The crazy thing is that I actually knew a real, flesh and blood fireman. He was a living, breathing, shitting archetype, this guy. His skin tone and general demeanor had a 1950s cinematic quality. Even his manner of speaking was affected, harking back to simpler times when children wanted to grow up to be policemen, doctors and marine biologists. He inhabited a dimension in which asbestos, household cleaners and processed foods were still considered wholesome. Like a suddenly animated wax figure – he was freakishly real. And the odd thing was that he was only five years my senior. He was still in his thirties.
I bumped into Ray Lupini down at Quadruple Serenity Park one afternoon. I had gone there to absorb the carefree ambiance that was the combined bi-product of the roller bladers and the dog walkers, the hipsters sitting in small circles surreptitiously drinking cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon, the melodramatic cyclists, the ancient, impish Chinese women combing the grounds for beer bottles, and the young urban mothers pushing around strollers worth more than my car. I had gone, primarily, to escape the guilt-laden air of wasted time hovering about my apartment. Leaking into the nooks and crannies, and those unreachable, greasy spaces in the vicinity of my gas stove. Ray approached me with that life-affirming bounce in his step, walking two intelligent looking pugs he introduced as Tony and Dot. I looked down at their compressed, almost two-dimensional mugs, their squat Olympic weightlifter’s bodies, and couldn’t help but laugh. “They’re life partners,” he explained.
I squatted to get face to face with the pugs, to pat them down and let them know that I was on their side. Looking up at Ray’s smiling face, almost blinded by the sun’s reflection on his perfect row of fireman’s teeth, I exclaimed, “Man, I fucking love pugs.”
“I remember you telling me you weren’t a big fan of dogs,” he said.
It’s true, I wasn’t; and it had only been two weeks since I had the heated conversation with Ping about pigs making the superior pet. I stood up, nodded, and then gestured towards Tony and Dot. “But these aren’t dogs. These ‘pugs’, as we call them, are collecting data for the mother ship currently orbiting the planet.” I nudged Dot with my foot, “Aren’t you, Dot?”
“Trust me,” he countered, “I’ve seen pugs screwing German Shepherds. It’s not a pretty sight, but it happens – it happens more than you think. They’re dogs.”
I stroked my chin ponderously, getting a good mental picture before asking, “So, how’s the fire-fighting life treating you?”
“You know how it is,” he said.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, ‘You know how it is’ . The words sounded strange, almost alien – it is. What is? I was losing perspective fast, and shot back, “No, I don’t. I know less about firefighting than I do about the sex life of pugs and German Shepherds. I have no idea how it is Ray. Fire-fighting is an absolute mystery to me. A blind spot. It exists for me as a concept alone, no meat.”
“We’ve talked about this before, Mike. It’s a lot of sitting around playing cards, watching movies, sleeping … and then sudden bursts of action.” He paused a moment to watch a flock of pigeons alight on a decaying picnic table. “The other day I resuscitated a morbidly obese woman in King City, a little out of my jurisdiction, but man – she must have been three hundred and twenty pounds.” He paused, stepping out of the way of a passing jogger, then continued, “it almost feels as if I rescued more than one person, if you know what I mean.”
I chuckled, “Wow, that must’ve been gratifying. You know, speaking of gratifying, I’ve spent the last week writing about German egg noodles –”
“It was, bro. When you save a life! That’s exactly the term – gratifying. It’s times like that that make the job worthwhile … that really reaffirm my original choice to walk the path of the firefighter.”
I was immediately reminded of the conversation I had with K a few days back, when we were slurping Yerba Mate out of those elaborately decorated gourds and quibbling about what it takes to be a fireman. Seizing the moment, I asked, “Say, how old were you when you knew?”
“Knew what?” Ray responded.
“Knew that you wanted to be a fireman?” I said in full earnestness.
Ray narrowed his gaze on me, momentarily suspicious of the question. Without saying a word he bent over and scooped up Tony and Dot in his arms, cradling them as they scrambled up his chest to lick his chin. “God these pugs are affectionate,” he said. “You should really invest in a pair — Around seven, eight. I used to be the kid putting out fires instead of lighting them. I was the one with all the junior fire fighting paraphernalia, the hat and coat, the cherry red toy fire trucks. My idols were Smoky the Bear and John Gage from Emergency. I once broke my brother’s nose for burning an ant with a magnifying glass, the little prick – that sadistic shit still repulses me. I guess I’ve always had an instinctive drive to extinguish or at the very least control fire.”
“So, if I were to ask you, say, if you think it’s too late for a thirty-three year old man to become a fire fighter, I mean at that stage of his life with no prior fire fighting experience, how would you respond?”
“I’d respond, in all honesty, that yes, it’s probably too late. But that’s the likely answer, because you have to ask yourself the question of why it hasn’t already happened, why has this thirty-three year old man not yet become a fire fighter. If it hasn’t happened by thirty-three, does this guy really have the focus and passion necessary for fighting fires?” He gave me an amiable pat on the shoulder, and said, “Unless, of course, he has a vision.”
“Thank you, Ray,” I said.
