"Yeah, dude.  That's true--my brother knows this guy who got out of jury duty because he'd done acid like nine times and they just sent him home..."

 

The New Guy Who Wasn't Going to Last Very Long that Summer was very pleased with his first contribution, ever, to a tent company discussion.  All the rest of us could muster was a half-assed, "Wow."

 

We all stood there, quietly tallying how close each of us was to a permanent vacation from jury duty, when Greg Johnson suddenly interrupted as he passed by.

 

"That's bullshit, man.  I did acid twenty times last summer, and they still made me serve on jury duty last fall..."

 

With that he kept on walking towards the cab of the truck to open another pack of Marlboro reds.  Seconds later, Mike Harvey had snuck up next to him to bum one off him, explaining how he'd inevitably left his smokes at home, in the car and/or at his girlfriend's place.  Greg didn't even fight it any more, handing him a butt without even looking at him.

 

The New Guy Who Wasn't Going to Last Very Long that summer stared at Greg in disbelief then looked back at us to see if we were fucking with him again.

 

"No way, right?  That's not possible..."

 

Greg just laughed.

 

"Believe what you want, man, but I do that shit all the time.  When I was working at the A&W diner, I used to drop acid before my shifts to make it interesting.  One time, I was trippin' my balls off and next thing you know, I was catching flies out of mid-air and dropping them into the clam chowder..."

 

Our Fearless Leader for the day Don soon came strolling back to the truck, clipboard in hand.  Apparently, he was done listening to the middle-aged lesbian who had ordered the tent.  We'd been enjoying watching their hand gestures as we got high behind the trucks.  Don was simultaneously annoyed that we'd gotten high without him and hadn't done a damn thing since we'd arrived.

 

"What the fuck, dudes?" 

 

When the strongest man in the world glares at you, you get moving.  And there were a lot of us that day, none of whom wanted to be on the receiving end of Don's un-stoned wrath. 

 

Looking back, it was a pretty big job, at one of those fancylad private schools south of Boston.  There was a lot of random shit to do, too--basically, we had to put up three tents, connect them with shitty-looking pieces of canvas, and then drop off an entire graduation's worth of tables, chairs and dance flooring. 

 

Mikey and Greg, though, moved at their own pace.  Mikey sat silently in the truck cab, muttering an occasional, "fuck that, man, I'm finishing my goddamn cigarette."  Greg, on the other hand, just wandered off somewhere.

 

Don alternated his disapproving glare from Mikey and his surliness to Greg and his wanderlust to the rest of us chasing each other around with sledgehammers and tent poles.  Finally, he gave up on all of us and simply walked over to the truck, where he picked up the largest canvas bag we'd brought.

 

As Don walked by carrying a 60' by 30' section of canvas tent, single-handedly, the rest of us got the point.  As three of us struggled to lift the next section, a 60' by 20' piece, even Mikey grudginly scuffed out his cigarette and silently started unloading the trucks.

 

At this point, Greg was still nowhere to be seen. 

 

Like everyone else at that company, Greg was a character in and of himself.  A shameless psychedelic drug user and pothead, he was a one-man encapsulation of everything the 60's had hoped for.  Musician, writer and intellectual, he avoided any kind of focus and dedication to ensure that he packed a variety pack of sure-fire chick-getting hobbies into his wiry six-foot-four frame.  And, to top it all, he looked a hell of a lot like Jesus.

 

Now, he didn't look like the real Jesus probably did--Greg in no way resembled some Middle Eastern guy who had obviously worked with his hands and lived in the desert.  Instead, Greg looked like that flowing-robed, wavy-hair-ed Renaissance Jesus, with his mellow smile, his half-open blue eyes and his "peace be with you" demeanor.  At times, he took on more of a Jesus Christ Superstar look, and other days, when the jobs got really shitty, he could get a frayed Life of Brian look going.  But, all in all, no matter how dizzying the high or terrifying the low, he never deviated far from a look eerily reminiscent of the Lord and Savior of millions worldwide.

 

What was really fucked up was that Greg hadn't always looked like that.  And I'm not saying, "he once had shorter hair."  He literally used to look nothing like himself.  As cliche as it sounds, he was a totally different man.  After the accident.

 

Fucked up personal tragedies seemed to be a job requirement at the tent company.  You didn't always know what was ticking in the back of your co-worker's brain, but you knew there was some fucked-up point in his past that turned him into the fellow alcohol-burning, pot-smoking madman sitting in the truck next to you.  Sometimes it would creep out for just a moment--like the time Sean Gurry smashed a radio playing Procul Harem's "Whiter Shade of Pale."  Other times, you got the story when you least expected it, like Don Wait's lunchtime revelations.  But with Greg, his story was the shit of legend.

 

When Greg was younger, he was climbing a tree one fateful day.  Was he climbing for the fun of it?  To save a cat?  To find God while high on acid at age 12?  That part depended on who you asked.  Everyone's story, however, agreed that he fell from the top of that tree and landed on his face, smashing it beyond recognition.  He would need plasitc surgery.  Fuckloads of it. 

 

A lot of people would have been crushed by the experience--seeing themselves all fucked up, hoping against hope to lead a normal life.  A few brave souls would fight through the pain, the humiliation and the fear and emerge just as good looking as they did before.  Greg Jackson went one better--he had the doctors make him even better looking than he had been before.  After all, he was already going in for a small house's worth of plastic surgery payments.  Why not max it out?

 

It fucking worked.  Even in a sea of homophobic tent workers, the consensus was, "that's a good lookin' guy who pulls a lot of wool, dude."  And no one faulted him for mixing in a little vanity with necessity.  Hell, he'd snuck one in there as far as most guys were concerned.  I'll even admit there were a few akward summers in late adolescence where I secretly prayed for a fall, an accident, some sort of excuse to clear up the wrongs genetics had done me.  All I got was a baton across the nose from a Canadian policeman--hardly an excuse to go under the knife.  Greg had made the best fucking lemonade possible from his pile of lemons, then spiked the shit for good measure.

 

Naturally, as a good looking Jesus, he got away with a tremendous amount of shit, and even Don wasn't going to call him out on his now-conspicuous absence.  Greg had gone beyond the usual "taking a piss time" or "taking a shit time."  He was in "wandering the fuck around time."

 

Suddenly, though, just like the figure he most resembled, Greg was back when we least expected him.  His arrival was announced by Jeremy Starr--one of the funniest, nicest guys to ever get juiced goofy on steroids and admit it openly.  Jeremy had been taking a legitimate piss break when he returned with a triumphant yell, "I've found Greg and punished him for his sins!"

 

With that, Greg stumbled forward from behind one of the trucks, his hair hanging down over his face, his shirt missing, and carrying one of the main wooden tent poles across his shoulders like he had fallen straight out of the Second Station of the Cross.  Not to be out-done, Jeremy proceeded to whip him with a spare tent rope, yelling at him in made-up Latin as he struggled.  Greg fell the requisite three times, at which point Jeremy lost his shit laughing and Mikey looked on in admiration, wishing he'd thought of that one himself.  Don finally stepped in when Mikey suggested that we hang Greg up on the main tent pole for a while.

 

"You guys are all going to hell," Don said as he laughed. 

 

As the New Guy Who Wasn't Going to Last Very Long that Summer crossed himself repeatedly to ward off any damnation-by-association, the rest of us stood back a few feet, hoping the lightning would have good aim when it came. 

 

The rest of the day was sunny and warm.

 

 

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