I'm part cowboy, on my mother's side.
I went looking for work at the Thunder Box Port-A-Potty Company on the outskirts of Fairbanks the other day.
I don’t know why, but I’ve always romanticized physical labor. What I’m realizing, tho, is that I’ve romanticized it for other people. There are all kinds of manly jobs in Alaska: chopping down trees, hauling up fish, squirting out oil, digging up special rocks [ commonly called “ores” ]. But they all seem really, really difficult. I am liable to get sore. Plus, God only knows how much they’d cut into my sittin’ around time.
My interview was with a guy named Kyle, who described himself as “one of the managers”.
[ It takes more than one? ]
The Thunder Box Port-A-Potty Company was in a warehouse. There were two flatbed trucks in the snow-dusted dirt parking lot with the company name painted on the doors when I arrived. Next to the name was a cartoon port-a-potty with lines painted around the edges to give the impression that it was experiencing an earthquake. The same name and logo was on the Kyle’s t-shirt.
“You Mike?” he said.
“Yep.”
It wasn’t so much an interview as a tour. To the right were dozens of port-a-potties. To the left was a port-a-potty washing area. There was a guy washing one with a hose that hung down from the ceiling of the warehouse. A large grate in the floor caught the water. The whole place smelled like shit.
He pointed to my right, his left. “These are the cleaned potties that are ready to go out.” He pointed to his right, my left. “This is where the dirty potties are cleaned. That’s Mark on poop duty.”
Mark waved and I waved back. Apart from the one he was working on, there were three others awaiting his attention. He wore a threadbare Van Halen t-shirt, goggles, and looked a little too happy, in my opinion.
“Obviously,” Kyle said, “we rent these out, mainly to construction sites and outdoor events–fairs, open-air concerts, and the like. Now that the warm season is here [ it was April 14th and 39 degrees out ] we’re starting to get busy, which is why we’re looking for another hand.”
Kyle walked on and I followed.
“You probably wouldn’t have guessed it,” he said, “but the waste actually varies according to the rental. Over here are our chemicals.”
We came to a tall shelf, which was filled with white gallon jugs. The labels of the jugs said SMELL AWAY! A little cartoon turd was in the corner of the label with the red ‘banned’ slash over it. “This is the main stuff we use. We fill up the tanks with it after an installation. It, as you can imagine, keeps the smell away, plus flies, which are attracted to human waste. Big time. Over here…”
We walked to a smaller shelf in the corner of the warehouse that also held gallon jugs, this time yellow ones. “Over here is the bad boy stuff.” The labels of the jugs read Reek-Be-Gone. Instead of an outlawed cartoon turd, there was a skull and crossbones. “This is the stuff we use mainly for construction sites. Those guys who work construction, Jesus Christ.” Kyle shook his head, then launched into a nightmare spiel about the different varieties of human shit that can occur based on location and event.
As I stood there trying not to listen, my mind clicked over to screen saver, which, lately, has been a clip of a gorgeous blonde slowly peeling off fishnet stockings. Wood sprouted in my jeans and I covered it up by putting my hands in the pockets of my jeans and balling them up into fists.
“Anyway,” Kyle was saying, “I think it has something to do with diet or the type of food offered at the event.”
“I must go now,” I said and left him standing there.
I needed a shower. Big time.
