K.T.: “Boy that warms the cockles of your heart.”
S.P.: “What did you say?”
K.T.: “Cockles of your heart, read a book.”
S.P.: “What does it mean?”
K.T.: “What does it mean? Uh, I’m not sure.”
S.P: “At least I understand everything I read.”
“Cockles of one’s heart” means one’s innermost feelings.
***
Warning: Sleep-hazy recollections follow.
When I arrived at work at one post meridian, we were loading the finished, crated product into a fifty-three foot truck. Since the fifty-three foot truck cannot swing around to meet its opened rear to the loading bay dock, this process involves A.G. driving the battery-operated forklift and moving the approximately four hundred pound crates from the loading bay into the truck, where others will help move the crates into position with a pallet jack and brute force. I recall around forty crates or so, and everyone had been loading since around ten ante meridian. It didn’t help that when tightening the crates to the forklift, M.N. strapped it down so tight that K.R. and B.E. were having trouble unstrapping the squat beasts. They started screaming over to the loading bay, at which point V.C. stuffed some tissues into the next strapped crate.
At around two thirty post meridian, the dirty deed had been done, and the truck sat pregnant with product. Much of the forklift’s battery had been drained by the back and forth, back and forth. However, there was still enough charge, sixty percent or so, to take care of the second truck. This one had been crammed full of wooden crate material, sides, tops, bottoms, all stacked up and ready to be transported.
To give you an idea of what the crates are like, when fully assembled, they stand about eight to nine feet tall. The bases and sides weigh ten to fifteen pounds each, with the top an additional five to ten. This phone booth sized coffin is nail-gunned together, and the door is screwed in. Though not the most attractive girl on the block, she’ll still take whatever you have to give her into her hole, and keep it trapped in there. Wait, that makes her like the psycho-ex that keeps on calling you and saving the used condoms forever and ever. But I digress.
Tops and bottoms are stacked ten to a pallet. Sides are probably forty or fifty to a pallet. These numbers necessitate the use of the forklift, because we sure as hell can’t move that sort of weight ourselves, except piecemeal. Given that this second truck is also a fifty-three footer, what we have to do is hoist a pallet jack into the truck to move successive pallets forward as we unload the earlier pallets. Since there are so many pallets, and its already late, the plan is to just get them unloaded into the parking lot, and move them to the storage facility later.
A.G. had just walked away to eat his lunch, KFC I believe, when M.N. called him back into duty. This infuriated him so badly that later, he went to get his biscuit, took two bites, said now it was hard as a rock, and chucked it sidearm off into the grass lot adjoining the parking lot, a good sixty feet away. That biscuit flew like a chicken shot from a cannon. It dropped tiny pebble-like crumbs all over the parking lot.
We unload the first fourteen or so pallets without much difficulty. The problem comes in magic number fifteen, a sides pallet. These eight to nine foot sides are unwieldy and prohibitively heavy when stacked together. At this point, a wrench and the number seven have been blinking on the forklift’s console for a significant amount of time, but what choice have we but to ignore the warning we don’t understand? This sides pallet was also off balance, as the pallet itself was off center. A.G. had to try to balance the forklift tines beneath the center of gravity, rather than on the pallet. He cleared the sides of the truck trailer, and was starting to back up, when the forklift seized up. Everything stopped working, and in slow motion, you could watch forty to fifty side panels waterfall off to the side, tumbling away from the forklift, spilling off like a new river.
To our surprise, none of the panels had been damaged, but to our chagrin, we had to move all of them piece by piece onto a separate pallet. Further, the forklift refused to function, like a donkey overworked in the summer’s heat. It sat there, silent ass, refusing to go anywhere. We had one sides pallet left on the truck. M.N. first suggested that we get it all down in one rush. Three on one side, three on the other, we carefully balance it out of the trailer, then drop that shit on the ground. I had to ask him if he was serious, to which he replied he wasn’t. We’d have to take this one down piece by piece.
The limiting factor on these sides is not the weight, but the size. They are a bitch to move around, because you either can’t see where you are going, or produce a very large footprint as you move around. More than once I almost clocked someone because I couldn’t see them and chose to turn at a bad time. However, we finally got it onto a separate pallet. There we stood, panting and frowning; it seemed appropriate that the forklift would choose this moment to reactivate.
A.G. took it down to recharge. Meanwhile, we had sixteen pallets stuck in the parking lot, and no way to move them. M.N. at this point suggested we “take fifty.” K.R. bristled at this idea. He was tired of us sitting around “with our dicks in our hands,” and proposed the mad genius idea to transport the tops and bottoms pallets to the storage facility using naught but a pallet jack and teams of two.
Allow me to diagram for you the circuitous path that such a pallet jack team must traverse. The parking lot is a good football field in length, and on a gradual downslope. At the far end, you must hang a left onto a ten degree incline, then continue up to the left until you have completed a one hundred and eighty degree turn. At this point, the incline continues, and you must go about half a football field up, then make a ninety degree turn to the right, at which point you have found the Storage USA facility. Take it up, activate the gate, then push on through as the incline increases in slope to twenty or twenty-five degrees. Push upwards about seventy-five yards, hang a right, and stumble forward another fifty yards until you arrive at our two storage bays, then jack the pallet in. Simple.
I had the good fortune to volunteer to help K.R. and to take the keys to the storage bay door locks. We had no problem going downhill. Hell, K.R. jumped on the pallet jack and rode it a good twenty-five yards, with me hanging on behind with one hand, trying to slow it down, and really just running fast just to try not to fall down.
The first problem came with the incline, when he pulled and I pushed. We had to run to get it up, and that was no simpleton folly. As the incline increased, so did our patience for this job decrease, but we huffed and we puffed until we managed to round the final bend and stumble it over to the bay doors. K.R. took a few steps away while I went to unlock the bay door. When I turned back he had collapsed onto the ground, chest heaving, breaths shallow and faint.
The family using their van to load up items stared at him with a mix of curiosity, pity and laughter.
I wasn’t going to get the pallet into the bay by myself, so K.R. called B.E. to come help me. There is a step leading into the bay, which necessitated going wheel first with the jack. We of course didn’t think of that, so we went fork first, where the jack’s profile is naturally lower. Three times we ran it forward, three times we battering rammed the two inch lip. My body jolted as if a lover touched me. Three times. We finally managed to get the jack positioned wheel first, and with me pulling and B.E. pushing, slammed the jack home. Of course, I fall over and B.E. almost pushes the pallet jack over me.
On the way back, we all agreed that we were not going to do this anymore. In the end, we had to compromise by putting the sides pallets into the loading bay, then stacking the tops and bottoms tight, and hoping no one would steal them. “But K.T.,” you ask the phosphorous screen before you, “who would plunder such a strange assortment of wooden crating?” There are some screwed up people out there, and I can only hope right now no one has stolen it.
***
After work, I thought I was going to a bar, but it turned out that I was babysitting. We were all headed to Galaxies, a pool bar in
G.B. had just gotten off work, while K.C. was still finishing up some last minute assignments. J.L. and E.X. had previously scouted out the area and were waiting outside, while V.P. and A.T. were en route, to arrive at seven post meridian. So, myself, G.B., J.L. and E.X. headed off to Galaxies.
Several things strike me as unique about Galaxies. The area is quite capacious and open, despite its basement situation. There are a slew of televisions decorating the walls, as well as a main projection screen displaying the most popular sporting event at the time. Galaxies must contain thirty full sized pool tables, with wide enough alleys between to disallow clumsy people from clocking each others on their pool cue recoil. Every time I enter Galaxies, it is deserted. There are no more than forty people in the entire area at any one time.
We arrive at happy hour, and so order two pitchers of beer and a large cheese pizza. Our waitress is a cute
I have to make special mention of this “pizza.” The mozzarella has extended all the way to the crust, so that there is no technical crust, just a delineation between the state of being pizza, and the state of not being pizza. The dough is undercooked, and the entire venture is lukewarm, leading us to wonder if it was prepared using a heat lamp, a giant non functioning microwave, or my private thought, a fat cook lying on top of it for fifteen minutes. It is not nauseating, but I observe that if I were alone in a sewer, lost, and starving, if this pizza and a diseased rat were side by side, nine times out of ten I would deign to consume a slice of this monstrosity. The tenth time, yes, I would consume the rat.
We vacuum through the pitchers in due time. G.B. pours me some, which I am forced to accept, as angry G.B. equates to injured K.T. In due time, K.C., V.P. and A.T. arrive. Our party, seated comfortably at a four person table, now stretches the same boundaries as a seven person melee. More pitchers are called for, as well as quesadillas and wings. Thankfully, their pizza incompetence does not extend to their quesadillas or their chicken wings. I didn’t partake of the quesadilla, but the hot and barbecue wings were done to perfection, basted thick in their own savory sauces, still piping hot, but not to the point of scalding the precious folds of the inner mouth. A culinary miracle erasing the horrid memory of that damned pizza.
As we sit there, we get more pitchers. G.B., J.L., K.C. and A.T. get noticeably drunk, though G.B.’s was frontloaded, and everyone else’s was backloaded. As the drinking madness commences, V.P. and I compare our PDAs. (Yes, I bought a PDA. Yes, I’m sorry that I did. No I’m not returning it. No, so far I’m not becoming one of those people. I’m just halfway there, like I’m halfway to crack addiction every day I live.) I bought a Palm Z22, he bid for and won a Dell Axim x50 from eBay. Damned if his didn’t give me PDA envy. His color screen was larger than my PDA was. He had so many cool options on there. I only felt it necessary and just to record a task on there for him (“make love to men”). In return, he called my PDA “cute” and wondered why it was so scratched. J.L. tried to stab his finger through my PDA in an attempt to activate it sans stylus. Damned if he wasn’t almost successful.
Much of the night is a blur, as it tends to be when you’re unused to drinking and having fun. I do recall looking at my cell phone at one point and realizing three hours had passed. What follows is a pastiche of what I recall: G.B. once extruded feces for two minutes straight after a four-day constipation binge. K.C. has roughly fifty bosses at work, and all of them are jockeying for his time. I yell and wave my hands much more when intoxicated. K.C. likes touching V.P. inappropriately, going so far as to throw his arm around V.P.’s shoulder and sway to the music, whatever it was, some of the popular music the kids are listening to now. K.C. likes punching G.B. The drunker J.L. is, the more he sounds like an intelligent three-year old, still able to string together coherent sentences, but unable to articulate even the most basic words. Trying to comprehend him to any great extent is impossible, and nodding is a good method of interpretation. A.T. loves speed drinking contests. I exist to provide others with entertainment while they are killing time at work. Salt will not stick to my dry forearm. If you bang a table hard enough, beer glasses will tip over and spill on you. Yes, we still laugh at someone that looks like they pissed their pants, even though not ten seconds ago, we saw the glass fall that wet them. The Astros beat the Cardinals in game 6, spurring an incoherent rant from J.L. about how all the analysts had erred when predicting the Astros demise, though they were ahead three games to two in the series. If I mock anyone, A.T. will kill me. If I mock A.T., A.T. will kill me. If I mock myself, A.T. will not kill me, because he will make my life so miserable I will kill myself. A.T. can fit an entire piece of pizza into his mouth at once. I will teach G.B. how to write, but not about poop. In exchange, he will teach me about computers, though presumably not about computers cooled with poop. J.L. thinks I am fat, and took every opportunity to make a hog-snorting sound. I am a girl when it comes to people calling me fat, calling them out at every perceived slight, no matter how far away from the truth. If everyone thinks I am fat, I must be fat. I don’t know why I ate all those wings, it’s time to throw up after I finish writing this. Damn I hate being fat, I wish I was skinny like all the girls in magazines. Then again, I wish I was with the girls in the magazines, so I don’t know how that’s going to work out. We all approve of lesbians, and encourage them in all aspects of life. Finally, none of us can really go back to Galaxies.
Such a shame, not being able to go back, but none of us will sit easy should we do so. The problem is A.T.’s quaffing copious amounts of beer. A.T. got real pale real fast, and asked G.B. for a glass to vomit into. G.B. immediately sent A.T. off to the bathroom, and commented that if A.T. was going to vomit, it would be better in there than out here. In retrospect, I beg to differ.
Five minutes pass, then another two. I get worried about A.T., and my bladder strains and stretches from the five Pepsis I have downed at this point (“Oh Hardcore!” F you J.L.). I get up and go to the bathroom. Mistake number one.
Opening the door, the most sour smell greets me, of wasted bile and chicken fingers and half-digested pizza and Satan knows what else, so rank was the odor. A.T. is by the urinal at the back, wiping up his sick and dropping paper towels into the urinal itself. He looks at me, a strange glaze in his eyes. “The stalls were locked, I couldn’t get in.” He continues to wipe the inside and the top of the urinal, such was the force of his vomit. I walk over to the stall, and pull outward. The door swings like a thirties dancer. “F*ck.”
A.T. is paler, and I’m sure his skin would be clammy if I dared go near and touch his bare skin. He goes over to the sink, rinses his mouth out, wipes his forehead a few times, then goes to the stall to sit down. Fair enough, compose yourself before going back into the bar.
A few more minutes pass, and I get worried. I revisit the bathroom, open the door, and all I see before the door swings back shut is A.T.’s faded blue jeans and his tennis shoes in a kneeling position, still inside the stall.
The third visit, I had to look through the crack between the door and the stall wall. (Have you ever had a B.M. in public, and you stare through that tiny slit, and you think someone is staring back at you? It is quite disorienting, because how do you call them out when you’re at your most vulnerable? You just have to suck it up and let it go. Taken the wrong way, both those phrases are disgusting.) A.T. is slumped on the toilet bowl. This is not good. I knock and he manages to get to his feet. He must have vomited into the toilet at some point, then fell forward into a stupor, for when he arises, his forehead is bright red, in the shape of the back of the toilet seat where his head came to rest. A.T. walks over to the sink, leans over on his arm, breathes in the sink fumes.
I walk over to the paper towel dispenser to get him some towels, and when I look back in, the running water is now pink, brackish, like leftover milk from a pink flavored kid’s cereal. The swirling water only adds to the effect. A.T. vomited into the sink, without a peep. I go grab even more towels, and he remains slumped over the sink, afraid to show anyone. I looked in later, and the water level was rising. In another five minutes, he might have drowned if he hadn’t moved. Apparently, A.T.’s pizza wasn’t chewed into a manageable size, so it came back out much as it went in. Admittedly, for this pizza, it might have been an improvement, but I didn’t want to test the waters.
We all took turns visiting, and as time passed, we knew we had to get going before an employee went in there. V.P. goes to get the bill, and as we’re all settling up, I reach into my pocket, and pull out none other than the keys to the storage bays at work that I forgot to return. So much for my plan of sleeping in tomorrow.
I revisit the bathroom again, and J.L. is keeping A.T. company. As soon as I walk in, I know, just know, know as much as I know my own name which I am not telling you, that A.T. has thrown up. Again. Sure enough, the wall paper towel dispenser/waste disposal is no longer virgin. A priest may have to come to sanctify it. J.L. missed it (he was pretty gone by that point), and was whispering like a three year old, so I had even less chance of understanding what was going on. My best guess, A.T. stood up, walked over to get his own towels, then projectile vomited while standing upright, because the splash pattern started at about his head level. Given that some of it had actually stretched past the extended trash basket and pooled around the floor, it had some force behind it, and must have been an explosion worthy of a building implosion. Through, little white strands, like maggots, lay unwrithing in the now orange-flavored sick.
We finally manage to roll out. Consider the urinal covered in sick with paper towels jamming it, the sink choked with uneaten pizza, the paper towel dispenser that dispenses evil, and you see why we will not be going back anytime soon.
The best part of the night was the return train, as we had to get A.T. home. G.B. and J.L. drove A.T.’s car, while I followed behind. When we got him to his house, I would take those two back to the parking garage, where they could mount their own mechanical steeds and ride home.
Well, the ride back from A.T.’s house was nothing short of amazing. J.L., now completely in his cups and incoherent, is freezing because I need the window down to keep me awake. Thank goodness I had all those Pepsis earlier, I had a feeling something like this might happen. I tell him to put on my jacket, which is about as successful as telling a dog to put on a sweater. He is rolling in the backseat with my jacket, stuffing his hands repeatedly into the pockets, sticking his head into the sleeves, and muttering the entire time. Then, he takes to slapping me and G.B. with the sleeves, because he can’t operate the damn coat. Finally, at one point, his left hand reaches forward and starts groping my leg. Forward and forward it goes, freaking me out, until he manages to reach the window button, and raise the window. I was surprised he was that coordinated while drunk and tired. Later, for no reason, he opened the back door while on the highway. Also, there was alternating talk from him of dying alone/with us dying with him, and killing as many people driving on the road as we could.
I finally dropped them off around one thirty ante meridian, made it back here around two ante meridian, and have been typing for the past ninety minutes or so. In five hours, I will have to stop at work to drop off two tiny keys, before returning here to try to get some sleep before class and work in the afternoon. I will be tired and cranky all day afternoon, and I’m sure the day will suffer, especially with the alcohol I drank. I hope there’s no hangover.
And you know what? It was worth it.
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