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The Odorano Man©2007 David Boyne This is the prologue from my book-in-progress, |
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For at least the past century of humanity’s history, almost every adventure in even the most anonymous of lives begins with filling out a form.
Whether applying for a marriage license, enlisting in the
Marines, or interviewing for a job, the sought for passage can only be
made once we answer prompts such as “Name,” “Age,”
“Present address,” and “Other than minor motor-vehicle
violations, have you ever been convicted of any crime(s)?”
When I was 19-years old just past dawn of an August day already ruined
by oppressive heat and humidity, I paced on a section of sidewalk in Providence,
Rhode Island. I had moved to the city two days earlier. Arriving with
next-to-nothing (a sleeping bag, assorted toiletries, and a second-hand
brown Raleigh Super Course bicycle), I had found and rented a room in
a vast mock-Victorian house that had been converted into a rabbit warren
of small, hot rooms, some without windows. All the other rooms seemed
to be rented by young men who looked a lot like me. Yet, despite this
humid morning being only my third day in the city, I had managed to become
upwardly mobile. For in my damp hand I clutched a pink sheet of paper,
my copy of a triplicate form I had minutes before filled out when in the
offices of the temporary employment agency called Manpower.
Minutes before, while seated at his battered metal desk, my Manpower Employment
Counselor, an anemic man with thick black glasses held in place by the
dense topiary of his afro haircut, had taken the completed form from me,
peeled off the top white copy and dropped it into an overflowing basket
of white copies, then peeled off the yellow copy and dropped it into a
basket overflowing with yellow copies. He had leaned across his desk to
hand back to me the remaining pink copy of the form and said, “Just
stand out front on the sidewalk and wait for a guy in a white van.”
“A guy in a white van?”
“You’ll be helping him out today. If things work out, you do
a good job, you got yourself a steady gig, man.”
“Doing?”
He looked right into my eyes. I could see that his eyeglasses had dust
and smears on them. I wondered if, seeing me though those grimy lenses,
my face had dust and smears on it. “You’ll be cleaning,”
he said. “Maintenance. Easy work. Sonny will explain it all.”
“Sonny?” I asked.
“The guy in the white van.”
“Oh.”
I went out and stood on the sidewalk. I was 19 and my restless energy
was undiminished by the wet heat of the day, so I paced. I had found a
job, Sure, it wasn’t much, but for the day at least, I had purpose
in my life: To get into the white van when it pulled up, surrender my
pink form to Sonny, and spend the next 8 hours of my life doing whatever
he told me to do. At the end of the day Sonny would sign the pink form,
drop me back at this same place on the sidewalk outside of Manpower, and
if I could return the pink form to my Employment Counselor before the
offices closed, I would be given half of the wages I had earned, in cash.
The other half of my day’s wages would be mailed to me a week later,
in a check, with all federal, state and local payroll taxes deducted.
A horn blared. I looked up to see a man in white coveralls and white painter’s
cap lean over to roll down the passenger side window of a white van and
yell, “You Manpower?”
As I walked toward the battered, dirty white van I noted the blue and
gold words painted on the side of the van in the energetic, supremely
confident style found on the covers of superhero comic books, “ODORANO
Man!”
“Are you Sonny?” I asked.
“I’m the Odorano Man! Get in.”
It was only a moment of hesitation, certainly not long enough for The
Odorano Man to have even noticed. But in that eternally stretched out
hesitation I was struck with two thoughts of equal clarity and force.
The first was, “My life really sucks.”
The second was, “Maybe I can write about this some day.”
I got in the van.