Working. Part 31

The rose 'round the door make me love mother more

I'll see my sweetheart glow and friends I used to know

When I-

(He pauses, stops.) Somehow or other, I'm losin' out on that song. But that's all right.

I go to fires every once in a while. That fire we had on Milwaukee Avenue about three months ago, that was supposed to start in the morning. I was there at four o'clock that afternoon. I was surprised that G.o.ddarned all the windows was broke and yet the smoke was comin' out there heavy as h.e.l.l, but you don't see the flame. They had about thirty units there. You get the news on the radio. I was gonna go to that Midway Airport accident. My two friends, they said, "Joe, you can't see nothin' there no more. That's all cleaned up, leveled off and everything." They work fast on that.

I tell you what I did see. In 1915 I was workin' as an errand boy. I saw that Eastland disaster about two minutes after it happened. I was right on the bridge when it toppled over. You should hear the screams. I was chased off. That was that Western Electric picnic outing. Seven hundred or something was drowned.

I usually go to the Exchange Bank downtown just to get myself a nasty headache. I have a brother there. He makes up packages of dollar bills in a canvas bag and puts a wire around. One-dollar bills come four hundred in a package. Sometimes he's got stacks about two foot long and two foot wide and three foot high. You can imagine he's got a couple of million there. That's the headache.

This coming December, it'll be three years I made the trip to California. I got a sister out there. I stayed out there over the Christmas holidays and we went to Disneyland. Believe it or not, honest to G.o.d, I didn't think such beautiful things existed in this world of ours. It was somethin'.

I'm hopin' to be around here for at least five more years. I don't care. Twenty more years? Oh G.o.d, no. When people get old, they get a little bit childish.

I have a very, very good, darn good memory. I'll tell you another one. On the eighteenth of June, 1918, I went to a dance. Another guy and me. There was two girls dancin'. They were sisters. He grabbed one, so I grabbed the other. You know what they played. (Sings) Smile a while, you bid me sad adieu. I kissed that girl on the cheek. She told the world and me, "If I don't marry you, Joe, I'll never marry another person in this world." She was seventy years old last week. I called her up, wished her a happy birthday, and that's all. I could've married her, but- I know a lot of songs. Sometimes when I'm washin' dishes, that's when the old time songs come to you. (He sings.) Everybody loves a baby

That's why I'm in love with you

Pretty baby, pretty baby

Won't you let me rock you in the cradle of love

And we'll cuddle all the time.

Everybody loves a baby

That's why I'm in love with you, pretty baby of mine.

That's all. That's over. There's more I know. I pride myself with that. Many of my friends will tell you, "If there's anything you want to know, ask Joe."

BOOK EIGHT.

THE AGE OF CHARLIE BLOSSOM.

CHARLIE BLOSSOM.

He is twenty-four years old, of an upper-middle-cla.s.s family. His father and grandfather are both doctors. His parents are divorced; each has since remarried. He attended a college on the west coast for one year, dropped out, and has been on his own ever since. "My main concern was political activity. I was then supported by my parents. It was a struggle for a lot of people I knew, whether to continue taking money from their parents."

His long hair is be-ribboned into a ponytail; his gla.s.ses are wire-rimmed; his mustache is scraggly and his beard is wispy. He is seated on the floor, having a.s.sumed the lotus position. The account of his life, adventures-and reflections-is somewhat discursive.

My first job was in a dog kennel, cleaning up the s.h.i.t. It was just for a couple of days. My real first job was in a factory. I was hired to sweep the s.h.i.t off the floor. They saw I was a good worker and made me a machine operator. I was eighteen and a conscientious objector. I told 'em at the factory I didn't want to do any war work, any kind of contract with any military inst.i.tution. I tried to adhere to my politics and my morality. Since that time and through different jobs I've been led into compromises that have corrupted me.

They said, "You don't have to do any war stuff." They were just not telling me what it was, figuring I'd be cool. I was going along with it because I wanted to keep my job. I didn't want a confrontation. I was punching out some kind of styrofoam. It was for some burglar alarm or something weird. You twist it around and ream it out. I was getting really angry about it. It's just not worthy work for a person to be doing. I had a real battle with myself. If I had any real guts, I'd say, "f.u.c.k it," and walk out. I would be free. All this emotional tension was making me a prisoner. If I would just get up, I would put this down and say, "This is bogus, it's bulls.h.i.t, it's not worthy. I'm a human being. A man, a woman shouldn't have to spend time doing this"-and just walk out. I'd be liberated. But I didn't.

One afternoon I was sorting out the dies and hangin' 'em on a pipe rack. In order to make room to hang more up, I had to push 'em like you push clothes in a closet. It made a horrible kind of screeching sound-metal on metal. I was thinking to myself-somewhat dramatically-This is like the scream of the Vietnamese people that are being napalmed. So I walked over to the foreman and I said, "Look, no longer is it enough not to do war work. The whole plant has just not to do any kind of work a.s.sociating with killing people of any kind. Or I'm not gonna work at all." It was sort of like a little strike. I said, "I'm going home." He said, "Yeah, come back in a day or so." So I came back in a day or so and some high-up guy said, "Maybe you better look for another job." I said, "Okay." That was my first real job.

I worked in VISTA for a couple of years. I got a.s.signed as a youth worker, with no real supervision, no activities. I just collected my paycheck, cashed it, and lived. I suppose I did as good as anyone else with a structured job. Freeing myself of a lot of thought habits, guilt, and repressiveness. Getting better acquainted with my own feelings, my own sensations, my own body, my own life. After they fired me, I worked with guerrilla theater. I worked for a leftist printer. It didn't work out. I didn't have a car, didn't have money. Couldn't get a job. Not that I was really trying. Finally I was recommended for a job as copy boy on a Chicago paper.

I had very long hair at that time. It was halfway down my back. In order to get the job, I tied it up in such a way that it was all down inside my shirt. From the front it looked like a hillbilly greaser kind of haircut. The kind like Johnny Cash has. I borrowed some ritzy looking clothes, advertising agency clothes.

I went down to the paper and I talked to this guy and told him how much I wanted to be a journalist. It sounded like some d.i.c.k and Jane textbook. A lot of people like to pretend that's the way the world is. He liked me. He thought I was bright and hired me. I had a tie on.

Within a couple of weeks after working there, I reverted to my natural clothes. I was bringing organic walnuts and organic raisins and giving it away. Coming to work was for me a kind of missionary kind of thing. Originally I was gonna get some money and leave, but I had to get involved. So I tried to relate.

After a couple of weeks, the editor called me into this office. He said, "Read this little speech I wrote and tell me what you think of it." It was just a bunch of plat.i.tudes. Objectivity was the one thing he mentioned. I started telling him stuff: I think a newspaper should be this, that, and the other thing. We talked about an hour. I thought we were in fine agreement, that he was eating it up. I was paraphrasing exactly what he said. In the business world, you gotta play the game. I was leading around to asking for a scholarship.

We were exchanging rhetoric about how wonderful a newspaper is as a free inst.i.tution and all this bulls.h.i.t. All of a sudden he said, "I was walking through the office last week and I said, 'Who is that dirty, sc.u.mmy, disgusting filthy creature over there?' And I was told that's one of our new copy boys. I was told he was bright and energetic."

He was talking about me! That struck me as a weird way of relating to somebody. He started by saying that clothing is unimportant, "so that's why I'm asking you to change your clothes." It was just so bizarre. I told him, "Look, now that I've got a job, I'll buy fancy clothes, I'll rent an apartment, I'll take a shower." He seemed pleased, but he wanted me to cut my hair. I balked at that. He rose from his desk and stood up. The interview was over. He said blah, blah, blah, blah and hustled me out of the office. I was very shaken by it and went out and cried. Or maybe I didn't cry at that time. But once he was p.i.s.sed off at an a.s.sistant editor and took it out on me and yelled, "You got to look like a young businessman tomorrow or you're out!" That's one time I'm pretty sure I did cry,'cause I just don't know how to relate to it.

I was enjoying my job, because I was answering the phone most of the time. People would call up and complain or have a problem. I'd say, "This is a capitalist newspaper and as long as it's a capitalistic newspaper it's not gonna serve you, because its purpose is not to serve you. Its purpose is to make money for its owner. If you want some help . . ." And I'd refer them to the Panthers or the Seed.62 People were very grateful. They'd say, "Thank you very much." After they talked to me forty-five minutes or so, they'd say, "I'm glad I talked to you. I didn't know the Panthers were like that."

Were there any complaints?

About what?

About your-uh-commentary and suggestions?

No complaints, no ha.s.sles. I was very polite. At that stage of the game, I was in a very mellow mood. I was giving organic raisins and walnuts and sunflower seeds to everybody-to reporters and rewrite men. I was bright and cheerful and everything. The city editor was very short and rude to people that called up and hung up and stuff like that. I'd say, "That's a person on the phone." I used to walk around the office and say, "How can grown people spend their time doing this?" I got into long raps. I actually got one, who'd been a reporter for twenty years, to seriously question himself: Am I doing anything worthwhile? I liked doing this, to persuade people to think. It was my contribution to the world. That's why I told people who called for help that they should write letters or call up the editor or come down and take over the paper. A lot of people responded very well to those suggestions.

And no complaints about your persuasions . . . ?

(A throwaway.) Sometimes. What finally happened was-I was involved in a severe personal relationship and I really got obnoxious. I was very alienated and very hostile. I stopped bringing in organic food. I started taking a couple of hours off on my dinner break-which is very cool. I'd grab two, three beers and smoke a joint or two on my break. The gra.s.s and the beers put me in a very mellow state. The straw broke when somebody called up and the reporter hung up on him. The guy called back and I answered the phone. I got real mad at the guy, too, and called him a bigot, racist, and hung up on him, too. The guy complained. And I was the one who got in trouble. It was a big thing, with the editor coming down on me for my att.i.tude on the phones. I guess he found out about those other calls. I couldn't understand his anger. I was just trying to convey my feelings to the people.

My fantasies all spring at the paper was getting a machine gun and coming in and shooting them. Getting psychedelic hallucinogens and putting them in their drinks. Getting a gun and walk into the editor's office and shooting him. Maybe pointing the gun at him first and say, "Okay, how do you face your death?" I saw a j.a.panese movie once where two guys met their deaths in two different ways. That's the kind of fantasies I had, cutting 'em up with knives.

Other people's fantasies, from what I could observe, were s.e.xual. They were not connected with the political realities. They would look at the young women-attractive by white, bourgeois standards, the ones with long blonde hair and miniskirts-and draw erotic stimulation.

There was one hired as a copy girl, through some uncle who had pull, and within a month she was an editorial a.s.sistant. There were two copy boys that had worked there for a couple of years, that were married and had kids, and weren't getting f.u.c.king paid as editorial a.s.sistants.

A copy boy is a kind of n.i.g.g.e.r. You stand around in a room full of people that are very ego-involved in a fantasy-they think they're putting out a newspaper. These are the reporters and editors. Somebody yells, "Copy!" Sometimes they yell, "Boy!" You run over-or you walk over-and they give you a piece of paper. You take that piece of paper someplace, and you either leave it there and go back to waiting around or you get another piece of paper and bring it back to the person that originally called you.

The other thing you do is go down, when the editions come off the press, and you get three hundred copies of the paper on a big cart and you wheel it around and put one on everybody's desk. And stuff like that. "We've got a pack of photographs to pick up at a.s.sociated Press, go over and get it." "Somebody's in town making a speech, go and get it." Or, "Take this over to city hall and give it to the reporter that's over there . . ."

Copy boys are also expected to do editorial a.s.sistant's work. That's answering the phone and saying, "City Desk." If it's a reporter, you connect him with the editor or whatever. If an individual is calling about a story that says, "Continued on page seven," but it's not on page seven, I look through the paper until I find where the story is and tell him. Or I go get clips out of the library. You take one piece of paper and exchange it for another. It's basically bulls.h.i.t.

When I first worked there, I ran. They'd say, "Copy!" and I'd run. n.o.body noticed. It didn't make any difference. Then I started walking. Why the f.u.c.k should I run for them? This spring, I started to shuffle. That's when the people started to complain about me. I started in February, 1970, and I was fired May 20, 1971. I was out with hepat.i.tis for six months.

Want to know why I was ultimately fired? I had a pair of shoes, the soles were loose. I didn't want to spend money on shoes. I was taking home seventy bucks a week and saving fifty. I wasn't hanging around the paper because that was my destiny. I was just some little pinball that had dropped in a slot. I was there because a bunch of accidents put me there. I also had a will and an energy and I was moving. I was in motion, creative I wanted to have a computer at the paper. I wanted an arrangement where you could get up in the morning and call up and say, "Okay, this is Charlie. I can work on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Sat.u.r.day in the evenings. And on Wednesday morning. I absolutely cannot work Wednesday evening." Everyone would be calling up and the computer would put it all together. They would call back and say, "Okay, these are your hours this week." 'Cause it doesn't make any difference who shows up, the way they run the paper. These are the kinds of ideas I had. I wanted decision making in the hands of the people who did the work. I wanted to f.u.c.k capitalism.

I saw those things in terms of cla.s.ses. The seventh floor was the executive. The fourth floor was the middle cla.s.s-editorial, reporters, and all that. The ruling cla.s.s had their offices there too, not up with the executives. I used to see Marshall Field in the hall. I was thinking, If they kill Bobby Seale, maybe I should get a gun and come in here and shoot Field. Maybe that's a reason for me to keep this job. I'm not accomplishing anything else here. I don't want money. Money isn't worth it.

What would you accomplish by killing Marshall Field?

Oh well, you can't look at it as accomplishing anything. Like one of the editors told me, "If you behave yourself, you won't get fired." I wanted to take a baseball bat and smash his head in, except I wanted to do it with my hands. He made me so angry. Here is this motherf.u.c.ker, who is comfortable, he's not struggling-in truth, there's not a h.e.l.l of a lot for him to struggle about, 'cause he's a f.u.c.kin' marshmallow in a bag of marshmallows. He's a nice guy. I mean, I like him. But he's a f.u.c.kin' marshmallow.

Your shoes, the soles were loose . . .

Yeah. What I did was put glue on 'em. And then somebody suggested I put tape on 'em. So I did. People kept suggesting that I buy shoes. I kept saying, "No. I don't want to buy shoes. These shoes are fine." There was no reason for me to stay in their culture.

Still I was making friends with different people. I was trying to get the foreign editor to do an article about opium that the CIA is responsible for bringing into this country as heroin. I read it in Ramparts. They just laughed at it. A week later, another paper ran a column by Flora Lewis about the Ramparts article. I was incensed by these pigs. This guy thinks he's my friend. I mean, I like him a lot. He's really a nice person. I don't know if I would get any pleasure from shooting him up with a .50-caliber machine gun and seeing his body splatter to pieces. I'd be emotionally disturbed by an act of destruction as total as that. But I would get some satisfaction out of it, because of the rage I feel towards these guys. The way they wrote about the demonstrations and the Panther grand jury. I'm so enraged by these swine . . . They pretend they're liberals. They pretend to be concerned. They never fight over an issue. This editor told me, "I fight every day for s.p.a.ce." G.o.d!!

I had my most hostile fantasies on the job. I just reached a point where I just didn't want to hand out the f.u.c.king newspaper. I wanted to burn it. It's like you get a job in a prison. It's the only job in town. Your job is to go around the cells and hand out a washcloth. I don't want to be just handing out washcloths. You begin to realize this guy that's locked up is just another human being. Maybe I could help him out. I'll bring him cigarettes. I think that was the real reason I pa.s.sed out organic walnuts and raisins. And my thoughts.

The job was also a corrupting thing. I realized I could get a lot of free books, a lot of books came in to review. And records, I could cop records. You sort of be nice to this guy because he'll give you the records. I was getting corrupted.

How pitiful these people are! They kept telling me I should try to keep the job. It was security. I could look at these guys that worked twenty, thirty f.u.c.king years, and they were telling me if I cut my hair and wore different clothes, I would be like them. They don't want to have to say, "Jesus! I blew it! I'm sixty years old and I've wasted it all." I'm not stupid. I can work. I'm lazy, most of us are. But we're lazy because we've got nothing worthwhile to do. I lost a year of my life working there. Was it worth it?

I'm saying G.o.dly things, that's what it's all about. How can we get that boot to step three inches over to the left or the right, so it won't trample that flower. Look at these rich motherf.u.c.kers who don't know s.h.i.t. We don't have to have a society in which you work because you're tricked, cajoled, manipulated, or pressured into it.

How many jobs in this country consist of locking things or counting things, like money-the banks, the cashiers. Or being a watchman of some kind. Why in the h.e.l.l do these jobs exist? These jobs are not necessary to life. This guy I was talking to yesterday said, "Money makes the world go around. Brothers kill each other over money." And that's true. I pointed to the sun. "What makes that go around? You're not gonna tell me money makes that go around." So there's something else besides money. You can't eat money, you can't f.u.c.k money, you can't do nothin' with money except exchange things. We can live without money. We can live with people and grow food and build a table and ma.s.sage a neck that has a sprain . . .

Your shoes, you had them taped . . .

Oh yeah. You wanna know why I was ultimately fired? I'm very interested in Oriental stuff. Sometimes I fantasize about being a samurai, especially after I see a j.a.panese movie. So I used to sit j.a.panese-style on my knees on the floor. (At this point, he shifts from the lotus position to that of a samurai.) I'd pick a quiet corner of the room.

(Softly, hardly audible) The city room . . . ?

In front of the desk of the religion editor. I thought it was appropriate. Sitting and breathing. People tried to ignore it. Some people thought I was meditating. I said, "Sure I'm meditating." I don't know what meditation is exactly, so I would be reluctant to call it that. I used to do this, before, on the floor of the mail room. One day a guy objected because he thought if a guy came in wheeling a thing, he wouldn't be able to see me. I showed him I could move extremely quickly. That put his fears to rest.

One day the head librarian, he's such an a.s.s-hole-I really hate to call people a.s.s-holes because they're all nice, I'm more obnoxious than a lot of people I call a.s.s-holes. But he's the kind of guy only interested in himself, which to me is a very outdated point of view. I mean, if you study Zen or ancient philosophy, they all say the same thing, and that is that no man is an island. Okay, so he came in and said, "Don't sit like that." I said, "Why not? I'm not bothering anybody." He said, "I don't want you to."

I said, "Man, let me explain . . ." He said, "Do you want me to talk to the editor?" I said, "No, no, no, don't talk to him, he'll fire me." So he said, "I don't want you sitting there, it looks just terrible." I said, "Okay, I won't sit in the corner, I'll sit in the middle of the room." He said, "No, no, no, don't do that either." So I left. I went down and sat in front of the desk of the religion editor.

About a week or so later-one of my stops with the paper is the public relations office. There was a vase with some flowers in it. So I sat down in the chair and looked at the flowers in it-maybe five minutes, six at most-and I got up and left. A couple of days later, the editor called me into his office and says, "I got three complaints I want to discuss with you. One was from the librarian. He told me about your sitting on your knees and I told him if you ever do that again to throw you out. The second is about you and the flowers. They complained you disrupted the office." I said, "I was sitting there with my back straight and breathing (breathes slowly, deliberately, deeply) instead of (gasps frantically)-right?" That disrupted them?

In a way I did disrupt. It's the kind of thing Gandhi or Th.o.r.eau or Christ would say. If you really want to strike a blow at the corruption of society, come into eternity. I have to concede that a human being who sits down and meditates-tries to get in touch with G.o.d or whatever-is the most threatening f.u.c.king thing of all. On a physical plane, I wasn't interfering with them at all. But the fact that I sat with my back straight and most people at their jobs don't sit with their backs straight, that's weird. They looked at me and they felt guilty. I wasn't trying to irritate them. I wasn't trying to throw any magic their way. I was just looking at the flowers.

Most of all, I wanted to be touched by these flowers. I stroked a couple of petals really gently. I was trying to reach out and say, "Hey plant, I know you're here in this office and it's probably a drag and you're lonely. But I love you." I took a couple of petals that had fallen off the table and put them in my pocket.

The third complaint . . . ?

. . . was about my shoes. He said, "It's entirely unacceptable to have tape on your shoes."

Were you fired because of the shoes, looking at the flowers, or a.s.suming the samurai position?

No. On Monday morning I called up the paper and said I'd be fifteen minutes late and I was fifteen minutes late. Tuesday morning I called and said I'd be fifteen minutes late and I was fifteen minutes late. He said that was entirely unacceptable. So he gave me a written memo.

So that was it?

No. Originally they p.i.s.sed about my clothing. I said, "When I wore my good clothes they got ruined here, tearing against the typewriters. You ought to provide some kind of smocks." Surprisingly, he accepted the idea and gave us smocks. h.e.l.l, it was hot and it was summertime. So I started wearing just the smock and no shirt. And he said that was entirely unacceptable. "Suppose somebody comes in and sees you. This is a business office."

n.o.body complained about my work except the head copy boy, and I made a deal with him. I said, "Let me do all the paper rounds and I won't be in the city room." I hated the way they treat you in the city room.

I got great satisfaction from the paper rounds, far more than going to a library or hanging around the city room. I'd go down and fill up the cart and that f.u.c.king thing's heavy. I'd have to push it and it would take strength and I'd sweat. It's like 250 or 300 papers to go around on each edition. I liked it 'cause I sweated and I got into conversations with people. I'd get done and I would say, "I did something."

I'd do the rounds and go sit outside in the flower garden. After a week or so, the head copy boy said, "Look, the other copy boys see you sittin' around while they're working and it makes them uptight." I said, "Okay, I'll come back, do more work, but I won't do all the paper rounds." They were uptight not because they saw me sitting around-because dealing with these reporters, these pigs, who called them "Boy!" all the time, they wanted a chance to get out.

(Mumbles) Then it wasn't the shoes or the samurai position or the flowers or being late . . . ?

No. I was going through all this upset. I said to the head copy boy, "I'm going through all this weirdness and I haven't gone to lunch. I might as well leave early." People do that kind of s.h.i.t all the time. Come five', I started getting my stuff together and changing. I would come to work in blue jeans and change into a pair of pants and a shirt. At the end of the day I could change back into blue jeans. At five thirty, I would just (snaps fingers) walk out the door.

At five thirty somebody walked in and said to me, "Here are some clips. Can you go and get 'em?" I said, "No, I'm leaving." Another copy boy says no, too. The next morning the editor came to me and said, "You left early . . . blah, blah, blah, blah . . . And you refused to get the clips." I said, "Let me explain." And he said, "That's entirely unacceptable. This is the straw that broke the camel's back." To me it was more like the one that broke the pig's back.