Andrew Sullivan - Waste

“Every man has got to have a bonsai tree, man. It is the only way you will survive here.”

Donnie Henley’s parents had never even heard of the Eagles when they gave birth to their first son. The band did not even exist at the time. Don spent the first twenty years of his life blissfully unaffected by his namesake. That was, until “Hotel California” became the anthem at his college. Called to countless keggers, where he proudly chugged along as the more famous Henley warned him he would never leave, Don dropped out after failing three chemistry midterms in a row. His failure also might have been connected to the bong his girlfriend bought him for their three-week anniversary. The girlfriend who would later become his wife and personal trainer. On his weekends off, Don Henley liked to bare-knuckle box in his backyard.

With TACO BELL tattooed across his knuckles and a freshly broken nose, Henley trained Brock and Jamie in the bowels of the warehouse. He showed them how to empty trucks at the slowest pace acceptable by union standards, and how to build a bed of Heineken cases to rest on if they were hung over. The trick was to pad the top row with bags of sawdust and cover it in a tarp. He showed them how to tie the knots that kept five thousand dollars worth of Johnnie Walker Blue Label from crashing to the floor, and he always knew which table to sit at in the dingy cafeteria. Mostly, Don Henley just showed them how to pass the time.

“Now, I know I love my wife — I’ve known that ever since she bought me a box of ice cream sandwiches after I had my wisdom teeth out,” Donnie said one day. “A girl who knows exactly what you desire, in the exact moment of desire, the exact millisecond, that is a girl you want to stay with for life.”

Brock and Jamie rolled their eyes. They were still covered in Beefeater gin from when Sweet Pete Colleti had dumped a skid of it across the loading dock. Took three hours to clean up.

“Hey, I don’t expect you to up and propose to whatever girl you’ve got lined up for the night, all right? I’m trying to tell you something important, though. This place is going to drive you crazy if you don’t find a way to cope with it. You’ll end up driving a forklift right off the dock.

“What you need to survive here is a bonsai tree. My brother has one in his office in Toronto, one of those nice big office towers on Bay. He says they all have them in the office. That’s what they use to relax.”

“They have trees in their offices?” Brock asked.

“Little Japanese trees, dwarf things. Only grow so big over the course of their lifetime. Sort of look like full-grown trees, only miniature.”

Brock said, “Sounds like your brother is a fag, Donnie.”

“You only wish, Cutcherson. Got your mouth open all the time looks like you’re just waiting for a dick to fill it,” Donnie said. “Unfortunately, he’s married.”

“All right,” Jamie said. “So what’s your point?”

“Always with the point here, eh, Garrison? You guys are just lucky the whole system shut down, otherwise we’d be unloading Peanut Noir all night,” Donnie said. “Point I’m trying to get to is that if you work here long enough, you will go certifiably insane. Maybe it’s the fumes from the booze, or the dust, or the fucking monotony, but you will go crazy without a doubt. Whether it’s smashing a window or someone’s face or jumping off the top row back in storage. And guess who will have to clean that up?”

“You?”

“Yes, me. I will somehow be bestowed with that great honor.”

The warehouse was loud that night, but the three still sat in the shipping container talking in harsh whispers. Harry “Colon” Collins would be on their asses to dust or sweep if he found them hiding out in a trailer while the receiving system rebooted the rolling lines.

“So you need a bonsai tree. You need something to distract you, to keep your mind off the fact that you’re stuck in this place for the foreseeable future with a lack of females and a whole lot of ugly motherfuckers who you can barely interact with in a civ manner.”

The boys said nothing.

“And although I do have a wife, I also have a fucking bonsai tree. And you can always have both, that’s the beauty of it.”

“Don, this is just fucking confusin’.”

“Everything is confusing for you, Garrison. What I’m saying is pretty simple. With these trees, they always just do a little maintenance, a little interaction with nature every day, a little preservation of something that isn’t like a millionaire’s stocks or his wife’s assets in the divorce over his mistress, secretary, whatever. These guys in the big towers, they get to interact with something real. Real natural.

“Now, back at my place, my wife has a nice little herb garden and that’s how she does it. But here, we can’t really grow shit, can we? Not even like dill. That shit will grow anywhere if you let it. No, we are kinda stuck. Closest thing we got in here is women.”

“Like ten of them? All in the offices, all typing away or running from here to there with their files and shit,” Jamie said.

“But that’s the point, Garrison. It doesn’t need to be all the time. These dudes downtown aren’t pruning and raking their little trees all day, but they are checking in on them from time to time. That’s how you fucking survive here.”

“Most of the girls in here got boyfriends already, or are way old. Like older than you, and you’re…shit, you been around since what? Civil War?” Jamie said.

“I’m thirty, I’m not the walking dead, all right? But I get you. You don’t need to want to date them. You just need to establish a rapport.”

“A what?” Brock said.

“Okay, I don’t know — a relationship.”

“You said we aren’t trying to bang these broads, so what are you even talking about, man?”

“I’m talking about decent human interaction here, boys. To connect you with a world that you otherwise would not be able to handle,” Donnie said.

“So what do we do then, huh?”

“Just find one of the girls here, like in the parking lot, or whatever, the caf. Start up a little conversation. Hmm, look. All right, you know Candice?”

“Girl who checks the hours, does all that stuff? She’s kinda got a—”

“She’s got a weird nose, I know, but she’s real nice. I check in to pick up my paystub, or see her in the parking lot. Maybe I chat a little here and there, and it’s nice,” Donnie said. “I got something to look forward to, a relationship to maintain, and that’s it. Something at work that doesn’t have shit to do with work keeps me from getting all crazy.”

“So, you don’t wanna ever do anything with Candice? I mean, besides the nose thing, she is pretty fit,” Jamie said. “And she’s got that tattoo…”

“No, Garrison, I don’t. I really don’t. Thing is, I do love my wife, truly, deeply, from the fucking root of my cock all the way to my heart and back, but the other thing is, when I’m here, a little female interaction is what keeps me sane,” Donnie said. “It’s why I don’t think they should ever be segregating boys from girls in schools, and why I think so many of the numb nuts working here end up either crazy or bitter as shit about women.”

“And what are we supposed to do with this information?”

“Find yourself a bonsai tree, man. Something to maintain. Cutcherson, man, you want to try that girl who processes all the receiving paperwork. She smiles at you, doesn’t she?”

“Have you seen her teeth, man? They don’t know up from down. They go fucking sideways. The boys call her the Sidewinder,” Brock said.

“You aren’t trying to knock her up. I go home to my wife and I don’t even dream about that girl. It’s just about having someone to talk to or notice you who doesn’t have a dick.”