Light Blue Collar Half-Fiction

I recently finished re-reading Clockers by Richard Price sometime before New Years Eve, which if anything, has inspired me to try and crack the genre of writing mystery novels, or at least crime novels with average joe characters who are more motivated by trying to make ends meet than the criminal justice system. Not that I’m expecting this to be easy; as much as I’ve blazed through what I call “Airport Shop Noir” or poorly written crime thrillers that were more than likely delegated down young adult fiction, you have your Prince’s, or your Lehane’s or your Ellroy’s who set the bar and challenge you to write something just as inspiring. I would include Elmore Leonard on this list (gotta give Detroit boys respect, especially those who mention Downriver, Michigan landmarks like the Grosse Ile pay bridge), but I’ve only read Killshot which, frankly, I probably could have picked a better first read.

Anyway, my co-worker Bebo (not his real name like most of my co-workers whom I’m planning on writing about) gave me his copy of Gangbusters, by New York Daily News crime reporter Michael Stone which I’m trying to plow through before the end of this week (I’m a slow reader, give me a break). It came out in 2000 and reads like a clunky second rate novelization of The Wire if it took place in The Bronx and the drug dealers were from the Dominican Republic. Dozens of character in the police department, DA, witnesses, along with gang members with different affiliations, street names along with their real names only makes for more of a confusing read that might have benefitted with some pictures to place a face with the various personalities and graft charts to see who ranked where on both sides of the law.

As I paged through Gangbusters in the company box truck while waiting for a cargo load of art from JFK one day, Bebo made sure to tell me that his cousins were mentioned somewhere in there as muscle for The Wild Cowboys, the main gang discussed in this book (along with the Jheri Curls and a group of Jamaican drug runners whom Stone just refereed to as “The Jamaicans”). I asked what their role was in the gang and smirked about how they had a lot of bodies on them. When I asked how many, he just started to laugh.

“Yeah man, they got a lot of bodies on them,” he chuckled. “A LOT.”

Jerry, who sat in the middle seat between us glanced up blankly from his iPad game of Angry Birds as if he was about to say something, then looked back down and kept quiet out of his newfound fear of our co-worker.

Art handling seems to be the only job I’ve personally experienced that bridges the gap between those who grew up in inner city poverty and well off suburban kids who’re under the strain of student loan debt courtesy of their parents who either couldn’t afford the 80 to 90 thousand dollar tuition fees or didn’t want to front said bill for a worthless masters degree in fine arts. And nothing’s more apparent than seeing a handful of co-workers (mostly from Pratt) who’ve have to rough it for 16 to 18 an hour for driving a giant truck in New York City, hauling giant, heavy works of art for artists more successful than us or worse, millionaire collectors who’ve sometimes made us hang abstract work upside down or sideways because they said it looks better that way. Meanwhile, you’re trying to keep up with your aforementioned student loan debts while paying way too much in rent for your overpriced loft and studio that you have to share with several other artist types somewhere in the ass end of Red Hook, Brooklyn that’s only accessible by a barely functional bus line before eventually giving it all up in frustration to move back to your midwestern hometown and (if you’re lucky) find work at either a grocery store or substitute teacher. Sometimes you can see the resentment just seethe off of someone like steam.

Then you have people like Bebo who just stumbled into art handling through a cousin of his after time spent in jail for possession (where he eventually earned his GED) and an extended stint in rehab for crack addiction. He has two teenage daughters who live with their mom somewhere in Queens that he barely gets to see while trying to save up and move from the tenement high rises buildings he grew up in the south Bronx. A few weeks ago, he came into work sporting a cast on his right hand from breaking it on some would-be muggers jaw and later on that day while loading a giant Miro from the Guggenheim, turned towards a latte drinking, recent college grad investment banker looking type in a three piece suit who started filming us with his iPhone and brought South Bronx inches from his face on the corner of 86th and 5th with an ear piercing “THA FUCK YOU LOOKIN’ AT” that made everyone around him flinch. Since then, Bebo’s been put on the late-night airport pick up shift that keeps him far away from museums after the Guggenheim registrar complained about our us being “too ghetto.”

What brings people like Jerry and Bebo together in art handling is that they’re both victims of a faulty system that leads to dead end jobs. Physical brain dead labor with master degrees equals to a new line of work I’ve called Light-Blue collar that especially rings true amidst this recession. Sure, you could verbalize your dissertation on Gorky’s color scheme as he experimented briefly with cubism, but that’s not going to help you carry one of his works up ten flights of stairs in an Upper East Side highrise because the damn thing wont fit in the commercial elevator; so shut your pie hole Artforum and dissertate your back into this heavy frame.

“You guys make me mad,” he said to Jerry and I after we returned from JFK and clocked out. “You think if I had a college degree I’d be fucking around with a job like this?”

“I only do this to keep in touch with the little people,” Jerry quipped as he got on his bike and rode off in the snowy weather towards his Red Hook loft that he shares with five other people.

“I’m only doing this as research for my upcoming novel,” I said while getting on my own bike. “Yep, still in the research phase, seven years later.”

“Whatever,” Bebo huffed before he reached in for a goodbye hug. “I need to go back to school for rehab counseling.”

And that’s another thing: We’re not all here because we’re all really into art handling, but because we’re in transition for something bigger and better along the way, whatever that is. Jerry, like most of my co-workers with a masters degree in fine arts and crushing life-long student loan debt, wants to be a successful painter while Bebo wants to help others so they don’t make the same mistakes he did when he was younger. As for myself? Well, I’m still in the researching phase.