Another Day as a Moving Man

The pecking of fingers against keyboards serenaded the brightly lit, high-ceilinged room. By the far wall a gaggle of students pulled books from the stacks. In a nearby corner a few others scrolled computer screens and sipped from their coffee cups.

Continuing on, my co-worker and I approached a bald man in the center of the library, looking at the sheet of paper our boss had given us, tapping lightly against it with the fingers of our work gloves.

“Pardon us sire,” my co-worker addressed the bald man with his best British accent, “we’re here for,” he tapped his glove against the paper again, “eighteen library carrels.”

The bald man looked curiously at us. “You’re the truck drivers?” he asked suspiciously.

“That we are,” I responded with bravado.

The bald man was the Library Supervisor or someone of a similar title. He handed us his card. My co-worker palmed it then seemingly made the card disappear – a simple magician’s slight-of-hand.

“You two are really the truck guys?” he asked again.

I performed the same illusion with his business card then passed it through my fingers again and held it before him. “Indeed,” I replied.

The Library Supervisor pointed us to the eighteen wooden cubicles that the State University of New York was donating to our theater.

“What’s the theater going to use them for?” he asked, adjusting his necktie with one hand.

“That’s nothing we’ve been told,” I responded. “We just load, deliver and unload.”

That was the truth. As truck drivers for the theater, my co-worker and I regularly drove borough to borough through New York collecting donated furniture, unloading it in the storage space of our boss’s choosing. At each stop we got the same reaction: ‘You’re the truck drivers?’

Most likely they were expecting the kind of blue-collar movers they usually saw in our profession; gruff men of basic education, slow with a smile and seldom with a joke. We, on the other hand, were two college graduates in our mid-twenties, underemployed artists skirting through our workdays with phony accents, simple magic tricks, winks, and smiles.

Picture the two of us crossing Manhattan’s many scenic bridges in our huge, yellow Penske truck, just one size shy of an eighteen-wheeler. Picture the two of us lifting desks from the SUNY library. Picture us carrying tables and sofas from the homes of the deceased who’ve remembered the theater in their wills. Imagine us hanging out with union forklift operators at sound stage loading docks… always with the same joshing, the same goofing around, the same puns and illusions with business cards.

Work was a grand affair everyday, manual labor tasks flavored with our own blend of foolishness, punctuated by occasional naps and frequent stints helping the stage carpenters prepare the scenery.

In the downtime I was getting some reading and writing done but mostly I was learning. I was learning how a script became a play. I was learning how writers, directors, producers, and actors launched careers. I was learning how art was produced, marketed, and critiqued.

Through my job at the theater, I was hooked in to the New York art scene. I was showing my face around at plays, gallery showings, book talks. I was meeting people who introduced me to other writers, authors, and artists. People listened to me. They respected me. They took me seriously as a thinker and an artist. It was a new world, one I’d never fully imagined. Entering into it, I was realizing new possibilities for myself.

I’d snuck in masquerading as a blue-collar laborer – a truck driver. But that disguise was wearing so thin even those watching me work were doing double-takes. Driving jobs and labor gigs were still paying my bills but I was beginning to accept that I wouldn’t have to rely on that income forever. Soon I’d be no different from the authors and playwrights and actors that were becoming my peer group. Soon my thoughts and my words would be paying my bills.

Like the Library Supervisor, I was still a little dumbstruck. Could this really be happening? I was beyond the point of self-delusion. It was.