The Opposite of Loneliness Essays and Stories(47)
“I tend to use sticky paper bait pads in closets,” he explains as he makes his way into the shelf-lined room. “When people walk in, it’s usually pretty dark, and we wouldn’t want their toes getting snapped off, now would we?” He grins. “The mice wander onto the pad, and their noses and feet get stuck. After break-dancing for about ten minutes they settle down and suffocate to death, ’cause they can’t breathe.” He shuts the closet door behind him and switches on his flashlight, eerily illuminating his face from below. “Do youuu like to break-dance, my dear?” Tommy flicks on the closet bulb, his laughter echoing in the small room.
Tommy acknowledges that most people are very uncomfortable with bugs and vermin and knows that his humor serves to calm them down, claiming that “his lighthearted nature helps his business.” However, Tommy’s sense of humor has not always been an asset. “See, I almost got kicked out of the first company I worked for. I was assigned to give a thirty-to forty-five-minute discussion on bat control, and as I approached the podium, I had a wooden hammer, three wooden stakes, a black cloak, and a copy of the Old Testament.” He wheezes, then stops to collect himself. “God, I thought that was just hilarious. Too bad my boss didn’t.”
Although Tommy’s customers all agree that he’s a funny guy, some of them admit he sometimes takes it too far in mocking himself. “Tommy’s a riot,” Larry says, “but sometimes I feel like he’s laughing at his own profession so that others won’t. I mean, he’s great, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that I get the feeling he’s a bit embarrassed.” Larry looks over both his shoulders before continuing in a hushed voice. “I mean, look at his truck. No markings, nothing. Just plain white. He’ll joke about it, but there’s no giant cockroach painted on the back.”
Even Tommy understands that he sometimes hides behind his jokes. “For the most part people perceive me as I perceive myself, but there are times when people have been rude to me.” He pauses, starts to say something different, then stops. His body tenses up and he begins to rub his hands as if washing them in invisible water. “I mean, I guess you could say I sometimes use humor as a defense mechanism.” He stops again, as if thinking over whether or not he really does. “There are all different types of people and issues that you have to deal with when you work in a job like this. Some people approach you very nicely. Some people, well, some people don’t.” He shrugs and shakes his head, averting his eyes. “Some people are different, very judgmental.”
Tommy fingers the fish pin on his cap, then awkwardly laughs. “Well, the roach coach is calling!” he proclaims, referencing his nickname for his truck. “I got a nasty case of bedbugs to deal with over in Washington Heights and this kitchen is squeaky clean for now.” He guffaws, apparently unaware of his joke’s repetition. Although Tommy seems clueless, Larry admits his repertoire of jokes is like “a sitcom on rerun.” Gathering his stuff, Tommy trudges out the back door of the diner and into the cold Chicago air.
Tommy’s old unlabeled truck is parked perfectly in one of the many open spaces. Despite its white, spotless shell, the inside of Tommy’s vehicle is a reflection of his unique personality. The back of the truck serves as a storage room for traps, nets, gloves, structural repair items, sticky boards, pheromone traps, sprays, and more than twelve different kinds of poison. The front is subject to a series of bumper stickers stuck to the inside walls for only Tommy to see. Ironically, most of them seem to shout things at other drivers. HORN BROKEN. WATCH FOR FINGER, one reads. BEWARE: RED GREEN COLOR CONFUSION, boasts another. A small stuffed parrot hangs from the rearview mirror, squawking things like “Let me see your tits!” and “Polly wants a f*cking cracker!” when squeezed. On the driver’s side, the decor is more serious. THE SERVICE INDUSTRY MEANS SERVICE reads one sticker. A 1/20/09: BUSH’S FINAL DAY sticker is stuck just inches away from one that reads NOT ANOTHER VIETNAM: STOP WAR IN IRAQ.
As a liberal Democrat, Tommy has always been against war. However, in the winter of 1967, at the age of twenty-two, he was drafted into the U.S. Army. Up until then, Tommy had had a difficult time finding his place in society. He attended four different schools: North Shore Country Day, Notre Dame, Deerfield High School, and Culver Academy in Indiana—one for each year of high school. “Magna cum laude were three words I never heard in my education,” he chuckles. “I wasn’t the world’s greatest student.” After graduating, Tommy attended college in San Francisco, where he was introduced to the “whole sixties thing.” He explains, “When I was living out in California, I became pretty friendly with this hippie colony that lived near campus. I remember telling one of the guys there that I had just got drafted. I mean, I could have run to Canada and hidden out, but that’s just not me. I just couldn’t do it.”
Although he served in the army from 1967 to 1970, Tommy never actually had to go to Vietnam. As one of only two hundred enlisted men to avoid the war, Tommy was deployed to a small town in Germany where he was assigned to watch over things as a ski patrolman. “I’m a Vietnam era vet, not an actual Vietnam vet. Some guy in a computer punching numbers, that’s all it was. I was damn lucky, that’s for sure. I just got to ski around. Hah! Pretty good way to spend my duty.” Tommy breathes in deeply and sighs. “Anyway, that’s the past. Unimportant now for the most part, other than the fact that they made me cut off my hair. I had an Afro back then. I mean, I still have a lot of hair. I’m sixty-three, and look at all this shit.” Tommy grabs two clumps of his gray curls and pulls them outward. “I don’t look sixty-three, I don’t feel sixty-three, I don’t act sixty-three, and I don’t care. Age is but a state of mind, my dear.” After a long pause, Tommy becomes uncomfortable in his own seriousness and jerks his head quickly to the left, breaking eye contact. “Ha! Did I ever tell you my friends call me Dr. Death? That’s more important. Write that down, my dear, write that down.”