First, a disclaimer. I'm part Native American, so the above image is completely not offensive. Don't even try to get me on this one, because making fun of your own people is really just self-deprecation. Because I'm so humble. So really, not only is the above image not offensive, it's actually virtuous. It's not easy being this good all the time, but somebody has to set an example.
The summer before senior year of high school, I turned seventeen and needed gas money so I could cruise around in my rattling, vibrating Saturn. It was a great car. The only fully-functioning part of it was the sunroof. The automatic window on the driver's side had to be pulled up manually if you lowered it more than halfway. The speakers were blown. The previous owner was a smoker, so it smelled pretty awful at first and the upholstery was speckled with cigarette burns. The entire vehicle vibrated in an almost vulgar fashion when idling at red lights. The steering was misaligned to such an extreme that I had to cock the steering wheel at a 45 degree angle to drive in a straight line. The previous owner had also rear-ended an SUV and put a hole in the front bumper, which he patched with a dinner-plate-sized smear of copper-colored putty. The car was dark blue. I put a Band-Aid on the blemish. It was so bad, but so good, because it was MY car.
In order to drive MY car, I also had to pay for MY gas, so I started looking for a job. I had no experience doing anything, and didn't know where to start. My boyfriend at the time was working at a now-defunct 1950's-themed pizza and ice cream joint down the street from my house. He told his boss I was looking for a job so they hired me on the spot. Naively, I was flattered, until I soon realized that they were not exactly selective with their employees, all of whom were paid $5 an hour under the table.
This fine establishment, Brownie's, reeked of fried chicken, even though that wasn't on the menu. Years before, the building was home to a fried chicken joint called Jackrabbit, and the smell continued to cling to every crevice and waft out of every ceiling tile. The smell alone would have been enough to produce only bad memories of my first job, but there were just so many wrong things that happened there, the memories are now one prolonged, smelly blur of discomfort, trauma, and indignity.
The prospect of spending the summer working with my boyfriend was almost a consolation for the fried chicken stench that quickly found its way into all my pores and hair follicles. But no, the owner sadistically gave us completely opposite schedules, making it impossible to ever get together. Oh well, I thought, at least I'm making some money. That is, I consoled myself with that thought until I saw the owner stealing money from the tip jar.
Most of the time, I had the pleasure of working with the owner's derelict 27 year old son, who couldn't get a real job because he had some serious shit on his criminal record. Somehow, that didn't deter a woman from reproducing with him, because he had a kid. I imagine that about half his pay went towards child support and the other half was spent on drugs, because those were the only two things this guy would talk about. His kid, doing drugs, oh, and karate. He labored under the delusion that he had once been a karate champion, and never tired of regaling me with the tale of how he was ejected from a competition because he kicked someone's knee so hard their kneecap came out of their skin. This guy was unreal.
Did I mention that this place also sold Coca-cola and Looney Tunes merchandise, and I was required to purchase (with my own money) a Taz t-shirt to wear to work every day? I am not a big girl, but I had to buy an XL, because most of their customers were so enormous that they really didn't bother to carry smaller sizes. And, keeping with the 1950s theme, they played exclusively 1950s music. That would have been fine, but they played the same three or four records over and over again without any variation. To this day, when I hear "Duke of Earl" I curl up in the fetal position and become catatonic until the aural raping stops. (The worst part is, that song is from 1962, so they have forced my hatred to bleed into another perfectly good decade.)
One balmy summer evening, I was working with a middle-aged woman named Jeanie. Jeanie had a permed mullet, but that was the least of her troubles. It was a slow night (they were all slow nights, as most people in town knew better than to set foot in Brownie's). All evening, the only customers had been a couple of guys who sat in a corner booth eating pizza. Jeanie was telling me her sob story, which was, admittedly, legitimately and terribly sad. She was explaining how, a few years prior, her son had choked to death on his own vomit after a night of binge drinking. The flood gates were open. On her face. And then some other flood gates opened. She stopped in mid-sentence and said, "Uh-oh, my tampon just flooded, I'll be right back."
I stood behind the counter in shock, still trying to process the multiple levels of horror that had just been presented to me. When Jeanie returned from the bathroom, I was still numb. She looked pale and sickly, I assumed because she was upset and possibly anemic from blood loss. "You have to go in the bathroom," she stammered.
"Uh, why?"
"Someone shit on the wall. I can't clean it up, I'll toss my cookies, you gotta do it."
It was like one of those nightmares where you try to scream but nothing comes out. I couldn't protest. She steered me towards the bathroom and handed me some spray bottles. As I neared the threshold, I finally found my meek voice. "Gloves?"
"What?"
"Gloves, I need gloves. I can't clean poop with my bare hands."
She walked away and returned a minute later with two plastic grocery bags. No gloves. I trudged into the bathroom, turned to the left, and nearly choked to death on my vomit. Oh. My. God. There was a mountainous turd on the floor, just to the left of the doorway. On the wall next to the door frame, starting just below the light switch, was a streak of feces smeared from about the height of my ribcage all the way down to the floor. It must be noted that the toilet was against the opposite wall, so this was clearly not an accident attributable to poor aim.
To this day, I can't decide what is a more likely scenario. Did someone poop on the floor and then manhandle the turd to create their own version of the Lascaux cave paintings? Or did someone jump up in mid-defecation so that the emerging Mud Golem streaked down the wall by the sheer force of gravity? It's just one of those questions we will never be able to answer. Every once in a while when I have trouble sleeping, questions like this gnaw at my brain like so many hungry rodents. I live a tortured existence.
That night, I showered for a long time and washed my hands until my knuckles were raw. I felt cheap and violated, and cheaper still when I pondered the injustice that hookers probably feel the same way at the end of the night, but they have earned a lot more money.
Once I stopped working there and set higher standards for myself, like not working anywhere that won't give me a W-2 each January, I thought my days of touching strangers' poo were behind me. As you will see in the second part of our story, I was terribly mistaken.
