A Creeper’s Creeper

Riding along with a priestess of feelings.

“The Department of Psychological Welfare operates to answer a simple question,” Constance “Connie” Leigh tells me. “How do our emotions connect us to society? And how can emotions be used to drive society forward?” She muses on that for a moment. “I guess that’s actually two questions. But even so, I don’t think other Departments have that kind of clarity to work with.”

Connie tells me this as I am seated in the passenger side of her state-issued Chrysler K-platform. She is one of several hundred emotional caseworkers operating in this state alone under the Department’s authority. She is taking me on what she calls her “rounds,” which make up a high percentage of her working life. “I’d say 20 percent of my week takes place behind a desk. Maybe not even that,” she says with some pride. “Psyfare is kind of like Social Security. Citizenship makes you a client automatically. And while it may take us a while to get to any one person, no one is forgotten.” She laughs to herself as she merges off the exit ramp of Route 22. “Not even you.”

Connie’s first love is helping others, and her second love is travel. In this job she is privileged to make use of both. “The Department actually assigns us based on feeling rather than population. I work in New Jersey, technically, but my case portfolio is sadness. I go all over the state observing and tracking how sadness emanates among its people. Just last week I was doing rounds in Camden, where there were some pretty interesting results.” Many things are interesting to Connie.

We come off the highway into a serene and verdant expanse for one of Connie’s many scheduled visits to monitor sadness in Hunterdon County. Her cheery demeanor from the morning seems to have retreated into apprehension. “I need to make a stop at Starbucks,” she says abruptly. In the parking lot she digs through her purse to confirm its contents: her ID badge, her tape recorder, a steno pad, and a small can of Mace. I ask what it’s for. “For people who aren’t accustomed to visits from state officials.”

At 33, Connie is at what she thinks is the median age and experience of the emotional caseworker. She graduated from DeSales University with a BA in Sociology and with a minor in English lit. She has no other degrees and no present plans to pursue any more. Her most recent appropriate work experience is occasional babysitting. “Psyfare takes a nuanced approach to qualifications,” she insists as we sit at far back table in the Starbucks.

“Like,” I pause to check unnecessary facetiousness in my phrasing, “in being in touch with your feelings in some unique way?”

“Actually no,” she replies registering no apparent offense. “It’s like the opposite. In college I was detached from feelings.” She sips her latte and winces without comment. “Let me clarify … I was very much into my own feelings, sure. But those feelings were typically misdirected into … uhm … recreational activities that peaked into a real nightmare.” She lowers her head and then whispers, “I wrote a sex advice column for the campus paper.” She jolts back up. “Through maneuvers that have never been made clear to me, that writing circulated all the way to Mr. Secretary himself. Of course to him I was completely transparent. But in seeing through me, he saw potential. So like a decade later, here I am.”

“In Starbucks.”

“Yes … very much in Starbucks.”

“Mr. Secretary,” as he is called without fail, is the patriarch at the center of this otherwise matronly organization. If the Department of Psychological Welfare is like the Vatican, Mr. Secretary is the Pope of Feelings, enrobed in adjectives. He is motivational like Tony Robbins, cerebral like Adam Phillips, and empathetic like Dr. Drew Pinsky. His credibility is ironclad and his vision is far-reaching; you contradict his authority at your peril. Connie is just one Jesuit sent out to instill his dogma. A missionary’s pride beams in blinding lumens from her face even as she changes from her flats to her cowboy boots, also state-issued, in the Starbucks parking lot.

“I think what Mr. Secretary looks for is a deeper qualification,” Connie says as she checks her teeth in a rearview mirror for lipstick. “Have you ever been inside a teen girl’s bedroom?”

I demurred.

“Well, if you’ve ever been in one, you might be overwhelmed by her decor style. All those cutouts of posters, magazine spreads, pictures of friends. Maybe even some words she finds vaguely appealing. Like ‘gorgeous’ or just, like, ‘apple.’ Anyway, I’m sure it’s all very baffling, like looking at bathroom graffiti. With no apparent logic or context. But let me tell you, it makes all the sense in the world, and it can be applied to society as a whole. All that chaos has a coherence. It coheres gradually and brings everyone together. Even people who fucking hate each other. The emotional landscape of America is a lot like that. You know?”

“Uhm … where do we go first?”

“Open the glove box will you, hon?”

I do so and out slides a tablet device. I hand it to her and she glides her fingers over its surface as if it’s a stringed instrument. “Most social workers rely on reports submitted by the public. We are working on a broader scale that can’t rely on the biases of others. But thankfully we can just spin The Wheel.” The Wheel, it turns out, is an algorithmic program by which all available public data can be culled to measure, with a reasonable degree of accuracy, very recent emotional states, from residence to residence.

“So all the assigned emotions are measured on a spectrum—or maybe a gradient—from most to least severe, in this case from morose to wistful respectively.” She shows me a screen with a map of the immediate area. Each residential property had a corresponding colored dot. “These houses with the pink dot are less severe, so we’re not gonna pay too much attention to them. But this one that’s pale blue, somewhere above the mean, is a higher priority.”

“What about this one?” I ask pointing to a house with a dot that was pulsing a kind of piss yellow.

“Interesting,” she says. “That’ll be our next visit.”

On the drive over, Connie volunteers more of her background.

“I think my life really turned when my sorority got into some trouble with hazing. In lieu of suspension, and as part of a settlement, we all agreed to do some kind of community service. Like my one roommate was reading to old people. One was a lifeguard at a pool exclusively for some kind of special needs kids. But I drew what I thought was the short straw: a suicide hotline. But I was really surprised. Everyone’s problems were so interesting! From that moment I felt like something or someone was guiding me along. I honestly can’t remember how I came to switch majors. It’s like Mr. Secretary had found me from that moment and hooked onto my brain. Many of my colleagues have that same experience.”

The first house is at the end of a long, slithering driveway. Getting out the K-car we spot a gardener at the far edge of the front lawn trimming a row of bushes into an identical cone shape. A man in pleated khakis, a polo shirt, and loafers without socks meets us at the front door.

“Hello, I’m Connie from the Department of Psychological Welfare,” she says showing the ID badge around her neck. “I’m your emotional caseworker here to do an assessment. I’m looking for Ellen Brady or …” she glances at the tablet, “… Mitchell Brady.”

“I’m Mitchell Brady.”

“Interesting. Is Mrs. Brady available as well?”

“She’s at the office.”

“Interesting! Do you consent to being recorded?”

Mitchell Brady leads us to the back deck of the house overlooking a tennis court in a state of extensive neglect at one end and a long-empty pool at the other. Connie places her recorder at the center of the table.

“Okay! Mr. Brady, we at the Department of Psychological Welfare believe that emotional well-being is a national concern. The feelings of one have a significant impact on the feelings of all. This, I understand, is overwhelming, but I hope it can also be understood as an opportunity to influence the attitudes of those around you, and maybe beyond! Now we offer a series of resources that are able to put you on that more proactive path.” She goes into her bag and takes out a pamphlet and slides it over to Mitchell. “Do any of these interest you at this time?”

Mitchell examines the pamphlet indifferently. “At this time? Not really.”

“Interesting!” She makes a note on her tablet, takes the recorder, and thanks him for his time.

In the car she makes a quick call.

“Hank? Hey! ... I’m great, you? … Listen, I was just with a case and I was wondering if you had any vacancies. … Uhm … I think so. … Yes, Aetna. … Interesting. … Interesting! … Very interesting! Awesome, talk soon.”

As we leave, Mitchell is standing sternly at the door, waving halfheartedly yet grinning slyly, having switched on the sprinklers with his gardener still sculpting cones.

“Now for the exciting part,” Connie exclaims indicating the yellow-dotted house on the agenda, which lacked the palatial, in-house groundskeeper splendor of the first house but was nonetheless affluent.

“Jean Marie Corwin. Retired realtor. Twice divorced, currently unmarried. Two adult children. Both childless.”

“Is that typically a source of sadness.”

“In this line of work,” Connie responds with a smirk, “nothing his hardly typical. This just seems more atypical than usual.”

Connie practically skips up the walkway, and is in jitters as she awaits the door’s answer. We are greeted by a gaunt-faced younger man, whose frail frame is concealed by an oversized black hooded sweatshirt. Connie’s jitters cease on sight.

“Yeah?” the man says.

“Hi … I’m sorry to disturb. Is Ms. Corwin available?”

“Nah.”

“Sorry … I’m a caseworker for the Department of Psychological Welfare. Do you mind if we come in?”

“Sure.”

The man leads us to a kitchen island and leans sluggishly over his end. The overhead lighting accentuates his sun-deprived complexion, his unkempt and probably unwashed black hair, and a lip piercing that seems chronically irritated. Connie regards him from the other end with a reserved tension, like that of a deer crossing paths with a human pedestrian.

“So Ms. Corwin isn’t in?”

“She’s in.”

“Can we speak with her?”

“Prob not.”

“Is she okay?”

“Been better.”

“What’s wrong with her?”

The man thinks for a moment. “She has, like, IBS or some shit. She’s on the toilet a lot.”

“Are you her son?”

“Nope.”

“Interesting,” Connie drawls.

“So you’re a creeper, right?” the man says.

“Pardon?”

“And you,” he directs to me, “you’re like a creeper’s creeper. Well I’m like you guys. I’m a creeper too. Just creepin’ everywhere, seeing what’s what.”

We are silent for a moment before Connie breaks it with a loud epiphany.

“Dang … I see what happened.” She turns to me. “It seems this case has already familiarized herself with the resources we offer.” She turns over to the man. “I’m so sorry. You’re doing great work.”

“No prob,” he drawls in a more reptilian way. He never removes his hands from his sweatshirt pocket and does not see us out.

At a different Starbucks parking lot, Connie changes back into her flats with an energy lag marked by more than just the end of a long workday.

“When you start,” she says with a sigh, “they tell us to ignore when people call us busybodies or voyeurs. Or to not take it personally when they chase you off their property with hammers or scissors. But I think a lot of the time people miss the bigger picture.”

“What’s that?” I ask.

“We’re explorers too. Like, Mr. Secretary tells us that there are so many more emotions than we realize. The same way that there might be like an eighth, ninth, and tenth deadly sin that we willfully ignore. It’s like they’re hiding from us, knowing that our discovery of them will change the course of this country for the better. But Mr. Secretary’s vision might not see over every horizon; or the President might lose interest.

“I know how this looks. Miss Sad Sadness Caseworker over here! I guess it’s like the field I should be working in is the one on the inside,” she says pointing to her chest.

“Caseworker assess thyself,” I chucklingly add.

“Yeah. Interesting.”