thursday, Joanna, the supervisor, asked me if I wanted to work some overtime. She had just received a big batch of forms and needed to make a dent in them. Chris wasn’t interested—he wanted to go to a party in the Castro. Would I stay late?

I settled into my cheap plastic seat, fired up my radio (tuned to NPR) and ripped into the pile. I had already logged my best eight hours ever: 1800. My arms ached but this was my chance. The forms flew through my fingertips–I was a universal lifeline fiend. I gritted my teeth. I was alone in the temp room. It was just me and Jim Lehrer gunning for the daily record.

When I passed 2100 (and bested Christopher’s daily tally of 2080), I could barely hold back the tears. I knew that the scientists watching on close circuit television were impressed. I had proven something. I wasn’t a loser. I had been the best for a day. I put my tally into the tally bin, punched the time card and left a note for Joanna telling her that I wouldn’t be back the next day. Or ever. I was on my way up.

Though professionally and financially, I did not exactly move up immediately, I did devote myself to winning other competitions. I entered the U.S. National Armwrestling Championships and placed fourth (out of four) in the country. That qualified me as an alternate for the US Armwrestling Team and I ended up going to the world championship in Poland. I felt a surge of confidence and that helped me muster the courage to talk to some magazine editors. I had things I wanted to explore (nicotine-free tobacco, internet-enabled warfare) and they agreed to pay me to write about them. It was the beginning of my writing career and I trace it back to that 10 hour battle to best Christopher’s universal lifeline tally. Sometimes, all it takes is a small victory to turn an entire life around.

8 October 2005 | guest authors |