Red Letters and Healthy Rivalries

First dates are a problem. Pretty often, they wind up being last dates too. Try telling the women you meet that you’re a garbageman for a living and the difficulty factor of asking them out goes up considerably. That’s why I had such high hopes for my first date with Wanda Melton: she and I met over the taking out of garbage.

Wanda leaned out her window one early morning while I was doing my job and whistled at me. She was wearing a nightie you could describe as gauzy. She had pale skin, black hair; maybe she had a few years on me. She asked would I come upstairs and give her a hand. This sort of thing doesn’t happen to us Sanitation Department guys every day.

The sack Wanda pointed out to me, up in her place, was a real brown burlap sack, not a plastic garbage bag. It was tied up with rope. She told me she’d taken up her wall-to-wall carpeting and gotten stuck with a load that was too heavy and bulky for her to lug downstairs. The thing was unwieldy, no mistake. Three flights down and no elevator. I worked up a sweat.

That would have been it--we sanitation engineers learn not to expect tips for special favors and custom removals like that--except Wanda followed me down and out onto the street. She watched me heave that sack of hers into the back of the truck. She stared, smiling, as the grinder chewed it up. She had such dark eyes, such red, full lips. She put her hand on my arm as she thanked me for helping her. Not many women will touch a garbageman during working hours. She told me the green of the uniform set off my eyes, which are blue. She said she liked a man in uniform. That doesn’t happen often, that a woman will say that to a garbageman. In fact, it never happens.

The sack probably contained Wanda’s husband, now that I think of it. At that moment, however, I wasn’t thinking. I was too busy asking Wanda if she’d consider going on a date with me. I was already having visions of the two of us going out on a whole string of dates, which would lead to me getting serious with a beautiful lady who wasn’t squeamish about garbage.

I wasn’t too crazy about the idea of handling garbage myself, not at first.

Everyone always asks me how I got stuck being a garbageman. The truth is, I kind of like it. The work, I mean. The pay is much better than you might suspect. The hours aren’t bad either, as long as you don’t mind getting up early. There are benefits galore, vacations out the wazoo and the Sanitation Department isn’t a bad crew, I have found. Adding to the job’s appeal is the fact that garbagemen don’t have to enter burning buildings wearing cumbersome outfits, swinging axes and dragging heavy hoses. Neither do garbagemen get shot at by drug dealers, mob guys and pimps. Sometimes we get rancid mayonnaise on our work clothes, or on an unprotected patch of skin, such as the wrist or neck. The smell of orange peels and coffee grounds does tend to linger in the nostrils, but that’s really the worst of it.

Four years of college unloaded me into the worst recession in forty years; that’s what the newspapers called it. The job market had been officially pronounced dead. I was about to get a taxi driver’s license when my friend Ned Chupo hooked me up with the garbage gig. Usually, there’s an official waiting list that takes years to slog through. It’s widely hinted that payola is involved in landing civil service jobs.

My old pal Ned’s a police officer. He kept pushing me to sign up for the Police Department. He said he wanted me to be his partner, got me moved to the front of the line for city jobs. He didn’t particularly care for the portly African-American fellow who had been assigned to him in a departmental arranged-marriage deal, following a certain Internal Affairs kerfuffle.

Ned was disappointed when I leapt on the Sanitation Department job that was available immediately. To me, at the time, desperate as I was for money and something to do, it seemed a much better option than waiting months on end to enroll in a Police Academy freshman class. And once you were in the Academy--provided you passed the entrance exam and physical--you still had six months of training to slog through before you got your chance of being shot or stabbed by crooks. Ned didn’t hold it against me, though. He said he understood my qualms. Ned’s got a nice long ragged scar down his cheek, courtesy of a mat knife whipped around by a murderer who didn’t feel like coming along quietly. Graduating college into a bad stock market is bad luck. Getting shot while trying to enforce laws you didn’t write, or being incinerated as a result of some insurance fraud scam to earn the sobriquet “bravest” is stupid. That’s how I philosophized the matter of my career choice while feeding heavy plastic sacks into the gulping green monster. Philosophy degrees don’t necessarily translate into high-paying, meaningful jobs even in the most prosperous times. Being a garbageman was my destiny, and I accepted it.

Annalee, my girlfriend at the time, did not. She took a powder after two months of me waking her up ungodly early and coming home smelling of bacon grease and banana oil. She left me in a dateless state. She only called once, to tell me that she’d hooked up with a doctor, a broken-bone man, just so I’d know. They’re married now, and live in Connecticut.

Laughing, dark-eyed Wanda, in her nightie, holding her arms together under her breasts because it was a cold morning, said yes, she’d go out with me. I told her I’d come pick her up Saturday evening. I mumbled her address to myself like some horny mantra the rest of the day. The rest of the week, I agonized over what to do with Wanda on our date.

Women like it when you get creative and go a bit out of your way on a first date. I’ve had people tell me about romantic boat rides, or renting a car and heading to a restaurant in the country. There are hot-air balloon dates and sky-diving dates where you and your lady jump out of an airplane together. You’ve got to be careful, though. Even after careful planning and tons of money spent, you can say the wrong thing, use the wrong fork, be a clumsy dancer, or have bad breath. Your choice of footwear, apparently, can make or break you.

Ned Chupo, my old pal Police Officer Ned Chupo, came to my rescue once again. He suggested I bring Wanda to the annual Police versus Firemen boxing matches, which were scheduled for Saturday, the evening of our date. He must have heard me gulp. Tickets for that particular slugfest go for upwards of two hundred bucks a pop--if you can get your hands on them, that is. Not a problem, said Ned. He produced two cardboard slips from the breast pocket of his suit and held them up like a miniature fan. Ned’s a detective now, and wears his own clothes to work. He’s a natty dresser. Detectives, he says, are as punctilious and bitchy about clothes as a roomful of debutantes. Sharp Ned goes out on a lot of dates with all kinds of different women.