Choke [Part Two]
I heard it was supposed to snow today.
It's earlier than normal. I hit the snooze button on my alarm for ten more minutes of rest. I hardly slept at all the night before. Six o'clock. Not as early as when I used to work freight at five in the morning in a cold back room, a fifty-foot semi trailer backed up to the loading dock door, but I felt the heaviness of exhaustion weighing on me.
I get to Norlin and come in through the coffee shop entrance and punch in the code for the safe to get a ring of keys for my shift. A minute later, another member of security walks up to me as I'm closing up the safe. Sorry for my tardiness, she says.
I say that's okay. How long have you been working here?
Since 2008, she says. A while.
Nice, I say. What's your name? Alisha?
No, Alicia. She pronounces it more distinctly.
Alicia. Oh, I say.
She asks me if I'm coming back next semester, I say yes. She says this building has an addictive quality to it. You'll just want to keep coming back, she says. Yeah, I say. It's a pretty mellow job.
We meet meditative security guy with a burnt orange coat -- like a retro looking one -- at S205, the security office. We get everything set up and I go over to the west gate to start the first shift at seven fifteen. I unlock the west doors for staff to come in a minute early. A man in a coat -- a blue one, I think -- brushes by me as I open the right-side door. I say good morning he says nothing back.
I settle into my old padded office chair at the west-gate desk and continue reading a Donald Miller book. More staff members and professors walk in. Good morning, I say to each of them. One Asian guy with a white fleece jacket comes in and says hi awkwardly, and I say hi awkwardly back. About ten minutes before nine, I see Greg come in wearing headphones and a beanie. I wave.
It's kind of dark and drab outside. Those matte gray clouds looming over campus.
I heard it was supposed to snow today.
A few minutes before nine, meditative security guy with his brown beanie (I still don't know his name; he told me once, I think) comes to drop off the office keys and a five-channel radio. I wait three more minutes and Alicia comes. Yo, you're free, she says. So I go to S205, the security office.
As I'm walking to S205 I see homeless guy off in one corner using a public-use computer. I need to drop a load, so I head to the nearest restroom down the hall and up a half-flight of stairs. It's in kind of a weird spot, so not a ton of people use it. The off-white walls are covered with a graffiti of obscene remarks and drawings. All three walls of the stall are riddled with black marker and pencil. As I'm walking up the stairs, I see round-bellied professor chatting with a lady who must be staff. He's wearing a brown sweater today. There's a new toilet paper dispenser in the stall, that's nice.
I'm back in the office, probably reading by now. I see homeless guy walk past the office door, headed somewhere. He's wearing a black beanie today. About fifteen or twenty minutes pass. It's nine-thirty now.
An average-height guy with tussled hair and a trimmed beard shows up at the door. Hi, I say. Hi, he says back. I'm Lincoln. Is Sarge here? No, I say. He's not here yet. I radio Alicia at the west gate to see if she knows when Sarge is supposed to show up. She says maybe ten, maybe eleven. Yesterday was eleven or so. Okay, I say. I let Lincoln into the room. I tell him he can hang out here until Sarge or our other supervisor gets here.
Lincoln's wearing a cotton-looking lighter-blue button-up shirt and boat-shoe type shoes. Lincoln seems like a cool guy. We start chatting.
Lincoln's a transfer student from Salt Lake, where he went to a school within fifteen minutes of seven different ski resorts. Dang, I say. Yeah, you could seriously go skiing between classes. That's sick, I say. Lincoln's originally from Denver, he says. He just went to Utah for school and to go snowboarding and stuff. He really likes it. That's sweet, I say.
A taller lady who seems to be balding a little on the top of her head comes to the door. She says she needs help closing a door. I say, okay, Lincoln, just tell anyone who comes to the door that I'll be back in a minute. Okay he says. Okay I say to the lady. The lady has a weird purple-ish brunette color of hair. She's wearing a light purple shirt, too. It's in Special Collections, she says. I say okay. We walk toward the north-west stairwell and go up to the third floor. We walk past some trippy striped paintings that have words that you can hardly see, hiding behind the different colored stripes. The letters are glow-in-the-dark, I remember from closing up on a Saturday a month back or so.
Here we are, the purple-haired lady says. We step into a room that I'd never been in before. Two black metal framed sliding glass doors face a small square courtyard that's starting to catch a few flakes of snow. I open the doors and shut it. I get it first try. Thanks, she says. I say have a good one.
I get back to the office and sit down. Lincoln tells me he has an old seventies road bike. I say I have one too. Mine's from the eighties, I think. It's an old, steel Miyata road bike. Lincoln tells me he has four sisters, all older than him, that live in four different states. One's in Montana. Yeah, I want to just live out of my truck and go see some national parks. I say that sounds sick. Yeah, he says. He says he'll take his girlfriend with him probably. I ask him if he has a camper shell for his truck, he says yeah. Yeah, he says. He'll just put an air mattress in the back. Nice.
Lincoln's an architectural engineering major. He came back to Colorado because this school is one of the five schools in the nation that has his major. Engineering for architects. Cool, I say. Well you came to the right place. He says he wants to go back to Utah once he's done with school. I say cool.
Lincoln lives just down the street from me. He lives with a couple other guys and his girlfriend in a five-bedroom near a park and a bus stop. I tell him where I live. Nice.
I tell Lincoln that I'll just call Sarge. Sarge answers his cell, but he doesn't know it's me. Apparently. I tell him that Lincoln is here to start training. Train him yourself, Sarge says. Uh, okay, I say. I hang up after an awkward goodbye.
A guy named Andrew with big, studio-type headphones comes in. Hi, I say. Hi, he says. Do you know when Sarge is gonna be here? Not really, he says.
Our other boss shows up pretty much right after I hang up the phone. It's ten-thirty now.
A shorter, thin-haired blond girl with round glasses comes to the door. Hi, I say. Hi, she says. Do you like that book? She asks.
I have my Donald Miller paperback on my desk. Yeah, I say. I'm about halfway through it and I love it so far.
Yeah, she says. I like it too so far. Haven't finished it yet. Do you guys have a lost and found?
I nod my head.
Um, I lost a pair of black and green gloves during the week of finals. Do you have them here? I'll check, I say.
We determine that her gloves aren't here. But I'll take your information so we can contact you if they turn up, I say. Okay. I get her name, email address, number, and a description of the gloves. Thanks, I say. Have a good day.
She's still standing there. It's a little awkward.
Do you know if you're hiring? She says.
Uh, I don't know, I say. I ask my boss. Does she have work-study? I ask her. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, have her fill out an app, he says, his mouth full of Reeses Puffs or something. He hands her the app and she fills it out.
By this time Lincoln and Alicia are back from the first part of his training or whatever. By this time it's eleven.
I go to the east gate.
Andrew is coloring or drawing or something when I get there. Hey, I say. Hey, he says. We talk about the weather. It's starting to snow a little more now. The ground is white with a thin layer of snow. He says he lives about two and a half miles away. I say I live about one and a half. Where do you live, I say. He lives down the street from me, I guess.
My other boss comes to chat with me. The weather. Bikes. Some other stuff. I have to bike home in the snow, I say. Yeah. They say it's supposed to snow. Yep. See ya.
Some guy is sitting with his ankles crossed in the lobby. He's typing something on his laptop and talking on his cell. He's a thinner guy with tan pants and a sweater. He's using words like "chic" and "passionate" to describe an apartment or something. He says words like "flurry" and "spoon-fed". Something about a choir. A gay man's choir, I think. He speaks very distinctly, using heavy emphasis on whatever he's talking about.
The phone on my rickety wooden podium rings, I pick it up. It's just a beeping noise or something. No one is there.
An older lady with fillings in her teeth asks me if the west gate doors are open. I say yeah. Homeless guy walks by, looking droopy-eyed and tired. I go back to using my computer. Homeless guy walks by the other way. Lincoln and Alicia pass me, still working on training, I guess.
The guy on the cell phone in the lobby with his ankles crossed is talking to some guy named Miles. Miles lives in San Diego.
It's noon. Big, white chunks of featherweight ice fall onto the east gate plaza.
I say goodbye to Alicia and Lincoln as I head out the door. I asked when he was working again, but he didn't know yet. It was his first day after all. I should have gotten his contact info. Especially considering yesterday's observations. And that I live down the street from him.
I remember the first day I worked with meditative security guy. He was making some spreadsheet for the keys. Which keys open what door. Which keys go to where. He said he was tired of being helpless.
They said it was supposed to snow today. I definitely didn't come prepared.
I'm biking home after work and the snow has started to build a little bit. It's a different type of snow. Like those little white beads inside of bean bag chairs. I've learned how to bike in icy and snow packed conditions on the inch-wide tires I have on this steel eighties road bike. But it's especially icy today, and the powdery snow does not help my situation. I lay my bike on its side as I'm cruising around a corner on a snowy bike path. I was still trying to be careful, really, but there I went. Before I fell, I saw this lady walking towards me along the path. She's wearing some pink beanie and a black coat. So I'm sliding on my side, my bike receiving some nasty scratches as I slide on the snowy concrete, and I'm literally two feet away from her when I come to a stop.
She doesn't even bat an eye. I get up and brush the snow off the right side of my body and get back on. Thanks for the help, I say.
The things you have to do to get someone to care, I think. Geez.
But I realize that I am just like her.
I hardly flinch when a homeless guy passes me on the street. I've got better things to do. Sure, they may not all be homeless, but I'm sure they wouldn't mind having a friend. Someone to listen to them. Whatever reason they're doing what they're doing. Yeah, I bought a homeless guy a cheeseburger at McDonald's once. He was stoned out of his mind and kept checking my girlfriend out. I felt good about giving him food or whatever, but that's where it stopped. That's not enough. I don't know where he went after that, or if he had a warm place to stay that night. All I know is that it wasn't enough. I know that I tend to be a Christian when it is convenient. I'm a comfortable Christian, more often than I realize. Anything exceeding my comfort zone is quickly dismissed. No, I'm not homeless. I've been close, but never have I worried about where my next meal will be. I don't sleep under bridges. I don't have a soggy cardboard comforter and newspaper sheet set.
I'm just like beanie lady. More often than I care to admit.
I won't bat an eye.
They said it was supposed to snow today.
It's earlier than normal. I hit the snooze button on my alarm for ten more minutes of rest. I hardly slept at all the night before. Six o'clock. Not as early as when I used to work freight at five in the morning in a cold back room, a fifty-foot semi trailer backed up to the loading dock door, but I felt the heaviness of exhaustion weighing on me.
I get to Norlin and come in through the coffee shop entrance and punch in the code for the safe to get a ring of keys for my shift. A minute later, another member of security walks up to me as I'm closing up the safe. Sorry for my tardiness, she says.
I say that's okay. How long have you been working here?
Since 2008, she says. A while.
Nice, I say. What's your name? Alisha?
No, Alicia. She pronounces it more distinctly.
Alicia. Oh, I say.
She asks me if I'm coming back next semester, I say yes. She says this building has an addictive quality to it. You'll just want to keep coming back, she says. Yeah, I say. It's a pretty mellow job.
We meet meditative security guy with a burnt orange coat -- like a retro looking one -- at S205, the security office. We get everything set up and I go over to the west gate to start the first shift at seven fifteen. I unlock the west doors for staff to come in a minute early. A man in a coat -- a blue one, I think -- brushes by me as I open the right-side door. I say good morning he says nothing back.
I settle into my old padded office chair at the west-gate desk and continue reading a Donald Miller book. More staff members and professors walk in. Good morning, I say to each of them. One Asian guy with a white fleece jacket comes in and says hi awkwardly, and I say hi awkwardly back. About ten minutes before nine, I see Greg come in wearing headphones and a beanie. I wave.
It's kind of dark and drab outside. Those matte gray clouds looming over campus.
I heard it was supposed to snow today.
A few minutes before nine, meditative security guy with his brown beanie (I still don't know his name; he told me once, I think) comes to drop off the office keys and a five-channel radio. I wait three more minutes and Alicia comes. Yo, you're free, she says. So I go to S205, the security office.
As I'm walking to S205 I see homeless guy off in one corner using a public-use computer. I need to drop a load, so I head to the nearest restroom down the hall and up a half-flight of stairs. It's in kind of a weird spot, so not a ton of people use it. The off-white walls are covered with a graffiti of obscene remarks and drawings. All three walls of the stall are riddled with black marker and pencil. As I'm walking up the stairs, I see round-bellied professor chatting with a lady who must be staff. He's wearing a brown sweater today. There's a new toilet paper dispenser in the stall, that's nice.
I'm back in the office, probably reading by now. I see homeless guy walk past the office door, headed somewhere. He's wearing a black beanie today. About fifteen or twenty minutes pass. It's nine-thirty now.
An average-height guy with tussled hair and a trimmed beard shows up at the door. Hi, I say. Hi, he says back. I'm Lincoln. Is Sarge here? No, I say. He's not here yet. I radio Alicia at the west gate to see if she knows when Sarge is supposed to show up. She says maybe ten, maybe eleven. Yesterday was eleven or so. Okay, I say. I let Lincoln into the room. I tell him he can hang out here until Sarge or our other supervisor gets here.
Lincoln's wearing a cotton-looking lighter-blue button-up shirt and boat-shoe type shoes. Lincoln seems like a cool guy. We start chatting.
Lincoln's a transfer student from Salt Lake, where he went to a school within fifteen minutes of seven different ski resorts. Dang, I say. Yeah, you could seriously go skiing between classes. That's sick, I say. Lincoln's originally from Denver, he says. He just went to Utah for school and to go snowboarding and stuff. He really likes it. That's sweet, I say.
A taller lady who seems to be balding a little on the top of her head comes to the door. She says she needs help closing a door. I say, okay, Lincoln, just tell anyone who comes to the door that I'll be back in a minute. Okay he says. Okay I say to the lady. The lady has a weird purple-ish brunette color of hair. She's wearing a light purple shirt, too. It's in Special Collections, she says. I say okay. We walk toward the north-west stairwell and go up to the third floor. We walk past some trippy striped paintings that have words that you can hardly see, hiding behind the different colored stripes. The letters are glow-in-the-dark, I remember from closing up on a Saturday a month back or so.
Here we are, the purple-haired lady says. We step into a room that I'd never been in before. Two black metal framed sliding glass doors face a small square courtyard that's starting to catch a few flakes of snow. I open the doors and shut it. I get it first try. Thanks, she says. I say have a good one.
I get back to the office and sit down. Lincoln tells me he has an old seventies road bike. I say I have one too. Mine's from the eighties, I think. It's an old, steel Miyata road bike. Lincoln tells me he has four sisters, all older than him, that live in four different states. One's in Montana. Yeah, I want to just live out of my truck and go see some national parks. I say that sounds sick. Yeah, he says. He says he'll take his girlfriend with him probably. I ask him if he has a camper shell for his truck, he says yeah. Yeah, he says. He'll just put an air mattress in the back. Nice.
Lincoln's an architectural engineering major. He came back to Colorado because this school is one of the five schools in the nation that has his major. Engineering for architects. Cool, I say. Well you came to the right place. He says he wants to go back to Utah once he's done with school. I say cool.
Lincoln lives just down the street from me. He lives with a couple other guys and his girlfriend in a five-bedroom near a park and a bus stop. I tell him where I live. Nice.
I tell Lincoln that I'll just call Sarge. Sarge answers his cell, but he doesn't know it's me. Apparently. I tell him that Lincoln is here to start training. Train him yourself, Sarge says. Uh, okay, I say. I hang up after an awkward goodbye.
A guy named Andrew with big, studio-type headphones comes in. Hi, I say. Hi, he says. Do you know when Sarge is gonna be here? Not really, he says.
Our other boss shows up pretty much right after I hang up the phone. It's ten-thirty now.
A shorter, thin-haired blond girl with round glasses comes to the door. Hi, I say. Hi, she says. Do you like that book? She asks.
I have my Donald Miller paperback on my desk. Yeah, I say. I'm about halfway through it and I love it so far.
Yeah, she says. I like it too so far. Haven't finished it yet. Do you guys have a lost and found?
I nod my head.
Um, I lost a pair of black and green gloves during the week of finals. Do you have them here? I'll check, I say.
We determine that her gloves aren't here. But I'll take your information so we can contact you if they turn up, I say. Okay. I get her name, email address, number, and a description of the gloves. Thanks, I say. Have a good day.
She's still standing there. It's a little awkward.
Do you know if you're hiring? She says.
Uh, I don't know, I say. I ask my boss. Does she have work-study? I ask her. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, have her fill out an app, he says, his mouth full of Reeses Puffs or something. He hands her the app and she fills it out.
By this time Lincoln and Alicia are back from the first part of his training or whatever. By this time it's eleven.
I go to the east gate.
Andrew is coloring or drawing or something when I get there. Hey, I say. Hey, he says. We talk about the weather. It's starting to snow a little more now. The ground is white with a thin layer of snow. He says he lives about two and a half miles away. I say I live about one and a half. Where do you live, I say. He lives down the street from me, I guess.
My other boss comes to chat with me. The weather. Bikes. Some other stuff. I have to bike home in the snow, I say. Yeah. They say it's supposed to snow. Yep. See ya.
Some guy is sitting with his ankles crossed in the lobby. He's typing something on his laptop and talking on his cell. He's a thinner guy with tan pants and a sweater. He's using words like "chic" and "passionate" to describe an apartment or something. He says words like "flurry" and "spoon-fed". Something about a choir. A gay man's choir, I think. He speaks very distinctly, using heavy emphasis on whatever he's talking about.
The phone on my rickety wooden podium rings, I pick it up. It's just a beeping noise or something. No one is there.
An older lady with fillings in her teeth asks me if the west gate doors are open. I say yeah. Homeless guy walks by, looking droopy-eyed and tired. I go back to using my computer. Homeless guy walks by the other way. Lincoln and Alicia pass me, still working on training, I guess.
The guy on the cell phone in the lobby with his ankles crossed is talking to some guy named Miles. Miles lives in San Diego.
It's noon. Big, white chunks of featherweight ice fall onto the east gate plaza.
I say goodbye to Alicia and Lincoln as I head out the door. I asked when he was working again, but he didn't know yet. It was his first day after all. I should have gotten his contact info. Especially considering yesterday's observations. And that I live down the street from him.
I remember the first day I worked with meditative security guy. He was making some spreadsheet for the keys. Which keys open what door. Which keys go to where. He said he was tired of being helpless.
They said it was supposed to snow today. I definitely didn't come prepared.
I'm biking home after work and the snow has started to build a little bit. It's a different type of snow. Like those little white beads inside of bean bag chairs. I've learned how to bike in icy and snow packed conditions on the inch-wide tires I have on this steel eighties road bike. But it's especially icy today, and the powdery snow does not help my situation. I lay my bike on its side as I'm cruising around a corner on a snowy bike path. I was still trying to be careful, really, but there I went. Before I fell, I saw this lady walking towards me along the path. She's wearing some pink beanie and a black coat. So I'm sliding on my side, my bike receiving some nasty scratches as I slide on the snowy concrete, and I'm literally two feet away from her when I come to a stop.
She doesn't even bat an eye. I get up and brush the snow off the right side of my body and get back on. Thanks for the help, I say.
The things you have to do to get someone to care, I think. Geez.
But I realize that I am just like her.
I hardly flinch when a homeless guy passes me on the street. I've got better things to do. Sure, they may not all be homeless, but I'm sure they wouldn't mind having a friend. Someone to listen to them. Whatever reason they're doing what they're doing. Yeah, I bought a homeless guy a cheeseburger at McDonald's once. He was stoned out of his mind and kept checking my girlfriend out. I felt good about giving him food or whatever, but that's where it stopped. That's not enough. I don't know where he went after that, or if he had a warm place to stay that night. All I know is that it wasn't enough. I know that I tend to be a Christian when it is convenient. I'm a comfortable Christian, more often than I realize. Anything exceeding my comfort zone is quickly dismissed. No, I'm not homeless. I've been close, but never have I worried about where my next meal will be. I don't sleep under bridges. I don't have a soggy cardboard comforter and newspaper sheet set.I'm just like beanie lady. More often than I care to admit.
I won't bat an eye.
They said it was supposed to snow today.
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