A Punker's Notes [Original Novel]

Part One: Entry 14

“You take one of these sheets here,” A young Mexican guy, Jorge, tells me. He grabs a four-by-five foot section of sheet metal from a stack sitting on a wooden pallet. “Then put it in here.”

He points towards two clamps extending from the arms of a fat press-punch machine. The huge gray thing is a good three feet taller than me.

“Make sure it’s secure and then push this green button.”

Jorge pushes the button. The arms shift swinging the sheet metal in close. The teeth of the press begin chomping on the metal. The sheet moves in and out of the press at different degrees. It’s inside, then out, turned ninety degrees, back in and the chewing starts again. The machine continues this activity for a good minute shifting the piece around, back and forth and side to side. The metal is shifted in jerky movements until a good portion of it is consumed. The piece then is extended back out to its original starting position.

Jorge releases the clips that hold the finished product firm then places it on a pile of other finished sheets.

“Now you do the same thing till that stack is finished,” he tells me. “Then I’ll bring you more.”

I commence on the task staring off into space while the machine goes through its routine.

Halfway through the pile I look up at the clock on the wall. It’s 7:30 a.m. Nine and half hours until I finish my work day. As I work, the first day on a new job at a sheet metal factory, I think, “Wow..., this is cool, so easy, just put this in, and stand here.”

That afternoon at coffee break I sit down at a table near older guys.

“Yeah,” Jim, a red headed spot-welder sits talking with a black man who looks to be in his early-sixties, “I was sittin’ there in that traffic after work last Friday and I’m thinkin’..., ‘Is that Brown up there in that gold Wildcat?’ ”

“Yeah,” the black guy nods. “I thought I saw you back there.”

“What was that all about?”

“Some young punk in a Ford rear-ended a VW bus..., shit all over the place.”

I turn my attention to a crusty deep fried burrito I’ve just bought off of a ‘Roach Coach,’ a commissary truck. I munch on the oily thing and listen to Brown who has switched topics sharing his experience playing trombone.

“Yeah..., used ta play with a lotta guys here... Up in L.A... Some of ‘em famous too... You ever heard uh Count Basie?” he asks Jim who affirms with a grunt.

“I sat in with him once... Filled in for one of his guys... Hell...! He sit there at the piano lookin’ at me like, ‘You fuck up...! I’ll kill ya!’ Shit...! I knew his stuff inside and out.”

On Thursday, the end of my four day work week, the novelty of easy work has worn off. It’s been replaced by the monotony that comes from doing the same action over and over again.

“Do you want to come in tomorrow and work eight hours overtime?” Jorge asks at the end of my shift. I decline then drive home to Huntington Beach super tired in the afternoon traffic.

I get home and go straight to my bedroom, open my desk drawer grabbing a joint that’s hidden under some papers. Then I’m sitting in the backyard in a lawn chair firing the weed up. Magically, after the first hit, all the stressful tiredness of my workday vanishes. A couple hits later, I put the joint out.

I pick up a book of Dylan Thomas’ poetry that sits in my lap and read, “And the beating dust be blown down to the river rooting plain under the night forever falling. Forever falling night is a known Star and country to the legion of sleepers whose tongue I toll ...” I zone in on the words taking them in line by line. I go deep into the stuff all stoned being struck heavily by the biblical content of the poem. For some reason it reminds me of a sermon I heard as an adolescent in Michigan. At that time I was starting to have major inner spiritual conflict. My family’s religion had always been inside me. It was really beginning to grind away at my conscience. Never a second was it completely gone. Feeling like I was constantly choosing between the ‘broad’ and the ‘straight and narrow.’ And this choice was gnawing at my sanity causing me to wish that I’d never entered into life to begin with. I was torn between what I saw as good and evil with a backslidden father and a mother who was still religious. I remember vividly the preacher quoting Job, “May that day be darkness... Let not God above care for it... Nor light shine on it... Let darkness and black gloom claim it. Let a cloud settle on it. Let the blackness of the day terrify it...” He interpreted this passage as being the true definition of hell, complete spiritual darkness, separation from God.

I get a deep impression right in the middle of my buzz in the backyard. I forget all of my desires and cares at hand. Partying, chasing girls, going to punk gigs. I envision what a life serving God would be like. I sit there meditating on this idea for a few minutes.

“Fuck dude!” Willard Arceneaux, my brother-in-law, bursts into the backyard arriving home from his construction gig. “My mom’s outta town...! She’s in New Orleans. She’s gonna move there sometime this year... Frank and Jenkins are gonna have a rager at the San Clemente place tomorrow night... Supposed ta be tons uh freshman sluts there.”

“Cool,” I come out of my vision of a life of piety at the thought of banging some San Clemente Community College freshmen girls. “You want some uh this roach?”

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Photo by Igor Ovsyannykov