Transformers: Genitals in Disguise

Transformers, Genitals in Disguise

The sun quivered and shook as it peaked over the horizon and through the morning humidity; the crimson rays made my sunburned neck pop and sizzle even in the early hours. My fingers lingered over the keys resting in the ingnition for a moment ... synapsis fired, chemicals pushed through grey tissue. "Maybe another day."

I crawled out of my car: a 92 red Integra packed to the roof with belongings I never moved into my apartment after a month of living there. After baking in the sun for a week or two, the contents created the most interesting smells: from the man musk of sweaty work boots and filthy jeans to cigarette butts and old coffee cups. It was as if Willy Wonka’s smell o vision was manifested in a sporty Japanese import and stuck on the "funk" setting. I squinted through bloodshot eyes to see a reputable financial firm rippling in the distance across the asphalt parking lot. Our job was to demo the insides. I recalled the early morning phone call from my acne-scarred boss hazily, “Dave, Devon Square, You’re with Jose’.”

As if some strange elemental force was summoned by the mere verbalization of its name in my internal monologue, a deep, gurgling rumble sounded like a report of a mortar in the distance. A gray, mammoth pickup truck pulled up next to me and lurched forward as it skidded to a stop. The large chrome wheels with rivets orbiting the center stuck me as fantastical for a work truck. Work trucks were beaten diesels with liners and gallon coffee mugs littering the bed and backseat. Instead, a polished, unscratched truck with tinted windows and rims loomed over the rusty Toyota and dented Chrystler on either side ominously. This broken dichotomy was resolved as the door slammed and I saw what towered over the bed.


He strode across the back of the truck like a great Puerto Rican Santa Clause bearing gifts of old Coors light cans and an 18inch fan box for the deomlition children. A tattooed alpha male gorilla stared at me as his steel toed boots pounded the pavement with every step. The lower jaw protruded, covered in stubble. It clicked its teeth together as the dark Spanish eyes looked me up and down. Jose’. A flaming representation of a Peurto Rican flag with “PR” underneath was inked on his large, muscular left arm. On his right wrist were the names of three women. His voice: a loud, monotone bullhorn.

“Dafe?”
“Yes”
“I am Jose’ You work with me today”
“Yeah”
“You will work hard and be safe.
“Ok.”
“Follow me.”

Jose’ stormed ahead across the parking lot. I quickly shuffled my 5’10” frame to keep up with his colossal stride. He heaved his bag of trash with one hand over the walls of a 10ft dumpster with ease, turned, and shot me what became his signature crooked grin, triumphant in his display of machismo.

The heat of the day disappeared as I shuffled my heavy workboots into the building. The familiar red job box spray painted with “John likes little boys,” stood embarrassed and alone against the far wall of the room. The demo workers had picked all the meat off the bones of the building; all that was left were the skeletal metal beams.

“This is Joab bowx, keep it clean or I will fowk up yowr day.”
“Ok.”
“Grab Saw-Zaul, follow me.”
“Got it boss.”
“What you say?”
“Nothing.”
“Cullo Gringo Motherfowker….,” flicked off his quick tongue as he stormed away.

We strode across the vast sea of a parking lot. Waves of heat gently rolled across the empty lot; the cacophony of chipping guns and machinery loomed in the distance. The smell of hot tar hung heavy in the humid July air as beads of sweat began to form, collect, and drip down my back. Jose’ pointed to the front of a stone alcove and declared, “Today, we take down front.”

“Ok.”

With this proclamation, Jose’ jumped into the basket of a beaten boom crane. Rusty liver spots dotted the machine’s worn, yellow skin. Tyco was tattooed across the boom arm. Its long, beaten head hung sullenly against the side of a dumpster. The machinery coughed and sputtered as Jose shouted some mystical Spanish curse over the head of the foundered metal beast like a pagan priest’s benediction. The machine instantly jumped and bucked to life as Jose’ drove its creaking frame under the stone overhang. “Crazy Horse eh?” he laughed as the beast slammed to a stop nearly throwing the maniacal Puerto Rican captain from its shoulders

“Dafe, Give me dah beat.”
“The what,” I asked?
“Dah dah beat, he gestured frantically toward a pile of tools propped against the curb.
I quickly searched the pile, quizzically holding up a sledge hammer.
“Sledge hammer?”
“Yas.”
I choked on a spurt of laughter.
“Uh what dah fowk do you think I’m talking about, bring me the fowking beat.”
“Eeeeesh,” He snatched the sledge from my hands. A smile cracked in the corner of his mouth momentarily.
“Yeah...the beat,” I quipped and stifled another chuckle. A icy glare from Jose made me shiver and swallow hard.

Jose’ took his gloves from his worn Levi's and pulled them over his hands. The doctor was in. The muscular, tattooed arm grabbed the sledge-hammer upright and promptly exploded in a mass of muscle and angst as he shoved it through the ceiling. The roofed exploded in a plume of plaster. He continued his assault until a four-foot hole was punctured into the roof. Sagging pieces of plaster and cable hung from the gaping wound.

“Take Beat”
I grabbed the beat and threw it on the tool pile.
“Saw Zaul”
I knew this one. I quickly grabbed the small handheld construction saw and tossed it to Jose'.
Jose' threw the saw into the hole and raised the endoscoptic boom so half of his body was in the hole. He climbed onto the boom’s guard rail and pulled himself into his victim.
“Sumballa Alla Tinte-ho Gringooooo,” echoed musically from the bowels of the building as the Saw-Zaul passed through the orifice.
“What?”

A buzz-cut head peaked down from the sphincter laughing; the inverted mustache looked like a smile, “I forget you no speak Espanola,” he gently chuckled... then shouted, “I SAY STAND BACKED WHITE BOY,” and disappeared into the hole.

A resounding boom shook the entire ceiling and sent me falling backwards. Like the witness at the scene of an accident, I stood with eyes wide and mouth gaping. BOOM. The ceiling was a thin sheet of ice. BOOM. Cracks sprinted to the wall. BOOM. Half of the plastered ceiling came crashing to the cement floor in an inverted mushroom cloud of dust and debris. As the filth settled on the sidewalk and the insides of my lungs and nose, Jose’s form appeared hanging from the rafters with a mischievous smile. He swung up into the remaining side and shouted the same phrase in Spanish. The rest of the plaster came crashing down. Light bulbs exploded and blew glass across the parking lot; only live electrical wires hung from the remains of Jose’s tree. He chimped his way across the steal limbs, kicked the debris off the boom, jumped, and landed next to me. He turned and smiled with a wide, victorious smile, “I work like I fowk…savagely.”

We hauled the construction debris away in wheel barrows. The rest of the day was spent sweating savagely under the sun, tearing off tar paper, staples, and fingernails on the alcove’s roof.

Lunch time came slowly. We drove to the local Wawa. I bought a milkshake, a sweaty jumbo hotdog with cheese and bacon, and a pack of cigarettes. Jose’ looked at my purchase and laughed. The girl in front of us turned and looked down at my meal.

“I’m trying to have a heart attack so I don’t have to go back to work." She laughed and looked me up and down. I was pathetically clad in filthy stone-washed jeans and a construction T-shirt stained dark blue by sweat. I looked at her in tight, brown pin-stripe pants, white blouse and open toed heels strapping over neatly painted pink toenails. Damn I wish I was working her job. Nine to five job in air-conditioning, hour lunch break, thirty thousand dollars plus a year, benefits, free coffee in the morning… a beautiful little cubical decorated with pictures of tropical islands and a porn-free computer. What was I doing?

We lunched in the shade underneath a maple tree at the fringe of the parking lot. The food was mediocre, but coupled with the natural shade of the tree and the moment of rest, the compressed 100% beef entrails tasted like fine French Cuisine. Another young business woman walked past on her lunch break. “Ieeee ma-mi” Jose’ whispered as he hit me with his arm and bit down hard on his left index knuckle. “Beautiful…You haf girl Dafe?” Jose inquired.

“Yeah…you?”
“I wose married twice. I lofe too many women. What dat called… Ahhh…..”
“Infidelity?”
“What?”
‘Nevermind man…have a girl now?”
“Eh, Sometime,” he pondered as he squinted over the parking lot. “You know what I want? I go to sex store other week. I sit at the mocheen where you pay the movie? You know what I mean?”

“Yeah. Porn.”
“Yes, I sit at the porn. I watch this movie where you see beautiful girl’s face. Ieeeee, she beautiful. Beeeg lips, beautiful face, dark hair, Brazilian girl. You see her bump and moan. The camera slowly go down and you see her beeeeg chest.”

At this point Jose’ had his eyes closed, lips pursed and pushed out holding up his mustache. His hands simulating two monstrous breasts as he bounced up and down.

“And den the movie go down and you see her. And you think she is getting fowked by man… but NO, she got man bent over and she FOWKING HIM!” Jose’s eyes were lit up and glimmered with fire as he grinned and clenched the air in front of him and thrust at it. He turned to me, instantly serious, “Dat is what I wont, a how you call…transformer. She got beautiful body, beautiful mouth, but she have man in here,” he cupped his hands in a V at his crotch. “Women all too…” his voice raised to a nagging falescetto, “… MehMehMeh… oh Jose’ you look at oder womens…blah blah.” His voice returned to his normal commanding bullhorn, “No, I no want that. I cannot have wife. I go to Brazil to find a transformer next year."

I couldn't stop thinking of the transformers I played with in my youth. They would never be the same. I imagined Jose’s quest for a transformer. A plane ride deep into the mysterious Amazon to find some hermaphroditic robot. What kind of vehicle would this gender-bending mass of metal transform into? A pink Volkswagen Beetle with fat tires and massive exhaust? Would it be a mini-van with two soccer balls attached by a rope hanging over the hitch? Would this robot champion for good or evil? I was raised from my mechanized sex dream by Jose’.

“No one know that it a transformer. She be waching my car in small shorts and all the neighbors look out and say damn dat Jose’ ees lucky. Nobody know she a transformer but me.”
“And me,” I jumped in.
“Yes, but you tell no one.”
“Ok…” One nagging question persisted, “…So Jose’... you don’t mind the uh…. dick?”
He smiled, “No, I no care, I drink deh white label…ehhh…duuuu..”
“Dewar’s?”
“Yes. Dewar’s and I no care. Hell, I suck her deek too,” he burst out in laughter grasping his belly.

“So when was the last time you were with a woman Jose’?”

A smile formed at the corners of his mouth in a mischievous grin, “Last night.” He pulled a pair of panties out of his soft cooler, raised them to his face, inhaled deeply, and shoved them back in. I smiled at the mischievous child.

"Are those your wives' on your arm?" I inquired.
"Eh.. no, dose are my three daughters."
"How old?"
"Ahh...uno, dos.... seventeen.....hmmm....thirteen, and eleven," he stated proudly.
"Ahh...nice you'll have to give me their phone numbers...eh?"
Jose' looked at me and laughed, "My daughter is man-eater, you could no handle her...hahaha...."
I stopped making jokes after that.

The remainder of the lunch hour was spent in silence. We stared off into space as the breeze rustled the leaves above our heads and cooled our sweat-stenched bodies. Each of us pursued our own thoughts, fantasized over the unobtainable. I pondered over graduate school and a career in writing. Jose’ doubtlessly fanaticizing over his Brazilian transformer,and the admiration and acceptance she would bring him. As time passed, Jose's dreamy smile dropped into a hardened scowl. He looked down at his watch and burst out in a frustrated, “BREAK OFER, TIME FOWR WORK.”

Our thoughts left for contemplation another day, we gently asked our aching backs to raise us once again. As if on cue, we both paused and looked through the building standing before us; we searched momentarily for a small part of our dream in it. Then gently, "Eh common Dafe, no time for dis now. We must work."






Stories to come….


Nacho, Taco, and the Arsenic birds of Prey