wrote an essay about this way in a college class afterwards, age 20,
cleaning up trash overnight at the stadium, for an entire season, every single home game, sometimes two a day, cleaning up all the trash from a stadium of up to like 40,000 people. Row by row. Piece by piece. Got promoted to running the trash bags up the stairs, sometimes a dozen, 15, at a time, dripping trash all over my clothes, my skin, through the gloves, over and over until like 5 in the morning.
There was things to appreciate looking back, we all used to smoke and drink before and after, and it was all pretty much lil gangsters from all over the city, and we would be in all the different neighborhoods smoking blunts and drinking bottles after hours, which none of us would do, if not for that job. Like 6 of us, on a blunt, in our uniforms on the block at like 5:00 Am, and no one bothered us.
Also, that sense of gratitude for that experience. I see some of those dudes around, the ones that are still alive, and they all have good jobs and seem happy. we always have that little bond of that summer. we used to literally pick up trash together.
but the visceral feelings of that trash feel on my skin and through my clothes gives me chills. Can remember staring across at people on rooftop clubs and just wondering what that was like.