The Youth I Never Was

Sarah Ansani

"Wherever one may live, whatever work one may

do, is it possible even for a moment to find

a haven for the body

or peace for the mind?

- Kamo no Chomei

            At the beginning of my last semester as an undergrad, one of my professors sarcastically reminded the class that there are indeed people whose happiness depends on the beer and TV after work. All the students in the class laughed, perhaps as a form of relief from their separation from those beer-guzzling nothings that most likely never had the opportunity to sit in a college classroom and laugh at those less educated.

            To my fellow classmates, these people are probably cashiers, truck drivers, and industrial factory workers, among other types. They wear blue vests with nametags, and when trained for the job, memorized certain songs celebrating whichever number Walmart they worked for, and now sing the jingle in groups near the double, swinging doors near the lockers, as shoppers push their carts by, snickering. Or these workers are sitting in the big rigs, bitching and complaining on the CB or to their dispatchers about the traffic in New York City or about the goddamned factory workers not having things ready on time. And those factory workers, they follow the steps, the lines, the orders, just to pass the time between smoking and gossiping breaks. They are stained with ink or burnt from metal machines. They label with brand names and logos promotional products that are given away to prospective college students such as pens, book bags, computer mice, and desk décor. They trip over skids, racing out at the end of their ten to twelve hour shift.

            When my professor shared this observation, I didn't laugh. I wasn't separated from the beer-guzzling, gossiping, let's get the hell out of here workers. Paychecks from Walmart, Pleasant Trucking, and Leed's Industries paid for my seat in that class. My mother wears the blue vest and two smiles. My father hates the traffic in New York City and Jersey and I love that beep the time clock makes after I've put in my ten to twelve hours at the factory.

            So, where does the writer come in? I asked myself this many times. I attended the workshopping classes, the round-table discussions consisting of quiet students loving the manuscripts before them. I'd sit in these classes wishing Miss I-Loved-This-Story could be replaced by Brian, who can find something in the world to complain about despite the hours he spends in front of the KF machine, stamping a smiley face die onto leather padfolios that need to be shipped out to the new employees at Walmart #583 in Milwaukee.

            So, when I critique others' work, I feel myself trying to bring the classroom into the factory with me. We surround the wobbling, wooden workbenches, ink and acetone is in the air. The machines are breathing and huffing heat and steam into an already eighty-degree building. We can't be afraid to sweat, bend down, or sign our names as proof that we did this and we did that and we did it right. And as we all stand and sweat at the benches, the sounds of air being released and fifty pound boxes being dropped drowns all the sound of soft, uncertain voices. I'm there with the mandatory let's get this done quick and right attitude, the don't think you're going to get away with this diatribe. Perhaps that would make a big difference from sitting around a wooden table, drinking tea, eating cookies, and being quietly confused. No urgency. You have three days to write a five-page essay on work. Be glad that you don't have just three hours to unpack, hit, heat, pack, and ship three thousand pens.

            Working raised me. Not just to have good work ethic, but it helps me last. I have gone six days straight without eating, four days straight without sleeping, twelve days straight without bathing, and almost five months straight without spending any money on myself. I've gone pretty much my whole college career with hardly any money at all. Endurance teaches us who we are and what we are capable of doing. It not only makes things feel possible, but actually makes them possible. And when you want to be a writer, you need as much endurance as the Taz silk-screening machine in order to outlast all the rejection. And we all know rejection. And you know, rejection is just a choice between two things: learn because of it or suffer because of it. And it really is your choice.

            And here is where the writer comes in. When I tell my peers or the other academics at school that I work in a factory when I'm home in Industrial Town, Pennsylvania, they often say something along the lines of, "Oh, I can only imagine the characters you work with!" This is my turn to laugh because yes, I guess that is all that they can do: imagine. But those "characters" are real enough to me. More real, even, than Miss Everything-You-Write-Is-Fabulous. More real than any accomplishments I've ever made. More real than my college career. More real than my Bachelor's degree.

            What can be more real than Woody, his fake leg, and his pockets full of monkeys he widdled from peach pits? What is more real than his desire to continue walking and lifting his leg over the seat of his Harley, which caused the fake leg in the first place? What is more real than the way he talks about getting high with his girlfriend and driving around, picking berries to put in the iced tea he brings to work? What is more real than Cindy, my boss, a big blonde woman that wears flannel shirts and has hints of a beard, but possesses a personality that erases all that. She is raising her nieces. She claims to not need anyone. She's sarcastic and in charge and I can hear her yell from all the way across the factory floor, despite Larry's radio blaring Metallica in my ear. She is rude and harsh, and best of all, she is lonely. What is more real than the older man I met there and fell in love with? What is more real than our first date at the park, the way he contributed to my talk about trees, or the worry in his face when he saw me cry at work after work crushed my finger and the ring he gave me?

            I might sound bitter. Being home at work and then three hundred miles away as an academic is quite the elixir. At school, I made friends who didn't have to work. Their parents were able to afford for them to have amazing, unpaid internships abroad. Internships that look stellar compared to on-and-off factory work on a resume. Internships that introduced them to a desirable lifestyle; a more professional group of laughter, perhaps. And I used to be envious.

            Stephen King's The Mangler was not completely imaginary. He actually worked in a factory that cleaned hospital sheets. They had to feed these sheets into a machine they nicknamed The Mangler. The workers were given salt pills so they would not pass out from the heat, which has happened to me once, almost twice. When working physical labor, it is more often my body speaking to my mind rather than vice versa. But Stephen King originated from endurance and experience, rather than privilege. Sometimes I think it is best when I create opportunities for myself rather than purchasing them.

            Opportunity. A five-syllable gift I would rather earn than inherit. It's as profound as interning for businessmen in China, doing a summer program in literature at Oxford, backpacking through Europe, or riding a horse across Mongolia, like some of my friends at college have done.  It's as profound as cleaning hospital sheets. It's as profound as smiling at rude customers that are on food stamps but can afford to get that pedicure and wear that brand name. It's as profound as managing to never be in a wreck, always being on time, doing what is expected, driving in New York City, and not getting appreciation for it. It's as profound as waking up dizzy, on the ground, surrounded by feet and worried people who do not know they are being laughed at in college classrooms. But they wouldn't care if they knew, anyway, because they know how to laugh at themselves.

            There is a group of people around my age that I worked with, that by the looks of them, seem unapproachable. They stand at their machines listening to I hate the world, and if you hate me, well, fuck you music. They hit item after item as fluidly as they speak about who Jess called last night while she was drunk or how Junior got in a fight again with Snake. For as long as I can remember, I never really bonded with anyone around my age, and found adults to be better company. The youth that I worked with were raw, sex-driven, drug-forged, young adults that lived on their own and shared everything. They had a love and a compassion that was very real to me. They had a spite and a vengeance that was very real to me. On days that it didn't rain, they would go up to their cars and smoke weed or pop some x and go back to work in ten minutes time. They always looked like they sniffed a line or baked some goods, but were never questioned at work. And that was mainly because the bosses at work were doing the same exact thing. But separately. I was always invited. I was the black sheep, the educated one, the pendulum swinging back and forth between privilege and poverty. But that didn't mean I wasn't capable of having a good time. And I am capable of having a good time…in my own way.

            I guess I don't need to ride my horse across Mongolia or go to China to endure any kind of culture shock. I just had to come back to school where everything is slower, the people are nicer, and therefore seem superficial and banal to me. But are they superficial? Is perversion real to me? At home, I was welcomed and invited by everyone whose door was always unlocked along with their insecurities and inhibitions. Is it rude for me to scoff at my roommates at college who constantly have to have the door to our room locked? Is something wrong with me when I feel my face flush with anger when a girl talks about becoming frightened when seeing a man on campus she does not know? Did I really just get chastised by a professor because I'm smoking a clove? Am I really getting paid to press the play button and switch the lights off in the projection booth? Am I really not getting paid for being a teaching assistant, for doing something that I love?

            But I will not complain. Nothing gets done that way and I'm too focused on making myself content and okay with how things turned and will continue to turn. My mother and my boyfriend, both very hard workers, have something important in common. They work hard at everything they do. Be it killing an army of ants or being a Marine. The job only matters to a point. Yes, I just said that and I'm not even rich. But what matters most is the pride and passion you put into it. You can even take jobs out of the equation. Do everything with passion.

            Cashiers at Walmart may not be passionate about Oxford, but they just may be passionate about their children in college. Truck drivers may not be passionate about doing much else than driving, but it doesn't mean they can't possess a drive. The youth on second shift at Leed's Industries might not be passionate about Mongolia, but that's because they're too passionate about getting by and enjoying the time they earn. These workers earn their contentment, even if that contentment may not be mine. And that's what I'm going to do. I'll earn my contentment one word at a time.

to my friends on second shift

Still, alone, in arms, or pulling away, astray

from the heavy heat of a lover, a lust,

a drug, they awaken.

The flow of blood slowed, the pupils changed

from oily moons to sharp stars.

Reds and blues are muted along with touch. They rise,

a smoke, low and dumb.

Like me, they stand before mirrors and sinks,

look out windows, out at the snow,

conjure up complaints about the ice on the road

and our cheap jalopies with radios that play the strings

of Vivaldi, Metallica, Ralph Stanley, and NPR.

They do not watch the news. They make their own

and they crochet blankets for trembling, flash-frigid nights.

They pull their own strings together

when all that's left is remnants of brownie batter

in the plastic bowl fingered clean.

Before work, they sit in their cars, holding themselves. Together,

or alone, they talk to the rear-view-mirror,

watching coworkers pass and pass.

They work hard in the factory, branding pens, bookbags, etc.,

with company names, pocketing Zippos, Swiss Army Knives,

emptying their wallets for the next few ounces,

or a few colorful capsules of life that will stimulate

the next alien floating above the bed. The next ghost

in the passenger seat, in the radio.

They have nothing to prove.

Let me be their apathy—

I'll smell like whisky and exist within mystical rings

of smoke. I'll cling to lips and be passed and passed

through saliva and the teasing of tongues. I'll be

pressed into ears, napes of necks, bellybuttons, nipples,

and swallowed—again and again.

They are the most human humans I know.

Their skin is moist and salty with sex

and the sweat of labor. It smells smoked and sweet.

I want to trail my finger down their gritty arms,

bending the fine hairs, so their pliant skin

succumbs to my pressure.

Their hair is greasy even when washed, but there exists

the orgasmic illusion of freshness. There are no second

thoughts in the presence of

                                                blood,

                                                            abortions,

                                                                        shared disease,

                                                                                    and pipes,

                                                                        and pills,

                                                            and toys,

                                                and beads.

Their tattoos are cages and bands

with which I want to be bound and gagged. To straddle

the half moon on her hip. To be bent and twisted

in the Kanji on his back.

                                        I want to be their backs—pale and contoured

by a bedrock of bone. Hairless, hard, and cold,

                                                                        expanding,

retracting 

                        with heavy, tobacco breaths.

Their hands are often red, chapped, and raw

stuffed in pockets on cold 8 o'clock breaks. Hats

are pulled down over their harrowed heads.

Neon black nail polish, bracelets up the arms.

A fairy tattoo covering the zigzag scars from razors

pinched between stoned fingers. Piercings up the ears,

jewels in the nose and brows and of course the sly tongue.

Let me be that metallic bead, that desired dew,

                                                                                                charming him.

After work, they party hard and heavy like rocks

that only roll when full of acid and ecstasy

and chewing gum to stop the grinding of the teeth.

The heavy metal die in the oven glows black,

grows hot. The bravest drop

                                                            their pants or bare their backs

for the burning brand.

They stick cigars between their teeth,

                                                                        clench,

                                                                                                and scream.

They inhabit the corners of dives when they are together,

the corners of dark rooms when they are alone

with crank hangovers, transparent glass pipes,

homemade bongs made of plastic bottles

and cans of Mountain Dew smothered

with the brown, sticky spit of chew. They stare

past stolen neon signs flashing in their windows

like hallucinations,

                                    like their lives before my eyes.

The guys play guitars and the girls cook meatloaf

with fresh vegetables. They eat like me.

The food fuels our bodies to do different things.

In a world where doors do not shut,

why not watch their limbs flush and rise?

Why not stroke a thigh that does not flinch?

Why not lick lips that are never chapped with drought?

The girls are dying tonight, to live. And all the guys

are dying to get in.

No one's heart is beating as hard as theirs.

No one's blood is more blue, yet ready for red.

No one else's skin is as ready to bruise,

                                                                        to bleed,

                                                                                                to sweat.

Tonight, there is a spot for me like a stain

on the carpeted floor. They'll turn off

the TV and we'll all get lit, and pass and pass. Out

the window, I'll inevitably look.

I'll see the snow and the ice still on the road.

Still on the road.                         Still                        on the road

as they teach me to die to live tonight.

            Teach me to live to die tonight.

                        Teach me to live, to die.