(For Cliff, who may remember it differently (especially the little bits I made up)

-A CLEAN BREAK-

In the summer of 1986, most of my peers were preparing for a new life -college, the military, a job- but I was counted among the aimless few who had no plans, no thoughts, nothing. I was floating along, dim and happy in the assumption that each day would take care of itself.

As my high school graduation ceremony receded into the past my mother became more and more eager to see me on my way in life -or at least out of the house- but it seemed hopeless. I was immune to her advice, her subtle hints; never noticing the paper left open to the help wanted-section. I had no ambition beyond trying to get drunk or laid.

The solution came in the form of my older brother, Cliff.

He arrived one day, out of the blue as usual, with some grass and a proposal. Ever wise, he waited until the full effects of the dope were upon me, thus insuring I was literally open-minded.

“Hey, Cor. How’d you like to get an apartment with me?” he asked.

“Oh, wow. Yeah! That’d be sooo cool!” I said. “But, uh, I don’t have a job.”

“You could get a job where I work.” Cliff’s latest job was that of a night-janitor at the local electronics plant.

“At Delore Industries? As a janitor? I dunno . . .” the sudden fear that I wasn’t qualified to run a mop hit me and I quailed.

“Oh, shit man, it’s easy! You’ll get in no problem. They’re always hiring people ‘cause they’re always firing people.” Cliff laughed.

“You know where Job Services is downtown?” he asked, his voice strained from holding in a hit. “Well, Clauson’s Janitorial is in the same building. Fill out an app and I’ll put in a good word for you.”

I took the pipe back from him but hesitated in taking another hit.

“Do I have to take a whiz-quiz?” I asked, using street vernacular for a common form of drug testing: urinalysis.

Cliff laughed as he exhaled a monstrous blue cloud of pungent smoke.

“Shit, man . . .”

Despite my trepidation, the business of filling out the application was almost painless and, though I felt certain they would never hire anyone whose job history was limited to gophering for his carpenter father, I received a call less than two days later asking me to come back down to the office for an ‘interview’, a session which involved less question and answer than just seeing if I could appear as instructed.

Having done so, I was given a scraper, two ugly yellow shirts, and told to show up at the plant that night; my shift beginning at 7 p.m. and ending at 3:30 in the morning.

The clock read 2:12 in the afternoon -were they giving me yet another test or simply being inhuman?

I went home and tried to get some sleep but was too nervous. What would it be like?

The Delore plant occupied a mythical status in my hometown; four large, interlocked buildings -750,000 square feet of production space dominating the gentle, sloping lawn of a bunny specked hill.

People said that the company had “saved our town” when it built its plant, and I suppose that’s certain. All I knew was that the kids whose parents worked there seemed to have more of everything –more toys, clothes, smarts, luck, teeth, you name it. It had never occurred to me that one day I, too, would work there –even if it was just as a janitor.

Dusk deepened around me as I strapped a brown paper lunch sack to my bike rack and started off across town; nerves and walkman jangling.

I grew up pedaling down narrow, empty country roads and here I was, head on against the heart and headlights of a small city’s sporadic evening traffic for the first time in my life. I pumped my legs to the beat and focused on the gutter.

A Clauson’s lead was waiting for me when I arrived at the gate. My name was checked off a yawning guard’s list and then I was escorted to the security office where my photo was taken for a nametag. I was still blinking when they handed me off to my new boss –Judy.

A plain stump of a woman, Judy’s short haircut and easter-egg body marked her, correctly or not, as a lesbian in the eyes of her crew. She was nice enough but I sensed tension, a grinding unhappiness in her.

Judy was very business like, responding little, if at all, to my humorous asides, as she taught me the skills I would need as a Clauson’s representative. According to her, my two most important tools were the scraper I’d been issued with my shirts and the detail brush, a small, thin, black-bristled hand broom, which Judy handed to me. When she spoke of these items it was with a kind of respectful awe that I found difficult not to snicker at.

From the regulations she laid out at the same time, I could see that her reverence was in step with the company’s wishes:

If I came into work without my scraper I could be written up. If I lost my scraper, the cost of its replacement would come out of my paycheck and I could be written up. If I lost my detail brush, I could be written up. If I were caught on duty without either of them when they were needed, I could be written up. If I were written up three times during any six-month period, I would be fired.

I was issued a large rolling trashcan, complete with a place to hang my detail brush and extra trash bags. Judy made it clear that it was my trashcan for as long as I worked on this floor for her crew. If I used anyone else’s without permission or lost my own, I could be written up.

Judy showed me my new area -a long stretch of cubicles, a couple of clean rooms, and a separating hallway- and how to go about cleaning them. My first duty was to empty the trash. Judy showed me the location of every wastebasket in my section and how to tie a knot in the replacement trash bag so that it was snug around the rim of the wastebasket. She was careful to stress that, outside of my own cleaning tools, I was never to touch anything but the floor or the wastebasket while doing my job –doing otherwise could result in me being written up.

Judy then introduced me to the location and contents of the janitorial supply closet. It was here that I would store my trashcan while sweeping with a large, red dust mop.

Judy acted as if the dust mop was a difficult and dangerous piece of machinery for a neophyte to operate, carefully demonstrating how to move its head by twisting the mop handle in one direction or the other. She then watched, making critical and supportive comments, as I maneuvered around the obstacles she chose for my dust-mop driver’s training.

When it came time to demonstrate the proper use of the detail brush, Judy got down on all fours and explained in great detail how to use it in conjunction with a dust pan, her large, shapeless ass protruding out from under a desk like a partially-inflated hot-air balloon.

We then went over proper mopping procedure and Judy was overjoyed to find a piece of gum stuck to the floor so that she could fully demonstrate the effectiveness of that prince of tools, the scraper.

After convincing herself that I was capable of all that I had been shown, Judy left me to my tasks.

I set to with an optimistic vigor. Nothing about my new job seemed difficult nor did it tax my brain. I could think my little thoughts all night long, undisturbed by the chores I was performing. I especially liked mopping. Everything about it seemed so . . . zen: the wringer, the suds, the creak of the wooden handle as I swept the mop across the floor, the way the moist strings of the head swept smoothly over the tiles, leaving a glistening layer of cleanliness in their wake –so good.

Of a sudden it occurred to me that I might have found the perfect job for a person of my character. I could see myself continuing in this line of work until I was ‘discovered’ –or even if I never was. There was something noble about being a lowly janitor while, I felt, one was so obviously above the job.

The night flew by. Before I knew it, Judy was fetching me out from under a desk where I battled dust mice and gum wrappers with my trusty new friend, the detail brush. It was 11 p.m. –lunchtime.

I stowed my tools, collected my lunch sack, and followed my crew to the cafeteria.

The cafeteria was monstrous, easily the size of a basketball court; one end dominated by a full-service kitchen and serving area, the rest filled with the expected array of long cafeteria tables.

By the time we arrived, the cafeteria staff had long since departed and only half the light banks remained lit. There were no hot meals awaiting us, only vending machines filled with the standard selection of pop, candy, and crackers as well as a couple of refrigerated machines offering stale bagels, dry apples, the day’s soggy leftovers wrapped in cellophane, and lunch-pail pudding for $1.25.

It was good to finally have a chance to talk with Cliff. He ambled in with his own crew, their good-natured banter contrasting with my nervous silence.

“Hey.” I called.

“Hey! How’s it goin’?”

“Not bad. It’s kinda fun. Easy.” I replied.

“Uh-huh –told ya! Wait ‘til you get to run a buffer,” he said. “That’s the best part.”

“Oh?”

“Here,” Cliff said, indicating a rack of silverware. “Every night grab a knife, spoon, and fork.” He thrust one of each into my hands.

“I don’t need these,” I said, confused. “All I have is sandwiches and chips.”

“No, dummy!” he hissed under his breath. “Stick ‘em in your bag and take ‘em home! We need silverware for the apartment!”

People settled into their familiar lunch seats and I found myself the odd man out. Cliff indicated with his demeanor that he didn’t want his little brother tagging along, so I picked out an empty table, feeling no real slight. The solitude gave me a better opportunity to observe the inhabitants of my new world.

Management sat at a head table, sycophants in tow, eating at a measured pace and talking low. The group received occasional glances from the rest of the crew –none of them friendly and only a few covetous.

Clauson’s did not shrink from hiring the mentally handicapped -people like Chris Sandaio who gossiped with his dust mop and mock-threatened his sandwich each day before taking great, snarfing bites out of it- and these folks tended to sit together during lunch, that or all alone as they chewed through their food with the same lack of zeal and awareness with which they performed their janitorial duties.

The remainder of the Clauson’s crew clumped together in their various factions –the stoners, the Hispanics, the Christians, etc- laughing or bitching as they wolfed down their meals before splitting into two further subgroups: the smokers and the non-smokers. While the former stayed seated, the latter moved outside.

Being a nicotine addict since the fourth grade, I had to follow them.

After lunch, Judy introduced me to my floor buffer, a powerful tool that is a cross between an upright vacuum cleaner and a push lawnmower. I was given a spray bottle and instructions as to the proper ratio of floor wax and water with which to fill it. Judy demonstrated the difference between a dirty and a clean floor-pad and showed me how to attach said large discs -really nothing more than giant scotch-bright pads, like the kind you use to scrub your dishes- to the mount beneath the buffer’s hood.

Plugging it in, Judy sprayed a thin stream of the wax on the floor, released the handle on the buffer and squeezed its dual triggers. The buffer began to float across the floor, Judy swaying gently behind, guiding it with ease, its wide handle couched in the ample crease of her lap. She waltzed the buffer over a small section of flooring until the tiles beneath gleamed as if they had never before seen foot traffic.

Now it was my turn.

With Judy coaching me I spritzed my wax, released the handle, placed it up against my hips as I’d seen her do, and engaged the triggers.

The buffer bucked back against my unsuspecting flesh with a startling violence, wrenching itself out of my grasp, and skittering over to thump against the wall. Judy let out a long sigh of suffering exasperation and we ran through it again. And again.

I was hopeless but seeing that I was at least able of keep my grip on the handle as it dragged me around the floor, Judy threw in the towel and left me to my struggle.

I spent the rest of the night on that 24-foot stretch of tile, fighting with the buffer like a ranch hand breaking a horse. Just when I’d think I had it, the pad would bark against the floor, pulling erratically away from me with a terrific violence I could barely contain. Once I even chuffed through the topcoat of wax I was supposed to be buffing, leaving an ugly red scar of melted pad on the tile below.

Even when I could control it, I was never sure of the effect my efforts were having. The lighting was such that the tiles remained a vague off-white unless viewed from some feet away. While Judy had buffed with a casual assurance, my uncertainty caused me to stop frequently. I’d step back to view the results with ever growing frustration and amazement, as the spot I’d been working would invariably appear duller than when I had begun. The attitude with which I had earlier faced my new job was soon just as flat and unremarkable.

The ride home was as exhilarating as the opposite had been intimidating. With the wind in my hair I zoomed down the naked black streets, slaloming across two and four lanes, from light to shadow, imagining myself the last human alive. My car would soon be roadworthy and these heart-pumping rides would cease –a change I looked forward to without realizing what I would be losing.

Cliff found us a place on the east side of town in a trio of apartment buildings clustered together around a withered lawn like three discarded cracker boxes. I didn’t have enough for my half of the deposit, but our mother gave me a loan so we began to move in.

Our place was on the second story of the western most building, one from the end; a set of narrow and perilous stairs making the move that much more difficult. At one point we discussed rigging up some kind of pulley system for the lighter objects but I think it was just the dope talking.

My belongings were limited and ridiculous: a few plates and glasses, a towel or two, my toothbrush, a mattress, pillow, sheets and a blanket, a limited wardrobe, one long bookshelf with books enough to fill it, 100 or more cassette tapes of music, some posters, a desk, and a lamp.

I found it strange that Cliff’s collection of belongings was as limited and even more impractical. Though he had been living on his own for over four years, he had no furniture and only one towel.

“Where’s all your stuff?”

“This is all my stuff.” he replied, gesturing at his pile -tools, signs, Halloween masks, toys, a boom box, a startling roll of posters, a couple of swords, two plates, some clothing, and a mind boggling array of glass, metal, and plastic gewgaws, what-nots, and other such impracticality.

“But . . . what about all your furniture? The tables, the chairs, that kick ass green lamp that stood by your front door?”

“I threw ‘em out.”

“You what?!?”

“I didn’t want to move all that crap. I just brought the essentials.”

“You threw it all out?”

“It wouldn’t fit in my car, anyway.”

“You threw it all away.”

“Don’t worry, bro. We’ll get more.”

I thought he was nuts but within a few weeks our apartment began to sprout furniture. First a ratty couch and loveseat appear, then an end table and three kitchen chairs, then a lamp and a stereo cabinet. Before I know it we are fully furnished. Cliff even produces the perfect bachelor clock: gaudy, promotional barware featuring a red LED readout above the ever-moving, illusory tricklings of a glowing waterfall.

"The hell you gettin' all this stuff?” I ask, fingering a worn but serviceable coat rack I discover in our entryway.

“The dumpster.” he replies with a grin. “Come on’n help me carry this great bureau someone chucked-away this morning . . .”

Apparently, Cliff’s moving philosophy is not as singular or as balmy as I initially thought.

Despite my buffer shortcomings, I begin to sink into a comfortable routine at the Delore plant, thoroughly enjoying my solitude. Still, one does become bored, particularly when the task at hand requires only the barest minimum of concentration to perform. Before too long I find myself snooping through cupboards, closets, and desk drawers.

Most people’s desks are as you’d expect -change, paperclips, broken pencils, and rubber bands in the little tray, a mess of paper, computer media, and office tools in the top drawer, mostly dusty hanging files beneath that, etcetera- but sometimes I was surprised.

One guy kept two pairs of muddy boots in his desk. Another’s was stocked with nothing but snacks, pop, and sportsman’s magazines. One lady had a little pink gnome on top of her desk that, when turned around, reveled itself as a detailed replica of an erect penis. My favorite was a guy who’s desk top was a riot of papers and computer disks yet the drawers below were completely empty except for a loose staple or two.

Beyond the cubicles and hallways, my duties also included a couple of production areas. Most of them held sensitive and interesting equipment, though not so sensitive that they couldn’t be trusted around a bumbling janitor.

The beakers, oscilloscopes, vats, environmental suits, chemicals, and deep sinks fascinated me. I started keeping some of stuff I found in the trash, like rejected silicon wafers or computer chips, and even began nicking little things -test tubes, rubber stamps, warning labels and the like. It was all very stupid of me –taking anything home, even trash, was cause for instant dismissal- but then, I was very stupid, and I certainly wasn’t alone. As I got to know my coworkers, I discovered that just about every one of them took something; the folks who cleaned the kitchen took home bags of coffee, sugar and salt. Custodians in the garage smuggled out oil, sparkplugs, and air filters. Folks working the offices pilfered change, candy, and kitsch from desks.

We we’re cleaning the place out in more ways than expected.

Cliff is a long time collector -by hook or by crook- of the unique and the bizarre, as well as the everyday and the mundane. Most of what he collects is used in a mind-boggling display that Cliff thinks of as home decorating. He has lived this was since I’ve known him and our apartment was no exception.

Before he even began liberating our furniture from dumpsters, Cliff decorated the apartment, a process that, like the creepings of a mutant ivy, never ceased. Banners of all hues covered our windows, a large, rainbow colored American flag effectively concealing the hallway. A mirror hung from the ceiling amid a sea of movie posters. The walls and ceiling were covered with pictures, posters, strings of Christmas lights, signs, clocks, pages cut from magazines, buttons, business cards, photo-copies, disassembled packaging, paintings, and other oddball gew-gaws until entire rooms lost their sense of direction, of geometry, becoming impossible, limitless universes of contradiction. This unique and startling approach to decorating makes our apartment a favored hangout; a place where reality suspends.

My ‘comfortable routine’ as a janitor quickly became not only dull but taxing. Living in relative squalor and sloth in my own apartment, I found it difficult to get up the gumption to do my job as well as I should have. I took to stretching out every duty I had in order to limit the amount of time I would have to spend fighting my buffer, preferring to mop or wander around raiding desks for candy and small change. I was careful to never take too much, leaving enough behind to camouflage my theft –or so I thought.

One night I reappeared at a woman’s desk only to find a note on top of her Wrigley’s spearmint pack that read: “Stop stealing my gum!”

I wrote “OK” on the note and never opened her desk again.

The on-site manager of Clauson’s was a stern-jawed, broad shouldered, ex-marine in glasses named Larry -a name I have yet to discover appended to a person of my liking.

Larry would stalk about the plant with the air of a drill-sergeant, muttering, glaring out from under his light gray crew-cut, and making everyone nervous.

His wife, Wanda, whom was dubbed ‘the wicked witch of the west’, headed up the Clauson’s day crew, yet it was not rare for her to make appearances during our shift. Her outrageous choice of clothing always made me laugh. Larry at least wore a Clauson’s shirt like any part of the crew, but Wanda was ever flamboyant. Brightly colored pantsuits were not uncommon, nor black sequined blouses, and each outfit was always accompanied by a pair of gaudy heels, chosen to match and accentuate the highlighting color of the outfit: gold, orange, purple, silver, puce.

The big boss, Dick, was a non-descript, paunchy man ever dressed in the company’s baby-blue coveralls. Dick’s appearances at the plant were rare, seeming to accompany only bad tidings. Because of this, he was seen as bad juju and was roundly disliked. The only consolation being that one could hail him with the phrase: “Hey, Dick.”

Life with Cliff was great. Being brothers, we had a deep understanding of each other and rarely disagreed, much less argued. Independent, we kept our own hours, cooked our own food, and remained immersed in little habits and hobbies that kept us out of each other’s hair.

Working the night shift suited our introverted and antisocial preferences, allowing us to hit the supermarket at four in the morning and otherwise go about much of our business without fear of unwanted intrusion.

The only real difference between the two of us is that Cliff is quite a bit more nosey than I, inserting himself into situations that I walk past with a quick step and eyes averted. He just can’t ignore something that doesn’t look right to him.

Before I knew it, and much to my horror, this character flaw had him making friends and acquaintances of our neighbors. Strangers –strange to me, that is- would accost us at the complex, saying ‘Hi’, inviting us in or, worse, arriving unlooked for on the doormat.

One neighbor in particular comes to mind: a young, single mother whose apartment was situated at the other end of the building. Tamara was surprisingly nice for a girl with the appearance of someone who’d blow you for a drink, but her smile was off-putting, to say the least. Looking as if she’d been attacked by a dentist wielding a length of chain and a dull chisel, the snaggled remnants of her teeth protruded from the graveyard of her gums like canted and crumbling headstones. I don’t think she had a single complete tooth in her head. I could never bring myself to ask her what happened to them. I suppose they could have rotted away, though she couldn’t have been more than 25 years old.

Chrissie, her teenaged sister and roommate, wasn’t as pleasant. While still in possession of most of her teeth, she was less intelligent and more self-involved. Just a senior in high school, she stayed with Tamara, in theory, as a live-in baby-sitter for Denise, Tamara’s daughter. In practice, Chrissie used the apartment to ditch school, become addicted to drugs, and to fuck anyone who could provide her with the aforementioned substances.

One time Chrissie, ringing her hands and tossing her head, barged into our apartment without knocking and began circling on the carpet.

“You got any coke?” she asked, popping her jaw. “Any coke? You must have some coke.”

“Nope,” I replied, scanning contents of our fridge, “just Pepsi.”

Tamara’s daughter, Denise, was a filthy, untrained, screaming hellion lost somewhere between the ages of two and five. In the areas in which she was not spoiled, she was neglected -or even abused. Frequently half-dressed and filthy, Denise was up all hours of the night and wee-morning, dined solely on a diet of chips, pop, sugary breakfast cereals, fast food burgers and whatever else was left lying around, remained at the mercy of whatever scumbag mom brought home from the bar, and was watched more carefully by the television set than her easily angered, coked-up auntie.

Whenever I visited Tamara’s, the general squalor and hopelessness of her life never failed to amaze me.

My lack of interest in my work did not go unnoticed. I was demoted to cleaning two large bathrooms and a long hallway. Judy demonstrated the new functions I was to perform. It was my first time inside a woman’s room since a group of jackal like girls had attempted to give me a swirlie in jr. highschool. Despite this fact, I found it even less absorbing than the labs I had been cleaning. I did note with some interest, however, that the ladies room had a long, padded bench with a high back while the men’s room had nothing more than toilets to sit on. The difference intrigued me. Both bathrooms had the same layout, the same number of sinks and toilets, even the same number of ashtrays to clean, yet the women had a place to sit or even lie down.

In those first few months, despite my failings as a laborer, I managed to make more friends than enemies, the only black spot on my record coming when I had a run in with Jerry.

Jerry was our crew’s resident handicap. With an over-large, egg-shaped skull, skinny little body, glasses, and twisted speech, everyone assumed he was mentally deficient but I suspected his problems were mostly physical. He worked hard and kept to himself. Most of the crew either snickered at him behind his back, calling him ‘retard’ and ‘egg-head’, or ignored him completely, preferring to pretend he didn’t exist. He made me uncomfortable, too, but my attitude has long been to ignore the deformities, not the person; an attempt to override my instinctive reaction to keep such unfortunates from reproducing.

Jerry seemed to sense this friendly ambivalence in me and began directing occasional comments towards conversations I was engaged in or laughing at my jokes. I didn’t understand much of what he said, his pronunciation mangled by a marked inability to control the flesh of his mouth, but he acted friendly enough.

One night my buffer died in mid polish. I was baffled, inspecting the pad and sniffing around the motor to see if anything had burned out. When I followed my cord around the corner I saw that someone had unplugged it from the outlet. My confused expression must have been priceless for Jerry could no longer contain himself, his large cranium bobbing up and down on the other side of a cubicle wall as he laughed at his little joke. I laughed too, enjoying the levity’s effect on me in the middle of my most hated task.

The next night I saw an opportunity to repay the favor, catching sight of Jerry’s back as he buffed away inside one of the labs. I crouched down and approached the outlet like a spider, pulled the cord and then slipped off to a covered position to watch his reaction. To my puzzlement, Jerry seemed not the least bit amused, not even when I showed myself and called out “Got you back!” in a friendly tone.

Later that night I received my first write up from Judy for having interfered in Jerry’s work. When I tried to explain myself, horrified that she might think I was picking on Jerry because of his handicap, Judy gave me an “I don’t want to hear it” look and walked away.

After that I ignored Jerry, too.

You won’t be surprised to hear that Clauson’s Janitorial didn’t often attract beautiful female employees –a lack I, as a young male, felt keenly- so it was a great shock to the entire crew the night a stunning young woman joined our ranks. When she first appeared in the cafeteria at lunch break, those of us not in her crew were bowled over to realize she was wearing a yellow Clauson’s shirt. Her long, brown hair, pretty eyes, large, full breasts and well-shaped posterior stopped us in mid chew. She wore her shirt unbuttoned one button farther than usual to expose a sexy golden neckband that drew eyes to both its glitter and the warm cleavage it rested above.

Yow.

Lunch was forgotten, replaced by ribald comments and rabid desire –or jealous biting commentary from the more traditionally blessed and sometimes even mustachioed female members of the crew.

Leave it to Cliff to not only know this girl but to snatch her up as his own within a few short weeks. Her name was Sheila and they had known each other though various friends for a number of years. She was closer to my age than his, having graduated from the same school a year before me but I couldn’t place her.

As is so often true of the gorgeous, much of Shelia’s beauty disappeared once she opened her mouth. Being Cliff’s girlfriend, she was over at the house often enough for my awe at her beauty to be eroded away by her unceasing, shallow drivel. Before I knew it, I didn’t even find her attractive.

Her invasion of the apartment started small but grew in leaps and bounds as she dragged her insane problems and shrill ideas into our home and our lives, making us miserable. Her life was a ridiculous soap opera of rival friends, loud, dangerous relatives, and bad judgment. She made us look smart.

Had it not been for Sheila, we never would have thrown the party. Cliff and I just don’t have those kinds of ideas. Truth be told, we had parties at our place all the time -but none were planned. People would show up and we’d party. It was less hassle that way.

Sheila thought an announced party would be great, though, and the idea got stuck in Cliff’s head. Hell, yeah! Why not? It even sounded like a good idea to me.

Cliff advertised the party to a select group at work -telling me to keep my yap shut, he’d do the inviting- and it was all set.

Right before the party, one of Sheila’s friends, a girl named Cindy, found a source of acid and I decided to buy a hit for the party. I’d tripped once before, in the mountains with a few friends, and thought it would be fun to do so again in a party setting. Sheila and Cindy agreed.

The party began small. Ron, a shaggy headed guy from work, arrived early and gave us a demonstration with his airbrush kit, creating a corny, alien horizon on a piece of white canvas board using only blue and violet. Others began to arrive.

Sheila handed me my hit of acid, cautioning: “The guy said it’s double-dipped, Corey. If this is only your second trip maybe you should just take half. You can always take more, later.”

No. I was a man, an independent man. Half-measures were for children who still lived at home. I popped the hit into my mouth and washed it down with an 18-ounce glass of orange juice. Those who saw me do this assumed I knew that citric acid is said to not only speed up a trip but also enhance its potency. I knew nothing of the sort and was only drinking the juice because I was thirsty.

More and more people arrived, one fellow toting a huge, multi-stemmed, volcano shaped bong the likes of which I’d never seen.

People in the know kept asking: “You peaking yet?” but I didn’t feel anything. Sheila and Cindy claimed to feel the onrush, searching for less nervous furniture and giggling in anticipation. Maybe my hit was a dud?

Earlier in the day, Cliff rigged a strobe light up to the light-switch in our dark hallway so that anyone flipping on the light as they searched for the bathroom would get a mind-numbing surprise. Demonstrating this little trick to a friend so fascinated him that we began to play with the effects of the strobe, spinning a half-dollar, then a bottle on a thick tile of glass until, in our inebriated exuberance, we spun too wildly, shattering the bottle on the edge of the tile.

As others attempted to pick the glass out of the carpeting I exited the dark hallway only to find that I was deep in the throat of my trip’s peak, the act of lifting the flag from the doorway seeming to set off the first wild rush of riotous sensation in my head.

Jack McIntyre, a high school friend of Cliff’s, noticed my dazzled condition and, screaming like a banshee, leapt at me, bringing his face inches away from mine and shaking it, his tongue waggling, as he uttered an unending string of cartoon sound effects for which he was known.

I wanted to laugh. I wanted to scream. I desperately wished to turn into a wisp of vapor and exit my body. Instead, I did the next best thing and sank to the floor, my arms over my head, assuming a fetal position and muttering “No, no, no, no.”

Somehow this single-incidence of sensory overload set the tone for my whole, horrible, paranoid trip. Jack felt terrible and spent years apologizing to me for his actions but I don’t blame him. My personality is not suited to the outer realms of strong hallucinogenic drugs.

Cindy and Sheila caught up with me eventually, though their trips were far more pleasant than mine. Cindy had a bit of a head cold so Cliff gave her a fresh box of Kleenex which she carried with her from place to place as she socialized.

Soon the party was going strong and I could not take the input. I considered going outside but, upon opening the door, was so horrified by the big, black openness of the night with its myriad, distant twinklings that I retreated to my room instead.

I paced a bit then sat down on my mattress and tried listening to some music but the sounds that poured forth -one of Syd Barret’s more creative guitar excursions- made me feel as if I was losing my mind.

I clicked the tape off just as Ron entered the room. Sloshed, he sat by my bed and began babbling about god. Even whacked out of my mind on acid, I’m not masochistic enough to want to listen to a drunk talking about religion but his mere presence calmed me. As he went on, I noticed that my hands left wonderful trails when they moved, an effect caused by an excess amount of light making its way past my chemically opened irises. Ron proselytized and I waved my hands, smiling.

Down near the foot of my bed, the faux wood grain on my hollow-core closet doors began to twist and coil and I could see what looked like weasels moving around under the bed covers near my feet. I blinked, nervous, looking to Ron for assurance but bits of his head and shoulder were fading out into multicolored gray smears -not unlike what one sees when blacking out- and merging with the slithery, encroaching closet doors. Having had just about enough, I got up without saying a word and left Ron to deal with the weasels.

In the kitchen, the revelers drank their alcohol, toked their hits, and engaged each other in sloppy games of bumper pool. My best friend, Hank Billings -a tall, thin guy with a hawkish face and a muppet’s head of curls- was twirling his pool stick in a big circle as he waited his turn, the trails of which stopped me dead in my tracks.

“You like that, do you?” he asked, seeing my reaction and spinning the stick faster only to lose his grip and –as always- spill a beer.

“Ungfwat.” I muttered, backing out of the room.

Back in the hallway, my eye fell on Cliff’s closed bedroom, the long, soothing rectangle of black beneath it seeming to promise escape. I slipped inside, unseen, and heaved a sigh of relief.

Despite the solitude, I still could not relax. If anything, Cliff’s room was even more a funhouse landscape than our living room, owing to the fact that it was a storehouse for those things he deemed too precious to come in contact with the general public. My blown pupils ranged over swords, toolboxes, Mountain Dew paraphernalia, clothing, car parts, magazines, flashers from barricades, a pair of large, hairy snow-boots, books, laundry, glass insulators, and more.

Coming to rest on the light switch, it occurred to me that what I really needed was a break from sensory input. Reaching over, I shut off the light and sat down on Cliff’s bed.

Being a true devotee to the good night’s sleep, Cliff covered his bedroom window with aluminum foil the day we moved in, the effect of which being that, with the light off and the door shut, virtually no ambient light source remained: I was in pitch darkness.

I smiled to myself and drew in a few calm breaths but rumpled origami of my brain would not leave well enough alone.

“This is great.” it said. “Total darkness. Just like the void.”

“Uh, huh.” I muttered in nervous agreement. “The void.”

“What if this really is the void?” my brain continued.

“No, don’t . . .”

“Yeah. If this was the void we’d just be floating. Lost. Like being in outer space but with no stars. No light, no life, just the yawing vacuum of space sucking at your clothes as you whirl, helpless; falling forever in an endless-”

I stood and clawed at my memory’s approximation of the switch plate, finding nothing but air, as if my yammering, idiot brain had somehow managed to create the void it spoke of. Almost gibbering with fright I fell forward into the wall, straining the entire length of my body to find the protruding nub of the light switch. When my desperate fumblings inadvertently flipped the elusive switch, the resulting flood of unexpected light caused me such renewed fright that I found myself pining for the void I had only just escaped.

Upon retaining some shred of reason, I realized that, as uncomfortable as I was around others, I was far safer with them than left alone with my thoughts –a dispiriting discovery for one so long happy with his life of voluntary solitude.

The rest of the party is but a blur to me, as I’m sure you can imagine. I remember swaying between a vague sense of unease and sheer panic for hours as I waited for the drug to wear off. My only hope was to distract myself with the others, not easy when you’re hyper aware and they’re rendered incomprehensible by drink or chattering nonstop like senseless hyenas from pot. My best bet, I felt, was to stick close to Cindy and Sheila, who were in the same ocean, if not the same boat, as I.

Sheila was too social for me, however, the LSD having rendered her capable of stopping with a person for only a few short and random sentences, shot out like machinegun rounds from the gaping chop of her mouth. Then some irresistible, inner momentum would carry her forward to another startled recipient of her seamless, erratic monologue.

Cindy was far calmer, her head cold serving as an anchor to her mind as it rode out the LSD storm. The Kleenex box she carried had became a kind of security object for her and she clutched it close to her chest, as a little girl with a favorite doll, plucking out the occasional tissue to dab at her congested nostrils. By the end of the party, a mere handful of unused but crumpled tissues remained inside a box rendered almost shapeless by the spasmodic fetishing; a deep crease near one end giving it a loose floppiness, as if a crucial bone had snapped somewhere deep within.

Late in the party, two uninvited guests arrived, bringing with them what looked like about a pound of marijuana in a freezer bag. They were low-level dealers with a menacing air. They were inside for less than five minutes before one of them made sure to stretch, thus ‘accidentally’ flashing the gun he was packing under his shirt; a move made with such theatrical nonchalance that it belied his otherwise aloof demeanor. Their arrival subdued the party, lowering its tone from freewheeling and jovial to somber and business like.

Something about the face on the guy with the gun bothered me to such a degree that it went beyond normal distrust into the murky realm of undeniable intuition –a thing I’ve never believed in. I told Cliff this and he laughed, saying: “These guys are cool. Trust me. You’re just having a bad trip.”

Almost everyone else had the same reaction: “Them? They’re okay!” –but I couldn’t kick the feeling.

The odd thing is that Sheila and Cindy felt as I; something about the fellow’s eyes, nay, the general shape of his face, seemed to exude evil to the three of us, as if the grim reaper himself lurked somewhere within his head and only those twisted by hard drugs could see it. We huddled in my room muttering like the idiots we were until they left.

Their departure signaled the beginning of the end of the party. Within thirty minutes all but the most wasted were gone, leaving our apartment as bewildered and disheveled as those who remained.

As the last of the mobile revelers moved out, Ron plopped down next to Cindy and, apparently finished with his incoherent proselytizing, began hitting on her with a desperation tempered only by his level of inebriation. Over Cindy’s protests that she was not only uninterested but engaged, Ron continued to slur various propositions into what he thought was her ear but, more often than not, was her shoulder or breast pocket. Cindy ignored him as well as she could but when his slouch would become too pronounced she would push him off saying: “Don’t ooze, Ron. You’re oozing.”

Shelia and Cliff were doomed from the start. Sheila was far too needy and disruptive, her bouncy, childish idiocy clashing with Cliff’s conservative nature. It wasn’t too many days after the party before they decided to break up. The parting was amicable; a good thing because, with so many mutual friends, it would have been a nightmare had their relationship reached a screaming and throwing-things level. Sheila managed to make things uncomfortable for me however, for, within 24 hours of their break-up, I found her in my bed.

I was a bit down that morning –a typical mood for me in those days- and Shelia wanted to try and cheer me up. We sat and talked awhile and then, seeing me stretch and strain at my aching shoulders, she offered me a backrub, which I accepted.

I lay face down on my bed while Sheila straddled me, her fingers working the knots out of my muscles as I groaned in sincere appreciation. A real fan of massage, I was soon semi-conscious and drooling on the pillow.

Finished, Sheila rolled off onto my bed and lay next to me. I sat up, still in rubbed-muscle heaven and, looking over, thanked her. Sheila said nothing, just arched her back, accentuating her large, round breasts, then parted her lips and looked deep into my eyes.

Of a sudden my slow, young brain realized what was being offered. Only the day before she’d been my brother’s girlfriend and here she was waiting for me to commence the sequel, her hair fanned out over my pillows. I recoiled, aghast at the concept but saying nothing.

She lay there a moment longer, a bit surprised I suppose, then got up and walked out.

My three-month review was not good. I was told that I wasn’t cutting the mustard and to collect my things –I was being transferred to production level. The change was to be immediate, an embarrassment for me because it was the middle of the shift so, as my coworkers came back from lunch, they witnessed my march of shame as I was escorted to the stairs. Everyone knew that the change was a demotion -I was literally moving down in the company. Judy wouldn’t even look at me.

As I've stated, the main floor was mostly cubicles and a few clean rooms. In engineer territory the worst messes occur around the coffee stations. The production level, on the other hand, was a vast, grey expanse of concrete filled with tanks of toxic chemicals, weird fumes, metal filings, and the casual dirt of the blue-collar worker.

My new section included a rough-edged research and design area, two short hallways, a stairwell, a makeshift metal shop, and a men’s room. The latter two always competed for filthiest but, in retrospect, the metal shop never had a chance.

While the upstairs was vacant during our shift, production was not. We had to work around a full crew most of the night. The place was such a flurry of activity that you could look behind you as you swept, mopped, or emptied trash and see all evidence of your efforts whisked away.

My new boss, Tom, was a beer-bellied, bearded redneck who wore ever-sagging jeans that he would tug upwards every few minutes or, if he were telling a joke, more often.

Tom was sympathetic to my plight and told me that no one expected any miracles on the production level –“Just look busy.” he said “With all these jack-asses spillin’ coffee and draggin’ mud in behind you, no one can tell if you’re doing any real work or not.”

One of my new coworkers was a guy named –I’m not making this up- Larry, a southerner who was rabid in his racism. Every conversation I had with him somehow ended up on the subject of what he called “niggers”, “spics”, and “kikes”.

His squat, melon-shaped skull, sporting a sallow array of almost simian features, was topped off with an unremarkable shank of brown hair styled to resemble a discarded mop head.

One night, as we dragging our trash buckets and our tired butts towards the supply closet, he began cursing Abraham Lincoln.

“This is all Lincoln’s fault.” he said. “If it weren’t for Lincoln, niggers would be doing this work.”

“Yeah,” I replied, “and we’d be unemployed.”

The thing that killed me was that, working in a different building, he had this beautiful, willow thin girlfriend with clear, gentle eyes who was very devoted to him. She almost never spoke except to him, and then only if spoken to. Whenever he spoke she would listen intently, a little smile curling gently at the corners of her mouth as if the crude jokes and idiotic opinions he uttered were the most beautiful sonnets ever composed. She always sat very close to him, as if his magnetism was palpable.

The only time she ever spoke to me was when I made a weak attempt to explain my lack of racism. “You don’t understand because you’ve never had to live among them,” she said in her soft, southern accent. “They’re no better than animals.”

After Sheila, Cliff avoided girls for a while –or tried to, anyway. They seemed to seek him out. He was as interested as any man would be but Sheila left a bad taste in his mouth, and now he was never at a loss to come up with excuses for why it wouldn’t work.

“Karen asked me down to her apartment again today.”

Karen was a girl he’d gone to school with who now lived just one door down. She was pretty, if a bit dull.

“Again? What was it this time? Jammed closet door?”

“Nope. Toilet was running. I just jiggled the handle then shortened the chain. She asked me to stay and have a beer.”

“You shoulda.”

“You know I don’t like beer.”

“So? She’s cute.” I teased.

“Yeah. She is –but she smokes.”

“You obviously like her.” I said, thinking about how he’d perk up whenever she came knocking. “Why not give it a try?”

“She has a kid and her ex-husband is always coming over and starting fights. She drinks too much, she's short, and she’s out of shape. It’d never work.”

“Then why’d you bring it up?”

Having an active crew working around me made cleaning more difficult than I’d expected. Not only were they right behind you, scuffing up the floor as you buffed it, they were sullen and hostile. Most of them were contract workers who didn’t give a damn about their jobs or the company; they’d throw their trash on the floor and piss all over the toilets. The rest were long-time Delore workers, disgruntled by the company’s steady decline –both in the stock market as well as in how they treated their employees- and saw the contract workers, a group in which we were included, as incompetent interlopers.

This meant that I now worked before a resentful audience that, at best ignored me as inhuman scum, at worst considered me an unnecessary obstacle to their progress, and thus a worthy target of their abuse:

“Can’t you wait until I’m finished to come through here with that goddamn thing?”

“Oh, shit! You emptied the trash can!?! I had important papers in there!”

“Hey buddy, I need to take a piss –and don’t gimmie that ‘the other bathroom is open’ bullshit. I ain’t walkin’ alla way over there just so some lazy-ass, retard janitor don’t have to mop twice.”

They stole my “Caution, Wet Floor” signs, dragged their black-soled shoes across my freshly buffed floors, hid my trashcan when my back was turned, and turned me in for the slightest, often imagined, infraction.

It wasn’t long before I just stopped trying. After completing my basic routine, I would spend the rest of the evening yapping with my coworkers, napping under out-of-the-way machinery with my detail brush, or doing crossword puzzles on the first landing of the stairwell.

Despite this slacking, I was not harassed until Sheila, enthralled with a handsome, blonde security guard, began whispering tales to him about how the janitors pilfered when no one was looking.

Of course, she had most closely associated with Cliff and I.

Though I don’t know if she ever actually said any names, before too long I found myself under some pretty heavy scrutiny. Every time I turned around I’d see Larry or someone else from upper-management scoping me out. The whole crew was forced to work harder because of it. Tom came and asked me if I knew what was up because, as he put it: “They’ve got a hard on for you and it’s killing me!”

I had no idea why I was commanding such attention but I could see the handwriting on the wall.

One night, right after first break, Connie, Larry’s second in command -a flat-chested, snaggle-toothed biker chick with oversized glasses, a drill-instructor’s charm, and a surprisingly shapely ass- button-holed me as I was collecting my tools.

“C’mon. Let’s inspect your area.”

She led me to the R&D section and began pointing at partially filled trashcans and the messy coffee station.

“Why the hell wasn’t this cleaned up before first break?”

“It was. Then they came in and used the area again after I’d been through.”

“Then you shoulda cleaned it again.”

“Well, I would have but I was already sweeping.”

“You dust-mopped this area?” she asked in mock surprise.

“Yeah. Then they came back in. Same thing that happened to the trashcan.” I pointed out.

“Watch your mouth, mister,” she cautioned.

After the inspection, I was written up, the upshot being that my area was to be sparkling clean regardless of the constant foot-traffic, or I would be fired. Had I a work ethic I couldn’t have done what was asked and they knew it.

Tom read Connie’s comments, then slapped me on the back and tried to cheer me up, saying: “Look at it this way, guy: Pretty soon you’ll never have t’come back here again.”

How right he was. I think I lasted another week before boss man Larry caught three of us gabbing at the supply closet. Later that evening Tom was forced to give me my walking papers –a chore he found uncomfortable.

“Well, uh, Corey, um, they, uh . . .”

“You have to write me up?”

“Well, um, yeah . . .”

“Does this count as my third time or, since I’m past the three month waiting period, is it only my second?”

Well, you know, they uh . . .” Tom adjusted his baseball cap for the umpteenth time, his eyes wandering everywhere except my face. “They asked me to fire you, man. I gotta let you go.”

For the first time he looked me in the eyes and I could see a cross between sympathy and a readiness for whatever my reaction might be -tears, recrimination, a sucker punch, who knew?

“Well, not terribly surprising, is it?” I said with a smile.

“Um, uh, no. Not really.”

“I never was that good at this job. I kinda hated it.”

“Yeah, you’re the worst buffer I ever seen.”

“So- do I finish out the rest of the night?”

“No, you gotta go now. And, uh . . .” Tom continued with obvious discomfort “I gotta escort you off the property.”

“Okay. Fine –except I drove my brother here? How will he get home?”

Tom just shrugged.

I climbed into my car, surprised to find a bit of a lump in my throat as I realized, even though I’d hardly been there, I was going to miss some of the people and -this will sound nuts- the experience of having and hating the job. The thought that I was now unable to hold up my end of the rent had yet to sink in.

Watching Tom tugging his pants up as he headed back inside, I let out an evil laugh –he’d confiscated my nametag but I still had my scraper.

Once home, I pulled huge lungfuls of smoke through Cliff’s big, glass steamroller, then ate my sack lunch in front of some putrid late-night television. I was desperate to erase the gnawing sense of failure and impending doom that curled like a ball of snakes in my belly. The fact that I could no longer pay my bills or feed myself was bad; that my unemployment also threatened Cliff was inexcusable. I had failed as a roommate and a brother.

What would Cliff say? What would he do? Could we survive on just his pay until I found another job? I paced our apartment like a big animal in a new cage.

When Cliff finally arrived home I met him at the door with a brave smile.

“Hey hey!” I said cheerfully. “I got fired!”

“Yeah, I know.” he said with equal cheerfulness. “I quit!”