Portermain is a division director for career policy at the Office of Personnel Management. The federal government bends over backward in its efforts to be fair, consistent and politically correct while coddling the lazy, overpaid, untalented, ignorant and generally stupid people who work for it. Making sure that happens is Portermain’s job. Not that he could be fired for failing to perform his duties, of course – he’s in the Civil Service, too, and, as a matter of fact is responsible for that particular policy point. Most of the time, he’s got a pretty easy gig – all he has to do is either invent or rubber stamp the most lenient, loophole-riddled and Panglossian employment policies possible. Consequently, he only prevails upon me for advice in the most extreme or absurd situations.
For example, there was the GS-11 at the EPA who started showing up for work naked every day the weather was warm and sunny – Portermain called me in to consult on that one. The fellow had a lawyer from the ACLU who claimed the guy was a just a fresh-air eco-freak. The lawyer said that, in order to balance his chi life-force with the outside environment, his client always slept with the windows open. Furthermore, every time DC had nice, balmy weather the guy would oversleep, as pleasant, fresh morning air has a tendency to make anyone do. So when arriving for work naked, this GS-11 was, in fact, actually sleepwalking while having that dream, the one a lot of people have, about showing up at the office with no clothes on. No way you can fire a member of the Civil Service for sleeping on the job, of course. But the real problems started when some fool from OPM went down to EPA Headquarters and set off one of those push-button compressed air horns next to the guy’s ear, trying to wake him up. Everybody knows you should never wake up a sleepwalker – but somebody must have forgotten to tell that fool from OPM. So the upshot was a big lawsuit brought by Mr. Birthday Suit, claiming emotional distress, temporary nervous breakdown and partial hearing loss in the ear that was nearest the air horn. I charged over 300 hours to that mess. The EPA had to retire Mr. Birthday Suit with full pay, and fork over substantial damages, too, but thanks to my work, OPM at last got the federal employee’s unions to allow summary re-assignment for any member of the Civil Service who shows up for work sleepwalking with no clothes on, that crazy dream a lot of people have notwithstanding.
Then there was the GS-14 at the Bureau of Naval Weapons who had a collection of silly hats. He’d arrive at the office every work day with a new silly hat. He’d wear them at his desk, to meetings, at assemblies where visiting Navy brass addressed the staff, on trips to weapons development laboratories; everywhere, basically – Napoleon hat, oversized Mexican sombrero, sixty-inch gold-tasseled purple fez with rhinestone encrustations, clear plastic top hat with a live goldfish in it, raspberry beret (the kind you find in a second hand store), King Tut hat, three-cornered hat with a green ostrich feather, beanie with a propeller in it, authentic replica of the Chinese Imperial crown, hat made of twist-and-tie balloons – you name it, this guy wore it to work; Bartholomew Cubbins had nothing on him. After weeks analyzing Civil Service employment rules, Portermain and I had to tell the Admiral in charge of BNW that the only way to get rid of him would be a RIF that covered his entire section. And a week later, after Hatman greeted a delegation of Israeli defense scientists wearing a bejeweled, turquoise turban, that’s what the Admiral tried. But Hatman and his coworkers took it before an administrative law judge, who overturned the Admiral’s decision. The Admiral’s reaction to that was to open a BNW annex in West Virginia and relocate Hatman’s section there.
Another corker I got called in on was the GS-13 who gained weight until she topped 350 pounds and subsequently stopped bathing. She claimed that God had told her to eat lots of ice cream and candy in order to save her soul and that Jesus had told her to stop bathing in order to keep Satan away. Her lawyer claimed First Amendment religious protection. Portermain and I worked that case off and on for about eight months until one day she dropped dead from a heart attack, rendering the issue moot. Still, Portermain and I did manage to establish the principle that while a member of the Civil Service cannot be re-assigned to a room in the basement simply for being outrageously obese, should a federal employee display a lack of personal hygiene sufficient to produce the gag reflex in an adult rhesus monkey held in a cage no more that two feet from the federal employee in question, then that federal employee may, at the discretion of his or her supervisor, be assigned to a solitary work environment.
And there’s no way I could forget the GS-12 who started picking his nose constantly and doing gross things with what he found. His case was no easier a nut to crack than the other three examples I have cited – until he slipped up and violated another civil servant’s civil rights with his creative boogery. She had created a mobile from folder hangers, beaded ballpoint pen chains and binder clips, which she proudly hung over her desk – Mr. Boogermeister decided it required further embellishment to achieve the necessary artistic je ne sais quoi. That made it possible to assign him to a solitary work environment under existing regulations and policies.
But Portermain was in a tizzy for sure about his latest policy pickle, one that, I think, will prove to be as difficult as any of those I have mentioned so far. Now, some people have nervous tics, but Portermain, he just blinks. The faster he blinks, the worse the problem, and in his office this afternoon, Portermain was blinking like a strobe light at the Fillmore Auditorium during a Grateful Dead concert.
“Tom, have you heard about that fellow, Steve Stanton, the city manager down in Largo, Florida, who lost his job in February and had a big hearing in front of the city commissioners last Saturday?”
“Sure,” I said, settling down in a chair next to his desk, “there was testimony, questions from the citizens, speeches by the city commissioners, and a huge media presence. He’s still out of a job, though – and no surprise there, either. He was working under contract to the city and there was an at-will employment clause in it. Technically speaking, the city could have fired him if he had started parting his hair on the other side and five or more of the city commissioners didn’t like it.”
“But he wasn’t exactly talking about changing his hair style,” Portermain’s blinking increased slightly, “was he, Tom?”
“Well,” I quipped, “a sex change would probably entail new hair style. Anyway, you have to admire his chutzpa – I hear he drafted an eight-page plan for the city government to effectively undergo the leadership transition.”
“There were fourteen transgendered persons at the hearing on Saturday,” Portermain observed, “urging the city commission to advance the cause of workplace diversity.”
“The papers reported that over seventy percent of the public who attended that hearing wanted the city commission to reconsider its decision,” I added, “but apparently a lot of them weren’t from Largo. Looks like it was a complete circus – local laity quoting scriptures, clergy urging compassion, former city employees airing grudges, and the frosting on the cake – a bomb scare. ”
“Five hundred people at that meeting, and press all over it, total world coverage.” Portermain shook his head in disbelief, “We hold a public EEO hearing and we’re lucky if the Post sends over one single reporter from the Metro desk to cover it.” Portermain’s eyelids sped up noticeably as he finished that remark.
“I say that means you’re doing things right,” I opined, using all my will power to keep eye contact with him, “the Stanton story just proves that Largo’s in the bush leagues when it comes to handling complex human resources questions. But it’s just a hick town in Florida, so what else could be expected? Anyway,” I continued, “OPM has been very proactive on transgender issues. Your division developed the FS69420, after all.”
Portermain nodded agreement, blinking even faster. “Nice piece of work, Tom. One of the best special purpose personnel forms the US Government ever produced, in my opinion.”
“Given the federal commitment to workplace diversity, the FS69420 is the solution to smooth transgender repositioning within the Civil Service,” I agreed, “no doubt about it. Just fill it out and send it in – the federal employee specifies the exact schedule for their gender identity transition, new forms of address, special needs, the whole nine yards. I suppose OPM must have received a boatload of FS69420 forms since the Stanton story hit the headlines.” I looked at Portermain and raised my eyebrows in anticipation – probably not the best move, since his blinking accelerated even more.
“It goes without saying, Tom,” he lamented, “people who were considering it see a story like that and it motivates them to get on the bandwagon – they think to themselves ‘Look, there’s this city manager doing it, why haven’t I done it yet?’ And then the next thing they do is plan a sex change schedule, decide on a new name, imagine a list of special favors they want and put them on that form. We’re up to our necks in them, Tom. Since last Monday, a huge crowd of federal civil servants have decided they are a woman trapped in a man’s body, a man trapped in a woman’s body, a lesbian trapped in a gay man’s body, a gay man trapped in a lesbian’s body or any of the eight other transgender identity transition paths currently recognized by OPM. And I must say, it’s obvious that your previous policy analysis work on transgender workplace issues and your development of the FS69420 form have averted what would have been a total nightmare for OPM.” Portermain’s blinking became so intense at this point, I could no longer distinguish individual blinks anymore – a sure indication that extreme consternation was lurking in the brain behind those rapidly fluttering lids. “But something else has happened, Tom, something we didn’t anticipate – something, I am pretty sure, that no sane person could have anticipated. Since last Thursday, my Inbox has been filled with emails from supervisors all over the federal bureaucracy, each telling me the same thing – federal employees are requesting a new kind of identity transition.”
“Which would be?” I leaned forward in my seat, not knowing what to expect.
“Tom, they want to change their species identities.” Portermain’s left eyelid got stuck. He took a moment to dislodge it.
“It must be some sort of cross-cutting media exposure effect,” I responded, “a week with a big gender identity story combined with a pet food poison scare story and worldwide coverage of a cute polar bear baby at the Berlin zoo. Plus multiple stories on cockfighting and endangered bird smuggling arrests, the whale rescue effort off Cape Cod, that flap about wolf bounties in Alaska, Jeff Corwin attacked by an elephant, that Nile crocodile they caught in the Stellenbosch river down in South Africa, the cougar attacks out west, that thing with the duck, the pet store girl and the shoplifter in Washington State, the discovery of the cloud leopard, that mouse running off with that old man’s dentures in Maine, stories about dead porpoises and dolphins washing up on the beaches, plus everybody coming off the Westminster Dog Show high in February – it’s an obvious combination. Most of the affected audience either ended up obsessing over animals or obsessing over gender identity, but a significant minority subconsciously conflated the concepts. That’s got to be where it’s coming from. What kind of cases are we dealing with?”
“Well,” Portermain began, examining a pile of hardcopy printouts and faxes on his desk, “we have a married couple at IRS who want to become vampire bats.”
“Fair enough,” I ventured, “even makes sense, sort of. What else?”
“There’s a guy at the National Science Foundation who wants to become a spiny anteater; another one at the Department of Labor who wants to become a guanaco; and there’s a married couple at NIH who want to be aardvarks. There’s a pair of female life-partners in the Justice anti-trust division who want to become woolly lemurs. A park ranger in Utah wants to become a bighorn sheep; his wife, who’s a biologist with Fish and Wildlife, wants to become a tapir. There’s a guy at the Social Security Administration who wants to become a rock hyrax, and an Hispanic couple with the INS in Texas who want to become armadillos. And there’s a woman at NOAA who wants to become something called a ‘nudie branch.’”
“That’s pronounced ‘noody brank,’” I noted for Portermain’s benefit. “But,” I continued, smiling wryly, “there has yet been no wild stampede of federal bureaucrats who want to become a rhinoceros?” Portermain just blinked back at me, mystified.
“Nobody requesting that – as of today, anyway,” he finally said, squinting at me and adding at last, “why do you ask?”
“Oh, of course not,” I replied, “silly of me. These are federal employees we’re talking about.”
“So?” Portermain blinked at me, ever faster.
“So there’s no way any of them would be literate enough to think of becoming a rhinoceros.”
“In that case,” he shot back, “thank God for a semi-literate federal work force. What we do have is lots of employees from various agencies who want to become wolves; mostly men, and others who want to become rabbits; mostly women. Also large numbers who want to become dogs; but the overwhelming majority, I’d say about sixty percent, want to become cats. Any idea why?”
“There are three major reasons that I can think of right off the top of my head,” I offered, “Number one, cats are now the most popular pets in America. Number two, that stupid musical that ran on Broadway for years and years. Number three, several trans-species cases of cat-humans have been the subject of tawdry cable documentaries lately.”
Portermain’s eye blinks went into warp drive. “You mean these requests we’re receiving are based on reality? Are you saying that these species re-identifications are… medically feasible?”
“They are,” I sadly informed him, “and at least two humans are currently living their lives as cats. One in Britain and one in the United States. The Brit lives as a leopard, the American lives as a large house cat. Their species transitions required extensive tattooing, plastic surgery, hair transplantation, dental work, and, in the case of the American, whisker implants. The results look very different from one another – but I must admit, it’s obvious that both of them are cats.”
“If these people aren’t just being hysterical, then we’ve got an extremely serious problem,” Portermain groused, “we’re going to need an effort that parallels the transgender question – complete policy review and analysis, resulting in new regulations and at least one new form for trans-species identification transitions.”
“Something similar to the SF69420, but specialized to species re-identification,” I suggested.
“Exactly my thoughts on that,” Portermain replied. “But there are so many other issues that we need to consider. How much of their species re-identification surgery will their health plans cover?”
“Right,” I agreed, continuing our brainstorming, “should they get extended absences, analogous to maternity leave, if necessary?”
“And facilities,” Portermain mused, blinking madly up at the ceiling, “that’s a big issue. Cats need litter boxes; we can put those in additional rest rooms on every floor. Dogs need to go out… or on newspaper.”
“Separate facilities for dogs and cats would probably be prudent,” I commented.
“Good point,” Portermain agreed. He hesitated a moment as, I could readily see, a terrible thought occurred to him. “Oh my God, Tom, what if the dogs start chasing the cats around their offices?”
“Well,” I opined, “that’s only natural. The Government wouldn’t want to interfere with what’s obviously the legal equivalent of cultural expression.”
“Would it be the same situation,” Portermain wondered, “if the dogs start digging up the flower beds in front of federal buildings?”
“It’s obvious,” I observed, “that we will need to ask OPM Counsel for assistance on a number of such questions…”
“Oh Jesus,” Portermain interrupted, “I just thought of something – what if one of the dogs bites a letter carrier?”
“Or what,” I expanded on the concept, “if a letter carrier is a dog, and bites another letter carrier; or bites a civilian; or gets into a dog fight?”
“Or if they come back to the office after lunch,” Portermain gasped, “and they’ve been rolling around in turds or a dead animal carcass? Tom – we have to draw the line somewhere on these behavior issues! We can’t have canine-identified trans-species federal employees lying in our office building driveways licking themselves! We can’t allow feline-identified employees to go around spraying the rugs and scratching up the furniture – that’s government property!”
“Maybe,” I suggested, “we could authorize their supervisors to carry rolled-up newspapers and squirt guns.”
Portermain groaned as a mountain of problems suddenly materialized in his mind and collapsed on his wits in a monstrous landslide. “The cafeterias, Tom! We’re going to have to start providing dry, canned and moist-pouched packaged dog food and cat food; chew toys and treats! And what about the other species?”
“Fortunately,” I assured him, “the Ralston Purina operating unit of the Nestle PetCare division manufactures a full line of animal chows…”
“Does that mean we will have to stipulate that the federal government is under no obligation to provide its trans-species employees with ethnically authentic foods in our cafeterias? You know if we do that, there’s going to be a lawsuit – probably several of them.”
“Yeah,” I concurred resignedly, “and if they manage to bring a suit in the Tenth Circuit, or here in the District of Columbia…”
Portermain put his head in his hands – “They’ll win! That’s what will happen, they’ll win! And we’ll have to feed the vampire bat couple at IRS! What do we do then? Provide them with live taxpayers or something?”
“Vampire bats feed on large mammals in the wild, but they also prey on livestock. So the IRS cafeteria could provide a cow for them.”
Portermain’s voice wafted from behind his hands. “A cow? To suck blood from?”
“Well,” I clarified, “true vampire bats don’t actually suck blood – they bite their host, then lick the blood up as it exits the bleeding wound.”
Portermain’s hands fell away from his face, which was now white as a sheet. “That’s absolutely revolting! PETA will sue us for being cruel to the cow!”
“No doubt,” I agreed, “and we need to consider what might happen if a wolf, or even a dog species-identifier, is assigned to the same office as one of the bunny rabbits. I mean, the cats will be able to take care of themselves, I’m sure, but…”
“Packs,” Portermain moaned, “dog packs, wolf packs – what if they form packs…”
“Cats fighting in the alley,” I chimed in, “bighorn sheep and armadillos grazing on the lawn…”
“Armadillos graze?” Portermain was truly puzzled.
“For insects and grubs,” I explained.
“We’re going to have to stock the lawn at a federal building in Texas with insects and grubs for the armadillo couple? And ants for the anteater?”
“Anteaters don’t really eat ants,” I explained, “they eat termites.”
“Oh, Christ!” Portermain muttered as he threw his papers down in frustration, “So we need what, piles of rotten wood? And what the hell do aardvarks eat?”
“Ah, they actually do eat ants,” I replied, “but they can eat termites, too. On the other hand, they require a specific vegetable, called the aardvark cucumber, which grows only in South Africa…”
“Do they need them for breakfast or lunch?” Portermain interrupted, his eye lids fluttering like camera shutters.
“No,” I said, “they only need them occasionally; for their water content.”
“Then let the aardvarks buy their own damn imported cucumbers and eat them at home!” Portermain’s distressed blinking was turning his eyes bright red at this point. He shuffled his papers pensively. “What the hell is a nudibranch, anyway?”
“It’s a type of mollusc; a slug, in fact,” I volunteered.
“A slug?” Portermain’s face contorted into a mask of loathing repugnance. “Like those lumbering, slimy things in my back yard? Those wet, gooey gray garden pests that bratty kids put salt all over so they can watch them dissolve?”
“Not exactly. Nudibranchs are very colorful and agile animals that live in tropical waters.”
“Tropical waters?” Portermain shook his head violently, blinking violently all the while, “What’s she going to do, slither in and out of a tank all day? Do you think we can draw the line at – what do you call them – earth walking, ground dwelling, ah…”
“Terrestrial species,” I said, “that’s the term you’re looking for.”
“Right,” he replied, “terrestrial species.”
“I’d say start off restricting it to that and wait until somebody like that woman at NOAA decides to sue,” I recommended, “the worst that could happen would be, it could buy some time while the case goes through the courts.”
Portermain crossed his arms on his desk and bowed his head in despair. “I tell you Tom,” he murmured, “sometimes, working for the federal government, doing this kind of thing – I feel like a complete jackass.”
“Consider the bright side,” I consoled him, “at least you don’t want to be one.”