I was tired, I explained, and in love, I added, hoping to appeal to that romantic Mediterranean nature I'd read and heard about. 'My girlfriend,' I said,

'I don't see her anymore. . and I miss her. . I have,' I added, 'a life . outside of this place.' I went on to describe going home each night to a sleeping girl, rolling exhausted into the sheets, still stinking from work, and how I arose at six with the girl still asleep, never exchanging so much as a word before leaving for work again, for yet another double. This was no good for a relationship, I said.

'Look at me,' said my boss, as if the nice suit and the haircut and the desk explained everything. 'I am married ten years to my wife.' He smiled. 'I work all the time. I never see her. . she never sees me.' He paused now to show me some teeth, his eyes growing more penetrating and a little scary. 'We are very happy. '

What my boss meant by this little glimpse into his soul, I have no idea. But he impressed me. I worked the double, figuring maybe this was what was required: total dedication. Forget the loved ones. Forget the outside world. There is no life other than this life. I didn't spend much time trying to figure it out. The man scared me. Years later, I got another perspective on things. I opened the Post to see a photo of my oId boss's wife, draped over the awning of a Chinese restaurant on the Upper East Side. She'd apparently performed a double-gainer from the window of her high-rise apartment and not quite made it to the pavement. So I guess she wasn't that happy after all.

You'd think the union would be happy about this development, or at least curious, with an energetic young organizer in their midst. I scheduled a meeting with the union president, looking forward to commiserating about the Imperialist Jackboot on the Necks of the Workers, and the Struggle Against the Controllers of the Means of Production. When finally I sat down with the president of Local 6 (yet another Italian with a thick accent), he was oddly unenthusiastic. He looked up sleepily at me from behind the desk of his dark office, as if I were a delivery boy bringing him a sandwich. When I asked him if I could, as shop steward, familiarize myself with The Contract, so that I might better serve our members, the president fiddled with his cufflinks and said, 'I seem to have . temporarily. . misplaced it.' It was clear from his inflection and posture that he didn't give a fuck whether I believed him or not. After a few more minutes of near total silence and zero enthusiasm on the president's part, I got the hint and skulked back to work empty-handed.