The Easiest $11/hour I Ever Made

I used to work in a bindery where every Coke was a Jack and Coke after a trip to my locker. I always kept at least half a bottle of bourbon under my car seat as a backup. In my mind, it was like never letting my gas tank get below the halfway marker.

The bathroom walls were thin. So thin that I, in a caffeinated drunk, heard two pressmen in the bathroom on the other side of the wall whisper about plans to leave their wives and finally be together. I never brought it up to them on our lunch breaks or otherwise.

My second week on the job, I drove a forklift through a wall and couldn’t stop laughing. It felt like an action movie. I was the hero barraging the mansion where the seven-meals-a-day, Wall Street elitist claimed exemption from the lower class he tortured. I was Robin Hood.

On deliveries, I would hock lugies and have to hold them in my mouth like dog-slobbered tennis balls because the windows in the van wouldn’t always roll down. When they would, I chain-smoked and made sure to stop for gum before I got back to the shop.

A buzzer would go off to signal our breaks. Every smoke break required two cigarettes: the first used to light the second. At the end of the breaks, we collected our butts like X’s, tattooed down our arms for every kid we accidentally killed in NAM but only sometimes regretted.

In the office, customers only knew us over the phone by our voices. They didn’t know Brian had Satan tattooed on his right forearm. They didn’t know he had scabs on his face, or that the scabs were from when Meth locked Brian in a motel room for three weeks. They didn’t know Gary was red-headed, balding, and just about the last guy you would feel comfortable with in a suddenly broken elevator. Dave sounded nice, but his skin looked like it was conspiring with gravity to slowly leave his body. His favorite phrase was, Life’s a bitch and then you die. It was never his favorite phrase over the phones, of course. Best of all, the customers had no idea that I was the only employee without a prison record.

Steve showed me how to sneak away for an extra break when the foreman was shit-heeling with the owner about his vacation hours, how he deserved more respect, etc. It’s funny how pieces of the plates broken at home stay in a person’s skin and bleed all over their workspace.

There was a corkboard on the breakroom wall where 4x6 photographs were thumb-tacked in to say, Look, we have fun here. Remember the Christmas party and how happy everyone was with the spouses they wanted to smother with pillows. Remember, this is your life. Remember, this is all you’ll ever be, so enjoy it.

Brian’s wife left him with the kids and he invited me over for dinner every day for three weeks. I could never make it, could always find an excuse, and he eventually left his car running in the garage after he got home from the bar. The funeral was like a work outing because we were his only friends.

One pressman came up to me, the boxer who would have fought Oscar de la Hoya if he didn’t get busted for black tar and crack the week before the match up. He said, in an English that had its kneecaps broken from diminishing return, Go to college, kid. Life’s tough. I still haven’t graduated from anything.

Tell Me Again, Please

 

            I was at the grocery store yesterday and, when we made eye contact, the cashier said, “I was just looking at all your tattoos. They’re crazy. What do they all mean?” Looking past the fact that she asked what would normally be a request for a fairly complex set of answers for most people, I said, “Nothing. Just like life.” She laughed and handed me my receipt. Hopefully, she bought a bottle of wine with the assuredly hefty discount she receives from her minimum wage job, went home to an empty apartment she can barely afford, uncorked the bottle and drank directly from it because she has never owned any wine glasses. I also imagine my small statement resonating so deeply within her that she even gave up on the idea of using a tumbler because she would have to clean it later and really, what’s the point to that? To measure how much you’ve consumed? Just accept that the bottle will be consumed eventually and you don’t need to measure it to know you’ll get to the end. Just enjoy the sips. Just do it, as some salesman for Nike probably repeated thousands of times during his short-lived career with the company in the 90’s. Michael Jordan was popular and no one held it against him. The salesman probably even looks back on that time in his life like most people look back at their time in college.

            Recently (and for the better part of the last five years) I’ve been thinking about how happy the past makes people. I’ve been considering a humanity where no one remembers what they’ve done and how that would pan out. I assume Homo sapiens would be happier because comparison would only exist for their current situations, such as choosing a dog at the pound. This one has spots. That one doesn’t. This one is missing most of its left ear. That one is smelling its shit. I suppose it’s possible for comparison to exist when looking into the future as well though. I think we will always find something to compare ourselves to. This table serves a purpose. It was made with a specific design in mind. Families will love this table. They will see the same model in their favorite sitcoms and exclaim to their current lovers: That’s the same table I ate off of growing up! as if the same model, breed, genre, etc. means there is only one. I suppose it does in a Platonic sense.

            Still, the meaninglessness protrudes through what you pretend matters. You may tell someone near you that they matter, that they serve a purpose, but they don’t. The lower me is setting in now. You may speak of how meaning is subjective and how you create it for yourself, but you don’t actually mean this. You mean that you are lying because it allows you to feel alright with yourself. You are the two-year-old pissing the bed, blaming it on the fact that you are two. You just need to learn more, you say. You just need to experience something new and then everything will be a set of Lego pieces that fit anywhere you want them to fit. I miss how much I used to look forward to getting Lego sets for Christmas. I miss getting stickers from my granddad. I miss being ignorantly content instead of consistently angry.

Everyone, even the group that is making a good amount of difference for the betterment of the world, is annoying. Everyone. Do not be confused that meaning takes on a new meaning. Everything still exists as meaninglessness, but there is some joy to be found there. If Camus can imagine Sisyphus with a stupid smile on his face, then I can slap one on too because absurdity is what we all want. Invention is what we need. And no matter how hard you want to fall in love just to have an indent in the mattress when you wake up in the morning, you will still judge yourself while you brush your teeth in the mirror before work.

Sometimes, Los Angeles

            “I can’t stop thinking of ways to kill her. Sometimes, I've just got a keyboard swinging. The USB cable’s flapping around and whipping me. I feel like a sting ray trying to murder its prey but also slaying itself simultaneously.

            “I thought up one the other day where I snapped my laptop in half on her face, then said something like, ‘What’s the matter? You used to love Facebook,’ as she’s crying on the ground. It’s funnier in my head.

            “They’re not all about computers though. Like, in a recent one, she was asleep on her stomach on the bed. I went into the kitchen, grabbed the set of cutting knives her dad bought her a few birthdays back. They were ceramic. You never had to sharpen them. Nice shit, you know? And while holding the wooden container or whatever it’s called, I took the biggest knife out and held it like Norman Bates during the shower scene, then put it right in the top of her spine. She screamed and tried to move around and shit, but I got on top of her and took the next biggest knife out and put it right below that big one. One after another after another until I was out of knives and she wasn't moving anymore. I got off her, still holding the wooden container and admired how she looked like a red stegosaurus.”

            “That’s some dark shit, Lewis,” Alex said, returning from the kitchen with two beers. “Maybe you should start smoking pot again. Calm yourself down a little, you know?”

            “No, that just makes it worse. Cemetery tunnels,” Lewis said as he took one of the beers from Alex.

            “Cemetery tunnels?”

            “Say you’re having a conversation with someone like we are now. We’re both leaning on a gravestone having a conversation.”

“How did we get in a graveyard? And what’s the name on the gravestone?” Alex asked.

“Doesn't matter,” Lewis said. “The ground we’re standing on is consciousness. The current conversation. The current subject. You know what you’re talking about and I know what I’m talking about and they usually coincide when we’re both engaged, but often, while I’m talking, you’re beneath the surface, in your head, your subconscious, digging tunnels.”

Alex’s head tilted.

“By the time I finish what I’m saying, you’re not even at the same gravestone I’m still leaning against. You've been digging tunnels all the way across the cemetery and pop up near someone born in 1923 because you saw that one of these dead people had been in World War Two and that led you to make a connection with what it was like to grow up during The Great Depression and then you started wondering whether someone who grew up during The Great Depression felt better once they fought in the war because they got to take out all this pent up aggravation they had against society on these men in different colored uniforms representing a different, bad society. It’s all contingent, you know? Cemetery tunnels. And when I’m stoned, I’m the fastest fucking digger on the planet.”

“I think you’re the only one who thinks that way.” Alex said. “I get what you mean, but I don’t do that. I’m pretty present most of the time. I mean, I might do that a little when I smoke, but most of the time I just forget what’s being talked about. It’s not because I’m making a line of connections though. I’m just stoned.”

Lewis worked in a gun manufacturing plant. Twelve hour days. Weekends off. He only drank on weekends. It was the weekend. He was drunk.

“I remember the first time my dad took me hunting,” Lewis said. “Just doves. Now that I think about it, it’s funny because my dad was such a fucking Christian, a Christian killing the most Christian bird. I don’t mean Catholic. I mean the contemporary, make-it-up-as-technology-grows type. The kind that is so far passed where it all started from that all anyone knows of the clothes that were worn back then is based off of the crappy paintings some retired grandpa does in an attempt to absolve himself of his sins.

“My personal favorite is the one of the heroin junky being held up by the pale-skinned Jesus, toting a beard and hippie hair. And I know some biker somewhere is staring at that painting saying, ‘You know, if I didn’t find Jesus, I don’t know where I’d be.’

“Anyway, my dad gave me this .410 and I shot the first bird I saw sitting on a branch. He ran over to it, elated as all shit, picked the dove up and handed it to me. Have you ever seen how a dead bird’s head hangs? It’s like there’s no spine at all. ‘Put your index and middle finger on either side of its neck,’ he said. ‘Squeeze them together and pull. It’ll pop right off.’ I did and it did. Then he said, ‘You kill it, you clean it.’ He forced my thumb through the skin just below the dove’s breast. The skin broke easily and when the guts smoothed against my thumb I got the same feeling I had when I pissed my pants on a camping trip with my dad and his friends the year before. I looked up and saw my dad grinning over me. Everyone just needs someone’s approval.” Lewis trailed off, staring through his knees.

Alex flicked a bottle cap at him.

“Sorry. It happened again. I had my thumb in that dove and I looked up at my dad and then when I looked back down, I was riding the red stegosaurus again. I had taken out the lowest knife in her back and was hitchhiking through her spine.”

“You’ve got to quit doing that,” Alex said. “Do you remember the first rule you screamed at me when we were in that stupid club downtown after Laura broke up with me? You said, ‘There are rules to getting over someone. The first is, ONE: you have to fuck someone else.’”

            “Yeah, of course I remember the rules. I fucking made them up.” Lewis said. “The next rule is, TWO: if you can’t manage that, find a good porn site.”

            “Well, let’s go take care of number one.”

            They went outside, covered in jackets. Lewis breathed heavier than usual to see his breath. It was assurance his body was still working.

“I’ll drive,” Lewis said.

They slid into his black Jetta. The paint was corroded. It looked gray and bored when it was light out, but you couldn’t tell once the sun was down.

Four blocks and three stop lights later, they pulled up to Gentry’s. A full parking lot next to a busy street is always a good sign. Men in dark jeans either leaned against the brick exterior or the even tougher women with sleeveless jackets and boots. If you went outside, it was to smoke while a band wasn’t playing. Everyone was outside. Everyone was smoking.

Lunging more for a drink than a conversation about how someone’s father never loved them or how their mother died, Lewis went directly inside, followed by Alex.

            Bartender’s eyes are lax, but attentive at the same time. The only thing that keeps them being helpful is a decent tip. At least one dollar per drink. If not, you’re a prick. You get spit in your road soda and no attention the next time you need another. They don’t want to be there. It’s a job. They have to make rent. That’s it.

            Lewis and the man wiping the bar nodded to one another.

            “Can I get a whiskey double? Well.”

            The man pointed to Alex.

            “Budwiser, please.”

            Lewis turned to his left and watched two men on stage hefting an amplifier the size of an overweight human into place. The bartender returned.

“The whiskey’s eight. Budwiser’s three.”

            “I’ve got this round,” Alex says. “Here’s to Fuck her.”

            They put the glass and bottle together. Alex swigged his beer. Lewis took his whiskey down all at once, like a child forced into cough syrup for saying he was sick and couldn’t go to school.

            “Cigarette?” Lewis asked.

            Alex stepped outside first.

            “Hey, Shithead,” a voice shouted, approaching from the parking lot.

            Alex squinted. Mike, Lauren’s fiancé, came out of the dark, attacking the asphalt in his march until he was an extended finger away from Alex’s chest.

            “What the fuck are you doing here?”

            “What does it look like I’m doing?” Alex said, lifting his beer.

            “He seems fun. Let’s party with this guy,” Lewis said.

            Mike glared at Lewis out of the corner of his eyes.

            “Why don’t you get the hell out of here and go beat up some girl after you tell her you love her?” Mike said, looking back at Alex.

            “Oh, is that the most recent story she has now?” Alex asked. “How many times has she changed it up on you yet? It’s funny; she told me the same thing about the guy she was sucking off before me.”

            “I said, get the hell out of here.”

            “Let me finish my beer first,” Alex said, lighting a cigarette.

Alex hardly put his lighter away before Mike’s arm started extending. Alex looked up. Mike’s fist first touched the cherry of the cigarette, gripped stiffly between Alex’s lips. Alex’s eyes widened. An invisible knife carved lines in his forehead. In Alex’s attempt to turn, his cigarette snapped. The filter flew away from his mouth and the cherried end floated for a bit between Mike’s knuckles and his upper lip until it was caught against Alex's face. Alex dropped backwards, without even attempting to stay on his feet. Mike stepped between Alex’s legs, lifted his boot towards Alex’s teeth, and started to show his own, gritting. Lewis crossed Mike directly in the jaw, catching him off balance and knocking him onto the asphalt. Alex flailed in retreat and Mike began to stand back up, turning towards Lewis.

Lewis scrambled away, escaping Mike’s swing, and ran to the trunk of his car. He pulled out his .38 snubnose, thumbed the hammer, and looked over the upright trunk door. Mike lifted Alex against the wall and kneed him in the groin. Lewis looked back down at the gun and suddenly, there she was, in the trunk of his car, tied up, make-up streaked down her face and staining the duct tape over her mouth. Her pupils expanded and her eyelids retreated into her sockets. Then, he finally saw it: genuine fear, like a beaten dog shaking and shitting itself in the corner of a barn in Buttfuck, Wisconsin, population 372.

Lewis smiled at her, put the snubnose under his shirt, in the back of his pants and grabbed his tire iron. He slammed the trunk and ran screaming towards Mike, tire iron raised over his head like a psychotic Olympian carrying the opening ceremony torch. He came down on Mike’s neck, hard. Mike fell, harder. It was easier than Lewis thought, crushing him like a ball of paper that was once a useable sheet.

He gripped Alex by the collar and forced him to walk faster than he could to the car. Lewis opened the passenger door and threw Alex in. Rounding his Jetta, he knocked twice on the trunk as he passed, smirking. He sat down behind the steering wheel, started the car, and turned to Alex.

            “People are fucking nuts, man,” he said. “You never know when someone has just completely lost it. Sometimes, Los Angeles just gets to you, I guess.”

One for the NASCAR Lovers

Memory #142

I remember standing outside of Centennial High School, in Glendale, Arizona after taking my SATs, with all that fear of realizing I had to actually do something with my life, bitch slapping me like the pimp responsibility would turn out to be. At that exact moment, life was fucking my face and making me deep throat decisions like, Where will you work for the rest of your life? Who will you marry? How many children will you have? Will you be happy? Are you happy now? Does college make a difference in a persons’ life? Does anything make a difference in a persons’ life? Then, while charring beneath that “dry heat,” and seeping into the ether of that smattering of a mostly empty parking lot, I saw this blonde girl in a shitty, silver, 4-door sedan (if I was more of a man then, I may have been able to identify it further) drive past me. She was going over the speed limit, which was only 15mph, but it seemed rebellious at the time because that’s what I wanted to see. She had purple sunglasses on (they might have also been brown) and, most importantly, she had Ha Ha by Mates of State shouting as loud as it would go on her blown-out stereo and she was dancing, slightly. I wanted her to be my girlfriend. I remember this, but not many other things.

Yes, I Do

You wanted to be loved, so you spasmed out an unlocked zipper, always shining to the world, like the glint off some frumped lady’s diamond everyone can gather around and seethe green over. You wanted to hate so you accidentally ran into doors and lamps and started throwing rocks into the river, but that escalated to keyboards through computer monitors, laptops halved, car doors keyed, wooden front ones too, once, you even burned a pentagram into a stranger’s couch with the cherry from your cigarette before throwing rocks and milk in his pool. You wanted to be problematic so you told people you loved them and then didn’t, because problems are change and it’s easy to change, so it’s easy to cause problems. You are a crushed, empty beer can on the handrail of a second-story porch that the wind will knock off the next time it gets cloudy. It’s cloudy today and you want to spit on the woman without a jacket because she won’t notice the lugie between drops. You wanted to be on the Internet. Well, here you are, tattoos and tits and all. There are certain people you stay close enough with your whole life just so that their friends know to notify you when they die. You are that to me.