It was about this time last year that a cop pulled me over on the Staten Island Expressway on a Sunday night. It was 2:30 in the goddamn morning, which I guess made it Monday. I vividly remember the bright, red flashers blinding my eyes. Truth be told, I didn’t care about the ticket I was about to receive, my third for speeding in six months. I didn’t even care that my license was surely going to be suspended, so long as it was valid long enough for me to get as far away from Washington as possible.
I had decided earlier that night that I was done with Georgetown, at least for the time being. Forget the Far East or down under. I was going to spend a year abroad in Far Rockaway and Downing’s Island.
This decision required an explanation to my family. My father was pretty adamant that I go back to school. Adamant, meaning he’d pay for me to go but not to live in his house. It took a good deal of bullshitting, but I finally convinced him that I was burned out with school, burned out on drugs and needed time to find my chi.
As a little kid, I remember my mother telling me I couldn’t play football because I would need my hands to become a doctor. I found it decidedly ironic that she now suggested that I ought to find work at a construction site in Far Rockaway, where condos and townhouses were being built on the boardwalk. Actually, this suggestion was more like a requirement if I wanted a bed with clean sheets and an occasional meal.
The construction company told me that I would be installing plumbing, which was good to know ahead of time, since it gave me a chance to check myself in the mirror to make sure I toed the line between showing too little crack and too much. I left the house for my first day of work and embarked on what would become my daily routine of driving through Long Beach, windows cracked, morning radio babbling. I felt a strange sense of pride, as though I could now call myself a working man, a tin lunch pail kind of guy. I rolled this idea around, pretending that it was something I could get used to. For a while, I actually let myself believe that this was the start of my new life-not just a year off from school. I was slumming it, baby, and it felt great. Then, the stench from Jones Beach ambled into the car, and I lost my train of thought. I would soon realize just how much like shit the beach can smell when the winds change.
I was the first member of the plumbing crew to arrive at the site. I stood around, feeling hopelessly out of place, until the supervisor-a young, white kid named Tony showed. He had the look of a genuine construction site worker with the sleeves of his t-shirt cut off and his muscles bulging. He took me into the shed and started pointing at things for me to load into his truck: a chipping gun, a hacksaw, a handsaw and all other kinds of tools that I don’t care to remember.
As I began my work, a car sped into the parking lot, kicking up dirt and gravel. Two dark-skinned guys got out of the car. I pegged them as islanders, and I later learned they were both from St. Vincent. The bigger of the two began singing as they walked toward the shed.
”’ere comes the sun … “
“Let’s go, you fairy,” Tony said smiling. “We’re gonna get out of here early today.”
“Hey Tony,” the driver said, “who’s yer white boy?”
“I’m Brandon,” I said, sticking out a hand. He ignored it and told me his name was Hunter and that the other guy in the car was Ali. According to Hunter, Ali didn’t talk. He told me to start loading things into the truck.
“You know what? Get going with that generator, boy. We gonna whip your fat white ass into shape,” Hunter laughed, and pointing to the generator.
The machine was a 100 pound behemoth of welded metal set on two wheels, and crappy wheels at that. Why no one ever bothered putting another two wheels on this thing is beyond me. I got a grip on the handles, and lifted the generator like a bastard wheelbarrow. Hunter pointed to a site about a half-a-mile away.
“Are you joking?” I asked him.
He chuckled. “You’d bettah get going, or Tony gonna whup your ass when his generator not ‘dere.”
Every day for three weeks while I pushed the generator, the same thought repeated over and over again in my mind: This is not my life. At the time though, it was so acutely my life, I often wondered: If I could just get this generator to the ocean, could I jump on it and float away?
Brandon Sloane is a junior in the College and an associate editor of the Georgetown Voice. He looked like a member of The Village People in his construction gear.
