SPRING, 2003

1.

Marty and Alex had steady work at an old folks home. An orderly there had hired them under the table at six bucks an hour cash to clean up old folks’ shit. Whenever there was an “incident” (he always named it that), he’d call them up and whichever one should be free at the moment would head over, only a few blocks away. Whether some old fuck had shit on his bed, the floor, a wheelchair--wherever--either Marty or Alex would spend a couple hours in gloves cleaning it up, disinfecting, all that. The orderly who set up the deal with them was supposed to be doing this stuff, but he was glad to shell out the six bucks an hour to pay Alex or Marty to do it. Fact was he himself was getting at least twelve bucks for each of those same hours, which he spent chatting in the kitchen or vacuuming or dealing with irate old farts, while Alex or Marty did his job for him and took in about half his wages.

The worst for Marty was when he’d get a call just after getting high. He knew the deal could easily fall apart if he ever refused to come in upon getting a call, and they were constantly behind on the rent--they couldn’t afford to lose this gig. He’d show up high and confused, and have to wipe human shit off of a floor or wheelchair with the marijuana-distorted sense of time, so that ten minutes of shit wiping seemed like an hour. The smell was sharper too when he was high, and the disgust at the putrid substance seemed inflated. The orderly suspected that Alex and Marty took their time with it so they’d get paid a little more, which was fine with him so long as it didn’t get out of hand and they weren’t spending three hours on a one-hour job. But the truth was both Alex and Marty did the work as fast as they could but were damn slow at everything. They would be happy to do what took them two hours in just one, since when they were actually working money was far from their minds and they only wanted to head home. But their hands simply wouldn’t move at a quick pace, and their minds were confused so as to delay every action as they moved lazily from grabbing paper towels to wiping, from wiping to scrubbing, from scrubbing to disinfecting.

Marty had never before realized just how much variety there is to human shit. Animal shit always looks the same; the Indian tracker or mountain man of generations ago could tell you just what animal left any given pile of dung. But human shit was different. It could be compacted into hard balls; it could look like a loaf; it could be nearly all liquid; it could be any color from yellow to maroon to black. He began naming the different categories of shit, calling diarrheic shit “streamers”, the long wide loaves “pipe”, and the compacted round ones “strainers”. He never really understood why the strainers should be shit accidentally--in bed or on the floor or wherever--since you’d think it would take some work to get them out, and it couldn’t catch the old fucks by surprise.

Every month now the landlord was letting them slide a few dollars more. Marty hated him for having let them slide even a dollar into debt, and wished he’d outright refused from the beginning. They both knew they weren’t ever going to pay it back, and despaired of slipping further and further back month by month, like paddling a canoe against a strong breeze and either staying in the same spot or drifting further from your goal despite all your efforts. Alex did not seem too anxious about money or anything at all--not even his genital warts--and though he was still depressed nothing seemed to cause him stress. He took everything in stride and was certain things would turn out well. Marty suspected that this wasn’t because he was stronger emotionally, but because he was just dumb. On the other hand Marty stressed at every dollar more that they slipped into the red with the landlord or the phone bill or the electric, and he knew things could get worse, much worse.

“If we end up homeless,” he told Alex one day, “it’s hard as shit to ever get back to a home. You need a job, and no one will hire you without an address. If you get a job somehow, you can’t get an apartment because no one will accept your application if you don’t have an address. Everyone who doesn’t have an address is a pariah in this world.” Alex didn’t know what the word “pariah” meant but he just sort of shrugged. “It’d be just like camping,” he said. “You know, you got your tent, you spend your time fishing at the Washington Park pond or the Platte--wouldn’t be so bad.” “It’s hard as shit to get back to normal once you’re homeless,” said Marty. “Plus it’s fucking dangerous--they get beat up, robbed in their sleep--it’s like prison.” “Why in hell is that?” said Alex. “You go outside where the homeless live every day, man; why’s it dangerous for them out there and not you? It’s just outside like any old day outside; it’s not fucking dangerous.” Marty was worried and stressed, and whenever they both were high and got a call from the old folks home to clean up shit, it was Marty who ended up going, since he was so desperate to keep this gig.