Long-Sigh Anxiety

Contributed by Matthew Hartwell on 23/10/08

They fired me two months ago. Well, not fired. Released. Kept my pension. Sort of an early retirement in which I had no say, but isn’t that usually the case? Not that I shouldn’t be grateful. I am. Grateful as a beaten dog. I wasn’t too old for the work. I kept abreast of the major trade magazines and made my way to conventions and lectures at least twice a year. No, I think their biggest issue, besides the chronic drinking, both on and off the job, was that I tried to erase the picture.

Although the drinking was probably a big part of it. You don’t wreck a coroner’s van into the front of a kindergarten and claim it jumped out in front of you.

It’s those CSI shows, really. If I’m going to place the blame on someone other than myself, and make no mistake, I am, it’s the guy with his sunglasses, and the crew in snazzy outfits with ultraviolet pen lights for seeing trace amounts of semen and blood on taxi cab seats.

I don’t take taxi cabs anymore.

These shows that teach everyone how to be a police scientist, except they don’t call them that anymore, it’s not sexy enough, so they’re CSI specialists, and “the guys down in the lab”. These shows were the beginning of the problem. You’ve seen the commercials for them, where some amateur thinks he’s an office-detective because he’s seen every episode of Cold Case? You’re supposed to think that’s funny. Maybe a little endearing. Maybe, you think, I know somebody like that, what a great commercial! But no, these commercials are terrifying, because they expose the belief that more than half the people have that watching the History Channel or A&E while soaking up unemployment is somehow equivalent to a doctorate in any given field. The Wikipedia Syndrome, where now, because everybody can be an expert, everybody must be.

So these shows, Bones and whatever else, they get all popular. But they’re not too grim, aren’t they? Depressing bits of fluff on TV every hour at the hour don’t sell, and so they get all dolled up. Our department head calls us all in for a meeting. Says the taxpayers, in a recently conducted survey, have indicated a desire to see us operate very publicly.

Real life? Not too much like the CSI: Miami version. And people come out and watch. And, in an unexpected turn, people are actually offended. Crowds that gather to witness us do swabs of bodies for DNA samples are uncomfortable with the casual way we handle the dead. They find the massive patches of blood at murder scenes upsetting, as they should. In real life, blood is a lot brighter than on television. Movies are always trying to make it darker and darker, but when it hits the oxygen, it lights up. Arterial spray seems more fake in real life than in an Eighties slasher flick.

Our boss calls us back in. This is maybe half a paycheck later. There have been letters, he says. Concerned telephone calls. The local affiliate is dropping two police procedurals from its lineup at the request of viewers. He has an idea to revamp our image.

I was never much of an art student, so I’m not tapped in the first wave of commissions. Most of the boys go for a realistic style, though there are some Impressionistic works. Even when artistic liberties are taken, the general shape has to be accurate. The one that upsets me most is the one on that door over by the corner of Canal Street. How’d she get up there? I wasn’t on that call, and I’m thankful everyday for that. The girl, two feet off the ground. This was one of the later pieces, when anyone in the department who wanted a shot could sign up. Frank did that one, and he later confided to me he has no artistic skill.

But I think he’s wrong. I think, despite its crude line-work and its nightmarish coloring, the facial expressions are perfectly sad, and the main reason I’m glad I was off work that day.

The main problem I have with this “city beautification” project, is that none of these works are temporary. When we used to do these in chalk, they’d wash away in the next rain, or a shopkeeper would spray them down with a hose once we gave him the okay. These stay up, and while they’re beautiful to most, to me they’re just a reminder.

I’m living in a city full of dead people.