something long and meandering about construction
i'm glad i didn't quit that first week i got sent to the new job, coming home inexplicably crying every night without words to explain why. my father saw me frustruated and i didn't want to tell him that i hated this job he's been doing for almost thirty years, that my spirit couldn't handle real hard work and buildings without walls or windows and dirt and never getting enough sleep.
there are bruises on my arms from the coffee order i have to carry three blocks at 9am: usually four plastic bags full of mostly egg sandwiches and drinks but sometimes coffee. sometimes with sugar, sometimes without. the elevator man, james, asked me if my boyfriend grabbed me; when i told him the real reason the purpley splotches spotted my limbs he concluded that i just bruise easily.
because of course i would have a boyfriend because i'm 21 and a girl and curvy. i've been asked if i had one to "keep me in line," i've been asked if i had one "because your dimples are even prettier than your eyeball color and i was wondering if i can get your number," because someone like me who's alone is dangerous or just begging to be picked up by a local union 8 roofer with silver caps and stunna shades forever affixed to his face.
people think i need protection, too, if only because they realize how shitty and sketchy people can be. i haven't had a reason to ask anyone's help yet, but i've gotten the "if anyone messes with you, just let me know and i'll set em straight" speech from dozens: the gay woman carpenter with "lite" inked on her wrist, my current 38-year-old partner who smokes weed everyday and keeps a wife and a girlfriend, the you're-so-fine-it-hurts 26-year-old i worked with last week with new tattoos and sad blue eyes. it makes me feel safe, or at least vaguely welcome.
my hard hat and jeans and construction boots make me feel safe: not only from hitting my head on the ceiling or stepping on nails, but safe from being an outsider in this game, from the people with shiny-new hardhats who stroll through the building fifteen minutes out of the entire week in corporate casual. i walk back to the subway smelling like crap and looking even worse, glaring inwardly at everyone else who sat in airconditioning all day long. i know, i know: they have battles to fight, too.
my first partner on the job made sure we locked up his industrial-strength radio every night. "the most important tool," he said, and i agreed because even though he kept it on lite FM it was something to make you forget that you were sweating and bruising and straining your muscles just to wake up and do it all again until you got laid off or transferred, you wanted to remember there were people who wanted to sing songs and dance outside of these incomplete four walls, you wanted to drown out the voice of the foreman nobody likes, who can never remember anyone's name.
i tried to make former-partner-hottie man happier while we were working. i felt like a paltry replacement to his former partner (whose memory was graffitied on their gangbox: "you can break-up partners but you can't break-up there love![sic]") so i did my part by drinking at the bar with them and joking around and asking questions and asking him how he was doing. "just trying to make it through the day, jillian," he would answer with a voice too tired for 26 years, hours before he would take a percoset. "we're only human, jillian," he would say after i shook my head and called him a perv after he looked through the small telescope the elevator guys had set up to look at girls in bikinis in the park next door and suddenly i wished i had worn a bigger tshirt, suddenly i felt exposed.
the elevator man once stopped the elevator between floors to look at me and say, "i have to be miserable all day and hate my job, but at least there's people i love at home." i wonder if all the guys think that, clutching onto their kids, or the yankees, or the next beer at lunchtime.
this whole thing probably doesn't make sense but i wanted to write down how it feels, just so i remember. i don't know if i'll ever step foot on a construction site again but this feels different and important enough to not let it get away.
there are bruises on my arms from the coffee order i have to carry three blocks at 9am: usually four plastic bags full of mostly egg sandwiches and drinks but sometimes coffee. sometimes with sugar, sometimes without. the elevator man, james, asked me if my boyfriend grabbed me; when i told him the real reason the purpley splotches spotted my limbs he concluded that i just bruise easily.
because of course i would have a boyfriend because i'm 21 and a girl and curvy. i've been asked if i had one to "keep me in line," i've been asked if i had one "because your dimples are even prettier than your eyeball color and i was wondering if i can get your number," because someone like me who's alone is dangerous or just begging to be picked up by a local union 8 roofer with silver caps and stunna shades forever affixed to his face.
people think i need protection, too, if only because they realize how shitty and sketchy people can be. i haven't had a reason to ask anyone's help yet, but i've gotten the "if anyone messes with you, just let me know and i'll set em straight" speech from dozens: the gay woman carpenter with "lite" inked on her wrist, my current 38-year-old partner who smokes weed everyday and keeps a wife and a girlfriend, the you're-so-fine-it-hurts 26-year-old i worked with last week with new tattoos and sad blue eyes. it makes me feel safe, or at least vaguely welcome.
my hard hat and jeans and construction boots make me feel safe: not only from hitting my head on the ceiling or stepping on nails, but safe from being an outsider in this game, from the people with shiny-new hardhats who stroll through the building fifteen minutes out of the entire week in corporate casual. i walk back to the subway smelling like crap and looking even worse, glaring inwardly at everyone else who sat in airconditioning all day long. i know, i know: they have battles to fight, too.
my first partner on the job made sure we locked up his industrial-strength radio every night. "the most important tool," he said, and i agreed because even though he kept it on lite FM it was something to make you forget that you were sweating and bruising and straining your muscles just to wake up and do it all again until you got laid off or transferred, you wanted to remember there were people who wanted to sing songs and dance outside of these incomplete four walls, you wanted to drown out the voice of the foreman nobody likes, who can never remember anyone's name.
i tried to make former-partner-hottie man happier while we were working. i felt like a paltry replacement to his former partner (whose memory was graffitied on their gangbox: "you can break-up partners but you can't break-up there love![sic]") so i did my part by drinking at the bar with them and joking around and asking questions and asking him how he was doing. "just trying to make it through the day, jillian," he would answer with a voice too tired for 26 years, hours before he would take a percoset. "we're only human, jillian," he would say after i shook my head and called him a perv after he looked through the small telescope the elevator guys had set up to look at girls in bikinis in the park next door and suddenly i wished i had worn a bigger tshirt, suddenly i felt exposed.
the elevator man once stopped the elevator between floors to look at me and say, "i have to be miserable all day and hate my job, but at least there's people i love at home." i wonder if all the guys think that, clutching onto their kids, or the yankees, or the next beer at lunchtime.
this whole thing probably doesn't make sense but i wanted to write down how it feels, just so i remember. i don't know if i'll ever step foot on a construction site again but this feels different and important enough to not let it get away.