thirty days

I arrived in the Bay area nine months ago, with a $9000 bankroll and a dream. Such exorbitance...the first time in my life i'd been anywhere near five digits. Under normal circumstances, it should have floated me job-free for a year and a half, free to save the world.
Thirty days ago, after paying my $680 rent, my fortune stood at $200. I'd been trying (and failing) for two months to find a reliable part-time job that didn't crush my spirit. That had never been a challenge in the past, but all i'd found were a dribble of one-offs. I was thirty days away from being confronted with something i'd never faced - eviction and homelessness (not to mention a blow to my artistic dream of having my voice as a writer be a more significant part of the humyn conversation...plus making an actual living through the products of my creativity).
The four months i'd been in San Francisco had been all i'd hoped for. I'd become a fixture on the open mic scene, with four regular gigs a week, plus irregulars. I'd had some amazing, humbling feedback, and been accepted into a community of wonderful, often brilliant artists. I'd done virtually nothing to try to turn my art into income, for several reasons: the feeling that time was on my side, my non-pushing/non-selling personality which prefers to let things happen organically, and the inertia that comes with mild depression/PTSD.
Almost nothing had happened that might be construed as putting me on any path toward artistic self-sufficiency, so i knew it was time to be more proactive.
I had lost a month or two and a chunk of money to family vacations, both back east and exploring California. I'd lost three months and a bigger chunk of money in a hellish limbo on the other side of the Bay. I'd finally found a home in the heart of Haight-Ashbury, with a rent that would be well-nigh irreplaceable if lost. Of course, that "fantastic" rent was more than i'd ever paid in my life. But not hugely more, and we don't worry about such things in my world. Yet now i was faced with simultaneously trying to kick-start my artistic dream, and find an instant, reliable income. The longer it took to find the latter, the more the former might suffer. To say nothing of having a personal life, and time to write.
Being evicted was probably never a serious concern. Both parents offered to loan me money...a safety net not available to the majority of the residents on planet Earth, who everyday face far more stark material realities than mine, simply as a matter of being alive.
But my thirty-day clock was ticking. My needs were simple - $1000 a month. A decent-paying job for two or three days a week would do it. My scramble was on. In addition to whatever work i found, there would be time burned every day searching ads, making phone calls or e-mails...
WEEK ONE
-Two days on a furniture delivery crew, with one boss and one other worker, and more time spent traveling than lifting. It was the third time i'd worked with them. They were good company, and it felt perfect for me. Something physical and mindlessly zen which i would never have to "take home". The boss liked me, but didn't have the shifts available to be a long-term solution.
-I began the process of becoming a professional dog walker with Rover.com. I'd have preferred arranging my work through independent means as i almost always had, but after two fruitless months...
TOTAL HAUL - $200
WEEK TWO
-Three hours assembling Ikea furniture for a womyn in a fancy home (the last hour for free, because she was stressed and i try to please). I worked while she and a neighbor watched reality TV and read tarot cards and got boozy on white wine. The off-putting aroma of the idle rich didn't sit well with how attractive i found the neighbor's personality (and ass). I had walked into the middle of a job someone else had started, with three huge pieces all the same color. I'm not positive i even had the proper directions, and i apparently put some hinges in the wrong place. She called the next day to tell me my payment had been rescinded (i got a nice TV which had been destined for the curb, though).
-Ninety minutes lugging bags of mulch and stone into a garage. My fellow worker and i also moved a four-hundred pound marble slab (creatively and efficiently, i might add).
-One session helping a theater student prepare for a big audition...canceled at the last minute.
-Ten days of unending hoops and corporate conformity with Rover.com finally kill me, and i abandon that path.
-I turn my daily hour and a half of ukulele practice into busking in Golden Gate Park...and make a buck or two each time! I realize that if i became homeless, i could make all the food money i need by making music. Don't think it isn't tempting...
TOTAL HAUL - $28, a TV, two lemons, and a poem...
"Unemployable"
Did you ever hear that famous author interview -
"What would you be if not a writer?"
"A flophouse bum...
for without writing,
i am utterly unemployable"
Self-deprecating or self-congratulating?
The interviewer doesn't ask...
But the audience smiles and nods
Happy to believe talent
IS rewarded
One more bullshit mythology
But for a writer...
Intolerant of hoops
Disdainful of grindstones
Allergic to paperwork
Crucified by conformity
For a writer with pockets that echo
Two weeks from rent time
Unemployability is a gut punch
Not a fucking punchline
WEEK THREE
-One day on the furniture crew. It really is enjoyable - stefan treats us to yummy lunches.
-Two half-days in a sweat shop, assembling magnetized wooden all-purpose remotes. If you have to be in a sweat shop, this is the one - a cap on shift length, and $25 an hour. Plus pretzels!
-Fifteen minutes in a sound studio, recording my voice for a study on accents. $50!
-One session teaching improv to a couple theater amateurs...cancelled at the last minute.
-I begin the paperwork to join Varsitytutors.com.
TOTAL HAUL - $300
WEEK FOUR
-One day on the furniture crew. Stefan wants to move me onto the payroll (even though the job isn't a permanent solution, and might become a casualty of said solution).
-Two days at the sweat shop. Not a long-term solution (and i don't think i'd want it to be, even with the great pay), as the business is moving to Boston in a few weeks.
-The tutor thing is proceeding well - i'm cleared to teach! But the way things are going elsewhere, i don't need to be a go-getter on this, and i'm not sure i want to. It might be enjoyable, or just another pain in the ass.
TOTAL HAUL - $300
MONTHLY HAUL - $828
Going into that last week, making rent was still iffy. But i do, and then some. And not to imply that the universe has a sense of humor, but after a month of soul-crushing stress, i'm already booked the first seven workdays in May, which would cover all of June's rent. Yeah yeah yeah...money money bullshit bullshit. What a fucked-up world. So okay, i get to devote the last few weeks of June to getting performance gigs, and agent-calling, and THAT bullshit.
Anyway, come visit my little slice of heaven in the Haight. It's mine...for at least another thirty days.
I love you all.

unstumped

It's possible that my lifelong passion for tree trimming and, more specifically, stump removal, can be traced to how utterly enthralled i was by chapter 3 of "Shane", as a child. Most critics would label that passage "human vs. nature", as Shane and Joe become obsessed with the removal of an ancient, monolithic tree stump. But i think it more rightly falls under the category "human vs. self", as their struggle is about exploring one's own limits.
I haven't re-read that passage since childhood, but its resonances have lost none of their impact. In very specific ways, it's subconsciously informed my own stump style (most notably, an aversion to mechanized aid). Not that i've never availed myself of chainsaws or vehicles with chains...but i'm most happy when it's just me, manual tools, a stump, and no heed of time's passage. Nor do i turn down help...but generally i prefer my stump crucibles to be solitary rather than with those who don't share the passion.
Many people prefer to not deal with a stump directly, choosing rather to let it rot, or even hasten that process with acid injections into the core. To me, that's like carefully nibbling away the biscuits of an oreo, then tossing away the creamy, yummy center. To be sure, the ape in me thrills to the climbing and denuding part of tree removal...but the moment you're alone with that naked stump, is usually when the job really begins.
The stump i removed over the past few days isn't the most titanic subterranean arboreal extraction i've ever essayed...but will serve as a lovely example of a lifetime's passion. Let's go down into the dirt.
This stump had decorated (or blighted) its owner's domestic landscape for eight years. Over two feet wide at the apex, it had acquired the appearance of a relic primed for removal. The visible rot seemed pronounced enough that one might be tempted to tear it apart with bare hands.
One would give up that tactic quickly. It was ash, a species i'd never dealt with. I brought out the stump remover's chief tool, a mattock. A long, thick handle topped by a pickax-like head, with one side often ax-like and the other a pick/digger. Rotted chunks fell away. Further swings revealed that the eighteen-inch core was stronger than most fresh trees.
I began digging around the base. Most stumps are removed this way, exposing and chopping the roots one by one. The easiest trees have roots close to the surface, spreading out like spokes on a wheel. A lot of systems are more like an inverted half-koosh, with roots that burrow deeper. The rarest system is a tap root, with one central root going straight down.
I soon discovered that this was a tap specimen, with a root close to two feet wide burrowing into the depths. There was also a four-inch surface root, and a few smaller ones.
After digging a foot or so around the base of the stump (except for the side that abutted a one-ton, half-buried boulder), i gathered more tools - two metal wedges, a sledge hammer, and a crowbar. A few more chunks slowly fell away, until i began concentrating my attention on a dark fissure that ran through the center of the stump. It proved to be weaker wood, and i was soon working my wedges, trying to split the stump in two. The greatest pitfall of this technique is being unable to extract a wedge. One of my wedges had a long handle, but the other almost got trapped a couple times. I made some headway, and even discovered a dirt hollow hidden in the stump. But it refused to split, so i went back to excavating. I discovered that the tap root, perhaps because of boulder-strewn soil, curved off to the left a couple feet down. I soon had an eighteen-inch section of its side exposed. Wood chunks began flying, and i was in the hardest physical stage of stump removal, when you have to just keep lifting and swinging your tool. The muscle core of most amateurs is only good for a few swings at a time, and is spent in a few minutes. I was a little out of shape myself.
It was during this section that i had my only contact with humanity. A neighbor came out, to go on an errand. I'd never met her, but she made some small talk. There was a spark of sexual energy, as is fitting between a woman and a half-naked, muscled man dripping in sweat and filth.
I hacked away, giving the stump an occasional whack with the sledge to test its vibratory quotient. At one point i was trying to push it forward, and my foot slipped, sprawling me across the stump. My forearm got scratched up. I knew that a prybar would separate the halves more quickly, but the only one i knew of was at my uncle's, a thirty-minute round trip. I guessed that it would take forty-five minutes with the tools i had, so kept at it. Finally, i tore away a section that was four feet long, two feet wide, and a foot deep. Dusk had fallen. I'd been at it four hours.
I returned two days later. When i went to re-clear the loose dirt i'd excavated from the underside, a toad almost jumped into my hand. I moved him from harm's way, as i'd done with a friend of his the first day. It was time for hacking. With the root intact, the remaining half of the stump was as solid as the whole stump had been...a lesson in the rot-resistance of taproots (moist and protected from the elements), and the hardness of ash (the wood used to make baseball bats).
As i hacked and cleared (ax-cutting involves 45-degree cuts opposite 135-degree cuts, pointing toward each other), i began to uncover what seemed to be the old bones of a large animal, perhaps a deer...or even human, my imagination thought. The passionate, focused part of me would have been annoyed at having to stop my work for something as mundane as calling the authorities to excavate a murder victim. Tain't human, i said to myself...and never found a fragment that proved otherwise. The hole was now close to three feet - a deep approach, particularly on the boulder side of the stump, which elevated me a foot higher.
I interrupted my hacking with occasional whacking (to test the vibratory quotient), and also availed myself of the chance to try to snap the stump with my legs, as the nearest tree was perfectly placed to lean my back against...but the stump barely quivered.
Hack, hack, hack, hack, hack.
I dug away at the secondary root. I'd avoided it because it was against the boulder, but with careful clearing i was able to get an angle. Ten hacks, and it was gone.
And back to the main root...
Hack.
Hack.
Hack hack hack hack hack hack hack hack hack hack hack hack.
More hack.
I was able to come at the root from the top and side. When i reached the bottom on the far side and the top on the near side, i knew it was close. Sometimes i'd test it, just to get a rest from the hacking. Was it time for a final leg push?
I tried to rock it back and forth. A tiny quiver grew, and i heard the first crack that heralded the end. Back, forth, back, forth, crack crack cracK CrAcK. CRACK!!
I let out a long whoop, as i had at the end of the first day. The second day took two or three hours. I pulled the second section from the pit. It was bigger than the first. I filled in the hole, and raked it over.
Within a week, no one would ever guess a tree or stump or worker had ever been there.

You. Will. Be. MOVED.

The most consistent freelance job of my New York years has been mover...though technically, it hasn't even been all freelance. I've been a member of a small moves company for six years. Moving Forces! Inc! I started out freelance, but one day i answered a "looking for movers" ad. It is a measure of how much i enjoy this company that, when we switched from casual wear to uniforms a few years ago, i (non-conformist in the very fibers of my DNA) didn't bolt.
Working small moves is perfect for my personality. You're helping others. You can take or refuse jobs at your discretion. Most are less than four hours. Constant exposure to new people and new environments. You can drop out of your mind almost entirely, to do work that negates the need for any other "exercise". Many jobs are easy, some are wonderfully brutal. Moving Forces services all five boroughs, plus parts of Jersey and very occasionally Long Island and Westchester.
A "small move" is one in which the client provides the vehicle (usually a rented truck), and hires extra hands for the loading or unloading (or both). Two movers is common, though i've been on crews of 1-5. For the past couple years, partly because of knees with recovering repetitive stress injuries, i've usually been the truck loader. Often i'd rather not be bothered with that...just give me heavy shit to carry...but i'm excellent at loading, and it does have a zen quality. It's reminiscent of the video game Tetris (which i've never played, but the number of times i've seen it played must mean it holds some kind of gaming record). Taking up every available cm of space, keeping heavier pieces low, protecting fragile pieces, and building in such a way as to avoid shifting or toppling, is a challenge. I consider the need for ropes a sign of someone who probably could have done better. There have been very few times when we weren't able to fit everything in the truck, even when the client should have rented the next size up.
I stand out a bit from other movers in eagerness and physical ability. I've never seen another mover go back up stairs for a new load as strongly as i, almost never slowing down to just one step at a time. The cameraderie with the other movers is great. Frequent chatter or singing or such. Our rare disagreements are generally good-natured, like the never-ending "chain/stage" debate. Our boss's favorite outburst has always been "Chain!", said with equal parts gung-ho and playfulness. "Chaining" is having a constant link of movers between apartment and truck, with one mover passing a load off to the next, and so on. But at a certain point over the past couple years, some movers (including, bizarrely, the boss) began to do staging instead of chaining...while still calling out "chain!" Staging is setting your load down at an arranged spot, for the next person in the link to pick up and carry on. I rail no end against staging, as its relative inefficiency is indisputable (not that some don't try, of course). What expends more energy - bending over to set something down, requiring someone to bend over and lift it back up, or passing a load directly to the next mover? It's a no-brainer. Staging can also cause gaps in communication, as the needs of the truck are relayed back to the apartment. When pushed to defend staging, the best my companions can come up with is shaky logic or a feeble appeal to emotionalism ("It's psychologically tougher having to sometimes carry the load an extra flight or two"). Any disparities in chaining even out over the course of a move - if you have a longer trudge, your next haul will automatically be shorter. But for some bizarre reason, several of my teammates are stuck on staging.
The clients are almost always wonderful, though a mixed bag in terms of preparedness. Some are still bagging and boxing as the truck fills up.
My favorite technique? The turtle - taking a heavy object (chair, coffee table, wardrobe box with handles) onto your head or back. The pancake is also fun - flopping a mattress over the railing of a stairwell while your partner moves ahead to catch it.
After six years, i have company seniority, aside from the boss. There are only five or six on the roster at any time. Many have been creative types (musicians, actors...). Moving Forces switched from a flag logo to camouflage a few years back, which i thought was ill-conceived, considering where we ply our trade. Patriotism resonates in NY. Militarism resonates in...Oklahoma? Our uniforms are black T-shirts with camo pants. The shirts bear our logo and the slogan "You Will Recommend Us".  Our reviews have borne this out - we've historically gotten the majority of our business from U-Haul's website, where we've constantly ranked at or near the top of their affiliated company rankings. I've thought of alternate slogans - "We Will Move You", "A Moving Experience", or "You Will Be Moved", but the boss is happy with the old one.
As for the boss, Robin, well...he's quite a bird. It all flows from him, and it's all pretty damned good, and he's quite a bird. A bizarre mix of german/brazilian heritage, he's got aryan structure and militarism - his original idea for the uniforms was fatigues, with medals for rank and distinguished service (we talked him out of that one). He adds to that a brazilian esoteric silliness...ducky stickers on paychecks, for example. He has heightened geopolitical awareness and an eager, offbeat sense of humor. He asks us to call the moves "trainings". He joins in many trainings himself.
New York moves sometimes involve elevators, but buildings lower than six floors aren't required to have one. You understand what i'm saying?
Fortunately i love heat...some of the summer moves involve stairwells where the temperature is over a hundred. Many movers bring a spare T-shirt (one guy even brings several), but i bring only one, mostly because i sweat less quickly and copiously than most.
The money's nice. After one raise, i make $17/hr. Tips are almost always involved, often $20 or more. My lowest-paying move was the day a fancy bed footboard tipped over, cracked, and my partner and i found ourselves with a $500 bill. My highest-paying day was a sixteen-hour move to the suburbs for a sweet musician named Duke, and his wife. $450.
The heaviest thing i ever moved was a first-edition widescreen TV. It weighed the better part of five hundred pounds. There were four of us, and we had to get it from the 5th floor to the street, with no elevator. We couldn't lift it steadily until we set it on two blankets and grasped the four corners. Even with that, we could only go one step at a time. LIFT! Bump. LIFT! Bump. LIFT...
My funniest moment involved a day my partner John and i were, for no particular reason, riffing on the old GET SMART. We were taking a huge, wobbly Ikea wardrobe down one flight and to the trash. I had the lower end. I'm about five steps down, sort of underneath it, when a whooshing sensation envelops me. When i open my eyes, the entire enormous swedish behemoth has imploded, myriad pieces of it trickling around my ankles. How i didn't get bowled over or otherwise concussed, i'll never understand. With unassailable comedic timing, i looked at John and, in my best Don Adams, said "Missed me by THAT much."
I hold the company record for the highest distance (forty-one stories) any mover has ever dropped an object. We were moving a client into a high-rise, and had a full load in the elevator. When the doors opened on the 41st floor, i picked up two armloads, then suddenly realized my partner needed help steadying something he was pulling down. I set down the load in one of my hands - right on the crack between elevator and floor. One of the things in that load was a small, unpainted wooden shelf. It silently sliced through the opening, and was gone. We never heard a crash.
Our most immortally-named client? Israel Sockeye.
Alas, the end of Moving Forces (www.movingforces.us) may be at hand. For some reason we'll perhaps never understand, U-Haul has dismissed us from their site, taking away 80% of our business. The reason they gave is that they only want to work with companies which don't have their own truck. Which we don't - the closest we ever came to having one was an affiliation with a fun fellow named Curtis, who had a big yellow truck. He bumped parked cars and fire hydrants with head-scratching regularity. We only dealt with him for a few months, four or five years ago. When i learned we were removed from the site, the only thought that made sense was that one of our rival companies had lined the wallet of someone at U-Haul corporate. We've applied to be reinstated, but U-Haul reserves the right to do whatever the hell they want (and charge us a hefty fee if they do reinstate us). A shame. I can't imagine that any NY company made clients as happy (or made U-Haul look as good) as we have the past few years. We're personable, quirky, talented, and dedicated. But the nature of this business is that the majority of your clients will never give you repeat business, no matter how thrilled they are. We'll wait a second while everyone catches up to the people who've already figured out why that is.
The most apt way i can tell you about my time as a NY mover, is to devote a moment to each of the most memorable movers i've worked with. This is also, i hope, a fitting memorial to one of NY's most unique moving companies ever.
ROBIN
Tall with large feet that sometimes flop in your way, he sets a fine example of moving talent. He never wants us to let on to the client that he's the boss. Trainings with him are peppered with his repeated exclamations of "Amaaaaazing" and "Chain!" It's easy to get him singing by humming a line to some obscure 80s pop song. He has an extreme macrobiotic diet, which is perhaps as much myth as reality (one legend being that he subsists entirely on orange juice). As he never eats added sugars, he never brushes his teeth. Add to that his habit of carrying garlic bulbs in his pocket, to pop in his mouth at random moments, and you have a formula for frequently-funky breath. He also eschews deodorants and such, so his musk is purty strong. But he's a delight to work with, every single time.
MIKE
I probably logged more minutes with Mike than any other mover. A sweet soul. He and i were the company's only bikers for a long time, and it was always fun comparing how far we'd traveled on any given day. An easygoing musician with an eager outlook, very comfortable in rapport with clients. He and his wife Sandy (and two dogs) took me in once for a month when i was between homes. Our last move together was moving him to the suburbs. He makes it back into the city on occasion, and is very much missed.
GREG
Moving Forces most regular mover over the past year or so, given my other conflicts. Thoroughly professional, thoroughtly competent, and thoroughly a pleasure. A singer/songwriter, his band, Greg Smith and the Broken English (http://www.gregsmithandthebrokenenglish.com/), won an IMA award last year. He's sort of a cross between Dylan, Tom Waits, and Davey Jones. He establishes rapport with clients easily. I love his music, and he's becoming a friend outside work.
IVAN
A gregarious croatian with heavy accent and a penchant for wordplay, he lived with Robin for a year or more before returning to Croatia. A good mover. He's a charismatic figure in new age spiritualism. I helped edit/translate one of his books, and he founded a school in NYC. I became friends with his ex-wife as well, and he invited me to become his traveling companion/editor, but i get suspicious any time the phrase "school of thought" comes up, and didn't want to risk making my own creative visions ancillary to anyone's.
JOHN
A freelance editor who spent a few years with us before taking a full-time position with a publishing company. Easygoing, keen of wit, and a right fine mover. He grumbled about physical labor as time wore on, which made me sad. We vowed to never see the film THE ROAD, as the book was so sublime. I hoped we might become better friends, and he did invite me to stay with him once when i was between homes, but he drifted away into his new life.
DAVE
My biological sibling, i brought him into Moving Forces when the Tavern on the Green, his fourteen-year employer, closed. He spent a year with us, until he became a doorman at the Trump Soho. As eager a mover as you could ever want, he loves to bring up little details of jobs we did months earlier, details which i've usually forgotten. His unfamilarity with the work and a bout with Lyme disease made him a bit slow and weak at first, but he shaped up nicely. I suspect we'll be sharing Moving Forces in-jokes decades from now. He still longs to do moves on his rare days off.
R.J.
A jazz trumpeter. Great company, fun and friendly, he also did volunteer work teaching kids music. He had the habit of scanning sidewalks for cigarettes that hadn't been fully smoked, and finishing them off. He disappeared off the face of the Earth, in a way that felt faintly ominous.
SINBAD
A testament to the in and out nature of freelance work, he was a great, smiling presence on many jobs, then disappeared when his gigs in the music world took off. A couple years later, he happily re-appeared.
JOE
A big, bearded fellow, very low-key. I took a shine to him, partly because he reminded me of a fuzzy-headed G.I. Joe i'd had as a child. I wanted to become friends with him outside work, and it almost happened.
JARED
He makes you want to find the people who raised him, just to say thank you.
SCOTT
Very outgoing and enthusiastic, but i eventually became disenchanted with him, and told Robin i thought he was making our company look bad. His strengths were negated by a general ungentleness, which manifested in dropping boxes instead of setting them down, and suggesting we attempt to "force" an expensive piece of furniture through a doorway it wasn't fitting through. The only mover i ever heard bark at a client. I lost good money because of him on at least one occasion.
STEVE
One of the most talented movers i ever beheld, he could handle enormous pieces of furniture alone like no one else...but acted as though he was in charge of every move he worked. I had more patience for him than most of my companions, but eventually his act wearied me too.
HOSHI GLUTESTRONG
Sadly, i'm kidding. We've never had a female mover, though i've kept egging Robin to hire one. He's interviewed several, and says none have gotten past the question, "Can you carry half a sleeper sofa up five flights?" Sigh. I've seen what Olympic women look like three or four decades after Title IX, so i refuse to give up hope.
GUNTHER
A gnarly acid jazz drummer from Germany, i think he ended up in jail for some bogus "consensual crime" charge.
UKE
The most imposingly statuesque mover i ever knew, he was 6'5" with arms the size of my legs. Unimpeachably agreeable. The only mover who had larger feet than Robin, he had to walk down stairs diagonally, otherwise he would slip off. I was sad when he left the company to go raise christian babies. That sentence can be interpreted two ways, and either would be correct.
FELIX
It took me about three seconds to be perplexed as to how or why Robin hired this guy. He was an ex-convict, which is perfectly fine, but he didn't have the kind of personality that puts people at ease. A pronounced lack of gentleness. I think perhaps Robin has a fascination for redemption...but his instincts failed him this time. During moves, Felix was sometimes on the phone conducting semi-shady business deals. I told Robin we were going to lose our high company ranking, and we were going to deserve it.
COOL BREEZE
I don't remember much about him, but how can i not mention someone named "Cool Breeze"?
AL
My first partner ever, Al was as great a comrade as you could ever want. He was funny, he was strong, and he played well with others. I nicknamed him "Lovin' Al", after the James Taylor song. He had been through any number of personal crucibles, with time spent in the army, jail, and a husband/father phase that sounded none too pleasant. He had put that all behind him, to live a life of enormous simplicity. I've never quite gotten over the fact that our company lost him when we moved "on the books", with tax forms and such.
==========
Moving Forces. Wonderful times.

naked! art! yay!

As i entered adulthood, one of the thoughts that bounced around my head from time to time was a curiosity about the world of the art model. Mostly, this curiosity was just a response to living in a sexually-repressed society, where nudity taboos are everywhere you look. I realized at a pretty young age how destructive these taboos are...that the damage done to our psyches by not being allowed to walk down the street, run with the wind, or dance in the rain naked naked naked, is almost incalculable. By the time i was an adult, i was ready to buck these taboos wherever i could. Any pretext to get naked, no matter how flimsy, i'll take (one of the possible titles for this blog was "sensitivenakedman"). I've never lived in a nudist colony, but it's on my short list. A lot of people perceive this facet of my personality as "exhibitionism", a form of attention-seeking.
A lot of people are pretty fucking stupid.

So doing naked modeling was in the back of my mind for years. Not just being naked, but being paid for it? Are you kidding?
Still, i knew how deep-rooted is the socialization that teaches us bodily shame. I couldn't be 100% sure that i would be comfortable taking off my clothes for a roomful of clothed strangers.
Just 99.999%.
Then one day, i'm looking through the want ads in Florida, seeking supplemental income for my acting. And there it was - "Art Models Wanted". A local art league. A quick phone call, and...
Know how some things you think are going to be cool, turn out to be even cooler?
I was so unself-conscious, it was silly. The artists were so friendly and fun. I was naked with strangers in public, and NOBODY CARED. When they put money in my hands, i may have laughed. Would i like to do it again? Are you kidding?
Years later, i've been professionally naked all over the place. For individual artists. For art leagues and colleges. For illustrators, painters, photographers, and sculptors.

Is it hard work? Brutal. Sometimes the poses are short, five minutes or less, but for serious work, they want you to stay unmoving for a long time. The industry standard is twenty minutes on, ten minutes off. With classes, they usually time that pretty strictly. With individual artists, i've gone an hour or more. But even twenty minutes is seventeen more than lots of folks could handle. You might never have realized how constantly humans shift our bodies, even in the most relaxed moments. We're designed that way...optimal blood flow and muscle comfort involves almost continual motion (look at speeded-up tapes of people "not doing anything" sometime). To suddenly freeze that natural state is, well...unnatural. To do it well requires muscle tone and pain tolerance.
The industry standard is a three-hour shift, but i've been asked to do as many as eight. Mostly, you're asked to do one pose over and over and over again. You quickly learn where the pain points are. You learn what part of you is going to fall asleep, over and over and over again. Very occasionally you'll have a pose that qualifies as easy...usually involving about thirty pillows. But generally, even poses that start out comfortably are killers by the second hour. When the break comes, you can't just stand up. You need to slowly unfold out of the pose. You spend your break stretching and moving and slapping whatever part of your body has fallen asleep. Ten minutes is almost never enough time to feel normal again. After an hour or so in one pose, you won't feel "normal" until the next day.
Even with all that, there are times when staying awake on the stand isn't easy. There can be something so deliciously soporific about forced inactivity.

And the most-common question of people who have never done it is, of course...do you get erect? No no no no no. What a silly idea. I mean, okay, maybe once in those hundreds of times, i started to feel a little blood flowing into my "area"...but i thought about Margaret Thatcher, and was fine. I don't think i'm atypical, i'm pretty sure erections are almost unheard-of. Which is actually a tiny bit surprising, because another question i get is, what do you think about while you're up there?
Mostly bad pop songs from the eighties.
Plus any of the million other things people think of when they're not thinking of anything. Since sex is pretty high on that list, you'd think there might be the occasional erection. There are certainly other public occasions...say, on a subway car, when you get a little chubby as you're dozing, or become aware that the nipples of the woman across from you aren't as innocuous as they were a couple minutes before.
But really, no. There's something inherently non-turgid about being naked for strangers while in pain.
You do learn, however, that you might want to avoid sex before a session. Drippage.
And i do confess i occasionally, surreptitiously "straighten" my penis, which tends to flop to the right.
Do i ever do clothed modeling? Yeah, but i really have to like the artist a lot.

A big part of the reason why modeling is even cooler than you'd imagine, is the work being done. Even with amateurs, there is something going on that is enormously ego-stroking. To walk around and see ten or twenty versions of "you" is a bit of a rush. And if the artists have actual talent, it becomes...there's no other word than "humbling". Never mind what the artistic object is, just being witness to beauty in creation, is amazing. I've amassed a nice collection of images of myself. Artists generally love to be generous with that sort of thing, making you copies and sometimes even giving originals.
I once spent a week posing with two women, but not intimately. After hundreds and hundreds of experiences, posing intimately with a woman is the only thing i've never yet done. I'm looking forward to that as the pinnacle of my career.

Any particularly goofy or special memories?
I once posed for a college art class, and one of the female students turned out to have been a high school student of mine, from a year or two before. I wish i could have a transcript of any phone calls she made after class.
I've done body double work for Brad Pitt.
I've been made into a statue by one of Hollywood's top body-casters, an experience that's worth an article all by itself (http://nakedmeadow.blogspot.com/2009/06/statue.html).
I've had a beautiful rendering of my erect penis done (in larger than life size). If you come across that one...
Make me a copy. I never got one.

(Clothed modeling? Look again.)

statutory life

There is a fourth statue of me in the world!

Or more precisely, there are now eight (four originals, four copies).

The newest, created this year in Brooklyn and headed for the Maritime Museum in Washington, D.C. continues my burgeoning military career. I started out as a West Point cadet, just before the first world war. It took me around sixty years to find myself promoted to lieutenant, aboard a destroyer. I blame the slowness of my rise on the unconventional choice of switching branches of the service. At this rate, i'll make general (er, admiral) just in time to annoy a certain Picard with my know-it-all ways and comic relief flatulence.

This newest one, made at Atta Studios (http://www.attainc.com/frames/portfolio_frame.html ...how many seconds does it take you to find me??), was created with a combination of techniques. The molds for the body and arms were done with good, old-fashioned plaster (as the statue is clothed [yawn], precision there wasn't crucial). The head and hands were done in goopy, rubbery, hardening alginate.

If you've never had your body reproduced, here's the drill. You shave any body hair that won't tuck under a swim cap (you'll pay for any lack of meticulousness). You slather yourself head to toe in vaseline. Or maybe you'll skip the cap, and vaseline your hair, too. If it feels like you have enough on you, you don't.

Your artists get dipping and slapping plaster. It's nice and warm at first (if your artists have done their part with thoughtfulness and care). It hardens within ten minutes, and that's when the fun begins. As they pull on whatever part of the plaster they can grab, you expand and contract your muscles and skin, pulling away from the plaster molecule by molecule. There are sections of the body where this is fairly pain-free.

Then there are the other sections.

Anywhere you missed hair, anywhere you didn't have about a centimeter of vaseline, it might hurt. The sweaty, light-headed kind of hurt that feels like the initial stages of a drug trip. This is the part where the once-warm plaster is cold and unyielding...unless you have extra layers of fat on you, you'll be all too aware you're the only naked one in the room. You'll ask for your robe to be draped on the naked parts as they emerge, and hope that the studio's space heater is working, so it can be pointed right at you from the closest distance that won't actually peel your epidermis. As understanding as the artists will be, there will be moments when their speed will be one gear above yours (when you're trying to extract your lost body, hoping it comes back like it was before, one gear is the difference between oxcart and Studebaker). At any point during this process, they may or may not actually put their feet on your thighs or chest, to get more leverage.

Nope, not making that up.

Finally you're free.

The artists inspect the insides of the molds, mostly to see where you didn't shave so well.

On to the head and hands. Alginate technology has come a long way. When i did an all-body alginate job five years ago, you had to stay inside the mold for almost an hour and a half, during which time 78% of the subjects pass out. These days, it's about five minutes. They leave your nostrils uncovered, hope you're not claustrophobic, then shhhloop, shloop, pop, you're out.

The artists are done with you. Off to the showers. Parts of your skin feel like the steel-wool dance troupe has been practicing pirouettes on you. You're cold and squishy, but faintly giddy breathing the sweet air of freedom. You place yourself under a shower that may or may not have hot water. If it is hot, you're so grateful for any warmth at all, you'll want to stay under there forever.

Which is good, because forever is approximately how long it takes to wash off vaseline. You eventually give up, and towel off. You'll shower again when you get home (but it'll be another day or two before you recognize your skin).

A couple months later, there's a new you in the world! And to think, women just put a penis in their vagina to get the same magical effect...them ladies, always taking the easy way. No pain tolerance.

So if you're in the old District of C., stop on in and see me. Kissing, mooning, and saluting are all encouraged. No leg humping, though.

I'm an officer now, after all.

ex-officiant

The historical scholar who's traveled back in time to study me (for such i'm now convinced the cricket must be), has noticed that there is one less vocation in my profile.
Say hello to wrob, ex-wedding officiant.
I can no longer muster any kind of indulgence for the institution of marriage. I'll not participate in one ever again. Not even as guest.
Understand, my officiant career was a bit of a lark...including the "staged" wedding in which the congregation didn't know i wasn't legit, i've officiated exactly twice. In the past year or two, no prospective couple has been a match for my spirit. I've known most of my life that marriage was an outdated institution of barbaric origin, but i became an officiant in the spirit of fun, thinking that if people wanted to do it, nothing was going to stop them, so they might as well have my irreligious, irreverant energy. I also like embracing ludicrousness, and to tell someone that i was a wedding officiant, had a little touch of zaniness in it.
The change in my spirit comes from the realization that my sentiments against marriage, instead of being some idealistic fancy, are more likely a sensible attitude that science is finally catching up with. I don't believe in capitalism or slavery...and the roots of marriage are in the male ownership of women. I don't believe in monogamy...and what is marriage but the sanctioning of the most unrelenting, spirit-maiming monogamy conceiveable?
For a primer on the scientific basis for the unnaturalness of monogamy, look to this book:
http://nakedmeadow.blogspot.com/2010/11/myth-of-monogamy.html
And this better book:
http://nakedmeadow.blogspot.com/2012/02/sex-at-dawn.html
Okay, i suppose i might be convinced to come out of retirement for a couple embarking on an open marriage.
But only if the service is naked, and the reception downright orgiastic.
I love you all.

sub!

During my Florida years, i was an occasional substitute teacher for the Lee County schools. The first time was on an extended vacation, then again when i returned more permanently in '96 to look after my grandmother, and again a couple years after that. I subbed when theater jobs hit a dry spell.
Jumping into an alien space and filling it up with your personality is the essence of subbing. I worked at more than a dozen schools, eventually covering every grade, even middle school (which wasn't the horror show i half-expected). Generally, i had ample personality and smarts to make my easygoing nature work. There was one class of little ones my first month who were used to getting their way, either with their regular teacher or with previous subs. When it came time for recess, they couldn't make an organized class line, so i sat them back down. After three tries, you could sense the growing agony, as they heard the shouts of fun outside. I refused to keep just the bad apples inside, and told them they would go together, or not at all. After more than half of recess was gone, they finally made it. The principal later told me how word spread that Mr. R was like a Catholic School teacher. I laughed. My first time around, i fell in love with Miss Suarez, a kindergarten teacher. She was engaged, and the one time i met him it seemed like the universe was upside down. I think she felt so too, from the way we looked at each other on our last day together...words came so close to being spoken, that our lips parted...but the road of practicality and stability she was on silenced my foolish, wise tongue. And maybe i was also the teeniest bit afraid to lose something i wanted so very, very much.
My favorite grades were pre-K, 2nd, 5th, and 12th. Pre-K is special because the children still haven't learned the "personal space" boundaries which will be cemented within a year. One day i gave an assignment, and stood at the head of the class. A child stood up and walked to me. Their head was down, so i couldn't be sure what they wanted. They wrapped their arms around my leg, held on, then walked back to their seat, never once looking up. I melted inside, as i realized this child was still in a place where physical contact didn't need to be "defined". He or she needed to hold someone, got it, and went back to work.
Why do we lose that?
5th is great because they're still children, but their minds are beginning to process deeper thoughts. 12th was my favorite of all, because the smart ones can handle just about anything you throw at them. Just as 6th graders have left childhood, there's a subtle but immense difference between seniors and juniors. With 12th graders, you can really sense the adults they'll be.
Usually if you do good work at one school, they book you as much as they can. My first year, my most regular gig was Michigan Elementary. There were closer schools, and this one was on the "wrong" side of the tracks, but i came to love them as much as they loved me. It's so wonderful when kids run up to you in the morning, hoping you'll be covering one of their classes. I became friend and tennis buddy to the assistant principal, Steve Santoro, a wonderful guy.
When i returned to Pennsylvania, i even spent a couple days subbing in a maximum security prison, as part of a last chance program for juvenile inmates. It sounds impressive. But they were just kids.
Far and away, the gem in my subbing career was my final year, at Florida's Cape Coral High. I reported to Sue Mull, who was simply the best. I was there every week, at least three or four days. At one point i even took a long-term gig, going six weeks for an art teacher who was out. I developed some wonderful teacher friendships. The English faculty loved me because i told students i was "well". The principal loved how i biked the twelve miles to school every morning. He told the kids to be like Mr. R, nominated me for district sub of the year, and offered me a full-time job teaching art the following year. Knowing that wasn't the best use of my talents (or Peter Pan magic), i passed.
High school students are still childlike enough that they were just like their elementary counterparts, running up in the morning with shouts of "Mr. R! Mr. R!", to find out where i'd be. My classroom became a magnet for strays and students trying to ditch class. If they had permission to be with me, i'd sometimes let them stay. I had a pack of "passes", and it was comical the lengths some students went, to get one. I began putting a "question of the day" up on the board, offering a prize to any who could answer it. The internet era had begun, so i had to be careful to avoid questions too easily researched on a library computer. Kids who weren't even in my class would show up, already knowing the question. The one i remember most is "complete this John Lennon lyric: woman is the (blank) of the world". The student who found the answer was a bit wide-eyed that i even indirectly used the word "nigger", but that led to a nice discussion on the nature of profanity.
Certain students became favorites. There were two intelligent misfits who asked me to help write a Star Trek script. Another time, i went with some kids to a pool hall after school. When one of my closest students was going through a hard time, we sat in the hall after school and talked, until she cried on my shoulder. When one of our students died, i was the only teacher asked to be part of the student vigil.
Being a male teacher had special challenges. One lass had the temerity to grab my ass. Another, a nineteen year-old senior who made freshmen boys visibly quiver, saw me one morning in the lobby after i'd been holed away in my art class for six weeks, and screamed. She ran to me, hurled herself through the air, and wrapped her legs around me. She was a sassy Brooklyn girl who laughed at everything. She told me how much she had missed me. I smiled, said thank you, and invited her to jump down. Those feelings sometimes went the other way, and pay no mind to anyone who says differently. There will forever be a corner of my spirit profoundly, gently in love with an exchange student named Christina.
Around that time of my life i was learning to feel situations, not just think them as i had done in my youth. Living that way, certain decisions seem ridiculous in retrospect, but they're often the moments that resonate most deeply. I'm going to tell you what i did, though i'm not even sure i believe it myself. One day when i had a free period, i was discovered by three students too bright to really fit in. They were skipping class, but since they were a week or so from graduation, i decided to be their walking "pass". They took me through a secret route they knew to the roof, and after we had talked for a while, they hesitatingly asked if i wanted to share a joint with them. I declined, but allowed them to partake. That they risked that level of trust in me...it just became imperative that i teach them that stepping off a cliff is okay. I caught them, and maybe forever had a tiny impact on their cynicism in this brutal world.
On teacher follies day, the faculty staged WWF-style wrestling matches. My character was "Susan". Students braided my hair into pigtails, and i wore a borrowed bikini. I entered the ring to the blaring of "Man, I Feel Like a Woman". At another assembly, my best teacher buddy Mr. Kulie and i performed the Monty Python "argument" sketch.
A very special group of students, including the girl who had cried on my shoulder, found out when my birthday was, and on that day there was a knock on my classroom door. I looked up to see three or four of them holding a cupcake with a lit candle. Out in the hall, they read me a poem they had written. At the end of the year, i wrote a poem for them, and all the others...
The following summer, my crying buddy and another, Nicole, came to one of my plays and gave me the beautifullest tie dye shirt ever. Another two, James and Athena, remembering the tattered briefcase i brought on days it was too rainy to bike, gave me a new one. As the last days of school had wound down, realizing that nothing would top that year, i'd decided to make it my subbing swan song. After the final day of classes, i pedaled off, smiling...

bucks county coffee boy

When i was finishing my master's, i got a call from an old neighbor, Kathy, whose son John was a great bud. She had split with John Sr. and married Rodger Owen, owner of the Bucks County Coffee Company. She asked whether i'd consider being at the center of the company's new marketing campaign. They wanted someone to travel around a five-state area, giving away free coffee in a customized 1950 Chevy panel truck. My curiosity piqued, i headed to NY for auditions. In a fancy Manhattan advertising firm, i met with the Owens and the suits. Rodger was an affable, guarded fellow. I was offered the job, which was to consist of event appearances, visits to the forty-three coffee kiosks, and stopping people on the street. It sounded like a hoot, and at $12 an hour, i was in.
I tell people about my one year "in the corporate world", but that's a little misleading. It was fun, independent, and i brought joy wherever i went. "Rob, the coffee guy", that was me. After i left, my successors had to go by the name of Rob, because my name was everywhere.
My vehicle was a pip. It had an oo-gah horn. The panels were tan and brown, with company logos and coffee mugs. In the back, i could carry up to twenty-four gallons of coffee in space age, six-gallon insulated shuttles which kept the coffee at a servable temperature for twelve hours. I was decked out with all the fixings. In summer i carried iced coffee. I wore khakis and classy, cotton company shirts. If i needed to go on foot, i had the jet-pack. I could strap four gallons of beverage onto my back, with a nozzle dispenser at my side and creamers and sweeteners in my belt pack. I was a one-man coffee band. I showed up at openings and fairs and parades and car shows, just giving away the good stuff. At least they assured me it was the good stuff...we had dozens of varieties we sold in our kiosks, and in the high end grocery stores which carried us. The company was a nut company as well, and i loved nibbling the snack mixes when i got home from my day's adventure, often long after the other workers had left. I was often there and gone in the morning before anyone else too. The coffee maker for my shuttles was an impressive piece of $40,000 hardware. The filters were about two feet wide. A couple times i did a gig without the truck, and when that happened i was given one of the company Lexuses. I once tried to estimate how much i was entrusted with, and it was in the hundreds of thousands.
There was a bit of an irony in all this, in that i didn't actually drink coffee. Ha! So i had to lie about that in my public persona (i did like the iced coffee, though). The public always reacted extremely well to me...they usually just smiled goofy smiles. Once in a while i got a coffee afficionado who would talk my ear off, and test the coffee knowledge i had been able to absorb.
Our market area was Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and D.C. When i spent a day at one of our kiosks, the baristas and managers were excited to see me. The truck and i were on posters, on "I saw Rob!" coupons, and a billboard in Philadelphia. There was a game on the company website called "Rob's Coffee Adventure". We filmed a commercial, but i don't know whether it was ever finished. After six months, i was given a raise to $15 an hour.
I had the most fun when i was freelancing, and always pushed for more of that. My girlfriend, whose best friend worked in one of the kiosks, loved it when i let her ride in the truck. I got my first disconcerting mini-taste of celebrity, when someone recognized me outside of work.
It was a solitary job. Sometimes days would go by without seeing a single other person at the warehouse. I only had after-hours silliness there one time, when a local barista i had become chummy with visited me with her friend while i cleaned up, and we had a whipped cream fight that sprawled over the entire spooky place.
I did develop one very gentle and enduring crush that year, with Rodger's secretary Nora. Her presence melted me, she looked a little like a monchichi, and it was only my professionalism that kept me from telling her how i felt. I wrote her a loving letter when i left, but never heard back.
After one year, i was starting to feel that i had gotten all i was going to get from the job. Even though it was indeed a hoot of enormous proportions, i was ultimately selling something which i didn't feel passion for. And my Mom was never thrilled with me being there, as the company had "unhired" her husband Chuck. So when my grandmother in Florida fell down and couldn't live alone anymore...it felt right on several levels that i move on from this chapter of my life. The day i went to tell Kathy, she started talking first and told me that it didn't make sense for me to not be on salary. I told her i had come to that same conclusion, but then i told her about my grandmother. She was understanding and appreciative, and gave me a hug to speed me on my way.
The sweetest gig i did in all my time there was when i parked the truck behind the crowd at a Pete Seeger state park concert. It was amazing.
At the office, one of the VPs and i estimated that i had given out fifty thousand cups of coffee. I have a little replica of the truck, which Rodger gave to me after one of his friends made it for him. It was a wonderful year, and it ended in a way that was just right. I smiled at life, and headed down to the sunshine state.

Salem Harbor Country Club

With a wankerish name like Salem Harbor Country Club, i knew my time there would be temporary. My final college summer was a short one, because i spent a month of it in China. Steve, the head manager at my Chi-Chi's job, asked me whether i'd help run a food stand by a country club pool. Swayed by his $6 an hour and the perfect timing, i agreed.
It was a bit of a drive, almost thirty minutes. There were two of us on staff, and Steve came around occasionally to restock us. The other guy was older, and more experienced with food. He had the energy of a rock band roadie...kind of hippieish, with a proclivity to get the work done and have a beer or toke. There was a hard edge in him somewhere, but we got on okay. He had been to one of Harry Chapin's concerts, which was very muchly cool to me. We usually saw each other for about half an hour a day, when he came on for the evening shift. For the first time in my life i was in charge of making food product all by myself, mostly burgers and dogs. The days were pretty relaxed. I cooked for myself, and became friends with the pool staff. They were nice. There was one lifeguard named Jade, and watching her in her red bathing suit, my hormones did backflips. She was small and busty, and didn't lack for male attention. She responded to my interest a bit, and we almost got together. My partner looked at us and said, "Man, she is gonna steamroll you". There was perhaps a touch of self-satisfaction and jealousy in his assessment, and i wanted to prove him wrong. But in the end he was quite right. If i'd been more of a party boy, she might have been mine. Even though it was possible all she had going for her was sex appeal, i was still sad. There may have been a primal part of me that wanted her simply because every other man did, and that's "the girl" i had never had.

Chi-Chi's

My first college summer, i came home and decided to get a job with more social prospects. There was a huge Mexican chain restaurant on the outskirts of the mall called Chi-Chi's. Throughout high school my family had been secret spies there, getting free meals in exchange for reports. I loved the food, and got a job as a busboy. I was curious about waiting tables, and wanted to move one step closer to it (which turned out to be as close as i would ever come...there are just way too many idiots and boors running around with a charge card). Bussing was a lot of fun, though. There were four dining rooms. We busboys (and girls) probably had the most cushy job in the place. Everybody else was in constant motion, but we had some down time. There were two bus stations, and usually five or six bussers on duty. We set and cleared tables, and brought out chips and salsa. But mostly i indulged in my favorite bus activity: eating chips and salsa.
You don't understand. These chips and salsa were really, really good. The salsa was made by the cooks, and stored in thirty-gallon plastic drums in the walk-in. We made the chips ourselves. We pulled them out of the freezer, separated them, and put them into huge fryer baskets. We pulled them out, and salted them. If you got the timing right and didn't skimp on the salt, they melted in your mouth. At the bus station, we stored them in heated drawers. We ate 'em until they came out of our ears, and somehow never tired of it (well, the diehards like myself never tired of it, i guess). Ohhhhhhh, i wish i had some right now. Chips that came to the tables lost heat quickly, which i think was the secret ingredient in making them irresistable. We also had soda guns in our station, and my favorite drink was a cola/orange hybrid. Another duty was singing the birthday song. Staff would gather around the birthday customer's table, armed with tambourine and sombreros, and sing a peppy "Mexican" birthday song. Though i was an actor, i found this duty insipid and embarrassing, and became expert at avoiding it. Ole.
Anyway, i got along well with the other bussers...and to an unusual extent, also with the cooks and hosts and waitstaff and dishwashers and bartenders. Which actually was the key in my Chi-Chi's vocational expansion. A few weeks into my second summer, the cooks were short a prep person as i finished a shift, and asked me to fill in. I happily did so, and before long i spent a few weeks doing food prep. It was okay...on a social level it was a little more fulfilling, as you could be yourself more, out of sight of the customers. There were two Chris's back there. Chris#1 and i actually talked about real stuff, and Chris (Space) Marnie was just a tall, way-out, certifiable loon. They didn't like each other, but i was friends with both. I also filled in as a dishwasher. But kitchen work became boring pretty quickly.
It was a special project, which led to my next position. The restaurant was being re-decorated, and they asked for volunteers to be on the overnight wall-painting crews. I volunteered. The project took over two weeks, and it was the most on-the-clock intensive work of my life. With bussing and painting, at one point i worked 21 hours straight, with 41 and 45 hours of overtime in consecutive weeks. I was so conspicuous on the paint crew, the head manager Steve asked whether i'd like to do other maintenance projects. Liking the prospect of independence, and the $4.5o an hour he offered, i accepted. After a couple weeks of spot work, i suggested that i do maintenance full-time. I had realized that, with roads on all sides and three parking lots, keeping the grounds picked up ought to be attended to daily. I proposed that as the core of my duties, and that i come in every day of the week to tend to it. I would do other projects as they came, but some of my days would involve no more than the grounds, which took two or three hours. Steve gave his approval. He gave me a lot of independence to find my own work, and do it at my own pace. I came and went, a sunshiny presence. It suited me so well i did it the rest of the summer, and the following one. By the end of that third summer, i was making $5.50. Every day i'd be out there, in a rather zen place. I'd usually be singing. Most days it was "Jesus Christ Superstar" in its entirety.
The managers were a mixed lot. Steve was a bit dour. My favorite was Jim, who was rather smooth, but with a dry sense of humor. He was forever flirting with fellow manager Kerry, who was a bit of a blonde sex goddess. She would humorously rebuff him, but i think he finally wore down her resistance. Tom was a more serious manager, and he put me through my one ethical dilemma there. One night, he told me to carry a bunch of frozen steaks out to the back lot, where he would load them into his car. He wanted my complicity in an act of theft. In my mind, i froze. Looking back, i can't help thinking of Milgram's experiment. He was my boss, what was i to do? It was so surreal, i'm not even sure of what i did. I think i chose a middle road, not helping him, but not turning him in. It's even possible i did what he asked. The experience felt vaguely like a test, like he was probing my worthiness for management. I also remember him walking away, and not going through with the theft. Isn't it amazing that i can't remember? To me, it felt like i failed the test...but i might have felt that way no matter what i did.
In my first summer, i had my one grand Chi-Chi's social misadventure. There were twin sisters on the wait staff, Mindy and Milsey. They were pretty stunning. I favored Milsey, and by favored i mean starry-eyed...and she and i actually hit it off. We talked when we could, usually about how her boyfriend Fred wasn't treating her well. Fred was a busser i had never got on with. He was at least a head taller than i, and a bit of a lout. Eventually Milsey and i swapped phone numbers, and spent time together outside of work. Fred didn't take well to this, but i was willing to chance any hell. Co-workers told me that Fred said he was going to kill me, and tried to warn me away. One of these was a waitress and single mother of a small child. We always had very nice talks, and she said that she would step in if Fred tried to hurt me. I think she really meant it. She moved away that summer, and in retrospect not only was she genuinely sweet on me, she also had more to offer than Milsey...but i never walked through that door. I was intimidated by the child, i suppose. And as for Milsey, perhaps we all have a time in our life when we are blinded by something shiny and insubstantial? Or perhaps many times. One surreal night, we walked in her neighborhood and had a drive-by by Fred. We cut through yards to elude him. We mostly just talked, though we did finally kiss that night, just once. But within a couple days, she was back with him and giving me a cold shoulder. I walked around in confusion, until Mindy told me that Milsey had been using me. At that moment, it hurt, but i felt like i would have done it the same way again if given the chance. Bravery? Idiocy? The power of sex? Yes, yes, and without a doubt yes.

Paperback Booksmith

After graduating from high school, i sought a summer job before heading off to college. Deciding i'd been around food long enough, i went to one of my favorite places: a mall bookstore called Paperback Booksmith. Four years before, reading "Tarzan of the Apes" had transformed me into a reader, and it was at this bookstore that i had acquired most of my Burroughs collection. The store was intimate and non-corporate. The owner Steve, a middle-aged, mildly serious man, seemed to genuinely like what he did, and worked the store himself. There were only three or four of us on staff. It was fun. I've always had an organizational streak, i can lose myself in arranging a movie or book collection. I made happy use of the employee discount, mostly to increase my Doonesbury collection. It was fun to learn about the book business. After just a couple months, i got cast in two plays at the same time, and i didn't need the money enough to try to keep working as well. Steve was disappointed in me, but nothing was more exciting in my world than acting.
And that's the post. What, i'm not entitled to be boring?

Friendly's

When i was sixteen, i got a summer job at Friendly's ice cream restaurant. I was finally making the big bucks: $3.35 an hour, the national minimum wage. The staff was larger than at Haywood's, my $2.85 job from the summer before (my manager there, Chuck, had actually offered me minimum wage to stay, but i had my sights set on new horizons).
Friendly's had actual waitresses, not just counter girls, and i got the job i wanted: ice cream scoop, a job that didn't permeate your skin like other food jobs. The ice cream section was in front, and was almost a separate entity from the restaurant itself. We would take order slips from the waitresses, but had no direct interactions with the rest of the food prep staff. Much of our business was from customers who came to our counter for ice cream only, so i had to learn the workings of a cash register. On occasion we would run a product out to a table, but we mostly stayed behind our counter. We had blue and white polyester uniforms. There were always two or three scoops on duty, depending on the time of day. Since i liked ice cream and people, i liked the work. And the food, too. Longer shifts came with food breaks, and the swiss burger on rye was my favorite.
We scooped cones and bowls, sold half gallons, and made sundaes. Friendly's had a relationship with Hershey's, so many of our items were based on their products. We had maybe twelve different flavors (plus others in half gallons) and all the toppings you could want, including a hot fudge machine which operated at very high temperatures. There was a different kind of cameraderie than at Haywood's, which had had the slight feel of a group of roustabouts. It was a touch more impersonal here, being part of a large chain. There was socialization among the staff, but it was less general and pronounced.
If you ever meet someone with one arm conspicuously bigger than the other, ask them whether they work in ice cream. We would dig down into those ten-gallon tubs, and sometimes the product was pretty frozen. The scoops were mostly, but not entirely, guys. It was fun making sundaes for friends or family, and giving them more than their money's worth.
I developed a lasting crush on a waitress, Sherry. She was in her twenties and engaged, and out of my league i suppose, but it was dreamlike just to be near her. She was beautiful, and though she didn't parade it, achingly sexy. She treated me with a touch of playful affection...and i'm pretty sure that when we parted over a year later, she gave me the tiniest moment of "if only our timing had been...". I'm not even entirely sure it happened, because it was so unexpected and so far out of the bounds of reality that it seemed a dream even as it was happening. I remember seeing a picture of her fiance a few years later, on the manager's section of the wall in a lumber store in New Jersey. I had met him a few times, and i couldn't not like him. I wanted to be happy for her, but inside my heart could only wish that i were the one giving her the world.
My other favorite waitresses were a mom and her daughter, Tammy. They were always fun. Tammy was engaged to Dave, one of my managers. He had faintly purple hair, but he somehow managed to look conservative. He was funny and easygoing, one of the best bosses i've ever had. He also opened up a tiny moment of humanity to me, when he and Tammy left the store. He told me that the ribbing he got from everyone, for his weight perhaps, bothered him deep down. I was taken aback because i had done it too, and the fact that he opened up to me, when i was little more than a kid...i was at once touched and embarrassed, and i'm pretty sure my attitudes about picking on someone, even good-naturedly, were forever changed by the experience.
The greatest moment of excitement i had there was when the hot fudge exploded on me. When the dispenser sat unused, the fudge in the spigot would cool and harden. It would then clog, of course, but if you pushed the pump hard enough, you could usually get it flowing again. One night i pushed on a clogged spigot, but it was too far gone. I tried more force, and BOOM, the one-inch metal cap on the spigot dislodged, spraying a pressurized torrent of scalding fudge. Fortune was with me, as i took it in the torso, and almost none of it on my face and arms. Even through polyester and a T-shirt i got slightly burned, but i was laughing right away. Don't tell me scooping isn't extreme.
After Dave and Tammy and Sherry were gone, a lot of the magic was too. I stayed at Friendly's for two summers. It was fun and comfortable. I got a couple raises, finishing at maybe $3.65. At first Mom or Dad drove me, and i eventually got rides from co-workers, too. My second summer, new license in hand, i occasionally drove myself and was able to offer co-workers a lift. One time i gave Sherry a ride home. I haven't thought about that moment in many years, but the feeling of being so close to her...of feeling her energy and warmth near me, even after she was gone...it's very possible that that drive was the sweetest of my life.

Haywood's

The summer i turned fifteen, i took my first hourly wage job at Haywood's, a fried chicken restaurant converted from an old Red Barn. The minimum work age was sixteen, but there was a loophole which allowed fifteen year-olds to work, as long as they didn't go over a certain number (thirtysomething?) of hours a week. Minimum wage was $3.35 an hour, but because of my age they were allowed to pay me $2.75. I remember being excited that summer when i got the first raise of my life, to $2.85. My sister had worked there before me, so i was introduced to everyone as her little brother. She must have been liked, as i was treated okay.
Haywood's was fun. There was a bit of the "this idiot place" to the mood, but the workers liked each other, hanging out after work and such. Being so young, i didn't do much of that, but a couple of the oldest guys, brothers named Steve and Rick whom everyone respected, took me under their wings (haha) a bit. In retrospect, they may have been happy to have the chance to score points with my sister, but they were genuine too. Everybody jokingly called the place Bobo's Burger Barn, because the owner Boris was maybe the tiniest bit creepy. The manager was a really cool guy named Chuck. He had a nice sense of humor and kept the place running well, if not always by the book. I remember one time i spilled an entire rack of freshly-cooked chicken. He looked down at the mess, then out front to see if any customers had noticed. He looked back to me, and gestured to put the chicken back on the rack.
Most of the girls worked at the counter, and most of the boys in the back. I ended up doing lots of cleanup and food prep, most memorably dislocating innumerable chicken thighs and scooping glandular yellow goo out of them. I loved sneaking chicken salad out of the walk-in fridge, especially when Steve made it.
I also gained points with my peers and managers one day by volunteering to clean the bathroom, in which a drug-addled customer had voided machine-gun diarrhea over the walls.
One Sunday morning Rick told me to come in extra early to help him open. It was the first time i'd seen a cook do the open, and it was a little impressive. After firing up the grill, he flipped a few eggs on it, and made us a very tasty breakfast. Somehow, eating that meal was maybe the most grownup i'd yet felt in life.
There was one girl who worked in the back. She was cool, funny, and not at all snooty. She was a couple years older than i, and one night while we were finishing up after closing, she gave me the first sexual proposition of my life. I was cutting tomatoes and she backed me up against the table, asking me whether i'd like her to fondle my tomatoes. A part of me wanted to say yes, but i wasn't at all sure. I croaked out some attempted joke, put a tomato in her hand, and beat a hasty retreat.
The coolest thing that happened that summer was being electrocuted. We were operating some appliance with an ancient, frayed extension cord, which was lying on a metal table. Steve was touching the table, and dropped a wet dishrag into my hand. A jolt of current suddenly travelled from the cord to the table to Steve to the rag to me. I felt my senses scramble into complete incoherency, then into an insensate state. I woke up some seconds later, with Steve looking down at me like i might be dead. The current hadn't affected him at all. I was up and joking within a minute.
Looking back, i realize that at that time in my life i was close to making the life decision to not drink alcohol. I had been drunk once, at Erik Berger's bar mitzvah, and hadn't cared for it. For additional teen identity crisis reasons, i was soon to put alcohol and other things out of my life altogether. Drinking was a part of the Haywood's scene. My youth had kind of excused me from that, but i think i realized that next summer, my non-drinking might set me apart. Because i liked the people there, leaving instead of being different may have suddenly seemed preferable. So at the end of the summer, tired of smelling like a days-old french fry and determined to make my way in a place not blazed by my sister, i set my sights on the Friendly's ice cream shop across the way.

jobs of my childhood

I did household chores from an early age, for which i was given a modest middle class allowance. There were no gender distinctions made, so we all vacuumed and dusted, mowed the lawn, picked up dog poo, did our own laundry, vaccuumed the pool, and cleaned bathrooms and dishes. I was pretty agreeable with all of these, perhaps preferring the outside work a bit. Except for the poop detail. We had schnauzers, so the poop was small. I remember explaining to my parents that since i was missing one color band in my vision, the one that differentiated shades of brown and green, i was genetically unsuited for picking poop out of grass.
They were singularly unimpressed.
My first real job was babysitting, around the age of 12 or 13. It was okay, and i did it sporadically for a year or so. My only strong memory of it was changing the diapers of our neighbors' baby, Megan. I remember looking at her little genitals with curiosity and wonder...and being mock-stunned years later when my brothers told me she was now a hottie.
The first real, regular job i held was paperboy, around the age of 14-15. I delivered the Bucks County Courier Times to about fifty houses. I can't remember how i got started, it may have been through parental prompting. But that paper route became a source of quiet pride and happiness. I was up around 5AM. I opened the bundled newspapers which were dropped at my curb, and put them into my huge cloth shoulder bag. When it rained, i had to plastic bag them. Every day of the week but Sunday, i could carry them all in one load.
I jumped on my bike, and was off. Most of the customers were fine with the paper going into the mailbox, but a few asked me to walk it to the porch. I developed an intimate relationship with each box, cherishing the singularities and acoustic qualities of each. I zipped around the neighborhood in the stillness of pre-dawn, before there were any lights on in most houses. I came to love that dark stillness. It was just me and the world, all alone. When i set out, the bike balance was clumsy from the weight of the bag, but as i progressed, my ever-lightening load lent speed to my wheels. And every morning, just as i was finishing my last few houses, the dawn would break.
I can't remember how much money i made, but for a suburb kid with no responsibilities, it was plenty. I probably spent the lion's share on Star Wars figures and cards, and the occasional Heath Bar. Once a month, i collected money. I had a little bundle of cards, clasped by two silver rings. The one or two clients who paid by mail were in red, and the rest green. On the green cards, i would track payments. I got an occasional tip or holiday card from a customer, seldom had complaints, and mostly enjoyed the collecting. But the best part was the solitude and silence of those mornings. Some of my more "well-off" peers seemed above a paper route, but i knew that they weren't to be envied. I took pride in always doing the route myself, no matter how bad the weather. Mom or Dad only ever drove me around one or two times, in some particularly bad snowstorm. I remember years later when my brother Jeff had the job, he conned them into driving him more often than not. Perhaps he wanted to be what my "well-off" peers had been. It made me sad. I knew he was missing something.

graduate assistant

One of the coolest jobs i ever held was graduate assistant. In my mid-twenties, i got a master's degree in philosophy from West Chester U. of PA. It took me three semesters, and i was the department's grad assistant for the last two. The department had only one assistant, and it was only part-time at that, but it was a nice boon in reducing my tuition. The fact that there was only one, also made it a nice match for my personality.
My two semesters covered a transition between department heads, and i felt honored to be the only assistant who ever worked for both Dr. Claghorn and Dr. Platt. Ostensibly i assisted the entire faculty, but it was the department head who had use of my services almost exclusively. George Claghorn, who specialized in early American philosophy, was a gentle soul who had been the heart of the department for decades. He seemed a relic from a more courteous time. He sprinkled touches of humor into his serious-mindedness, and his soft laughter was a joy. During my semester with him, most of my duties consisted of researching 19th century Boston newspapers, collecting references for a book he was writing.
Thomas Platt, an Episcopalian minister who specialized in ethics, had a wry sense of humor very much in line with my own. He had been one of my favorite undergrad professors, and had even loaned me one of his clerical outfits for a production of "The Importance of Being Earnest". The semester i spent with him provided more exciting duties. I tutored undergrads, and covered classes for professors who were absent. There was also some clerical work, which was fun because i thought the world of Dr. Platt's secretary, Gerri. That final semester i also revived the long-dormant philosophy club, the only organization of which i've ever been president. We met weekly, and i was able to bring together a core group of about ten regulars. We also had regular newcomers, in part because of my posters. I would advertise the week's activity, making full use of my aforementioned humor. It was very gratifying knowing that the club became strong and vibrant, and continued after i left.
My courses were pretty wonderful. Debating and wrestling with deep issues came very naturally to me. Strangely though, my elective courses in psychology ended up being more exciting, as they dealt with more concrete realities.
One of the most memorable moments came one afternoon while lounging on the quad, a grassy area at the center of campus where students played and relaxed. I was with five or six philosophy M.A. students. We had been volleyballing or frisbeeing. We had all known each other for at least a semester, and were among the brightest in our department. Despite our familiarity, we didn't know each other inside and out, and part of that came from how we approached our studies. We focused on questions more than answers, and didn't demand that everyone take a stand on every issue. So very often, each other's core attitudes were unknown. And too, in a program which lasts only three semesters, deep friendships are more rare. There's a smaller pool of students, and from that pool, the odds are long that the even smaller handful you could really connect with, will be there at the exact same time as you. So you might have only one or two semesters with those few you might develop a close friendship with.
Anyway, the group of us on the quad enjoyed each other's company, and on that day, a moment of unforgettable resonance occurred. A pair of evangelical students came up to us, and began witnessing. After a minute or two, one of them asked a direct question: did we believe in God? We had a moment's hesitation, in which we exchanged the briefest of glances. None of us knew the rest of the group's answers to that question, and the thought of alienating each other a tiny bit probably played through most of our minds.
I doubt anyone expected what happened next.
One of us answered "no".
Another voice said the same.
Then another.
One by one, we all answered "no".
It was a moment of affirmation and beauty. We knew that we represented some of the best minds from the communities that had molded us. And in a moment of synchronicity, we knew that we had each figured something out, in spite of the cultural influences most of us had grown up with. The evangelical students had perhaps chosen that question because in any group of more than two, it was a question almost guaranteed to provide at least one ally.
But they quickly realized they had asked the wrong question, as several of us began dismantling any proposition they offered up. They soon accepted the obvious, and beat a retreat.
In retrospect, it was the tiniest bit unfair, like picking on younger siblings. They were of good intent, but middling intelligence.
As they left, we looked at one another...and i think there was a tiny element of redemption for most of us, in what had taken place. Religious folk are almost by definition sanctimonious, a fact that is frustrating for those who take a more humble approach to life and knowledge. Religious folk even delude themselves into believing that their approach to life is rooted in humility, but to claim knowledge of "God" requires an arrogance of stunning proportions. And the fact that our group had discussed god in great depth, yet remained ignorant of each others' beliefs...it was simply a very profound moment of synchronicity.
A moment to feel that, despite the barbaric ignorance and superstition all around us, the world of tomorrow will indeed shine with brother and sisterhood, and truth.

Labor Ready

During a fallow work period in my Florida life, between theaters i ran and at a time when acting jobs were scarce, i became abruptly homeless. I still had my freelance tree trimming, but this crisis came during the summer, when the snowbirds (and income therefrom) were away. I needed regular income, and quick.
I had been living with Shane and his girlfriend Angelina, in Megan's condominium. Shane was one of my oldest FL friends. He had acted in my shows, and been stage manager for many more. Angelina was his girlfriend from Utah, who had moved to be with him. Megan was Shane's father's girlfriend. We paid her monthly (at the time of the crisis, however, i was the only one who was up to date with rent). Shane's dad, who was visiting from NY with Megan, had become direly concerned. In the parlance of his religion, he felt Angelina was a dark mass who would bring Shane to an early death. Even though i was more than a little sympathetic to his concerns, i had long since made my feelings known, and was now content to support my friend in whatever he did. Shane's dad and Megan made an ultimatum: either Shane put Angelina on a plane back to Utah forever, or they would have to leave the condo immediately. Unless i supported this ultimatum, i would have to leave too. Shane stood by her, and i stood by him. We gathered our belongings into my station wagon, and left.
I contacted friends who might be able to help us, and within a few hours, my waitress friend Jenny had offered her guest room. She was on the mainland. We moved in, and shared the apartment with Jenny, her two ferrets, and her occasional boyfriend. She never asked for rent, but i gave her a little money when i could. Shane and Angelina didn't respond well to the crisis...for the 6 or so weeks we were there, they barely worked. On top of that, they kept their part of the house (and often the kitchen) a mess. It embarrassed me, and eventually i chastened them, with some good effect.
When we were shown the curb, i had just paid rent, but Megan said it had already been spent. Finding immediate and regular work that didn't feel like prostitution was a challenge. I scanned the want ads, and found Labor Ready.
There are businesses like Labor Ready all across the land. They provide temp day laborers. The workers who end up there are at the bottom of the labor barrel: dropouts, legal and questionably-legal aliens, and people unable to hold a job in the "regular" world. This attracted me on several levels. When i wasn't being creative, i preferred work that was physical, and working at the bottom of the barrel was spiritually appealing.
With Labor Ready, you rarely knew ahead of time whether you'd work on a given day. You showed up at the office around 6AM, and waited while they handed out assignments. If you were still waiting at 8AM, you were out of luck. Fortunately, i didn't have many days like that. This was probably because i established myself as strong and reliable, and also perhaps because i was white and well-spoken, which increased the likelihood of Labor Ready's getting repeat business.
You got paid by check each day back at the main office. After taxes, it came out to about $40. If you got asked to be a crew supervisor, you got $70 (as one of the newer guys, i only got that honor one time). Most jobs involved several workers, though i remember a couple that were one-man. The companies or individuals who hired us generally treated us well. The work was hard, but seldom prohibitively so. One exception to this was the day i literally dug ditches, during summer in south Florida. I've never experienced anything like it, before or since.
But occasionally you'd get lucky in the other direction, stumbling into something almost laughably easy.
After several weeks, i hit the Labor Ready jackpot: a long-term contract (long-term being anything over a day). A construction company from West Virginia wanted to hire three of us for a two-month job building a concrete mausoleum. I and two others, Bart and Arnie, had worked for them already, and they requested us specifically. The long-term contract meant an extra ten bucks a day. I don't remember Bart and Arnie's real names, but they were an unforgettable pair, a Mutt and Jeff who had lived through life's wringer. They were in their fifties or sixties (it can be hard to gauge an alcoholic's age), and had figured out how to make life work for them. They would pool their money, rent a $35 motel room each night, and spend the other $45 on drink. They sometimes saved enough to get a room for the weekend, but more often they ended up on the street. I never saw them drink on the job though, or be unable to work.
They laughed a lot, and accepted me quickly. Their humor had a gallows edge to it, which i loved. Arnie had had a very well-paying corporate job for much of his life, and a family. He now saw his grown children once a year or less.
The WV crew was a fun bunch. There were about six of them. The foreman was Bubba, a big, round man whose accent was so thick that i could only make out about half of what he was saying. He didn't laugh a lot, but he ran a good crew, and gave us all baseball hats when the job came to an end. His smiley-faced, right-hand man was Felton, who was also rotund, and got along with everyone. The youngest was Reggie. He was bright and a little more sensitive and savvy than the others. The crew found out i was an actor, and got amusement out of that, but Reggie was the only one who asked for details. He also told me about his girlfriend and life in WV.
Their crew traveled together for half the year, then returned home for the winter. We worked with them for six weeks. The mausoleum was honeycomb-styled, with alcoves just big enough for a coffin. It was eight stories high, but only 25'. On the ground, it was 20'x40'. The work was fun. The cement truck would show up, and we would have the molds and rebar skeleton in place. We used huge rubber rakes to push and smooth. My favorite part of the job was retrieving the panels after an alcove had dried. We had to crawl inside, and bang the steel panels loose with a ten-pound hammer. It was dusty and ear-ringingly loud, so we wore goggles and masks and headphones. There was a slightly surreal quality to it, as we lay on our backs banging away. The light and fresh air by your feet seemed further away than it really was. The thought that there would only ever be one other human in that alcove...or rather, one ex-human...it was a pretty unavoidable invitation to think about death. I also loved climbing up the open face of the building, without a ladder.
I had my own hard hat, from my theater costume supply. On my last day, everyone signed it. With heartfelt cameraderie, we all said our goodbyes. I drove Bart and Arnie back to Labor Ready, to pick up our final checks. I had decided that that would be my last day with Labor Ready (though they did reel me back for one more three-day construction cleanup job, down in Naples). There were theater jobs coming, and i knew that anything after the mausoleum would be anti-climactic. I had saved enough money that Shane and Angelina and i were now in a place of our own, back on Ft. Myers Beach.
I drove my compatriots to their motel, grasped their hands one last time, and watched them shuffle off into the sunset.