Beast of Burden

He watched, expecting it, as they recoiled from his elaborately-devised diffidence, revealing his intent to them. How could he even contemplate such a thing? Their laid-back son was kidding them, they knew his predilection for shocking them, then sitting back and watching as they slowly adjusted their attitude, trying in their fairly transparent way (to him, in any event) to disguise their visceral reaction that marked them in his mind as strait-laced and conservative.

Their predictable attitude and his aversion to their values went a long way to explaining why he seldom informed them of much that went on in his mind, in his world, among his acquaintances and friends, much less about the way he comported himself outside the house. The house he no longer, as it happened, shared with his parents. It gave him a mean kind of satisfaction to bear evidence that he was once again, their only child, disparaging their shared apprehensions of how it would look to their friends and associates if they knew what he was doing, how that might reflect on the opinion that others held of them.

It satisfied his sense of amused reflection on what he did not share with his parents to appreciate their reaction. He would never outright disparage their choices, having done it more than sufficiently as an adolescent. This way was much better, feigning to overlook his disgust at their social mores, their vain self-satisfaction with their place in their middle-class community, upholding all the values that were superficially and without argument utterly and patently useless in their self-affirming righteousness.

There was a time, he recalled, not all that long ago, when he had to struggle with himself to stifle an almost overwhelming desire to comfort them. To tell them that he was not rejecting them. It was only their values that he found utterly without value. He loved them, he wanted to say to them, but how could he also tell them that while loving them as his parents, weighted with the memories of their cherishing love for him, that he had no respect for them? He knew if he indulged relieving himself of the burden of his parents’ pain expressed because of his attitude, telling them how he felt, in that kind of split affection and disaffection they would never understand anyway. So why bother?

When they offered him funding for his studies he just automatically responded “No. Thank you anyway, no need, I’m managing nicely enough”.

Trying at the same time to modify the stiffness of his reply with an insouciant smile hoping to communicate - he felt - to relay some degree of feeling he yet had for them. Deep in his consciousness he had no wish to be a graceless ingrate, the twerp he must seem to be to his extended family.

He hardly cared about that, but in his own mind he liked to get things sorted out. They did deserve better than to be victimized by his scorn for their socially puerile values and concerns. They did raise him, after all, with the best of intentions.

His alienation from them was not that complete that he couldn’t feel some bit of compassion for them. But their attitudes infuriated him, and it was as though there was a rage he couldn’t manage to control when he was confronted with those stupid, bourgeois attitudes. Their superficial concerns for how things appeared rather than confronting issues that mattered drove him to distraction. And drove him to criticize them until his mother was driven to tears of helpless confusion.

So yes, they represented the great mass of society insensitive to imperatives other than their own immediate comforts. Representing a society obsessed with a veneer of sensitivity to all the fleeting issues of the day as they erupted. While he, in his obsessive disgust with what they represented, sometimes came across to himself as a sanctimonious clod of an ingrate for all that this same society endowed him with. While rejecting those portions of the social contract that he detested, he grasped those elements that had meaning to him.

Hell, that’s what life is all about, evaluating and judging and making informed discriminatory choices. It was his parents’ prerogative to remain what they had always been, immune to the challenges of viewing themselves in the prism of current-day realities. And it was his decision, always had been, to reject just about everything they represented.

To be fair, even Jen, one of his housemates, was critical of his decision. She said as far as she was concerned it was a personal decision, but to go ahead and do that, well, it was kind of humanly demeaning. Like being a pack animal.

“A dray beast”, he said, sarcastically, but smiling at her to deflect any idea of hard feelings.

“There’s no dignity”, she said, “in voluntarily acting like a coolie”

“Tch, tch, that’s pretty politically indelicate”, Keith told her.

“I suppose in fact, there’s not all that much difference in hauling people around, and hauling food around and slinging it at them”, Sheila said.

“A lot different, it sure is! Waiting is waiting, it doesn’t represent abnegating yourself before others by subjecting yourself to their not even seeing you as a human being, but some beast of burden.”

“Hey now, Jen, take a pill, that doesn’t represent reality at all, it’s just your personal hang-up, kid. It’s a job, that’s all it is, a job like just about any other. It’s menial to be sure, but how is it worse than slinging burgers at MacDonald’s? Is that a whole lot better, working for a multinational that grows and enriches itself by exploiting minimum wage labour, by despoiling the environment, by subtly teaching kids that MacDonald’s means food, good nutrition - and we see the results of that in overweight kids, don’t we?”

“Yes” she said glumly, “there is that, of course. But how can you feel so sanguine about presenting yourself like that, by hauling around some middle-class, brain-singed tourists who think it’s good, clean fun to have another human being drag himself around straining his energy to save them theirs? “It’s damningly indecent, nothing less, to submit yourself to that kind of abuse.”

“It’s only abuse”, he corrected, "if someone demands of me something I’m not prepared to countenance. This is my decision, and I’m not about to apologize for it. It’s not an attempt on my part to degrade myself out of a misguided sense of contrition for having a superior intelligence to the dolts I’ll be taking money from for the pleasure of helping them negotiate tourist spots in the city. I’m doing it because it’s a job, and one that I can perform out-of-doors, not cramped in some smelly fast-food dive.”

“Man”, Keith said, observing him almost admiringly, “that’s self-abnegation. I couldn’t do that. Big ego shock, y’know? I might snub myself to the extent of considering driving one of those horse-drawn carts, y’know, but a rickshaw? No way, man.”

“Yeah, sure, I know what you mean. But I figure, big deal. I’m young, strong, haven’t got those hang-ups and jobs being scarce…”

“Well, how about it, Rob? Why not one of those horsey-things?” Sheila prodded.

“Because”, he drew a breath, “simply because I sympathize with the animal, wearing blinkers to keep it from panicking at the sight of being surrounded by all those mechanical beasts on the road. Bad enough it’s taught to ignore the noise, the smells. Ever seen how some motorists drive around those horses? I did, the other day, before I made up my mind. Saw a driver with two in tow, edged into traffic because she hadn’t anticipated the light-change, trying to back up, the horse nervous and beginning to twitch, signalling to the guy in the car behind her to loosen up, give her some back-up room, and he thought it was a real hoot, just laughed at her, gave her the finger.”

After his first week on the job, he felt as though every bone in his body had cracked; he actually heard bones cracking; he could swear the marrow was seeping out of them. He felt swept clean of energy, a broken carcase of a man. He could empathize, he thought with rickshaw pullers in India and wherever else they plied their trade.

It was, after all, a demeaning, back-breaking, pitiful way to make a living. He was doing it in the capital city of a wealthy country in a tourist area where well-heeled gawkers could afford to pay for the anomaly of having a living, human being act as a beast of burden, and think nothing of it. As though to degrade another human being - and themselves for being complicit in the act - was part of the exotic appeal of being somewhere else than where they were accustomed to being, where something like that would never occur, where motor vehicles transported people around and about, not horse-drawn carriages - rickshaws really, but pulled by horses - and men on bicycles pulling the same, along with men bipedally straining just like the horses, to give the city visitors a taste of something really different.

And come to think of it, he was tired of posing for innumerable photographs, and smiling broadly as though he was enjoying himself. He was fed up with cringing inwardly when some overweight guy in a bright striped shirt and belly hanging over his too-tight pants approached him with a grin that told him what he was feeling but not betraying visibly, yet might very well be intuited by the bloody sadist he would have to take for a client.

Above all, he was desperately weary. His aching bones wouldn’t let him sleep at night. He was taking more acetaminophen regularly than he knew would be good for him. He’d gone through a few too many jars of Vicks body-rub already, with its distinctive odour, that made his roommates raise their eyebrows at him, but politely say very little even approximating “I told you so”.

Only Keith commiserated quietly, one evening when they were alone, simply saying “It’s tough, old buddy”. He made as though he’d heard nothing, turned dully away and went off to bed. Early. There were a lot of early bed-times for him. No more going out with the gang at night, over to the bars in Gatineau. He just couldn’t do that any more.

Of course, he could take money from his well-heeled father. It meant nothing to his father, to part with that money; he had it, to spare. And it would please them both, if he did that. But he had no intention of doing it, he would never submit to that kind of craven defeat. That’s how he thought of it.

He was an adult, independent, responsible, and he could hack it. He’d save the tuition he needed for the coming semesters. He was already in enough debt through those student loans.

To make himself feel better he told himself another week and then another week and his body would acclimate. And it was true, the pain wasn’t quite as intense as before. And while he still didn’t feel himself, he no longer felt like retching instead of eating.

He was coming around. Once that happened he’d be all right. He just had to get to that point, that was all. He knew he could do it, that he would do it, and once the summer was over he’d get on to other things. And hope that the following year the job prospects would pick up.

He had to face the truth even if only to himself - pulling a rickshaw was no one’s - least of all his own - idea of a good job. He’d thought at first he’d be able to laugh it off, because he did think it was kind of amusing. His parents’ shocked reaction to their son’s descent into menial labour of a kind they could never have envisioned.

On the plus side he was getting a nice tan. His muscles were firming up really well, even if they hurt like hell. His back was proving equal to the occasion, even if, in the evenings he felt like Quasimodo.

Come to think of it, it was kind of hilarious, to see university kids like him doing something like that, in a wealthy, modern city, reverting back to medieval customs that the impoverished of their times relied upon to keep body and soul together. Dying, he imagined, an early and painful death, their undernourished bodies contorted with unceasing pain, their spindly, limbs failing.

Well, he would consider it an experiment. He’d thought about it, done it, survived it, and would get on with his life. And for his pains pay the bills. Some of them.