I came across former Scene editor Bruce Dobie’s name one afternoon while scouring my alma mater’s alumni website for school contacts in Nashville. I’d never heard of the guy but noticed that he’d listed himself as a journalist. Journalism always seemed like a hip field to me, the kind where you were always in the thick of things—out meeting people, writing and getting heard—a very romantic notion. I’d always dreamed of being a writer when I was young, of the feeling I’d get telling people when they asked what I did for a living. I came across former Scene editor Bruce Dobie’s name one afternoon while scouring my alma mater’s alumni website for school contacts in Nashville. I’d never heard of the guy but noticed that he’d listed himself as a journalist. Journalism always seemed like a hip field to me, the kind where you were always in the thick of things—out meeting people, writing and getting heard—a very romantic notion. I’d always dreamed of being a writer when I was young, of the feeling I’d get telling people when they asked what I did for a living. I also felt a sense of entitlement, like fate owed me something. I’d heard but didn’t understand that everything in life involves a give and take, reciprocity. I didn’t buy all that “it will happen when the time is right” rap. Sounded like a bunch of mumbo jumbo, the stuff people say to make you feel better when you’re down on your luck—and besides, my experience seemed to disprove that notion. I’d always had help getting jobs through friends or friend’s parents, or parent’s friends, never had to look too hard, but I can’t say that I’d ever been happy doing whatever it was I was doing. Now, here I’d landed in Nashville all by my lonesome, in a solitary state of mind, trying to sell myself and my agenda with little more than a clue as to who I really was. I sent Dobie an email that day asking that he speak with me but not really expecting too much—I’d sent dozens of similar emails elsewhere without hearing so much as a pin drop in return. But Dobie was different. We met for coffee at Fido the following week. I showed up wearing a polo shirt and some beat-up khakis, the only pair I had that didn’t make me look like I’d just come from a prostate exam. I’d been listening to The Killers on the way over and the same song was playing on the coffee shop stereo, helping warm me up for what I thought would be an interview as I spun the yarn I expected would cover up my inexperience. He spotted me as soon as he walked in and I took note, felt like I had to brace myself before I said a word to him. Perhaps he smelled the load of crap I was about to feed him, or perhaps he just saw Sewanee written all over me—Sewanee students tend to have a certain recognizable quality. He walked over, smiled and stuck out his hand. His hands were much bigger than mine. He was tall but not towering, exuded a warm confidence and spoke with sincerity. He got breakfast and I got coffee. I’d lost my appetite anticipating our meeting. Our conversation lasted about an hour, with less than 15 minutes actually devoted to what a journalism career in Nashville was like, which was fine by me because I’d have rather talked about other stuff anyway and I wasn’t really interested in answering any questions. The rest of the time we talked about our university, our fondness for it and the trouble we’d gotten into there. We also discovered each other’s fondness for booze. “You’d like it at the Nashville Scene” he said. “They like to drink there.” We shook hands a last time, and he gave me editor Liz Garrigan’s office number and offered to put in a good word for me. I couldn’t have been more optimistic. I made a call to Liz but never heard anything back, so I had to resort to going to interviews that I’d found through placement companies like Monster or Careerbuilder. I was losing my mind. Trying to find gainful employment through these types of search engines having just graduated from college is damn near futile, or so was my experience. I got some interviews from my profile at Monster, but they were inevitably at some seedy company situated atop a greasy spoon outside of the city that paid commission only. I’d go into these offices—floors covered in sawdust, walls stripped of paint—and they’d sit me down and ask me irrelevant questions that had absolutely nothing to do with my job qualifications. “If you could be any type of animal what would it be?” At some point during our exchange, the interviewer would begin to sell the company, or at least the idea of working there. These places always “represented Fortune 500 companies”—a fancy way of saying they were outsourced labor that sold credit cards or the like door to door. They’d promise fortunes and benefits, good hours and good working conditions; the truth being, working for these places makes you nothing more than a glorified day laborer—you work outside with little benefit other than being outside. The success of these “companies,” I always imagined, rested on their ability to coerce applicants into second interviews, which were always scheduled for the next day. You’d go back to the office and within 20 minutes they’d put you on the street to hock gimmicks to dime stores and uninterested retailers. Most applicants would leave after the second day or maybe a few days later when lightning struck and these foot soldiers realized they couldn’t make any real money in this type of industry. I never went back for these second interviews, but knew plenty of friends who had. After nearly a month of interviewing with sketchy businesses, I’d about had it. Liz hadn’t called me back and I hadn’t heard much from Dobie, either. I hated the idea of going back to square one, especially since I’d been so close to a dream. I went down the road one night and bought a bottle of bourbon and some beer, sat on my front porch swing and drank with a couple good friends who tried to cheer me up. The night’s warm breeze offered a strange relief as we all sat quietly and listened to Neil Young wail on “Don’t Be Denied” through some old computer speakers. Looking back, I’d have to say the timing of everything that night was weird. The pieces of my fragmented mind all of a sudden started to fall into place, and who is to say why? The song didn’t get to me in any religious sort of way—I didn’t “break on through to the other side,” so to speak—but, along with everything else that had happened over the past few weeks, it was enough to get me thinking, push me to the edge of reason and make me take a leap of faith. Tight on whiskey, all broken up and with little left to lose, I found my cell phone and dialed Liz’s number. It was 2:30 a.m. She wasn’t in her office. I got her voice mail. Anticipation. Adrenaline. Go Time. My heart beat ferociously, might have leapt out of my chest had I not been clutching my sternum. “Hello Liz. This is Dave Rudolph. I’ve called but haven’t heard back from you. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that I’ve always wanted to be a writer and that I really, really, really, really, really”—I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t articulate what I wanted to say—“really, really want to work for the Scene.” I was slurring my words. “If you could please call me back….” I left my number and email address, hung up, and shortly thereafter fell in front of a toilet and vomited. The next few days were silent. No calls from Liz, no interviews. I’d lost all motivation and began to cuss at those calling from the suspect businesses that were still trying to get me to come in for second interviews. I began to loathe Nashville, and worse still, I’d begun to question everything I’d ever done, even the time I’d spent on the mountain. What had once been recognizable suddenly wasn’t anymore. I started thinking about my time at Sewanee, but mostly I just thought about the affluence of my best friends’ families and how I probably had a better idea of where my buddies were going to be in 20 years than I did of my own future. Most of my friends came from prosperous families with big insurance brokerages, soda companies or food distributors, and most of them would, at some point after graduation, be returning to those businesses to follow their family’s lineage. Unlike them, I didn’t have a true north, something to go back to. Having graduated with an English degree didn’t seem to help much either. Nine out of 10 people I talked with about my liberal arts diploma said I had two options: become a teacher or go to law school. That didn’t sit right with me, getting pigeonholed. If I’d had a dime for every asshole that figured me for a teacher because I’d been an English major, I probably wouldn’t have worried so much about finding a job. One day, though, about a week after my drink-and-dial, I got a phone call from Carrington Fox, the special projects editor at the Scene and a good friend of Liz’s, asking me to come in for a quick interview. I arrived at her office at about 10 the next morning. We sat around and chatted about the paper, and about life outside of it. The interview went well, and the questions Carrington asked were more pointed than the other places I’d been, had less to do with the fantastic and more to do with my background and what I could offer. It felt good. Before all was said and done, I was introduced to Liz, who spoke to me about journalism, my English degree and grammar. Liz said she hated semicolons. She said Kurt Vonnegut did too. Anyway, the Scene hired me as an intern that day. Weeks later, I learned how many calls Liz gets from people just like me, looking for some way to break into journalism. I also learned that I was hired because I’d set myself apart from the rest, because I wasn’t afraid to take a chance—actually, I was scared but full of liquid courage. “You’re one of us,” she told me. In the coming months, an opportunity would open up at the paper and my internship would lead me into a full-time position—a story that involves another drunken phone call, but that’s a tale for another time. So that’s how it happened. It’s a story that’s both convoluted and simple, like a drunken conversation among friends. I can’t help it if I’m lucky.
