Butchblog

‘/’

 It’s August. You feel heated up, mostly happy, especially when you are away from your family. You have to work, though. That’s what the parents expect. And you like it too. Why not? It makes you feel grown up, like you are beginning to matter, finally someone sees you. The summer strips away all your hiding, makes you come out into the light. You can hardly wait for each morning’s new sun rise. Before work, before breakfast, you grab your surfboard and walk to the beach. There’s hardly anyone there this early, not even the lifeguards, so you have it all to yourself. You’re hoping for the big swells as you top the dunes, but it doesn’t really matter if the ocean is flat. You still are happy to see it. Without knowing exactly why, you are perfectly content. You paddle out. The water is still cold. It will be warm by the time you return in the early evening. There are some waves today and you are happy to catch them, even though the ride is short. You head back to the cottage as the first bathers and beachcombers appear. The asphalt is warm on your bare feet. The sun is hot on your shoulders. You are so much in tune with your body that no one feeling is stronger than another – the sun, the street, the longboard under your arm, the sounds of the ocean and the traffic on the boulevard. Your dad glances at you as you walk in the door. He’s reading the morning newspaper and you know he’s not going to speak to you. But today he nods as you go up to your room to get changed for work. This pleases you. Maybe you are okay after all.

My older sister worked as a checker at Marvel’s Market on Long Beach Island, New Jersey, where we had our summer house, and she managed to get me on as a bagger, the kid who packs groceries into the shopping bags after the customer checks out and then offers to carry said bags to the car and hopefully get a tip in the process. I think I was being paid 95 cents an hour, which was fine with me. Most of my friends hadn’t been able to find a job at all and were envious of my exalted status. Marvels was a small, independent, all-purpose market, the kind of place that doesn’t much exist anymore. It was owned by the eponymous Tommy Marvel, a man who I was scared shitless of. I felt like he was watching every move that I made. Marvel was that kind of owner. He pretended that he was my pal, slapping me on the back and asking me questions about school and girls. What the hell did I know about girls, but I played along. He was the boss. Sometimes I felt like he was testing me, seeing how far he could push me, but I didn’t know why. One day at closing time, when I was ready to go home, he assigned me to clean the rubber mats in the butchers’ department. The mats were thick with congealed fat and blood and didn’t come clean without many applications of boiling hot water and vigorous scrubbing. Tommy was watching me the whole time I worked on them. He was also making comments to the butchers, and though I couldn’t make out what he was saying, they seemed to be having a big laugh at my expense. I wanted to punch Tommy Marvel in his pasty face.

            One day Tommy leaped on to my back as I was stocking shelves. I was a pretty big kid, but he nearly knocked me on my ass. “Ride ’em, cowboy,” Tommy shouted. I didn’t know what to make of it. The other stock boys weren’t getting harassed like this. But what the hell, I wanted the job and actually liked going to work every morning and little by little I was being allowed to do other jobs around the store. I even made friends with Rich, the bakery guy, who showed me how to make donuts in the big vat of oil. Marvel’s was famous for their fresh baked cinnamon donuts. But still I was always looking around nervously, waiting for Tommy’s next attack.

            At the end of one busy summer week, the older guys set up a big tub of ice and beer and invited everyone back into the stock room for a party. Tommy grabbed me and pulled me back there, and opened a cold beer for me. I was too embarrassed to say that I didn’t drink, which wouldn’t have been true anyway. I was too young to know if I drank or not. I knew I didn’t do it at home. “Go ahead, have a beer. Don’t be a pussy,” Tommy said and punched me in the shoulder. The other older guys were standing around looking, ready to laugh. Randy, and Bob Keating, and Tony the produce guy. I took a long swig of the beer. Marvel cheered. “Thattaboy.” Before long I had finished two or three more of the ice-cold brews. The beer started to taste better and better and I began to worry less and less about what Marvel thought of me or what anybody else did either. I even got into a semi-playful fight with one of the other stock boys and was excited when Tommy Marvel cheered me on. I left that night knowing what it meant to be drunk and knowing what it meant to be included in a circle of male bonding. I guess that’s what it was, though the next day at work nobody spoke about it. Marvel, in fact, seemed angry with me and assigned me to clean the walk-in cooler, something that was rarely ever done during the course of the summer. I noticed how tired he looked. But I was cool with the rest of the guys and even went back into the stockroom to eat my lunch instead of walking up to the beach and eating my sandwich by myself