Blue-Collar Job, Blue-Collar Mind

I occasionally say things that horrify strangers around me. It takes a lot of conscious effort to control my foul mind. I have worked in professions—soldier, security contractor, and bouncer—where I am mostly surrounded by rough, disgusting, and sick-minded men. I love the fact that I am able to talk about the most cruel and demented subjects that come to mind while at work. Our current subjects are zoophilia and how we should skull-fuck Iran. From the little experience I have in working a “real world” job, political correctness and politeness seem to be the dominant social behavior. Dog-fucking, it seems, has no place in a professional, productive, and cohesive work environment.

I don’t believe I can handle a job where censoring my dirty mouth, avoiding offensive subjects, and being a “Nancy No-No” are required. I worked in a warehouse for a small skin-care company for two months. Aside from the two owners and two other guys who worked the warehouse with me, the staff of fifteen was all women. I remember one time I came into work still sleepy and possibly hung over, and one of the girls said, “Good morning, Raul,” to which I responded, “I fucking hate my life.”

With a horrified look on her face, she said, “You know, life is beautiful, you have a job, my husband doesn’t have one…” In other words, “Blah, blah, blah, I’m a narrow-minded bitch.”

I don’t remember what, if anything, I said to her, but I do remember thinking, “Really? Take a fucking joke, cunt.”

My dark sense of humor began to develop when I was a teenager, back in the days when rotten.com and ebaumsworld.com were relevant. The Internet allowed me to grow insensitive and to hold nothing as sacred. I learned to love and adore our First Amendment rights and to despise censorship and any form of dishonesty. Internet writers such as Maddox and Tucker Max, combined with the violent, hate-filled attitudes of the men with whom I served in the Army, allowed me to realize that it was all right to laugh at the thought of taking a preacher, bending him over a pew, and fucking him in the ass until he swears that he is a Jew.

In his book Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain says of the people who occupy the male-dominated profession of line cooks, “You might get the impression from the specifics of my less than stellar career that all line cooks are wacked-out moral degenerates, dope fiends, refugees, a thuggish assortment of drunks, sneak thieves, sluts and psychopaths. You wouldn’t be too far off base.” To a lesser extent, I believe that the men who work male-dominated blue-collar jobs exhibit these dark characteristics. We like it. We like being able to exhibit our lowbrow, unhealthy, sickening selves in the place where we spend most of our time.

Some people do need to feel safe at work. They want the humorless shield of Human Resources protecting them from anything mildly objectionable. A pretentious fuck may claim that acting like a testosterone-infused monkey is just immature behavior that is reserved for lower classes. It’s not appealing to those who are educated, of status, or of fine pedigrees. So fucking what?

The thoughts in my mind are raunchy; I smile with delight at what should make me cringe, and my mouth is dirtier than a Mexican hooker’s pussy. Does that make me a bad person? No. There is a difference between being able to laugh at deviant behavior and actually doing it. It’s the men with this kind of humor whom you want to fight your wars, fix your cars, save you from fires, police your streets, and cook your meals. Dark humor creates a deeper connection among men than whatever bullshit team-building exercises the corporate world pushes.