i called my drummer the other night to see if he wanted to grab a bite to eat and down a cold one somewhere. his answer was more disillusioning than i had imagined it could be. he went on to tell me, to my dismay, that he was driving with the other guitarist in my band en route to a play in some far off town. i good talked the shit out of them, hung up, and asked if they had called "no homo" before embarking on such a blatantly sexually ambiguous adventure. the only way such an activity is kosher according to the Man Code if there is an attractive female somehow involved in the equation, which there was not in this case. i hope it was free admission, beer was consumed before, during, and/or after the performance, and that lessons were learned about engaging in such questionable forms of entertainment without expecting ridicule. just kidding, guys, i still love you...platonically.
not that i can really talk. i've been rocking a D.A.R.E. bracelet pretty hard lately; you know, one of those solidly colored rubbery jobs that different causes have jumped on the bandwagon with: breast cancer, autism, erectile dysfunction/premature ejaculation, marrying sheryl crow when you're obviously not strong enough to be her man no matter how strong you claim to live, etc. i was cashing my check (well, trying to cash it, since it turned out to be rubber as rubber as the bracelet) and walked past a display table in front of a drugstore where some nice black man with shitlocks approached me about extending the D.A.R.E. program. i asked if he wanted a donation, he said it was more of a "gift" and i'd get something in return. i said i already had two t-shirts from the thrift store at home, he said he'd give me a bracelet instead. i started wearing it on the regular, but only in my civilian clothing (construction workers tend not to wear bracelets, especially bright red ones with a specific "cause" assigned to them). one morning i got dressed for work while still drunk from the night before and failed to notice that i had forgotten to take it off until i had already been at work for an hour or two. i discreetly shoved it in my pocket and hoped that no one had noticed. later on in the day i was digging my lighter out of the same pocket and the bracelet flew out onto the ground. a coworker who had asked to use my lighter caught a glimpse and asked if i was kidding. i handed him the bic, picked up the damn red piece of rubber, and found something to do in a far corner of the building. i'm not sure what the point of this story was, but there doesn't always have to be one. more hemingway, less eggers; more scorsese, less oliver stone (i love "platoon," but i'm a sucker for a good war story since that's more or less what this is.)
then again i really don't take anyone i work with too seriously. people piss and moan about stupid shit and forget that if they just went to work and did their job the best they could, no more and no less, they wouldn't have a problem. that same sarcastic asshole who busted my balls about the D.A.R.E. bracelet has little room to talk. he's in his forties and just finished the five-year apprenticeship program but has little-to-no common sense. i can work circles around him and i'm half his age and haven't even been in the trade a year yet. my foreman recognizes this and sends me on my own little pipefitting missions instead of sending the other guy because he knows i can get in done in half the time and won't have as many problems. i'm not saying i know what the hell i'm doing all the time, but i at least try to think it through and overcome obstacles the simplest way instead of "building a rocketship" (construction phrase used to describe making things harder than they have to be) like the other guy does. what really gets me is when i have to go back and fix his fuck-ups, though. last week my apprentice buddy and i were cutting in T's for some water lines in the grocery store we're building. we were up on the lift running our pipe as straight as possible when we noticed that the vent line the other douchebag had run first for the sink was crooked; it was obvious because the ribs in the metal roof decking are straight and his pipe did not run anywhere near parallel to them. he had already gone back and "fixed" the problem once, and the foreman wasn't around for me to consult, so i went ahead and ran my pipe correctly. a few days later the supervisor called me over and said it looked like shit. i explained that i did the best i could and the reason it looked lousy was because of the optibal delusion (that's one of the pathetically non-English phrases my mildly retarded boss uses) caused by numbnuts' pipe being crooked. he said it didn't matter and i had to fix the other guy's work regardless. it was after three o'clock and we were getting ready to leave. i got up on the lift and lengthened the run of pipe before the elbow by using two couplings and another short piece of pipe, thus straightening the crooked pipe. all three other guys stood on the ground and watched as i sweat bullets of rage at the fact that i had to work at the end of the day while they stood and watched. it pissed me off at the time, but the next day i told my foreman that i learned a lesson from it. next time i'll go ahead and fix the other guy's shitty work automatically so there won't be an issue to begin with. yes, i'll bust balls about it at coffee break, but i'll do it. he apologized for blaming me at first and more or less reassured me that there won't be a next time because he sees that i'm a much better plumber than the guy who's supposed to know better than to leave something that messed up. (ok, so the REAL reason i don't particularly care for the other dude is because he says "supposebly" and his his breath smells like someone shit in an ashtray and left it there for a week; sue me.)
that's not to say that my boss is the most admirable guy on the face of the earth either. the hypocrisy on the job abounds to the point where if i let it get to me i'd explode. he always preaches about how if someone breaks one of our pipes sticking out of the ground unintentionally they need to tell us so we can fix it, which they rarely do. then last week he's on the motorized lift at the end of the day and butchers the hell out of three trades' work in one swoop. he lowered the lift right onto the tin ceiling joists in the bathroom section of the building, which in turn caused our pipes running along the ceiling to fall, as well as the refrigeration guy's two copper lines. he tried to play it off like it wasn't him at first. i called him out on it at the end of the day by asking if he'd informed the carpenters and refrigeration guys that he accidentally demolished their shit. he said "fuck them" and walked away. as he stormed off, huffing and puffing, i reminded him how just the week before he complained that other trades never give us the heads up when they damage our pipes. my other two coworkers laughed and gave me an approving look for laying down the truth on a job loaded with lies from the higher-ups. it doesn't take much to fess up to your mistakes. just the other day i was coming down from working on some ceiling hangers and the bottom of the lift just barely caught the edge of an elbow attached to the end of one of the sprinkler guys' pipes. it bent the shit out of an eight-foot length of steel pipe and damn near ripped the threads right out of the joint. i shit my pants a little at first, but i immediately went up to the man and told him the deal. he said it was no biggie, sent his helper over to fix it, i let him use my lift since it was right there, and the whole thing was over with in a matter of ten minutes. i felt bad, but was glad i did the right thing. later on that day he approached me and said he really appreciated me being honest with him and that the same thing happened four times on the last job he did, but no one ever told him they had broken it. that's one difference between my foreman and i: i'm not afraid to admit when i fuck up.
though, i must say, he definitely has his own especially crude way of dealing with mistakes when he does make them, plumbing-related or otherwise. the one tattoo he has on his left forearm is about forty years old and looks like a rectangular green blob. i asked him why it looks so incredibly unrecognizable last week and he told me: it was his ex-wife's name, and when he left her a few years after their marriage he covered the tattoo himself with a sharp object and some ink. that takes something. then again, he's such a cheap bastard that it was probably more of a money issue than a symbolic act of defiance.
my mom wants a tattoo now. apparently i'm a bad influence. she texted me about it last week and i couldn't believe my eyes. she always used to complain about all the stuff on my arms, and now she wants some ink of her own. she said she thinks she knows why i get them now, and she wants to feel the pain. it freaked me out a little, but i guess that is part of the reason i get them, too. it's a very real couple hours when you're under the needle, there's no denying that you are doing something mildly painful and beautiful and, most importantly, permanent. no one can take that from you, unless they rip your skin off or something. she said she wants something on the bottom of her back. i warned her that this is called a "tramp stamp" and i will not allow it. she laughed and said she didn't realize the location had such negative connotations and suggested the hip instead. true, that's not the most original place either, but i'll let it slide. besides, i'd rather have my tattoo artist see my mom's abdomen than the top of her ass. gross. anyway, she told me she's not sure what she wants yet and she needs me to help her think of something since all of mine are obviously meaningful. i've been mulling it over for a few days and can't really come up with anything concrete. she's the strongest person i know and has been through more shit than most people in my life combined, her tattoo should reflect that somehow. if there's one phrase that always sticks out in my mind when i think of what my mom taught me it's "stick to your guns," but a tattoo idea incorporating that is a little too Hells Angels for a fifty-three year old woman. i'll keep pondering what she should get. it'll give me something to do at work besides, well, work.
a friend of an acquaintance recognized me as "that guy in the tight shirt a few weeks ago" at the bar saturday night. thankfully, i was stone sober at the time and brushed it off. i said i had no idea what he was talking about and casually retreated from the scene, though i'm sure it wasn't too convincing. hey, at least i wasn't approached by one of those poor girls who was suckered into having her picture taken with my stupid ass. not that i really care what they think anyway.
which is why i'm not going to bother fixing the small chip in one of my incisors again. i woke up after a hard night of drinking a couple weeks ago and noticed that it had somehow broken off for the third time in my sleep. the dentist can fix it with some magical fake-tooth compound, but it costs at least a hundred bucks and doesn't last very long in the mouth of a hard-partying, hard-working, hard-rocking tooth-clencher like myself. fuck it. if someone can't deal with my teeth being imperfect than they definitely can't deal with the rest of my flaws. i remember my mom asking if i wanted braces in junior high since it was the cool thing to do. i remember saying no, my reasoning being that my musical idol at the time, billy corgan, had very crooked teeth and he didn't seem to give a shit about what people thought of it. maybe a bald-headed egomaniac who re-forms bands when the money runs out is a bad role model to have, but the point remains the same. same thing with the beard: i think i'm going to let it grow back in for awhile. i honestly like having one, but try to avoid it most of the time because it makes me look like a haggard terrorist. i started shaving religiously again when i split with the last girl since i know i look a lot better clean-shaven to most people. it worked for awhile, same as the buzzed head. i clean up fairly nicely. girls started looking in my general direction again, i can't complain about the results. my complaint is that i don't want to appeal to "most" anymore, i want to be appreciated for what's behind the facial hair and the words that whizz by the slightly-chipped tooth. it's a lot to ask, but can't someone just like me for me? that's rhetorical, smartass.
that being said, i'm going to go "be me" for awhile by reading and going to bed in time to wake up for another fun day of work. welcome to the real world, it'll hit you too eventually.
Currently reading:
"Dangling In The Tournefortia" by Charles Bukowski.
No comments:
Post a Comment