Psychologists tell us that we replay old stories in our lives by assuming and projecting three archetypical roles onto ourselves and all those with whom we interact. They have identified these players as The Victim, The Hero, and The Villain.
What role you play or put on your friends and family depends on what is most convenient for your ego and it's twisted rationales for your behavior-- hell, all human behavior. These scientists hypothesize that we are constantly reinforcing these categories upon situations in life in order to feel safe within the familiar. That the only way to discover our true identity and to grow as a human beings is to recognize these preset roles, and try to live beyond the boundaries of their constantly recurring stories.
Some shape-shifters can comfortably toggle between identities or find clever combos to play with, but to me the purest and most interesting moments in life are when you have no idea who you are. When you head out into the unknown without any story to rely upon.
The morning when I rolled into the dark cul-de-sac of my new job at Bill Zurich's workshop was one of these moments. The sun hadn't risen yet and the dank mist buzzed at the flickering streetlights as if trying to invade their cracked domes and shut them down for good. Noone was around so I checked the wind up alarm clock perched on the peeling dashboard of my $100 jalopy. 6:55, five minutes early.. great start!
Not knowing what else to do I sat my butt on the cold concrete in front of the roll-gate for workshop #C and waited. Half an hour later the deafening roar of an approaching Harley split the silence. Hairy Mike pulled in, and it was like the world parted to make way for his motorcycle. Perfectly scuffed boots planted firmly in front of me as he pulled off his helmet. Even though there weren't obvious patches on his leather you could tell by his carriage and grizzle that he was affiliated. My best friend's father-in-law had claimed to be with the Ghost Mountain Riders back in the day, but you could tell he was lying. In Mike I had met the real deal and he was instantly my hero.
“Parkin' on that wet concrete'll give ya piles, yank.” he snarl-chuckled. “Get off your ass kid, it's time to work. The boss'll be in late.”
When Bill did arrive it was with full bluster, as if we hadn't been waiting half the morning for him but rather, “why the hell are you standing around, and where is the coffee?” I could tell by Mike's smirk that this was the norm, and I soon learned that keeping the coffee pot full and bubbling was the most important thing in the shop. Whatever happened in the the two years I worked there, the boss's answer to was to proclaim, “Well! Time for a cuppa then eh, Ricky? Get on that.”
This ritual was useful either as a celebration of a job well done, or to break tension after a disaster, but mostly it was our only escape from the endless top forty blasting from the radio in back and the acrid paint fumes searing into our lungs all day.
My first job was something we might call an initiation, but really it was the shit work no one else wanted, or could be paid to do. This is a good job description for any apprentice, but someones gotta do it, and its true that you must learn how to crawl before you fly. An old Aston Martin had to have all it's rusty paint taken off and the most toxic paint stripper was required, something akin to agent orange but more vile. All the sleeves to my jump suit had to be sealed with rubber bands that also cut off the blood flow to my extremities forcing me to loosen them halfway through. When my putty knife would scrape one of these dollops of toxic waste into my sleeve I would scream out from under the car and dance around like a circus freak trying to get the burning chemical cinders out of the suit and off of my blistering skin.
Needless to say, this provided immense amusement to my co-workers, raucously cheering me on and dubbing me “Michael Jackson” due to my “smooth moves.”
As I hacked up streams of green paint at the end of the day, Bill shook his head and looked derisively at my attempts on the car. “Well, I guess we know what you'll be doing for the next couple weeks,” he chirped.
Bill Zurich was the perfect mentor for me at the time, his juvenile demeanor, yet adult standing provided the perfect paradox for me to ponder how this all works. He was of the Yugoslavic tradition which dictates that all boys are Mama's boys until they get engaged. He was in his mid twenties but still lived at home, and on the days he was actually at work he would call his mother and demand loudly that she deliver him lunch without a shred of embarrassment.
In the world of men, power is measured in inches if you know what I mean, and one of the best ways to compare is how women treat you in front of other men. This flagrant display of culturally arrested development did nothing for our respect for him, but I gather in the Deli world it is the perfect example of how to be a man-- at least until you get your wife to become your mother.
Bill wasn't necessarily a good business man, none of his projects were finished on time and he was never in the shop, but he was a good boss in that he was fun to be around, and he invested in us the knowledge and encouragement that we needed to get the job done-- then he would trust us to do it well. Unfortunately, he was terrible at spot-checking our work and human nature as it is, we often took advantage.
After a couple of months a routine developed where Bill would roll in mid-morning, bluster about for a couple of hours, then declare that he had to go look at a car or something and take off. Hairy Mike would finish off his obligatory minimum daily quota, and then split, instructing me to finish prepping all the cars he didn't want to.
Gravity being as it is I knew that shit rolls downhill, and if the jobs didn't get done I would receive a heaping of abuse, but a seventeen year old apprentice is not equipped to run a body shop on his own, and I would often find myself helplessly facing the purple rage of customers who had come by to see WTF was going on with their car. After a while whenever I would see feet approaching the office I would scoot further under the chassis of whatever car I was working on and start furiously grinding away, hiding behind a shower of sparks and flying metal until they left. If they caught me in a vertical position, I would point at my respirator and goggles as if they were locked onto my face and there was no way I could talk to them.
At some point I could no longer dodge them all, and this became the worst part of my job; not the grinding of rusted metal centimeters from my face, not the inhaling of colorful, cancerous fumes all day.. but the cloying disappointment of these unsatisfied customers, desperate to extract from me some assurance that all was well with their babies entrusted to our care.. that they weren't being lied to and avoided.Of course that was exactly what was happening and I decided that I couldn't effectively cover Bill's tracks by my attempts at looking busy, so I had to follow his lead and find a way to disappear myself during the middle of the day when people would walk in.
One day I went to get some supplies from the storage loft above the shop. The area was obscured from view by long hanging sheets of opaque plastic and as I rummaged around the corner of one wall of stacked boxes I discovered my boss's secret Shangri-la. Behind a pile of rags was a bong and tin of weed, and next to an oddly placed throw pillow were a dozen or so Penthouse magazines.
Jackpot! I wasn't gonna steal his marijuana, but I had my own and I knew that noone would smell it over the chemicals. Also from this vantage point I could see if anyone was driving into the cul-de-sac and recognizing my boss's tires I could run down the stairs in time to get back to work. As I gleefully pulled a smut mag off the pile, I set about my first experience in getting paid to smoke and jack-off. Good work if you can get it.
The most harrowing part of this whole scam was putting everything back exactly the way it was afterward so that I wouldn't be discovered. Every flake of ash had to be blown away, the Penthouses stacked in perfect order, and the pillow placed back in it's weird starting position. Every time I would enter our scummy little oasis I would scour the area for minute changes that I imagined were subtle traps set for me by Bill to expose my activities. The more I smoked the more paranoid I became that he was on to me, yet anything was better than facing the random customer outrage below, so I soldiered on.
I don't know if you have ever read Penthouse Forum. It's the section where readers supposedly write in about their outrageous sexual experiences, but it's really written by professional smut smiths, and was a staple of many an adolescent boy's first wank sessions at the time. The letters always started out with premise of two strangers meeting in public, eyeing each other up, and then slipping off to have sex in the most craven and implausible way possible. Or perhaps a bored couple agrees to get a third party involved and of course it goes incredibly well the first time out. Heavy on the “oh fuck me with your gigantic rod, you hot stud,” etc... Good stuff for the first few times-and it sure beats scraping paint-but after a while the stories all blended together and became less of a turn on. I began to look for any deviation from the formula, devouring the advice columns for hints of perversion beyond the ol' in-and-out.
I came upon a letter that was definitely different. In it a man described his confusion at being attracted to his best friend, how they had gotten drunk together and somehow ended up in the bathtub. He talked about there being a moment of looking into his friend's green eyes and realizing that he had to kiss him deeply.. that nothing could stop what was happening. He then went into a graphic description of their 'love-making' that was far more romantic and exciting than anything I had read in porno up until then. I think this must have been before the AIDS crisis because the letter was obviously written to appeal to a bisexual audience. I doubt you would ever find anything like it in Penthouse today, if it still exists.
There was a glitchy pattern emerging. I found my sessions starting out with the usual fodder to get going without guilt, and then always returning to that one page of the magazine towards climax until it became well-worn and dog-eared. After ejaculation I would become immediately wracked with remorse and OCD, attempting to smooth the pages over and over so that noone would ever know.
One day I climbed into what I now thought of as my spot, and turning to my favorite letter I discovered in horror that it had been torn out. Panicking, I scanned the surroundings but nothing else was out of place. Sick to my stomach, I realized the jig was up and that my relationship with my boss would be forever changed. But fight or flight is a funny thing and at the same time I grew amazingly empowered with the knowledge of all the things I could blackmail him about. I also resolved then and there that I would never be embarrassed of who I fall in love with, whether they be a woman or a man. I don't think you can choose, and not giving a fuck is golden.
I never went back into the loft after that, and my boss never mentioned it, but we were soon to clash in the most heterosexual way you can imagine. Over a beautiful woman his own age, and he never saw it coming...
