By Joshua Ryan

So, the way it happened, it was Saturday, and I was just comin outta the library, when I saw him! They’d brought him into town to do some grunt work for that manager of Mr. Hamilton’s, the gay one, and the workie that drove Mr. Hamilton’s cars. But those guys were off doin something and Butch came back to the car and there he was, leaning against the side, right next to the HAMILTON FARMS placard, waiting for them to show up. All alone! And SO hot! And just waiting for me!

So naturally, I made a total fool out of myself, just standing there with my mouth open, staring at him! Because he was SO hot! He looked exactly the way I wanted to look. He was wearing this great workie suit — which I knew you’re not supposed to like, but maybe that’s why I liked it, cuz people drive past a workie and they say, oh, ugh, look at that horrible suit, I’m glad I’m not a clown like that and I have to wear a clown suit. But that just means they can’t see how big and tough it makes you look, especially if you’ve got muscles that are making the suit be how it’s meant to be! Which is what Butch had.

But also, he had this nice, really … sensitive face! And this way of leaning against a car that was like, I’m leaning against the counter at Louis Vuitton or whatever! I had to come up with a name for some expensive place, so don’t check me up on that. You know what I mean, dude! What I wanta say is, he wasn’t like a lotta these big guys that you’re threatened to talk to. He was … actually, he looked more sad than anything. Like somebody’d thrown him away, and there he was. But he was definitely this big beautiful guy with his workie collar glinting behind the collar of his shirt, like it was saying come closer, Noah!

So he was like, this MAGNET, and I was like this little piece of metal, and clang! I was there! I was actually TALKING to this amazing man, and he was talking to me! And pretty soon, he told me everything I needed to know about life as a workie, and how my life would be. At Hamilton Farms!

Which was — what a relief! I realized I was …. I realized that what I wanted was this actual thing, that existed. That somebody could get.

Let me say it this way. One of my teachers said I was “too imaginative.” Maybe cuz I was always daydreaming in his class, LOL! But probly more cuz I was in one of these College Prep meetings and I said, “What would it be like if nobody went to college?” Which was definitely the wrong thing to say! The other kids all gave me these blank looks that meant “go away, Noah, we’re just tryin to get through this thing.” So I said, “No really. Just imagine it. Spose we don’t have to go to college. Spose we could do somethin else.” So the kids all groaned and rolled their eyes at me, and Mr. Matthews said, “Noah, maybe you’re being too imaginative.” So I stopped. Cuz at least he didn’t say, “You’re a fuckin weirdo, Noah!”

But anyway. I knew it was huge if I decided to be a workie. So I had to have the facts, just like in College Prep. And there was Butch — a fact! Sure, he told me stuff about the lifestyle. But the real thing was, did I want to be like that teacher — with that wife of his that I saw at the Honors banquet, the one with the big fat legs — or did I want to be like Butch? OK, not fair about the wife. I’ll say it another way. Did I want to be like my classmates that were sweatin buckets, applyin to so many colleges that ONE of them would have to take them, or did I want to be like Butch?

So, question answered.

Now what did I want to do about it?

I’d done some more research, and I found out that you couldn’t be a workie before you were 18. But I was! I was 18! So why not now? Why not go to the WORC place and talk to them? No reason!

I was SO hard when I looked up where the Recruitment Center was, and wrote down their hours! Next day, I was there.

In Life Skills class they’d taught us all this stuff about job interviews, so I thought, maybe this is something like that. So I put on some good slacks and my best polo and I rode out there on my bike. It’s only about three miles. Although three miles makes a big difference! My neighborhood is all living room, bedrooms, kitchen, two-car garage, lawn, flowers, tree, and people have these little decoration things all over, like maybe a deer or the Virgin Mary or a sign that says “Welcome to the Johnsons!” with glittery letters. But the Recruitment Center is serious serious serious. It’s all brick and concrete and you can see the razor wire out back. So gulp! Noah needs to be serious now. All serious, no “imagination”!

So I park my bike outside, and I’m all excited! I have to, like, calm myself down before I open those glass-and-steel doors and go inside. First sight — a guy at the desk, in a WORC Police uniform! I’d seen those before, when the inspectors came to check out the “living conditions” of my dad’s workies. But “normal people” never “have contact” with them. Sorry about all the quotes! You know what I mean. That’s the way people talk.

Anyway, the guy at the desk, who was this young, sorta hot guy, was real nice to me. No, it’s not my imagination! But I knew it was a recruitment office, and he had to be nice, OK? He asks me to please sit down and wait for Mr. Sinclair. Then I have a few minutes to chill and not be TOO nervous, and look at the really cool posters of workies that are on the walls, enjoying their lives. Which, I know, are just recruitment posters, but they’re hot anyway, and what’s wrong with that? Then I hear “Mr. Sinclair will see you now,” and I go into a little office that’s off to the side, and there’s wood all over it and it’s nice, like a bank. Mr. Sinclair is sitting there, and he’s a sorta young guy in a shirt and tie and he reminded me of Mr. Clayton, the guidance counselor at school, only Mr. Clayton was black, but they had the same kind of look.

So I tell him I’m Noah and I think I want to join up! Which is pretty simple. I mean, that’s what he’s there for, right? But he kind of bounces back in his chair and he says, “Whoa! Slow down there, Noah! First I need to tell you that this conversation is being recorded, to ensure our high quality of service.”

“OK,” I said. “But what I really …. ”

“You’re Noah …. Noah what?”

“Noah Burns.” He wrote that down.

“How OLD are you, Noah?” He asked it like, I don’t know what this kid’s tryin to pull, but he is WAY too young for this conversation. I guess I always look younger than I am! So I tell him, I’m 18! Like I’m real happy about that, and I am. And I whip out my driver’s license. So he looks at it real close and hands it back to me. “So yes,” he says. “You’re legal, Noah. But tell me more about yourself.”

Guidance counselors are always saying that! But they already know what they want to know. “When did you graduate high school?” he says. Huh? But I told him I didn’t graduate yet — I was in my senior year. Because …the first day of kindergarten they said my birthday put me too soon by five days or something, so I had to wait another year to start. My dad was so pissed! Cuz then my mom couldn’t work as much as they’d planned, cuz she had to stay home and watch me.

Sorry! I guess I just like to talk about myself!

While I was telling that, Mr. Sinclair kept lookin at me like, “You’re awful young and you probly don’t know what you’re doing, and also you’re sorta weird, aren’t you?” So I calmed down and started explaining the whole thing to him. I told him I knew I’d just turned 18 and I hadn’t finished high school yet but my dad had workies and I knew something about it and I’d been thinking about it for a long time and that’s what I wanted to be. I didn’t tell him about Butch, because that was so personal. But I said I’d been doing research and I knew what I wanted to do, and I actually knew where I wanted to be when I was a workie.

Then I noticed there was A Conflict Raging in His Mind! I can’t always tell what people are thinking. I try to watch how they look and talk and so forth, but sometimes I’m just totally wrong. But I could definitely see that he was like “Whoa! Is this a good thing for me or a bad thing?” By “me” I mean him. Because the thing is, he needs to recruit lotsa dudes to be workies, that’s his job, but on the other hand he doesn’t want to get mixed up with some whacko. Which I understand — I’d be the same way!   But I’d never applied to be a workie before, so I didn’t know how I was supposed to act. Maybe I was supposed to be all sad and depressed, cuz if I wasn’t I might be crazy. Anyhow, what he decided to say was, “Back up a minute, Noah. What does your family want you to do?”

OK, I thought. This is gonna be the boring part. I would’ve said scary part, but I knew my dad couldn’t keep me out of the program, because I was already 18. So just the boring part. I told him that my family was my dad and my older brother and I was supposed to go to college and I knew I could get in, but I wanted a life where I didn’t have to compete and I could just work and take orders and not have to worry about making decisions all the time. Which was true! I mean, I wasn’t one of those kids that always wanted to select their own topic to write about and was always arguing about grades because otherwise maybe he wouldn’t get the best grade and get into the best college. So I told him I felt I needed to make my own career choice.

“Career choice, Noah?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Like being a doctor or a lawyer or a teacher or whatever. A career choice.” I didn’t mention the part about, you know, likin other guys and wanting to just live with guys. I thought maybe that would turn into some kind of an obstacle, you know, about being gay. Or about gettin hard about how workies looked and lived and fences with razor wire and those long narrow buildings where they had to live …. I knew I couldn’t tell that to anybody.

“So why not go into the military, Noah?”

I had to think about that for a minute. It hadn’t occurred to me — which was a good sign that it wasn’t a good option! But why wasn’t it?

I thought about my brother’s friend Devin. He’d been in the army. I wasn’t crazy about his uniform. It was all nicely creased and cleaned and shined and decorated with little symbols. It looked like a big responsibility. I saw him in his cammies once, and that was a lot better, but it was kind of a fake. I mean, why’s he wearing this thing that makes him invisible if he’s standing in front of pile of abstract art or something? And when people saw him on the street, they looked like, “Ah, there’s a fine young soldier!” So that was an even bigger responsibility, like he needed to be even more normal than all the normal people. It just didn’t make me hard.

But I had to answer the guy’s question, so I said, “I’m not right for it. It’s all about duty and pride and the importance of your mission and how everybody oughta respect you …. Which is fine if you’re that way. But I’m not that way.” Which was true! “Also,” I remembered, “there’s plenty of competition in the army, right? I mean everybody’s wanting to go from corporal to sergeant and sergeant to lieutenant or whatever?”

“So I hear,” he said.

“I’d rather keep it basic. Just put me in a uniform and tell me what to do.”

“Maybe you’d like to be a mailman,” he joked.

“Nah,” I said. “I’m bad at sortin stuff. And I HATE light blue!”

We both laughed, which was nice. And actually, that’s the way it felt. Now we were having a nice conversation about my career choice. Which I’d already made! So let’s get goin.

“Like I said,” I told him, “I’ve been doin research, and I know where I want to …do my service. Is that the right way to say it?”

“Good enough,” he said. “What kind of place did you have in mind, Noah?” He was still sort of laughing.

“I want to be a workie at Hamilton Farms!”

“Hamilton Farms!” he said. “You know, almost all the program participants at Hamilton Farms are, well, almost all of them are coffled. Do you know what being coffled is, Noah?”

“Sure!” I said. “That’s where you’re all locked up together while you do your work. And that’s what I want. I’ve been …. ” I didn’t want to tell him about Butch, so I said, “I’ve driven past there. And that’s what I want. I want to be in a big operation.   I don’t want to be alone. And I want to be secured. So I don’t have to wonder what to do. But” — hint, hint, let’s get back on track here — “I did want to talk to someone who could tell me how to do this stuff. I mean, get into WORC and get to serve on the Farms.”

“But …you’ve talked this over with your dad?”

“Sure!” I lied. “He didn’t like it, but he says it’s a viable option. ‘Long as it’s on Mr. Hamilton’s place,’ he says.” Just total lies. It felt good to lie. It was like I was already a workie and was lying and stealing like them.

“You understand,” he said, “that once you’re a workie, you no longer have any choices. Mr. Hamilton could buy your lease and then sell it. You couldn’t do anything about it.”

“Does Mr. Hamilton sell a lotta leases?”

“Well …. No, actually. He never does.”

“Great!”

“Well, Noah, I can take your information, and of course get some pictures of you, and contact Mr. Hamilton and see whether he might be interested.”

“Sweet! Let’s do it!” I was so HARD!

So he wanted to see my driver’s license again and he scanned it and so forth. Then he asked me questions about my “education” and my “skills” and any “allergies or diseases” I had, and he put all that stuff in the computer. Then he took out his phone and said, “OK, Noah. This has got to be complete. Take off your clothes.”

At first I couldn’t believe it! Then I thought, “Fuck yeah! I wouldn’t buy a workie if I didn’t see the whole thing!” And after that I thought, “Oh man! Who gets to DO this! I mean, whoever thought that Noah Burns would be the next porn star?” Which I knew was like, somewhat exaggerated, but you can understand it. You get naked, there’s a camera … what else are you thinking about? Specially cuz it didn’t seem like there was any part he wasn’t takin a picture of. Even my pits and the inside of my mouth. Even the bottom sides of my feet.

So, yeah, I had a hardon. I was fightin it but it isn’t easy to keep your mind on math class or world geography or whatever might be able to distract you, when it was your hards that got you into that room to begin with, and now you’re havin this amazing thing happen to you …. I’m sure there was a lotta stiff meat in those pictures! Which, yeah, would probly be an asset! But I was actually kind of embarrassed, cuz he had pictures on his desk of some lady that must be his wife, so I knew he was straight, and he was always trying not to “look” while he used his camera on me. Also, he was sort of rushed at the end, like, “OK, just one more and then you can put your shorts back on.” But by that time, every part of Noah Burns had been totally photographed and recorded.

So then it was over and I did all that stuff you do when you put your clothes and your shoes back on, which seemed kinda funny, doin it all in an office like that, but anyhow. Then he said, “I’ll send your information to Mr. Hamilton. But don’t get your hopes up too high. He’s a pretty demanding buyer. If he’s interested he’ll let us know.”

“Thank you Mr. Sinclair. If he doesn’t …. I don’t know …. That would be pretty rough on me.”

“Look, Noah. I think you’re a good candidate for the program. Let’s just see what happens. I’ll tell you as soon as I know.”

Of course, I was happy he thought I’d be OK. And I thought I’d made a pretty good impression. I thought he’d want to sell me to Mr. Hamilton. So, some great job interview! I was so excited! I went home right away, and it wasn’t to study for my History exam!

To be continued …

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