Real Work

(Originally written 2/29/8)

OK, I wasn’t going to buzzog uh, er, write-tonight. But I have a wealth of new material, and I didn’t go to the gym or walk the dog tonight. I thought I would try to even the karmic scale by entertaining you, my loyal internet friends.

This week I started another job. And by “another job” I mean another short term, on again off again, totally out of my element. This week I started helping my brother in law who is a contractor. That’s right, we kill people. I keed, I keed. He calls me up over the weekend and tells me he could use an extra pair of hands for the next few days. For the record, he didn’t say he needed skilled hands. As I told him, “I am not your man to build anything important. You don’t want me building a staircase or crib. I’m all about destruction and general mayhem.” I point newer readers to my posts of last summer about the true hell that was redoing my bathroom. Yes, it’s not my thing. But it is a check. It keeps me busy and active. So busy, in fact, that I come home feeling like a broken old man. But I am getting ahead of myself.

So he abides by my advice of keeping me away from anything that might harm the clients. First task: knock down a wall. Sweet. It turns out to be a bit more complex than it sounds. I learn that will be a recurring theme; it is almost always harder than it looks. First, they have to do the ‘real man’ work, so that relegates me to sissy stuff like sweeping and organizing. Whatever, it’s cool. Soon enough, demolition will be mine. I should say that there are two other people in the crew; Paul, my brother in law who should really know better than to ask me to get involved, and Mikey, his loyal assistant. I work most of the time with Mike. So Mike and Paul build a wall in like 2 seconds. God, this shit goes fast when you get professionals involved; I wish my bathroom moved as fast. Finally, it’s time to take hammer in hand, and wail the fuck away. Months of aggression in every blow. Frustration and anger spark every blow. What a release! My arms flail with the strength of a hundred men, and each strike wields a gaping hole. With every blow, more pent up aggression and disappointment are released. This is freaking great. I …can…do..this…all…day…Goddamn…I (deep breath in)….am..sure…(breath out, inhale again)…getting…tired.

Mr. Gym Rat gets fatigued after hammering for a mere 20 minutes. For the life of me, I can’t figure out how my shoulders get fatigued first. You would think it would be arms, but no, its’ both shoulders. It also doesn’t help that I am not a great hammerer. I have to use a chisel to separate the drywall from the studs. Paul has been doing this for like 30 years, he’s 3rd generation, total pro. This guy can not only hammer without looking where the hammer is hitting the chisel, he hits the chisel with the hammer sideways. To the novice, this would seem like no big deal. In fact, after he walked away, I tried it, and failed miserably. Lesson learned; don’t get a head of myself. Hammering through drywall is easy, but there’s cement board as well, which takes a bit more. No big deal, as this will keep me busy while they do the glamorous stuff.

I know my role here. Simple, unglamorous stuff. My tasks will be the repetitive stuff that frees up those guys to make some serious headway in the build. If I recall correctly, most of the first day was knocking down walls and sweeping up. Not too shabby. Towards the end of the day, I step back, just to see all that we accomplished. It’s actually pretty cool. We did a lot. Created a room for the washer and dryer to go into, knocked down a wall and other manly things that I can’t seem to recall. But it was cool to just be a small piece of the team that did so much. Remember, tools and home improvement is really not my strong suit at all. But to step back and see all the difference we made was very cool. Almost a sense of pride welled up within me. Now that is something I haven’t felt for quite a while.

Tuesday I lucked out. Monday night was the first of 2 nights with the Pat McGee Trio. I will rave about these guys in another post. Paul wasn’t sure if he would need me on Tuesday, so I would have to be a good boy. That really wasn’t too much of a problem. I have a newer sense of focus with a somewhat steady job for the next little while. The problem here is that I have had some pretty wicked, funny drunken escapades with PMB over the years. I recall a few late, late nights in State College, more than a few late nights/early mornings on South Street , staying up 24 hours in AC, most of these alcohol fueled. In fact, when they were here last, I believe we left them somewhere around 5 in the morning to careen home. And I did something called ‘The Caveman’, as percussionist Chardy asked about right away on Monday. What ‘The Caveman’ is totally beyond me, it was “Drunk Kev’s” idea of fun. I had it in my head to be a good boy, and only had a few beers Monday night. In my mind, that justified staying out “late” with them. Late of course, meaning 1:45 (because I guess 2 Am would be far too late). I learned something the hard way Tuesday morning after getting in at 2:45; man, am I outta shape for this these days. That’s what I write it off to. When I was working regularly, my body was on a sched and could handle it. Generally my body is still on a sched, but throw in an earlier wake up time (6 instead of 7ish), and a full day doing destruction, I was out of shape. No, it’s certainly not that I am getting older. No, that’s not it at all. Paul calls and thankfully doesn’t need me. I put the phone down, and doze off for another 3 hours. I wasn’t hungover in the least, just fucking tired. Tues was another show with PMB, and I knew I had to work the next morning, so I took it easy, and those guys split relatively early. Bullet dodged.

Time for drink #2 of the post. I just went up to make myself another freshie, and Bauer was like “yo, dude, what the fuck? Are we gonna go for a walk? Or play? Seriously, what’s the deal here? Throw a ball or something.” So you guys better appreciate this.

I would walk into day 2 a bit smarter, though. I learned a few things after day 1. The biggest thing I learned was I am a fucking pussy. I look at Mikey and Paul as real guys. They do real work. Real hard, physical, demanding, dirty, strenuous work. They don’t wear fucking flip flops and board shorts. They wear jeans and those jeans tell a story by all the dirt that’s on them at the end of the day. They look at the next impossible task (by my means), put their heads down, and get it done. They’re real men. And apparently real men these days do next to nothing to protect themselves. Protective eye wear? Ppfftttt, not on your life, sally. Kneepads, even though the van is full of them? No, they’re for decoration, patsy. Next to these guys, I am prissy. I am a wuss. I am a girly man. I am not worthy of the work boots I wear. That’s totally OK, I get that, in fact I agree with that.

I’m gonna puss out. I bring knee pads (shaddup) and protective glasses. I can’t tell you how many times on Monday that I was hammering something, and debris flew right out at my eyes like it was fucking laser-guided. I wear contacts, and I swear, my eyes are like sponges. I could feel grit getting and staying in my eyes. I also did a lot of bending/kneeling down on Monday. I’ve had one major knee operation, I’ll be damned if I need 2. So I show up all ‘bubblewrap’. Wednesday is another day to knock walls down, 3 in fact. It’s me and Mikey. So we’re hammering away. And it hits me. No, not his hammer. It hits me that this is pretty fricking cool. Here are total strangers that are paying me to come into their house and knock down walls. C’mon, that’s pretty fucking sweet. I told Mikey, “You know, if my parents told me that they were going to remodel and take down some walls, I would gladly be doing this for free instead of paying Paul.” In the morning, we take down walls. I mean, I am going all Cops, and literally taking a 2 step start, and kicking through walls. Glorious. Drywall shatters and goes everywhere. Yea, it sucks to clean it up, but it’s well worth it. It’s a good morning. Too bad the afternoon will follow.

Oh vey, drink 2 of the post (#3 overall) this is so not a good sign, these coconut rum and cokes are going down way too easy.

It is decided that now that we have taken down 3 walls, it’s time to take up the floor of the entire area we are working in. Paul cuts down to the subfloor (i.e. the actual floorboards) and sees that there are 6 fucking levels of floor to go down through. I italicize that because he says this is the worst floor he’s ever seen. I did tell you he’s been doing this for like 100 years, right? This is not a good sign, this will be harder than it looks. So we grab these pry bars called wonderbars and hammers and get down to business. Me and Mikey have to hammer and cry-uh, pry, through all 6 levels to expose the subfloor. Here’s the problem. 1) There are entirely too many fucking nails and staples down to make this easy. 2) One of the lowest levels is plywood that splinters easily. 3) One of the layers is asbestos tile. OK, that’s more than one problem, but you see how this is going. So we get on hands and knees to hammer away. We’re doing this for a few minutes. Then it hits me; since we’re hammering and splitting through asbestos, we should be wearing masks. Again, I point out how Mike is a real guy. No mask, happily hammering away like a monkey. Um, a monkey that likes to hammer. He doesn’t care about inhaling asbestos. Ha, he probably mocks it. He probably breathes it in first thing in the morning, just to get it over with.

I suggest we get masks. Now, I am sure that the masks offer little actual protection. But he gets them. So there’s me; gloves on, kneepads on, glasses on. He just has a mask on. I am a dork. Soon, it becomes evident that my hot breath is escaping the mask and getting into my glasses which fogs them up. Goddamn it, I can’t get a break. I take the glasses off (cough, nancy, cough) and resume inhaling toxic dust. I admit that this weirds me out. I don’t consider myself a germaphobe. But I guess I do have something about being exposed to possibly hazardous elements. Everyone knows that one person who is uber-healthy; runs, works out, never smokes or drinks. And-BAM!-they get lung cancer and are dead inside of a week. I don’t want that to be me. But my cautious / worry side gets the better part of me, and all kinds of weird shit runs through my empty head.

This floor is a fucker to get up. It hard to get the bars all the way underneath to pry it up. There’s so many Goddamned nails and staples, it like they used a machine gun to nail all this shit down. I tell Mikey I swear right now there are 2 80 year old floor guys on the beach in Florida laughing their asses off because they know someone has to take this floor up. This floor is fighting us like Paris Hilton fights true talent. My ‘hammering blister’ I earned from Monday is ready to pop anew, but yet I hammer away. The room is full of (toxic) dust. I know I breathe it, I can feel it sticking in my eyes. Finally, somehow, we clear the space. It was not easy, we are worn down for sure, but we prevailed. Now we gotta shovel this shit into trash cans, and let the night breeze poison the rest of the neighborhood. Christ, there’s so many rusty nails and staples, you have to watch it. I am sore. No way I’m going to the gym. But we did the job. The real payoff was when the wife came home to see what we did on the house. She came in and said, “Wow, I can see you guys did a ton of work today.” That was gratifying to me, one of the more gratifying things I have heard in a while. I really appreciated that she came in, checked things out, and really liked the progress she saw. It made me feel good, which is sorely needed these days. I had that quiet feeling inside that she was really ignorant of all the obstacles we faced that day. It made me appreciate our bathroom a bit more.

What the fuck? Where did that last drink go? Is it really empty already? Man, I gotta be up in nine and a half hours…nine…and a half…long ..hours…hmm…that’s plenty of time to recoup. Plus these drinks are mostly Diet Coke and ice. Yea, that’s the ticket. Plenty of time until tomorrow. Plenty. And use lots of ice this time.

So today is an earlier start (7 AM? Really, do people work this early?) to meet at Paul’s shop. From there we got to another job. So there me and Mikey are, driving. We are on a fairly big area highway (309 for all you locals). As we whiz along, I look off to the side, and see guys, real guys, already at work. It’s 7:15 on a pretty cold morning, and we pass a building with guys already on top; hard hats, boots-the whole deal. I feel a certain-if fleeting-kinship with these real guys. Most people-girls and girly guys-are still doing their make-up. But here are 2 brave and noble warriors, getting ready to face the impossible and make it possible again. The morning is actually kinda cake. We go to another job, load the truck with trash, and do some general pisant stuff waiting for a delivery from Home Depot. Long story short, in a very un-Tony Stewart like performance, Home Depot is late. We dump that off on the electricians, and we’re off to the dump.

Right, I know what you’re thinking. “Seriously, Kev, you’re going to try to entertain me with tales from the dump?” Yes, yes I am. Maybe it’s a challenge, maybe it’s a sign of just how far I’ve fallen. Either way, you’re still reading. If you’re like me, you envision the dump as being an outside kind of thing. Wrong. This dump is inside. The building reminds me of a small airplane hangar. So you drive up, and are magically weighed. I mean a guy in a tux, comes out, pulls a rabbit out of his hat, and then tells you how much your truck weighs. OK, not really. You drive up to an embedded scale, wait for a light to change, then go wait in line. This is fucking cake, because there’s almost always a line. We’re getting paid to wait. There are all kinds of trucks waiting. Big rigs than can dump their load (uh huh huh) and smaller contractor trucks that have to do it manually. Inside this “hangar” there are two big cranes and one smaller ‘bearcat’. These guys help unload the trucks or scoop the trash off to the side into waiting flatbed trucks. It’s almost like watching dinosaurs feed. To me, the newbie, it’s oddly fascinating. Mikey starts coming to life, telling me tales of the dump. It’s our turn, we pull in, drop the gate of the truck and just start throwing and kicking shit off the truck. It’s kinda therapeutic. Inside, it smells, and I have a very poor sense of smell, so it must fucking reak. There are employees waking around in neon green vests, masks and protective ear wear. Man, I thought the jobs I had sucked. The dump makes a mint off selling metal, so the bearcat and employees go through, hunting for metal. Not only metal, when we were there, we saw a TV (with remote), keyboard and laptop that was pulled from the trash. I was convinced that the laptop had to be full of kiddie porn. We ended up going twice today. The second time, I was looking up at the rays of sun filtering through. It was almost like looking through a fog, there was so much shit in the air. It couldn’t be healthy, and we were dumping the asbestos off.

We go back to the job. By this time, it’s well past 1, so it’s lunch time. We eat in the work van. Yea, how shitty is your break room? I am eating so quick, I develop hiccups. There, I am, covered in spare bits of lunch meat, goatee covered in other lunch remnants, hiccupping like Jabba the Hutt. My task for the day? Take up another section of the floor. This time, I am chiseling off the area where the washer and dryer will go. In essence, not hard, just time consuming and again on all fours. The chisel I am using seems so small in comparison to the area I have to chisel up. But at least it’s immediate. I can see the change I am effecting. I really wanted to go to the gym tonight, but 2 rounds of chiseling floor up will kill the hardiest of souls I believe. So it’s me, the PC, downstairs, watching the Cryers earn a rare victory, listening to all Pat McGee Band stuff on my iTunes app.

The fingers I type with (and constantly fucking misspell with) are weathered. Blistered, nicked, cut, poked, cracked and dry. These are the hands of a real worker. Sure, when I was doing the music thing, I was very aware that the bands I worked with/for might very well play someone’s wedding song/prom song/ “our song” type of thing. But with doing a remodel, what I’m doing now will likely far outlive that, and outlive me. That’s gratifying. In the meantime, if I hear word that the owners want to remodel over the stuff we are doing now, I will show up at their front doorstep with Freddy Krueger gloves to persuade them otherwise.

I would be kidding to say I wasn’t sore. I would be kidding to say I’m not in a bit over my head. Paul loves to bust our chops. No matter what we do, his first response it always “That’s it?” I think he’s kidding most of the time. I would be kidding to say I’m not humbled. I would be kidding to say I am not a bit proud. I at least like the idea my wife is married to someone who actually has a meaningful job, even if it’s only a few days here and there.

Tomorrow I know we rip up more of the floor. But Paul says it shouldn’t be as hard as it was yesterday. Again, I recite that things are harder than they look. I swear he says shit to prop us up. “O, c’mon guys, this will be easy.” A few hours later, after it clearly wasn’t easy, he will say “yea, this was harder than I thought.” Tomorrow night, my 5 and fucking 0 Wings play, so I will get my ya-ya’s out there. Then, Saturday, sweet, sweet Saturday. My working man ass will be sleeping in. Hitting the noon puppy play time is out the window. Sleep late, drag my flabby ass to the gym to workout the least sore muscle group, then food shop for hopefully another almost full week of work. There will be a full bottle of rum in our future. Fuck this Sunday running BS with A&J. I have an interview Monday, then depending, probably more real work. Maybe even a real job.

All right, this marathon post is almost over. In fact, it should be over. But right now, we’re bordering on 6 full pages of Kevolution Theory goodness. Perhaps that directly correlates with my 6+ drinks so far. I didn’t plan to drink this much (yea, when’s the last time I said that) or write this much. I will have to check to see if this is the longest post I have ever done. Fuck that, I am too lazy, so I will just proclaim this the longest post I buzzogged. Man, this buzzogging thing might be the way to go. I see now why all the great writers had alcohol/chemical problems. It’s all OK, I still have 8 and a half hours before work. Plenty of time. And plenty of time for one more night cap. Then make lunch for tomorrow-quick who wants a jelly and turkey sandwich? Aw fuck, time to re-edit, catch all the fucking typos. Did I mention that I have a splinter in one of my main typing fingers? No, of course not, because I have grown hard core. Remember, by the time you are reading this tomorrow, I will probably be putting the WEA in weary. Always suffering for my art.

That’s it. Right now, Mike and Paul are hours into their sleep, whilst I am up, typing with splinter-ridden fingers for your meager enjoyment. F this shit, I am outta here.