Odd Jobs

By Brendan Coffey
Sunday, December 10, 2006

As far as occupations go, Washington has always been known as a city of lawyers, lobbyists and government workers. But among the navy-suited and sensibly shod are a few select folks who answer the ubiquitous question, "So, what do you do?" with replies more wacky than wonky

BIKINI TAILOR

Colleen Corrigan

FEW EXPERIENCES CARRY MORE POTENTIAL TO DEMORALIZE than having to examine your Lycra-clad jiggly bits while shopping for a swimsuit. Although Colleen Corrigan can't get rid of your love handles, she can alter a suit to emphasize your assets, a specialty that she has been perfecting for the past 20 years as one of the country's only bikini tailors.

Traditional tailors won't touch a swimsuit -- the material tears far too easily, and the clientele can be unrealistically demanding. Corrigan knows how rare she is: When she was opening her District store, the Bikini Shop, back in the 1980s, she tried to find someone who would work with her customers. "The tailors looked at me like I was crazy," she says. So she started doing the alterations herself, soon finding a growing following among bodybuilders, beauty pageant contestants and dedicated beach bunnies. Most, but not all, of Corrigan's clientele is female. Usually, a client will model a few bikinis or one-pieces, and Corrigan will make suggestions -- lengthening straps, adding bra pads, fastening eye-catching sequins.

These days, with the Bikini Shop closed for refurbishment, Corrigan works out of downtown's Southern Cleaners, with owner Tran Thu doing much of the sewing. Their biggest challenge, she says, is not so much the technical aspects of the job, but managing expectations. "Everybody is not going to come out looking like Raquel Welch," she says. Corrigan remembers one curvy client who, despite entreaties, insisted she wanted padding on her already generous natural assets. In the end, she got her way. "I did it," says Corrigan. "If she feels good, then good for her."

JAW MASSEUSE

Hyun Martin

PEOPLE PAY HYUN MARTIN TO STICK HER FINGERS IN THEIR MOUTHS, but she's no dentist. She's an expert in the art of jaw massage, a series of techniques designed to release tension in the small triangular joints connecting the mandible to the skull. Tightness in those areas can be precipitated by anything from a onetime fender bender to continuous stress. In its worst forms, it can prevent sufferers from opening their mouths more than an inch or two. Martin's typical 50-minute massage works the muscles of the cranium, neck, shoulders and, of course, jaw to soothe that pain.

Martin learned massage in the late 1990s, when she was an executive charged with hiring massage therapists for local fitness clubs and wanted to be able to evaluate the candidates' skills. Her adeptness at her new hobby persuaded her to change direction, and demand for her services quickly escalated. "My reputation was as a celebrity massage therapist. It was very much a jet-set lifestyle," she says. When a dentist told her that most people have some level of trouble with the temporomandibular joints, she added jaw massage to her services.

Eventually, work trips to London and Los Angeles to treat such clients as Metallica's James Hetfield and King Constantine of Greece paled next to the appeal of staying in the Washington area with her husband and children. Eight months ago, Martin opened her Bethesda spa, Be You Bi Yu. ("Bi Yu," translates as "beauty having fun" in Japanese, Martin says.) Martin emphasizes the spiritual side of massage and believes simple mechanical technique is only part of a holistic healing process. Still, "if you only want massage, that is fine. I'm not going to shove it down your throat," she says. Unless that's called for, of course.

CALLIGRAPHER

Rick Muffler

IF THERE'S A MENU, PLACE CARD OR CITATION to be handed out at the White House, you can bet Rick Muffler will be breaking out his dip pens and nibs. The senior of three White House calligraphers, Muffler toils in a tradition older than the presidency itself, painstakingly writing out programs, cocktail lists and more.

The decidedly traditional job is a mix of protocol and creativity. Menus for state dinners, for example, usually start with the first lady giving guidance on themes and styles. After using his collection of custom-made pens and inkwells to craft the lettering, Muffler may add embellishments for a special occasion -- perhaps an emu and kangaroo to honor the Australian prime minister. Practice runs are rushed to Laura Bush herself, and particularly tight turnaround times may mean whipping out the blow-dryers to speed the smear-proofing along. "The exemplars of the 1800s had months, sometimes, to do documents," Muffler says. "We get hours."

Muffler has been visiting the White House since childhood: His paternal grandfather was a chauffeur for presidents Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge; his late father was an electrician who served his last East Wing years as the official clock-winder. Having studied typography in college, Muffler wrote himself into his current job when he volunteered to help address envelopes during the Carter administration. While he does cop to a few misspellings or mistakes over the years, he says all were caught; nothing less than letter-perfect has ever made it in front of a guest

WORM CURATOR

Kristian Fauchald

IN AN OTHERWISE UNREMARKABLE STORAGE ROOM in the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, racks upon racks of worms float suspended in clear glass jars and appear to sway under the flickering fluorescent light. This is the domain of Kristian Fauchald, research zoologist and curator of worms. And though, yes, that is his formal title, his subjects are specifically in the phylum of annelids, or segmented worms. Many of its varieties -- leeches, for example -- are unnervingly common. But others, such as those that live around the sea vents at the bottom of the Atlantic, have been sighted by only a few. (Fauchald counts the thrill of discovery, or what he calls "that 'aha!' feeling that you are seeing what no one else has seen," as one of the many pleasures of his job.)

Annelids can range from a few millimeters in length to 18 feet; a disturbing number come equipped with bear-trap jaws. Fauchald has been fascinated by them since, as a teenager growing up in Arctic Norway, he came upon a small museum with a neglected collection of the creatures. Today, the Smithsonian's 500,000-specimen collection, which was started with the findings of a federal expedition off the East Coast in the 1870s, has been bolstered by contributions from Fauchald's own explorations. His latest discovery was made while snorkeling off of Papua New Guinea earlier this year: a polka-dotted worm that matches the rare coral on which it lives.

SILHOUETTIST

Marie Hartshorn Cheek

MARIE HARTSHORN CHEEK PREFERS MEN WITH FACIAL HAIR -- but it's strictly for the professional challenge. Cheek is a practitioner of the largely lost art of silhouette cutting, and, in her opinion, the profile of a bearded man makes for the best results. "You can cut every mustache and beard hair to get all of this tiny detail," she says. "They look really neat!" Hers is an art form that was last in vogue when Pierre L'Enfant was still drawing up plans for Washington. The small profiles were cut freehand and treasured by recipients, becoming the closest thing to a photograph most 18th-century Americans would ever possess.

Trained in painting and printmaking, Annandale-based Cheek came to silhouettes after years of doing technical drawings for the likes of the Army and Navy. "You go where the money is. It's tough for people with arts backgrounds," she explains. She finally went into business for herself doing caricatures at parties and events; when a client asked if she could also do silhouettes, she learned the craft and added it to her repertoire. Today, corporate shindigs make up most of the market for her delicate shadow portraits. An increasing number of individuals, though, are hiring her to immortalize their children and pets -- subjects that have trouble sitting still even for the five minutes the artist requires. But silhouetting, cautions Cheek, may not always be the ego boost most clients are after. Her creations are unforgiving of wens, weak chins and other physical imperfections. "If it's there," Cheek says grimly, "you have to put it in."

COASTER WALKER

Scott Taylor

HOURS BEFORE THE FIRST DELIGHTED SCREAMS will pierce the Maryland air, Scott Taylor is a precarious 10 stories above the ground, pacing wooden roller coaster slats and searching for anything out of place. As lead carpenter of the Six Flags America theme park in Largo, Taylor is responsible for inspecting the length of its two wooden coasters -- the Roar, built in 1998, and the Wild One, first constructed 89 years ago -- at the break of each dawn and searching for loose bolts, stress fractures and anything else his experience tells him could be a problem. In contrast to the two-minute or so rumble that thrill-seekers will nab from each ride, he'll spend 2 1/2 hours in the air methodically walking the same route, then come down to apply 90 minutes to examining the coasters' support pillars. On average, there are few major repairs: The bone-jarring jerking and ominous creaking of the coasters reflect a studied flexibility. "That's a part of the design," says Taylor. "It keeps the stresses from building up in one spot." But larger fixes do happen: Replacing a smashed-up piece of steel -- probably damaged by a heavy car load the night before -- once shut down a coaster for two hours.

Unlike park visitors, Taylor doesn't take a break from coasters in the off season. In the winter months, he and his staff of eight spend their time fashioning replacement parts out of pressure-treated pine from Georgia, making sure that, come summer, the coasters will be ready to creak to life yet again.

Brendan Coffey is a freelance writer based in New York City.