In 1997, when I was 21 and in between colleges, I worked as a printer at a dating-service photo lab in Austin, Tex. Along with a few other 20-somethings perhaps not living their best lives, I printed profile pictures of men and women who were seeking love and fulfillment via a national dating service. Everything was done by mail. Film came in each morning; prints went out each night. On breaks, we sat out back by a sad cactus, smoking and drinking lukewarm coffee.
At our machines, we printed roll after roll of film, making fun of the people in the pictures looking for love in San Diego and Denver. On one wall of the lab, my bookish colleague Richard and I would tape our favorites, creating a celebrity look-alike section. In Sharpies on these photos we wrote, "Old Keanu," or "That Lady From 'Who's The Boss?' " The categories with the most images were "Janet Reno" and "Magnum P.I." We made decks of cards out of the proofs and played a twisted version of Memory with them after hours.
Another co-worker, Stephen, and I especially enjoyed the photos of people that appeared in October. Why they thought it was appropriate to show up to their photo shoots wearing Halloween garb we never knew, but we were grateful. We printed hundreds of copies of one frumpy, gray-haired woman who had chosen two photos of herself in cat makeup for her profile. In one, she was smiling; in the other, frowning. We called these photos Happy Kitty and Grumpy Kitty, and we hid them all over the lab. If I went to make a cup of coffee, I would find the filters had been replaced by a stack of Grumpy Kitties. If Stephen reached for a book of negatives on an upper shelf, he would be showered with Happy Kitties.
The sole obstacle to our unbridled delight in these games was our boss, Peter, a perpetually annoyed, joy-killing Huskers fan who not only made us take down our celebrity wall and turn down our music (usually, and of course, the Replacements) but who even made us compete for Christmas bonuses. We wouldn't have minded, except that the receptionist, who had otherwise distinguished herself only by calling in sick from grief when Chris Farley died, surprised us all by exhibiting the focus of a ninja master. She annihilated us in darts and ring toss, clearing hundreds of dollars and leaving the rest of us with barely enough to get drunk on Shiner Bock after work.
Then, out of nowhere, Peter died. We heard he was driving when he had a heart attack and crashed. At the funeral, we sat in a row in the newly built church where a preacher who seemed to be just out of seminary described a man who bore no resemblance to the man we'd worked for.
"Peter was generous, and kind, and loving," he said, causing us all to elbow each other. One of his friends said: "Peter and I used to go out on his boat. I don't know whose boat I'm going to go out on now." He looked searchingly around the room. In an unintentional boat segue, the preacher said that Peter's fiancée wanted everyone to listen to "their song." On the loudspeaker, the silence was broken by "My Heart Will Go On" from "Titanic." In characteristic viciousness, one co-worker suggested this was appropriate given that she would most likely pick up someone at the reception that followed — a cocktail hour, by the way, with a cash bar.
Everything about that workplace was unromantic, ungenerous and unloving. We made fun of the people in the pictures for being desperate, but no one was more desperate than we were. At parties I often pretended to be someone named Amy and occasionally mud-wrestled. I was living with a boyfriend I would later marry and quickly divorce. Stephen frequently confessed to me sordid exploits that even I was shocked by. Richard had sworn off love and sex altogether. We were deeply flawed, unhappy people with lousy lives.
Never was that clearer than on days when we were charged with printing photos for "success stories." People who met through the dating service and fell in love received a full package of pictures of the two of them cuddling and staring into each other's eyes. Looking into our negative carriers at those happy Janet Renos and Magnum P.I.'s, seeing how they had looked for love and found it, we knew the joke was really on us.
Ada Calhoun is working on a book about St. Marks Place in New York City's East Village.
E-mail submissions for Lives to lives@nytimes.com. Because of the volume of e-mail, the magazine cannot respond to every submission.
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