Zeus
or.
How I Got Fired From My Father’s Explosives Plant

If you were 15 years old, and your dad hired you and your best friend to work the graveyard shift at his explosives plant, all alone, on a Saturday night, what would you do? It was 1972. I was a long-haired bell-bottomed burboid boy. My dad was an immigrant who arrived at Ellis Island with nothing and made his American dream come true by working his way up from bottle-washer to owner/manager of his very own explosives plant: the Zeus Powder Company, smack dab in the middle of a huge cow field between Dallas and Fort Worth, just outside a little shit-kicking dot-on-the-map called Euless, Texas. Useless, we called it.
As me and my best friend pondered our Saturday night graveyard shift, it quickly became clear that there was only one logical thing to do: work our asses off like madmen, fill our quota by 1 a.m., then throw open the gates of the explosives plant to our menagerie of exotic party animal friends for the blowout of the century, as Zeus fills the heavens with lightning bolts.
So, 10 p.m. Saturday night, it was high ho high ho, off to work we go. We toiled like men-children possessed, busting our buns to the bone, shrink-wrapping case after case of explosives. At midnight it looked like there was no way we’d be done, but somehow we kicked into maxi-mondo-overdrive, sweat pouring off our fevered brows, fingers flying, muscles aching. Perhaps it was the exuberance of our youth. Maybe we just wanted it bad enough. But I like to think that Zeus himself had a hand in the miraculous completion of our mammoth work load. Whatever, suddenly it was 10 till 1, and we were done, Hallelujah, praise the Lord and pass the ammunition! Sure enough, as we strolled triumphantly into the parking lot of the explosives plant and breathed in the sultry Texas night, we could see the first headlights of our fabulous furry freak brothers and sisters arriving, and with great glee we greeted our sweet revelers as they rolled in, ready to make merry till the cows came home.
There was Todd the Toad, Cindy Lou Who, Brad the Beast, Johnny Fuck You, Pickles, Ginger, the two Larries, Billy Bob Bobby Joe Willy Dick, and the blissfully breathtakingly blindingly beautiful Brenda. Brenda was my best friend’s girlfriend, and normally I woulda been jealous, but given what little good luck my best friend had, I did not begrudge him the joy of Brenda. Besides, I had hooked up with Cindy Lou Who, a lovely, up-for-anything Olive Oyl type, who was all eager elbows and knees, built for speed, if not entirely for comfort. Cindy Lou Who and I hadn’t been going out long, and we’d only ever messed around, but she was a firecracker and had indicated several times since that she was totally stoked about going All the Way with me. At this stage of my life, when my penis and I were like the two characters in the popular song, “Me and My Shadow”, the idea of being inside Cindy Lou Who was all I could think about, and in the days preceding our blowout I used the fantasy of it to fuel more than a few fabulous whack-off sessions.
When Cindy stepped out of Billy Bob Bobby Joe Willy’s beat-to-shit T-Bird decked out in a halter top and a microminiskirt with legs that seemed to never end, my heart soared and my penis roared. She seemed so happy to see me, giggling infectiously, lovely and silly and altogether delicious. And when she leaned in to kiss me she had a heavy, velvety Jack Danielsy smell that seemed to me to be the very essence of sex.
There followed the cracking open of many beers and the guzzling of much tequila. After everyone oohed and ahhed and ogled at the explosives plant, Todd the Toad broke out some world-class Lebanese hash and we all became quite excited. There was only one rub. The Toad, in his stoned stupor, had forgotten to bring any matches. So a quest was begun for fire. Incredibly, after an exhaustive search, there was not a match to be found.
Much head scratching ensued, as we put our collective, albeit feeble, brains together and stormed with them, like party-hardy cavemen trying to discover the secret of the sacred flame. Cigarette lighter! someone exclaimed. So we packed hash into pipe bowls, and dashed out into the parking lot. But no matter how hard we tried, the cigarette lighter from Billy Bob Bobby Joe Willy Dick’s beat-to-shit T-Bird just wouldn’t light the Lebanese. Johnny Fuck You insisted we should go out and get some matches. I quickly put the kibosh on that, as the nearest place was at least a thirty minute drive away, which would mean it’d be an hour before any world-class Lebanese hash could be sucked into hungry lungs. Totally unacceptable.
Suddenly I had a blinding flash of inspiration. I remembered that the liquid component of the explosives was highly flammable. We could douse paper and/or cardboard with it, then ignite the whole thing with the cigarette lighter from Billy Bob’s T-Bird and thus light the pipes full of hash. When I shared the idea with the group, they stared at me slack-jawed like a school of particularly dim fish. But the looks of confusion soon changed to admiration, and I was showered with congratulations. We ran back inside the plant, where I grabbed a plastic bottle full of the maroon colored liquid explosive, and the rest of the group snagged cardboard boxes and paper. Then together the motley, ragtag crew of partiers streamed out into the parking lot like so many addle-brained Athenas screaming out of the head of Zeus.
Some among us shredded cardboard into a small pile, while others improvised wicks from office-paper. While we worked Billy Bob Bobby Joe Willy Dick lit lots of lovely joints with his cigarette lighter, and as we passed them around, the air quickly thickened with pungent smoky skunkiness and we all got high, higher, highest.
When a nice little pile of paper and cut-up cardboard was prepared, and our wicks were made, I unscrewed the top of the plastic cylinder that contained the crimson colored liquid explosive component, and a severe chemical stench rushed out and assaulted me. Smelled like some powerful shit. As everyone watched breathlessly, I poured the crimson liquid over the shredded cardboard carefully, and doused several of the office-paper wicks.
Looking back it seems inconceivable that none of us were even vaguely aware of the potential for catastrophic bloodshed, dismemberment, and the splattering of brains all over Useless. Not one among us seemed to fully appreciate that if a spark somehow ignited the bottle of liquid explosives, it could’ve blown sky high, and that could’ve triggered a blast inside the plant, and Zeus, along with all of us, could’ve been blown to bits in a fiery conflagration of biblical proportions.
“15 DALLAS TEENS KILLED IN EXPLOSIVE PLANT TRAGEDY!!!”
But youth is blissfully ignorant, and as the Toad cranked the Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, and the singer dude crooned about how the lunatic was in his head, we gathered, poised, with our bowls full of world-class Lebanese hash all ready to smoke, completely unaware that Death was standing there laughing at us, just waiting for us to fuck up so he could haul our souls away to Hades.
In the still of the night, with all those teenage hormones bombing towards the billions of stars in the big huge Texas sky, the click of the cigarette lighter being expelled from its red hot hole sounded like a bomb going off. Billy Bob Bobby Joe Willie Dick yanked the fiery cherry out of the dashboard, and with all haste brought it toward us. We held our collective breath, as my best friend quickly stuck his long, liquid-explosive-saturated office-paper wick onto the red coils inside the lighter.
POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOF!!!
Flame blazed as if from the mouth of an angry dragon, and my best friend dropped his wick onto the shredded liquid-explosive-saturated cardboard, which ignited, sending a blast of heat and light fluming, mushrooming up into the air, driving us all backwards, and oh my Sweet Baby Jesus, it was like a phantasmagorical, supernatural magic trick, elemental and powerful, worthy of Zeus himself.
After it became clear that that no one was singed, burned or had burst into flames, we all cooed about how cool it was, and watched in wonderment as the blaze died down nicely, and the shredded cardboard burned beautifully. We then stuck unsaturated office-paper wicks into the fire and got several bowls going at once. The world-class Lebanese hash was even better than advertised. Smooth, cocky, insouciant, an amusing blonde with the kick of a turbo-charged mule. Certainly worth getting blown up for.
After we’d smoked our fill, we let the fire die down, and headed back into the explosives factory to do more heavy drinking. I gave Cindy Lou Who a ride on one of the forklifts, and when I squealed around the corner she held onto me tight and shrieked with delight. Suddenly Todd the Toad jumped into the other forklift, and with a wild war whoop, roared breakneck straight at me. How cool! my brain screamed, high-speed forklift chicken! As everybody shouted and cheered and carried on, I hit the gas and jammed as fast as the forklift would travel on a direct collision course with Todd the Toad, who threw his long-haired head back and wailed like Dionysius swooping down on the back of Pegasus. Closer and closer we sped towards each other, and if one of us didn’t swerve soon we were going to smash into each other head-on. I was determined to show everyone that I had the biggest of all balls, and the fact that Cindy Lou Who was clinging to me like a wet dream made it even more imperative that I be the one not to blink. But I also knew that Todd the Toad was a lunatic nut job, as I had once seen him pull off his own toenail to win a bet. And he had to use a pair of pliers to do it. And he only won 20 buck. At that moment I realized there was an extremely good chance Todd the Toad was not going to veer off. In fact it would have been kind of shocking if he did. So at the very last second I jerked the steering wheel as hard as I could to the right, and we swerved, curving around him with barely a short hair to spare.
The party applauded raucously as the Toad and I screech to a halt. Todd bounded out of his forklift and did a maniac victory-lap dance, ranting like a madman and slapping hands with the half-drunk, fully-stoned revelers:
“Hey man, I totally smoked you, I ate your ass for lunch, I own you, motherfucker!”
I took my medicine good-naturedly, with supplication befitting the situation. In the roaring good-vibe din of the party, as Led Zeppelin wailed over the sound system about wanting a whole lotta love, the sound of the crunchy rock bellowing through the hallowed halls of Zeus was spooky and majestic, and I noticed how spectacularly stoned I was, how floaty and euphoric, how the tequila had made all jazzed, jacked up, and ready to ruuuuuuuuuuuuuumble!
The only problem was that I’d somehow lost track of Cindy Lou Who. Dammit, I cursed myself! I looked up and down miles of aisles. I looked in shipping. I looked in receiving. I looked in the lounge with the coffee pots. I looked out back in the parking lot. I scoured Zeus through and through, but there was no sign of Cindy Lou Who. Dammit, I cursed myself!
I was rapidly going from frantic to desperate as I walked into the large men’s bathroom. I stopped, stunned to see heaps of steam streaming out from the shower area, like there was a supersized cloud in there trying to get out. I crept on stoned tiptoes toward the entrance to the shower. Over the hiss, spit and splat of ten gushing showerheads, I could hear a rhythmic moan and groan. Moan. Groan. Moan. Groan. Holy Shit, someone’s actually Doing It right here in the shower! How cool is that?! Moan. Groan. Moan. Groan. Somehow the fact that the sounds were disembodied made them that much sexier, like two hot ghosts were making beautiful love right there in the room with me. I saw a glimpse of movement. A shift in the air. And suddenly there she was. Brenda. Stark raving naked. Going all cowgirl on my best friend, her eyes rolled back in her head, her mouth gaping open, twin roses blooming on her perfect pale cheeks.
Suddenly the sound of loud rowdy teenagers headed my way. I took this as my cue to exit stage left. The immediate result of my voyeuristic shower encounter was the overwhelming, all-consuming, irresistible desire to find and woo Cindy Lou Who. I burst out of the steam and stormed into the main room of Zeus in hot pursuit of a whole lotta love of my own. I strode determined past boxes loaded with ammo. I turned left and looked up an aisle. Lying on the concrete floor was an embryonic lump. If this had been an urban street it would have looked like a homeless person. But there at Zeus it just looked like a sad party casualty. As I approached I felt bad. You hate to see one of your comrades fallen so early and so hard. Poor lightweight.
But as I closed in on the lifeless form a horror chilled all the way through me. Holy dear Christ, my brain shouted, it’s Cindy Lou Who! I bent down quickly, my heart pounding with concern, world-class hash and alcohol. I put my hand under her head and gently lifted up. I felt something squishy in her hair, as a bad rancid sour sick toxic hooch-drenched smell wafted out of her. I felt her pulse. Everything seemed to be in working order, even if she did have a nasty hangover waiting in her mailbox. But what is that squishy shit in her hair? my brain asked again. Gently I laid her head back down and removed my hand from the tangle of her rat’s nest hair. OH MY GOD!!! It’s puke. Spew. Urp. Hurl. Blown chunks. Tossed cookies. OH MY GOD!!!
I stopped my gag reflex and tried to find something to remove the puke with. I started to wipe it on the girl herself. But that seemed cruel and a bit inhuman. So I wiped it on a box of explosives. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried wiping sick of your hands onto a cardboard box of explosives, but it’s just as hard and gross as it sounds.
Just then my best friend screeched around the corner a little too crazy-eyed and out of control: “Hey man, we gotta go, there’s some crazy shit coming down.”
“What is it, man?” I asked, sufficiently traumatized, “What happened?”
Apparently, unbeknownst to any of us, Brenda had made a deal with her father. She’d agreed to be totally honest with him, no matter what. So at a certain point that evening, she’d had some kind of epiphany and called him, confessing that she was partying at the explosives plant, and not at a sleepover. Naturally, as soon as Brenda’s dad discovered the shenanigans we were up to, he’d called my dad.
Half an hour later, when I heard a car and saw headlights, my stomach flipped over and a sick feeling settled in its pit. We’d only just finished evacuating all of the partiers from the plant, but we hadn’t even begun to clean up the massive mess. And now my old man/employer was headed toward me, furious anger radiating through the grill of his wood-paneled station wagon. I glanced at my watch. 4:35 Sunday morning. Still the middle of the night, but if you listened closely you could hear the sound of dawn careening around the corner.
My father jumped out of the car like his hair was on fire and strode towards me, preceded by a large vein that was pulsating in the middle of his forehead. My next clear memory is sitting on the big wraparound couch in our living room with my best friend as the sun was coming up and my father was screaming about what an immature, irresponsible, immoral, selfish, ungrateful, unappreciative, wicked, stupid, spiteful, hateful, awful, atrocious monstrosity I was, while my long-suffering mother sat in the chair across from us and wept. Wept and wept and wept. To me that was so much worse. After a while my mind tuned my father out, and I watched his mouth move up and down, but the words sounded like nonsense, gibberish, the barkings of a mad dog. However, the more my mother sat there weeping those huge wet tears, the saddest tears imaginable, a mother’s tears, the worse it made me feel. I sat there asking myself, Why did you do this? What were you thinking? Are you out of your mind? Only a very very BAD person would do something like this. At first I asked for their forgiveness. Then I begged for it. But no matter what I said, my dad kept yelling, and my mother kept crying and crying and crying..
I don’t recall my father ever actually saying the words, You’re fired. But it was certainly implied. And I never again saw Useless, or set foot inside Zeus. Very soon thereafter I was shipped off to a boarding school, and my best friend was in the Army. A year later I was homeless and a prostitute, studying existentialism with nuns. 10 years later I was the Master of Ceremonies at Chippendale’s male strip club in New York City, and a cocaine addict. 10 years later I was acting with Will Smith on “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air”, and a sex addict. 10 years later I am about to be a dad, and in love with my wife. My best friend is currently doing a long stretch of hard time in prison.