Clive is Christ

Clive is a good trainer. He is very considerate. He does his best to make me feel comfortable. He wants this job to work out for me because he’s ready for his load to be lightened.

I am hoping that what he is feeling is just fatigue and not MS. I would be happy to help his symptoms go away. He is my age or a year older. And it seems strange for someone so young and so healthy to come down with MS. But I do not know how these things work.

I only get two days of training with him before I am on my own. I do my best to take advantage of those two days, making sure to do a little bit of everything. I drive the van, parallel park, load the handtruck, unload the handtruck, load the van, unload the van, go up curbs and down curbs, count bottles to sous chefs, take service elevators, etc.

We deliver liquor to many of the local bars. I would say that our store has the majority of the city’s bars. We even deliver to the restaurant Musette works at, which is always at the top of the list of restaurants to eat at when visiting Bridge City.

I feel like Hemingway in his ambulance days. Even though there is no literal war going on, this job is more active and exciting than a desk job or a shop job. Every zone is a war zone just waiting to erupt. One day you’re in peace, the next you’re in Syria. Or you’ve got some intruder knocking on doors asking if you’ve heard about the new regime.

Clive had ambitions of being a writer. He even went to school for it, pursuing a degree in creative writing. But I guess he just doesn’t see himself invested with the talent. Because he told me he believes that school is unnecessary for a writer; and that you either have the ability or you don’t.

He asks me how I do it, like what my process is. I tell him how I work. He seems to think writing takes a massive amount of time. And I guess it does. But what he doesn’t understand is that it doesn’t have to be difficult. And it doesn’t have to take a massive amount of energy.

“I have sweated over it.” I tell him. “Especially during my first piece. But that was a process of devirginization, and I thought that everything had to fit like puzzle pieces; like there was some kind of perfection capable of being achieved. But I think I was just testing myself, like I was in school: my own self created university; going through a process of cleansing the guilt I felt in regards to my lack of formal education. And maybe people will see it for the rigorously etched and polished gem I consider it to be, but I find that working in that fashion actually cramps the magic, stopping up the fountain of jewels which will forever flow if only you let it.”

He asks me what my novel is about. I give him a brief description. He tells me that it sounds like something he would like to read. He hasn’t done much reading recently. He is stuck in ‘Heart of Darkness.’ which I inform him is the basis of one of his favorite movies ‘Apocalypse Now.’

He likes Bukowski, and Dostoevsky. I ask him if he’s read ‘Ham on Rye.’ and he tells me that he hasn’t, but that he really wants to. So as a gift, once my time training with him is over, I give him my copy of ‘Ham on Rye’, as well as my copy of ‘Tropic of Cancer’, because he has never heard of Henry Miller, and he likes Bukowski, but thinks he’s a bit negative.

“I’ve never read somebody as positive as Henry Miller.” I say. “And you remind me of my friend Alex, who introduced me to Henry Miller. You all three share a common thread of daylight, which I find closer to Christ than any crucifix.”