“You’re going to need a good pair of sunglasses,” he said and then looked at my pasty Canadian legs. “And a lot of sunscreen.”
In the parking lot he popped the trunk of a silver Audi TT from a key in his pocket.
“Is that your car?” I asked.
“There’s only about ten of these in North America right now and only two this color. I had to place my order months ago.”
“Quite a step up from the Gremlin you had when I was born.”
As we drove through the city, Dad took on the role of tour guide. He’d already been there a month, and I could tell he was eager to show me around. Growing up in East Coast Canada, California always felt like a mythical land.
“That’s In-and-Out Burger. You’re going to want to try that at some point. You can see the ocean right over there. Any interest in learning to surf?”
“Sure.”
It was so exactly as I imagined that it felt clichéd. Women with golden abs ran along the street in sports bras and matching shorts. Kids rode longboards shirtless and shoeless, and all the cars looked like they’d just been driven off the lot. A bright red Volkswagen with blonde hair blowing out of the front and back window zoomed past us.
“I’m not so sure I’ll fit in here,” I said.
“Lucky for you, work ends at 3:30. You’ll have your afternoons free to figure that out.”
“Short work day,” I said.
“Work starts at 7:00.”
“A.m.?”
“Of course.”
I was used to oversleeping for noon classes and, on Sundays, sometimes didn’t get out of bed until 5:00 p.m. The last time I saw 7:00 a.m. I was drinking Captain Morgan with a townie who thought I was exotic because I had travelled to three different continents before I was six years old.
“You lived in Hong Kong. What was it like?” she asked me as we stood in the corner of a dimly lit basement party.
“Crowded.”
Two hours later we were sitting in my bed, and she shared her dream of escaping Boston for Los Angeles. When the sun rose she left for work at the bagel shop down the street; I passed out for the next eleven hours.
My father explained I’d be working on an assembly line for ruggedized computers, under the alias Steven Barton. He didn’t want anyone to know I was the VP’s son. It seemed exciting to take on a new persona. I thought about making a fake background for Mr. Barton. Maybe he was a computer major looking to be the next Bill Gates, or maybe he was in culinary school with dreams of opening his own restaurant that only served eggs Benedict. Then I figured it would be easiest just to fit in and say I was a general studies major at the local community college.
Saturday morning we woke up early to look at used cars. According to my dad’s rules, our budget was ten thousand dollars, and the car must have air bags and get good gas mileage.
I was interested in a Volkswagen Golf, but my dad told me a sedan had better resale value. Even though he had recently made the jump from upper middle class to upper-upper middle class, he was still cautious with money. Growing up in a house that sometimes went winters without heat made him frugal. I figured it would be easy to find a decent car for that price.
Golf or not, I was psyched on Volkswagen. I grew up thinking they were the coolest cars, only because Mike D of the Beastie Boys wore a Volkswagen emblem around his neck in the eighties.
My dad pulled the Audi into a VW dealership, and three guys in pressed shirts and ties swarmed the car. One guy broke from the pack opening the driver’s side door.
“Great ride. Those are hard to come by. You must have some connections,” he said, admiring the sleek design that shined in the sun. “I’m Tony. How can I serve you guys today?” He had an Australian accent.
“We’re just looking,” my father said, with a bored look draped across his face.
We casually walked through the lot, and I kept my eyes open for a sticker ten thousand dollars or below, eventually stopping at an $8,999 maroon Jetta.
“How about a test run?” Tony suggested.
I pulled onto the highway, and as I got comfortable with the car, my father grilled Tony.
“Was the previous owner a smoker? Smells kind of funny. How’s the wiring? I hear Volkswagens have bad wiring. What’s the resale on a maroon car? I can’t image there’s a lot of people dying for a maroon car.”
“Actually it’s burgundy,” Tony said.
“How’s the resale on a burgundy car?”
“Burgundy is a hot color right now,” he said and then looked over at me. “How’s it feel?”
I’d already been coached not to show interest, but it was moot. I liked how it handled, but I had no interest in a maroon car. It was closer to the type of car found in the teachers’ lot of my high school than the students’. I wanted something red, white, or black that would blend in with the other cars zipping up and down the Pacific Coast Highway.
“Not for me,” I said and shrugged as I pulled the key from the ignition.
We stopped in at another dealership where my dad small-talked with a salesman just to get his business card.
“It’s important to have options, son,” he said slipping the salesman’s business card into a stack he kept tucked into his shirt pocket.
“Did you like the handling of the Jetta?”
“Yeah, I just didn’t like the maroon.”
“Maroon cars are for divorced high school algebra teachers.”
We drove back to the first dealership.
“Back so soon,” Tony said with an eager smile splashed across his face.
“We’d like to check out another used Jetta,” my dad said.
We followed Tony to a seventeen-thousand-dollar silver Jetta. “This is one of our best preowned Jettas. An old lady leased it for a year and only drove to the grocery store and back. Still has that new car smell.”
“We’re looking for something in the nine-thousand-dollar range,” my dad said. “His mother is hoping I spend less than that.”
I was getting worried we wouldn’t find anything when my dad called me over to a black Jetta with a sticker price of thirteen thousand.
“Looks great, but isn’t that over the budget?”
“Let just take it for a spin,” my dad said.
While my dad and Tony formed a friendship, I drove around aimlessly. Tony explained he was born in Australia and had moved to the States a few years prior. He was a mechanic, but was now more interested in selling cars than working on them. My dad had spent two years living in Australia on business and was able to bond with Tony over their shared love of the Sydney Swans.
“You’re the first person I’ve met in America who’s interested in Australian rules football,” Tony said.
“I had season tickets. I follow them online now. I can’t find a network that airs the matches.”
“I know of a great bar that has a satellite. We should go together sometime.”
“If they sell meat pies, I’m there.”
When we returned to the dealership, my father said we were interested, but not for the sticker price.
“I can only go as low as $12,500,” Tony said.
“That’s too much. His mother would kill me if I went a penny over $9,750.”
“If I beg my boss, I can maybe go as low as $12,250. But only because you’re a fellow Swans fan.”
My dad reached into his front pocket and pulled out a stack of business cards. “Thanks Tony, but that’s just too high.” He flipped through the stack of cards and made sure to keep the other salesman’s business card prominently displayed on top. He pulled his own card from the bottom of the stack and handed it to Tony. “Here’s my card. Call me if you change your mind.”
My dad and I turned to leave when Tony stopped us to make his final counter.
“I can do eleven thousand dollars!”
“Sold,” my dad said.
A week later my older brother saw the Jetta and said, “Dude, that’s a chick car.”
O
n my first day of work I was shown around by Darnell, who had a shaved head except for a chunk in the back, which he braided into a tight ponytail. He gave me a smock and showed me to my station, where I’d be drilling fans into the backs of hard drives. To my left, a squat, round-faced woman named Suni installed the fans, and a short guy, who couldn’t seem to help grinning all the time and reminded me of an Ewok, attached covers over them. His name badge read JERRY, but he introduced himself as Yeddy. The day was broken up with two fifteen-minute breaks and thirty minutes for lunch.
The line started, and I drilled four screws, one in each corner of the fan, and then passed it along. The second I pushed the completed chassis to my right, a new one appeared. It didn’t seem like much at first, and using a power drill was kind of fun. I got into a rhythm and started talking with Suni.
“You look so young” was the first thing she said to me.
“I’m twenty. I’m on break from college.”
“College is good.”
“I like it.”
“You don’t party all the time like some kids, do you?”
“Never.”
“My nephew went to college—my brother pays a lot of money. He drinks every night then gets sent home with no refund.”
“I’ve seen kids like that,” I said. “What a waste of their parents’ money.”
We went back to drilling, and after what could’ve been five minutes or two hours, Suni spoke again.
“Watch out for Yeddy. He’s the joker around here.”
“Lies,” Jerry said, then looked over at me and winked.
“What are you doing for lunch today, Yeddy?” she asked.
“My wife made me balut.”
“Steven, do you eat balut?” Suni asked me.
“I’m not sure what that is,” I said. I’d never heard the word before, but the way it sounded, baal-oot, didn’t sound appetizing. It sounded like a part of the animal most people throw away.
“You wouldn’t like balut,” Jerry said. He scrunched up his face, which enhanced his resemblance to an Ewok. “You wouldn’t like balut,” he repeated.
“What is it?” Now I was intrigued.
“You will have to just try it.” Suni laughed.
I spent most of the time listening to their conversations and not participating because I didn’t have much to contribute on the subject of child rearing. They knew the names of each other’s kids, the schools they attended, and grades they were in. It was the type of intimate coworker relationship I’d never spent long enough at a job to develop. I imagined they rarely saw each other outside of the warehouse except for the occasional BBQ, where the awkwardness of the real world drove all their small talk to the subject of work. Yet while at work they only talked about their lives outside it.
“They ask me, ‘Mommy, how do I finish this problem?’ I don’t know,” Suni said, then laughed. “I don’t know why the teacher expects me to teach them how to do algebra. I’m not the teacher.”
When they did address me it was usually to tell me to slow down. They had a rhythm they’d perfected over the years and expected me to adapt.
“Less mistakes when we’re all on the same pace,” Yeddy said.
I looked at the clock.
11:40.
I discovered that I drilled eight screws a minute and did the math in my head, counting how many screws I did in an hour, then in a day, then in a week, then how many I would complete over the two and half months I was Steven Barton. I lost count when I started wondering where all these computers were going. How many of these get produced a day? Will there ever be a time when Jerry doesn’t have another chassis to push my way? How did man evolve from apes to end up like this?
I felt my chest tighten. I took deep breaths and tried to calm down by looking out the window to remind myself I was just two hours south of 90210, the place I dreamed about in my cold childhood basement. My eyes followed the gray brick wall, scanning for a window, but there wasn’t one. Just cement that seemed to go on forever. I was in a dungeon with different sections where people were hammering and drilling and soldering pieces of metal. I’d actually died in the plane ride to California and was in hell. I was going to spend eternity with a drill in my hand, screwing in fans that would never be turned on, just disassembled and sent right back to me. The sounds of saws and conveyor belts poked at my eardrum, and I thought I was going to have a panic attack when someone yelled, “Lunch!”
I started to rush to my car for my peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but before I made it out the door, Darnell stopped me.
“How’s it going so far?” he asked.
“Better than shoveling snow.”
“If you do a good job we can think about moving you to a more challenging station. There’s a lot for room for growth here.”
“Okay,” I said, barely listening. I had PB&J on the brain and thought about how good a cigarette was going to taste with the flavor of peanut butter still lingering on my tongue.
“We’re going to play some half court if you want to join us.”
“I’ll sit this one out.”
I sat in my car and wolfed down my warm sandwich as I quietly listened to an Eminem cassette.
I thought about driving off and never coming back. If I really were Steven Barton, I probably would have. Steven Barton wouldn’t have to explain himself to my father. Steven Barton would be pulling into the beach with a surfboard strapped to the roof of his car and a cooler full of cold ones in the trunk. Steven Barton was wicked fresh.
Steven Barker smoked a few cigarettes while sitting on the curb and watching the guys play basketball. They were throwing elbows and boxing out in the paint. At 12:30 everyone headed back in and the victors high-fived.
“Maybe we need to switch up the teams since you guys suck so bad,” someone called across the room.
“Maybe you should shut your mouth!” someone else responded.
“Yo momma didn’t last night,” another guy called out.
“You only won because Ferdinano’s hungover.”
As the group transitioned back into work mode, the trash talk died down, and the rhythm of the assembly line returned to the same pace we’d left before the break. I was reminded of the nightly soccer games I played in Boston during exam week. My friends and I would gather in the gym for an hour of competitive cardio to release the stress brought on by hours of studying and then kick back with a beer while the winning team told the losers how much they sucked.
I missed those games and wondered what my outlet for the summer would be. My only social contacts were Suni and Jerry. They were pleasant enough, but I doubted that either one would want to spend an evening kicking around a ball and then splitting a case of beer.
That night my dad and I went to a bar and grill that overlooked the ocean. Our waitress had a yoga-toned body tucked into a pair of black short shorts and a tiny top. She asked me what I was studying in school, and I blushed when I said I wanted to be a writer. “Good luck,” she said then recommended the avocado burger. She laughed when I told her I’d never had avocado before. “In California we put avocado on everything,” she said.
“How was work?” my dad asked.
“Awful.”
“What was so bad about it?”
“It’s boring. I do the same thing over and over.”
“Is it hard?”
“Not really.”
“Do they treat you well?”
“Everyone seems nice.”
“I don’t see the problem.”
“It just sucks,” I said.
The waitress returned with a Coke for me and a beer for my dad.
“Order another beer and let me have that one,” I said.
“That would be dishonest. You can have a beer back at the condo.”
“After the day I had I deserve a beer.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t so bad.”
“I did the same thing over and over. Time went by so slow. It was slower than church time.”
<
br /> “You know, son.” Here we go, I thought. Whenever my father called me “son” some sort of life lesson always followed, or a reminder of how easy my life was compared to his when he was my age. I already knew about the two-hour bus ride he took to high school and how he was the first in his family to graduate college and how he started out in the IBM mailroom and worked his way up to being a top salesman and blah, fuckity, blah.
“When I was your age,” he began, “I got a job at a meat packing plant for $2.50 an hour. In 1967, that was good money.
“I had a few different jobs there, but the one I hated most was removing the pig intestines, then wrapping them around a pole. I had to wear rubber boots because I stood in blood and waste two inches thick. The smell was awful, and my fingers were numb from the cold. I was the youngest person working there and the only one who was in college. The guys I worked with had been there for years and would continue to be there for the rest of their lives. And they were happy with that because it meant they could pay rent, feed their kids, and have a little left over to spend at the bar. Most of them never made it past the eighth grade.
“They resented me and called me ‘college boy.’ They hazed me by stuffing discarded pig ends into my peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Most days I went without lunch because I couldn’t afford to eat in the cafeteria.”
“Gross,” I said.
“When work ended on Friday night and I got on the bus to go back to my parents’ house, I already dreaded Monday morning. But you know what?” He stopped himself and took a long sip of his beer. “I was grateful for the work. I made enough money that summer to move into my fraternity house and take your mother out to dinner. It’s possible that you might not have been born without that job.”
“I’d puke if I had to touch a pig intestine,” I said.
“I’m not telling you this to make you feel bad or say I had it harder. I just want you to know about me at your age. I’m happy you don’t have to handle dead pigs all day. I didn’t eat pork for fifteen years after that job. Most jobs aren’t fun, but lucky for you, you’re in college and hopefully will have much better job opportunities when you graduate. And if you really hate this job that much and you find something better, by all means, you should take it. But you will work this summer. Plus, don’t you want to go back to Boston in the fall with some extra money so you can do fun things with your friends?”
Now for the Disappointing Part Page 2