Joey Cloudy online

chapter 4

TRAMP: Arbeit Macht Frei

“To be free one must give up a little part of oneself.”

-Hedwig

Some people are always surprised when the talking heads announce staring into the cycloptic laser eye of satellite-fed camera with a televangelist practiced solemnity, the never-before-seen news of yet another disgruntled postal worker arriving at work with a high-powered rifle and proceeding to systematically execute his coworkers and employers. Aaron was never surprised. Whenever a kid showed up at school with a small arsenal and pipe bombs concealed under a black trench coat, he never asked why. He knew why. He understood this desire for bloodbaths and ritual sex and death songs too well. The best fucks were whores. The best games you play to death. This was his normal state of being for most of his life. If anything surprised him, it was that it didn’t happen more often. He wasn’t surprised when these things happened to innocent people; no one is innocent.

“You’re not being fired. The company has simply eliminated the position of manager on the night shift.”

Aaron looked at the man sitting across the conference table from him. Daniel Crane, the regional supervisor new to Dallas, fresh outta school from Chicago. Just what the world needs, another asshole with a business degree. They had known each other for nearly four years but had only been friends for about a year, ever since the day Danial had been busted for possession after an argument in his apartment complex with a neighbor’s boyfriend.

The girlfriend called the cops after David kicked the boyfriend’s ass. So, David’s sitting in his living room jamming on his PlayStation, having pretty much forgotten about this girl whom he had only gone out with once, and the boyfriend who kicked her ass. He’s chilling out, smoking a joint, trying to get to the next level, when he hears a knock at the door. He’s so stoned, he doesn’t even think to look to see who it is and just opens the door wide open. The weed smoke rolls out of the door like a Cheech and Chong movie. Before the smoke cleared, the cops could not only smell the weed but also they can see it, a QP of that Chronic shit sitting on the coffee table.

After they cuff him, the Po Pos read him his Miranda rights, grab the weed, then go into the kitchen and grab a package of zip-lock plastic freezer bags. The law says that if you have over four ounces, then you are guilty of possession with intent to distribute. But if you have plastic baggies with any amount, then they always add the dope dealer charge. Before he’s tossed into a cell, they tell him to call his lawyer. But David’s from Chicago, and he’s only been living in Texas for a few months, so he calls his friend, night shift manager and weed connection, Aaron Moore, to bail him out before the company finds out.

Aaron is one of those paranoid fucks who uses the answering machine to screen his calls and who doesn’t answer the phone if he doesn’t recognize the number. But when he realized that David was calling from the Arlington County jail, he picked up the phone immediately. Usually, whenever he got a call from the county jail, it was family, either his cousin Robbie, his little brother, or possibly his father. Aaron had over a dozen warrants for unpaid traffic tickets, so he wasn’t crazy about going to bail David out of the county, but since he had sold him the weed, he figured it was probably in his own best interest to get him out of there before he decided to share that little bit of information with Five O.

They ordered pizza for lunch, and the sales rep climbed off of his secretary long enough to join the receptionist and accountant, and the owner’s son, David’s frat brother, in the conference room. They called Aaron in for a meeting on his day off. The owner, Ira, has this firing thing down to a science. David’s afraid of confrontation, so he wants to do this in front of a big crowd using language the way women do. Weak. Trying to pretend that this is not what it is. They’re giving me the ‘Jerry McGuire’ send-off. Mother fucker! I can’t believe yo punk ass just fired me! At six foot two inches, David’s got the reach advantage, plus he outweighs Aaron by about seventy-five pounds, but still, he’s afraid. Because even though he’s bigger, he knows Aaron could pound his ass like John Bonham on Moby Dick. Most of the fellows liked to horse around in the warehouse, wrestling and playing grab ass with each other. But not Aaron, he never took part in their sparring at work.

A few months back, David slugged him in the arm as he walked by on his way outside for a smoke break. You don’t want to go there with me. Aaron cautioned with a blank face as he continued walking towards the loading docks. David decided to smoke a cig, and followed him outside. As soon as he stepped outside, Aaron whirled 180 degrees and slammed his fist into David’s shoulder precisely at the joint to the clavicle, screaming KIIIEEAA! So loudly that David felt his heart jackhammering in his chest as his arm went numb.

“Now, we even motherfucker. Don’t do that shit again.” Aaron turned his back to him as he looked out across the parking lot at nothing in particular. “I told ya’ll, I don’t play.”

He fired up a Newport 100 as David slinked back into the building with a bruised ego to match the one on his arm.

The next day, barely able to raise his arm, he whined about the bruise as he showed the day shift manager, Charlton Puglisi, his injured arm. Charlton was pretty good friends with Aaron’s larcenous little brother, Ernest, and while he didn’t count Aaron as a friend, he had a halfhearted respect for his skill. He wasn’t as much fun as his brother, but he was infinitely more reliable and better disciplined. That’s why he hired him in the first place and why he had been his sensei for the last year. He’d been teaching Aaron Kempo free of charge simply because he wanted to learn, and Charlton wanted to teach.

The quiet ones like Aaron were hard to get a fix on; you were never quite sure if they were with you or just in the vicinity. But his kids seemed to like him, his fourteen-year-old daughter maybe a little too much, but while Aaron was flattered by the attention, he treated everyone with the proper respect, tried not to deliberately embarrass or humiliate anyone in or out of the dojo. The Vietnamese who worked for him on the night shift had taken a liking to him and nicknamed him Monk because he was so quiet, introspective, and respectful. And because everyone knew, he wasn’t getting any. He didn’t keep his self-imposed celibacy a secret. One of the women on his shift had stood up one night and told him in her broken English.

“Jose, I love you.”

Soon, others, having heard that he would never marry another American woman, were showing him pictures of their aunts or cousins still in Vietnam who they hoped he would want to marry. Let it slide, boy. So what, he nailed ya’ a good one, forget about it. There was no one on the docks when Aaron punched him, but his pride wouldn’t let it go. Even though there were no witnesses, he felt ashamed because he was afraid.

Maybe it was because he was so much bigger than Aaron, he felt like that little runt should have been afraid of him at least a little. It wasn’t just that Aaron didn’t respect his mass, but it was an unarticulated contempt for everything that he was and would ever be; the tone of his voice, the look in his eye, seemed to say that David wasn’t shit. It didn’t matter what he did with his life; as far as he was concerned, he would always be beneath contempt. That’s what it’s really about, isn’t it? The unarticulated fact that Aaron had no respect for him or anybody like him, that’s what bothered him the most.

All of these things would remain unknown to him, unnamed emotions buried within the matrix of electrical arc between the synapses of his subconscious. That he only felt a sense of discomfort, one experiences when faced with someone who is armed and you are not, like the cops when you don’t have a gun.

At lunch with all of the employees at the long tables at the end of the warehouse in the corner behind the managers’ offices, where the machine operators, quality control inspectors, and the shipping clerks normally all ate together. David, having almost convinced himself that it had only been “a lucky shot,” called Aaron out.

“Come on, spar with me, you afraid? I won’t hurt you.”

“You’re right, Daniel, I am afraid. Not of you hurting me, but of going to jail after I make you my bitch. You know that I don’t like to play with you people, so leave me the fuck alone before your pale ass gets embarrassed.”

Everyone stopped eating to look at the big white boy who was obviously about to whip the little niggers ass.

“I don’t believe all that Marine Corps mystic bullshit. You’re just a scary assed old man afraid to take what you got coming. Come on, grandpa, show me your best move.”

Aaron glanced at his sensei, and Charleston smiled as he gave him a subtle nod of approval. Within an eye blink, Daniel was on his knees, gasping for breath with Aaron, now somehow now standing behind him with his hand around David’s windpipe. David’s crotch now dampened from the kidney punch as Aaron leaned down and whispered into his reddening ear, doing his best Clint Eastwood.

“You ain’t gonna believe what happens next.”

Then he released his grip from David’s neck, bowed curtly to his sensei, he walked outside to smoke a cigarette.

The Vietnamese, Nigerian, and Cuban workers began to shout, stomp, clap, and pound the table with their fists as Aaron headed out to the loading docks. These people were not his friends; they had no great love for him, he was, after all, black, a people whose culture was just as mystifying to them as the defeated traditions of their motherlands were to him. Each had the misfortune of having less than ennobling encounters with black people in their short time in america. Their collective experience has already formed a negative perception of black people in this country. A perception based more on personal experience than any cultural prejudices or media influence.

Now, those who lived in black neighborhoods wanted nothing more than to get out of them, and those who had children wanted to get their children out of their schools. It wasn’t a matter of money; the Nigerians he had known in college had gone to one-room schools with all grades in a single building, and they had all been taught by a single Jesuit. Yet, they could speak French, Latin, and English as well as their native tongue and do calculus. The not enough money argument didn’t wash; this was about a culture that didn’t value knowledge or respect education.

The greatest enemy black Americans faced now and in the immediate future was their own deeply entrenched anti-intellectualism. Aaron, in his baggy jeans and oversized tee shirts, and black bandana covering his short dreads, looked to their eyes like any other young black man in America. It didn’t take long after you met him to realize that he seemed to exist in a completely different world in his own head. It was the geek factor; he looked thuggish at first, but in reality, he was a rather shy, soft-spoken artistic type.

Aaron worked hard to try to blend into the background in the hood, but on closer inspection, you would begin to notice things about him that didn’t fit the current stereotype for the black urban male. The ever-present book, a different one every week, it seemed. Sci-Fi, philosophy, fantasy, psychology, physics, he had an eclectic range of subjects that interested him as a reader. For political reasons, he wore no gold, diamonds, or Nike sneakers, “the personal being political” and vice versa. You were just as likely to hear rock as hip hop coming from his stereo speakers. His two favorite tapes now being Alanis Morrisettes ‘Jagged Little Pill’ and Tupac Shakurs ‘All Eyez On Me’ Aaron was an unapologetic geek.

The immigrants provided by Catholic Charities liked him because he was the only one in management who had bothered to try to learn even a little of their languages. He ate at the big tables with the rest of the workers on his shift instead of holed up in his office like the rest of the managers. He ate their food. His friend Ha Nguyen said that he was really Vietnamese because he ate his mom’s sauce, and Ha didn’t even eat his mom’s sauce.

He never raised his voice or embarrassed them in front of the other workers. When he needed to talk to you, he called you into his office if it was something too important to discuss on the shop floor. He was a quiet, competent, easy-going manager. While the rest of the managers spent most of their time in the office playing FreeCell, looking at internet porn, and humping the FOBs in quality control. Aaron finished his paperwork, peeked at the computer’s history to see what his coworkers had been up to on the previous shift. The only thing of interest to him online was gaming information.

The porn you could get free was pretty lame, while the gaming walkthroughs, hints, and cheat codes written by even bigger nerds than he was were excellent. After a few hours of paperwork, he spent the rest of his shift on the factory floor. No one at this job had ever been given the nigger treatment by him, so to them, he was a black man worthy of their respect. David, on the other hand, was an arrogant asshole. In their eyes, after he kicked the big white boys’ ass, Aaron could do no wrong.

Everyone was surprised at the outcome of their little sparring match, everyone except the manager, Charlton Puglisi. Their coworkers erroneously assumed that Aaron was afraid to fight or that because he would not that he didn’t know how, all of course was wrong. Aaron was a seasoned brawler; why waste his time on these scrubs at the warehouse? There wasn’t anything to be gained in such a fight. The way he looked at it, kicking the asses of the guys who worked here would be like beating up a little girl.

Charlton’s large belly jiggled as he chuckled to himself as he walked over and helped David to his feet. Most of the crew had followed Aaron outside, their lunches forgotten, as they went to touch the hem of the garment to congratulate their new people’s champion. Charlton watched the night crew walk past David without a single one stopping to help him or showing any concern for his health.

The whole thing played out as if it were a scene straight from an old Shaw Brothers kung fu flick. Charlton watched the people’s faces alight with a fierce joy as if they had kicked David’s ass themselves. Aaron was disciplined and hardworking on the job and in the dojo. He could teach him his skills, but he could not teach him how to inspire hope in people whose lives had been filled with despair. He couldn’t teach anyone how to earn the respect of another human being. It would not be necessary, after his small victory, he exited the building gracefully, offering neither threat nor boast.

Charlton respected Aaron Moore. Hell, if he didn’t have to babysit this insolent little shit here on the floor, he’d be out there with the rest of ‘em shaking his hand too. As Charlton looked down at the still kneeling district supervisor, David looked up at him with that need more information look in his eyes, still not quite understanding how it was possible for that scrawny little bastard to drop him effortlessly. Charlton extended a hand and helped him to his feet as he asked the question.

“Well, frat boy, while you were in college doing beer bongs and partying your ass off with the occasional break to cram for your exams that “Old Man” as you put it there, whose over ten years older than you and half your size was in the ring boxing other marines, studying martial arts in the dojo, and hitting the gym every day after putting in a full day’s work because he never knew when the only thing between his living and dying might be how well he could fight.”

“He was just a cook.” Danial whined derisively.

“You dumb fuck. Charlton laughed. He was a Marine.”

A few weeks back, David had even talked Aaron out of quitting when he got pissed off at the company because they had rehired a girl he had just fired. David didn’t want Aaron to quit because he wouldn’t be able to collect unemployment if he quit. He already knew that the company was planning to lay Aaron off; he just wanted to be sure he got the best deal possible. Aaron returned his set of keys to the building, left the conference room filled with the stink of cheap pizza.

He climbed into the cab of his aged 1987 vermillion Chevy pickup and drove home, not listening to Alanis Morrisette’s ‘Jagged Little Pill’ on the cassette player. This was not the first time he had been fired. Still, there was the same sense of humiliation one felt after being rejected, no matter how shitty the job. It was a lot like getting dumped by someone when you were already planning to dump them. You didn’t want to be with them; you just wanted the satisfaction of rejecting them before they rejected you. It’s the same thing with the McJob.

It’s all shite work. But it still stings a bit when you get fired, even from a job you hate. Aaron hated every job he’d ever had in his life. He didn’t remember driving home; he just looked up, and he was sitting in the parking lot of his apartment complex. What the fuck, never collected unemployment before. It’ll be a good chance to catch up on my painting. Aaron walked up the cement stairs to his one-bedroom apartment, relieved that this part of his life was finally over.

-about the author

JD Cloudy’s poetry has disappeared in the literary journals: Fatfizz, Mad Swirl, Texas Beat Anthology, Danse Macabre, Du Jour, and Death List Five. He has won no literary awards, entered no slam competitions, and never completed college. He lives to write in Dallas, TX.