1995 Part 2
Chapter 5. Book V ~ Edition II
One Saturday afternoon, Sherēm happened to pull into the yard just after I clocked-out and headed to the Jeep. Turning around and meeting him where he backed his truck into a space, I gave him an eye to safely guide his truck between trailers. As he exited the rig, I pointed to his car across the parking lot. “I’m hungry. You drive, I’ll buy.”
“Sounds good.” He jumped off the rig.
We went to a local sub shop not far from work, and after the waitress took our order, Sherēm took a drink of soda. “Man, this year has been crazy. Have you seen the rates they’re paying for hauling that tech?”
“I know; we’re receiving tractor-trailer loads of telecommunications equipment and new computers daily. Everyone is upgrading: government and companies. The money is great. We’re seeing more tech than household goods in the warehouse at this point.”
“I know, man. To be honest, it makes me worry a little. The business is changing so rapidly, and there is a lot of competition. With the internet booming, we’re losing a lot of good people, and no one is replacing them, at least no one good.”
The waitress brought our lunch as I pointed my thumb in the direction of Atlas. “I know. Theo, Edo, and some other good movers left for IT jobs after getting Microsoft Certification. We’re having issues covering the work in the warehouse, and Sadim keeps hiring crackheads.”
Sherēm looked out the window. “Yeah, when this bubble bursts, there’s going to be problems. Prices are already getting pushed down on non-tech work. The internet is creating a lot of price competition.”
“Hopefully, the work will keep up for a while. Seems hopeful with all the new dotcoms.”
While eating, Sherēm shifted subjects. “By the way, Lil told me you picked up some girl at happy hour a week or two ago. What’s up with her?”
I shook my head in frustration. “Oh, that would be Carin Suss. That bitch is crazy.”
He laughed, “What the hell happened?”
“Sherēm, I should’ve just walked away from her at happy hour when her group of friends mingled their way into our group. From the moment I met her, she rolled her eyes at everything and talked about everyone like they were pieces of shit.”
“Why did you keep talking to her?”
“Because she’s fucking hot. Why else?”
He laughed as I shook my head. “On our first date, all Carin talked about was herself. She droned on and on.” I raised the pitch of my voice, mimicking Carin, “I couldn’t believe my boss said that to me. Can you imagine? I’m a hard worker and a selfless person who tries to help everyone. Oh, by the way, can you get that lazy waitress? I’ve been waiting an eternity for some butter for these shrimps. Then my boss told me to work on my attitude because people don’t like it when I speak to them in a demeaning manner. Unbelievable! Me, demeaning my coworkers? Well, I wasn’t. I’m nice to everyone at work- Excuse me! I’ve been waiting forever for the butter I asked you to get for my shrimp. I don’t understand what is taking so long. Your job isn’t complicated.”
Sherēm shook his head, laughing at my impression of Carin. “Man, she sounds awful.”
“Tell me about it. I kept imagining Reins and the kitchen staff taking turns spitting into Carin’s butter.”
Sherēm pointed his fork at me. “Yeah, Reins is pretty tough, I could see her getting mad.”
“I know. Carin is no Reins. You think by now I’d know to walk away from girls like Carin. I need to institute a new rule: fuck girls like Carin once and never call them again.”
“You know, man, maybe you just miss Reins. She was cool, and I thought you two were a good fit.”
I leaned back in my seat, throwing my napkin on my plate. “I don’t know. We did, and we didn’t. Everything about her was great, but the timing was all wrong. She just started law school, and I am here trying to write or be a mover. There are no guarantees, and if I followed her to Boston, I’d be taking a huge risk.”
“Considering everything you could lose, ending up with a smart, beautiful, successful attorney seems just too great a risk.”
“Fuck you, man.” I threw some money on the table. “Well, guess I better get ready for tonight.”
“What do you have planned?”
“Carin. What else?”
Sherēm laughed, “You never learn.”
Despite side-work, money issues continued plaguing me with the need to work overtime, making the job feel endless. Working in the warehouse also lacked career advancement unless willing to become a boss, but the small size of Atlas limited opportunities and pay. The desire to get back on track with writing goals grew in a financial struggle, which always felt like a dilemma of choosing one path over another. Lacking any desire to make a career of moving and storage began a quest for alternative business opportunities and ways to make money that led to a brief period of tutoring college students.
While helping a driver load his truck one morning, a discussion of kids and their cost led to talk of his daughter’s education. Tim, a veteran driver for the company, made decent money but struggled like everyone with the cost of paying for a kid’s education. “Yeah, my daughter has it rough with school right now. She is taking this writing course and failing. If she fails, I got to pay for her to retake the class.”
I stacked some pads. “That sucks.”
“Yeah, it does. Her teacher is some kind of a hard-ass.”
“What kind of writing class is she taking?”
Tim looked up thoughtfully while pushing his glasses up his nose. “I’m pretty sure it’s a creative writing course, but don’t ask me how that pertains to a degree in nursing.”
“Tim, I can help her with that class. Sometimes students just need a little extra tutoring.”
Explaining to Tim my aspiration to be a writer surprised him, and his eyes widened. “Well, I’ll be damned. I’ll pass her number to you so you can work with her directly.”
A hot, young college student in her freshman year, Marie struggled with an introductory writing course but began passing with a little help. Marie came to the apartment about twice a week for eight weeks, and she sent some signals, but I didn’t answer them, even when dating Carin ended. Working with her dad barred sex with Marie, but more so, an increasing ambivalence towards life killed the desire to have sex with her or anyone.
Along with a lack of dating interest, tutoring hourly proved unprofitable, and after six months, I abandoned dating and the business. The struggle to make more money and write led to finding a roommate. Renting the empty second bedroom would significantly reduce living expenses and add no more time to my work schedule. Lack of foresight and perhaps even a little depression overrode a lack of desire for a roommate and led to some bad decision making when Sissy learned of my room for rent.
When he asked if he could rent the room, all thoughts of him being an annoying ex-crackhead disappeared in foolishness to believe him a good roommate in his claims to be a sober, responsible, career-minded person. Three years of him being a creationist ass and recovery freak somehow disappeared in his pursuit of a Class-A CDL. Fallaciously equating Sissy earning a CDL and more money with him becoming a better person proved a terrible mistake with no one to blame except me since plenty of irresponsible, asshole drivers worked at Atlas.
The living arrangement’s failure clarified the first Saturday evening after he moved in when I arrived home and found Sissy on the couch scribbling in a notebook. “What’s up, Sissy?”
He stopped writing and set his pen down while sighing and looking upward. “Vince, I would appreciate you calling me by my pen name. My nom de plume is Syph Sios. You do understand what a nom de plume is, correct?”
“Yeah, I figured it out when you said pen name. So, you’re a writer. I never knew that; I don’t remember you mentioning it on the truck. What do you write?”
“Yes, I never discuss my writing with those morons at work. I am a nonfiction writer. I’m writing about my experience in the Ozark Mountains during a family vacation. While walking in the woods, I became lost briefly, but the real terror began when a werewolf chased me. I managed to run back to the cabins where my family stayed, and the wolf stopped following me, seeing other people outside the cabins.”
“Well, Syph, that’s interesting, but I’m going to take a nap.”
Syph continued scribbling in his notebooks as I entered my room, feeling the familiar, grating frustration he once produced on the truck. Sitting on the edge of the bed, the failure of having once again misjudged a person became apparent in Syph’s narcissism and lunacy now haunting the living room. Am I really this stupid? I should know by now I can't make good decisions concerning people. Falling sideways on the bed, anger for Syph’s crazy story mixed with a feeling of being duped. That asshole better pay rent on time.
The weeks wore on with Syph obtaining a Class-A license, and Atlas hired him to drive, allowing the timely payment of rent. Life in the apartment proceeded okay with the concerted effort to stay out of Syph’s business and avoid discussions about writing, not wanting to punch him in the face. Prior aggravating conversations dictated avoidance. “Vince, I don’t think you understand the poem. You do know how to read poetry?”
“I’m pretty sure I learned how to read poetry in elementary school. Look, I said it was nice and took a lot of imagination. What are you looking for?”
“I just don’t believe you are feeling the gravity of the poem. You see, my poetry is an abstract style that is multilayered in meaning. Here let me read it to you.”
“Please don’t.”
Ignoring the plea, Syph launched into a recital,
The car is fast
The car won’t last
The car is motion
The car is emotion
The car is not what we see
The car is me.
“That’s great, man.”
“What was great about it?” Syph pressed.
A moment of silent frustration ended in anger. “Look, if you want a critique of your poetry, then here it is –– that shit sucks. It’s not funny, sad, angry, or anything. All your poetry is about you comparing yourself with an object. That’s not how poetry works. Poetry should interest you and other people or at least jar an emotion. I may not know exactly what makes good poetry, but your poems are not it.”
Syph turned red. “You lack an understanding of the complexity of poetry and prose. I write for me.”
I walked away. “Well, if that were true, then you wouldn’t be trying so hard to publish that shit.”
The most important rule of moving and storage dictated not hurting people. The dangerous nature of moving and storage often made injuries catastrophic, and after only three years, I witnessed two compound fractures, lost fingers, and countless twisted ankles and cuts requiring stitches. Guys working as subcontractors had no health insurance, and workman’s compensation did not provide enough to live on, which made injuries both financially and physically disastrous.
Sadim hired a newbie who claimed to know how to drive a forklift, and arguing with Sadim over the decision to work this man proved futile. Sadim ignored the obvious addict symptoms of fast-talking and rushing through tasks exhibited by the crackhead who raced around the warehouse on a forklift at top speeds.
The first two days, the newbie got the job done, but on the third day, he ran over Raimo’s foot when rounding a corner too fast to stop the four-thousand-pound forklift. Running from the other end of the warehouse to the scream’s origin, I found Diek and Sadim trying to help Raimo. The weight of the machine split the canvas of his sneaker from the sole, flowing blood from the sides of the shoe, pooling on the floor. Raimo howled in an incoherent agony. “The Gods teach in painful play. Queen of Shade returns this way. In my heart, I have truth known. Shade holds sins that men have grown. Love is the Lord’s redemption. Knows no end or exemption.”
Diek and I lifted him from the concrete, each supporting one arm and one leg, trying to steady legs to avoid worsening the injury as he cried in pain, “You’ll hold leviathan weight. Reap the love and suffer fate. The pain leaves purest hearts torn. Joy lost in the Devil’s scorn. She laments causing sorrow. Sows she must, seeds of morrow.”
Sadim backed his van into the warehouse, meeting us at the large rollup door to place a delirious Raimo within. “Bury me near my Mother. It is the Mount of Father. When the host of many takes. She leaves us with heart that breaks. Goes weeping on river’s wakes. Just chaff in the wind that blows. Chaff rolling in wind that blows. In the silent wind that blows. Wind swirling in constant flows. That in time’s true endless flows. Blows, blows, and forever flows.”
Closing the van’s doors on Raimo’s incoherent speech, Diek turned to the newbie. “Get your shit and get the fuck out.”
Diek’s composed and fair disposition gave way in the newbie breaking a cardinal rule, but chasing off one crackhead accomplished nothing. Sadim continued hiring crackheads as the pool of skilled workers continued diminishing. Raimo lost two toes, and seeing him limp from that day forward invoked disgust.
Acceptance of fate or circumstance didn’t prohibit anger, and Raimo’s indifference or lack of faculty to become enraged bothered me deeply when watching him work and perform tasks without complaint on his bum foot. Efforts to find better workers and arguing with Sadim to stop hiring crackheads failed, and accidents and injuries continued.
The end of 1995 brought an aloneness and lostness without cause and began churning worries of depression, or that insanity might be creeping back into life. The growing negativity darkened life in a play of monotonous nonexistence as if becoming a ghost haunting home and job. Stuck in the background of life’s mediocrity, days passed in a repetition of tasks and nights spent drinking beer or vodka while staring at a blank sheet of paper.
Abandoning the pen for booze followed with a TV purchase, hoping television might break the tediousness of life. Pursuing media and alcohol soon led to blank stares at the television that failed to entertain.
On Thanksgiving, Syph left town, allowing dinner without worry of a terrible prose or poetry recital. The TV played in the background while eating Chinese takeout and questioning life’s goals. Syph’s argument positing I lacked understanding of the writing craft weighted thoughts, and with no great adventure or wisdom to share, what purpose did authorship hold? Tired of the financial struggle and lack of creativity, shelving authorship seemed practical, at least for a time. Concentrating on a moving and storage career made sense since the job appeared to be the only success in life.