Grunt work

Restless labour, milking cows, days, and weeks and months not wasted but certainly not noted. A fine, or thick layer of shit becomes you as your body not so slowly fades into the distance, diminished.

I remember panicking about my shrinking form, wondering if it would ever stop. It was less about being friends with your coworkers and more about being one with your coworkers, a restless arm not moving forcefully but gently, smoothly, caressing the forehead of a cat.

The sinews get tired and the arm prone to injury with exhaustion, the simple and elegant wave terse and jagged. One of my coworkers woke up one morning blind in one eye, from foot and mouth disease that got trapped behind his socket. Suddenly we all realized we were separate units and one by one, the cells disintegrated, nerves became lame and muscles atrophied. What comes with quitting a job like that? The good thing is that time becomes real once more, hours and minutes tick rather than scream like a rushing, hysterical river. Well, the bad part is, society floods back into your brain. Friends. Lovers. Gender. There is something selfish and indulgent about working a job like that. A sense of unique superiority that comes in providing ceaselessly, and no need to create a self for others to perceive. At least, not in the way you normally have to do, when you wander out of your apartment, groaning, waking up your hungover housemate on the couch, and wander onto the streets, already silently filling with people.

It was uncomfortable. It was like people could see right through me, like my shirt tail amounted to an odd and ugly attempt at femininity, even my face, malformed through my projection.

I was lost after I quit that job, in the eyes of others. Until I found scaffolding, construction site laboring. The masculine joy of bulging muscles, the appreciation of solid form, watching a bloke who weighed at least 200 kilos pirouetting on a metal pole with iron rods in his hand, dripping sweat.

Pats on the back and instructions from the boss to avoid his boss.

Easy smiles and comradery, a gender ready-made – I can fix it, if I choose to. The ease of masculinity. It felt like finding a community, one that of course relied on my strength, that let me be my body.

I broke my leg playing footy a few months back. I lost my job, and still, my left leg aches with each springing step, a pain I swear I can feel in my jaw. At the moment I’m a dishie. I don’t have medical clearance to go back to construction work yet. The work is odd and clunky. My fingers aren’t used to being delicate crawling centipedes. So even with my muscles wizened, I yearn for the return of my shield. That thick boisterous and easy grin that comes with knowing our masculine bodies can do anything – all we have to do is ask. Who could want any other job, knowing that?