Sunday, June 12, 2005

Day 1: Setup

By 8 am it was already 85 degrees (30 C for you fucking metric people) and 91% humidity. Lovely day for sitting in the moist green shade of a tropical rainforest listening to the maniacal mating calls of Chowchillas, but a lousy day for hauling 20 full size mattresses, box springs, metal frames, assorted lamps, chairs, mildewey sofas, and cleaning supplies in a non-airconditioned truck in the company of 8 toothless first-time offenders. Thus began the setting up.

The members of the FSM, the Fuzzy Sado-Massochists club, wil be arriving in two day's time, and it was our assigned task to set up the two empty houses and two apartments that will be their living quarters for their 14-week sexcapades in the sultry Michigan clime. 10 men and 8 women will spend the rest of the summer creating facades, playing mind games, maniuplating each other, going out of their way to piss one another off, and hopping from one soggy, sagging mattress to the next. I just love the little darlins.

Since the FSM is a non-profit organization (it would be positively unethical for us to make a living torturing our members the way we do), we are able to yolk the assistance of convicts who need to perform community service as part of their sentence. Except for the slimey, toothless, fat white guy who spent the day hitting on me and trying to convince me we were meant for each other.

Toothless felon: We think the same way, you and me.

Me: Truly, we are two bodies and one mind.

TF (grinning messily): Exactly!

I was torn between laughing myself into a hernia for the subtlety of my insult, and weeping because it was completely lost on it's recipient and all hearers present. Except for the TF, our crew was incredibly polite and hard working. We even wrote job references for 2 of them at the end of the day, so impressed were we with their patience and durablitiy.

I impressed all and sundry with my expert handling of the dilapidated, 15-foot rental truck. Having worked for 2 years in downtown Boston as a truck driver, during which time I put 20-foot box trucks in dark loading docks where Ford Pintos fear to tread, I have developed a skill with vehicle manoeverability wich can only be described as god-like. (Although I don't think even god could have fit his car in that parallel space in Machester where I got the minivan in 2 moves with less than 6 inches of space to spare off either end. Oh yeah, baby; I rock.)

The day was a fair success, I must admit. We only had a few minor crises, including
1. The inability of a double-size box spring to fit up the stairs of one of the houses, thereby forcing us to locate 6 twin-size beds at the last minute.
2. The inability of our genius laborers to count above 10 with their shoes on.
3. The inability of our housing coordinator to coordinate housing. (that last one includes a lot.)

By 4 pm it was 90 degrees, 95% humidity, and I was sweaty, sunburnt, filthy, and bruised. The disorderly arrangement of red, brown, grey, purple, and yellow-green on my skin made me look more like a Jackson Pollack than a person, proving that life imitates art.

Stay tuned for tomorrow's adventures as we follow The Bitch and her cohorts in their attempts, against superhuman odds, to accomplish the terrifying task of...

...making the beds. All the mattress, complete with broken springs (tetanus, anyone?) and virginity spots, need sheets and blankets. No, god, no. Please, anything but that.

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