We Need to Talk About Kevin.

So, Gator and I did.

I have highlighted the important part of that exchange.

Kevin was our boss at Auto Wizards. For more than a year, most of my blog posts revolved around this absolute madman. Having Kevin as a first boss gave me warped ideas about professional boundaries. For Gator to claim that he wasn’t so bad makes me concerned about her history of bosses.

Exhibit A:

I am holding up what used to be a broomstick. This thing happened because Kevin got bored of helping Gator and me clean cars. He instead spent the day sitting on an upside-down milk crater, whittling the end of a broomstick with a box cutter. It may even have been done over a few days, as he took the time to sand, paint, and varnish it.

The sandpapering step was particularly vulgar, as he jerked the wood smooth with his sandpapered grip. When he finished, he lopped his creation off the broomstick, titled his masterpiece The Ram Rod, and deemed me a more worthy gift recipient as Gator had a boyfriend and I did not.

In case it wasn’t clear, Auto Wizards was an auto detailing place. Here is how I described the job in 2004:

“I’m an “auto detailer”. Often, when I tell people what I do for work, they picture some sort of glamorous job that involves painting flames on the side of hot rods. The truth is, I scrub piss out of carpets in station wagons. If not piss, then puke. If not puke, then shit, dog hair, snot, food, mud, assorted soft drinks, and possibly jism.”

Yeah, we did not work for West Coast Customs. There were no pimpin’ rides. We cleaned, buffed, and waxed cars for used car dealerships, all while putting up with Kevin’s pervertedness. Halfway through my Auto Wizards career, Gator left to work in the neighbouring auto shop. Because she was right next door, we still got to spend all our breaks together.

Here is where all the auto wizardry took place:

Exhibits B-Z were recorded in various old blog posts. I’ve shared excerpts from some and summed up some of the more rambly posts:

August 7, 2003

Gator: “He sure tells us some really personal stuff.”
Me: “I know. I bet if we asked, he’d tell us if he was circumcised or not.”
Gator: “Let’s ask!”
Me: “NO! I don’t want to know. I REALLY DO NOT WANT TO KNOW.“

Five minutes later, Gator asked Kevin just that.

Me: “What?”
Gator: “I just asked him…”
Me: “NO!”
Gator: “Yes, he is cut.”
Me: “Oh, fuck.”

August 28, 2003

Kevin: “My cousin has butterfly wings tattooed on her inner labias.”

September 30, 2003

Kevin mooned me.

December 2, 2003

I found an activity book in one of the cars, and it was a Mad Libs activity book. Kevin and I collaborated on a few of these Mad Libs, a few of which I brought home to record on my blog. Kevin’s contributions are in bold, and my annotations are in parentheses:

SOME OUTER SPACE POETRY
Twinkle, twinkle, little fart, How I wonder what you are.
Up above the dick so high
Like an erection in the sky.

Hey diddle diddle, the duck
and the grind (this was supposed to be a musical instrument),
The cow jumped over the pusy (spelled with one s)
The little dog wished to see such sport.
And the GigaBoo ran away with the spoon.

Star light, star bright, first pussy (this time spelled with TWO s) I see tonight.
I wish I may, I wish I might,
Have the best fuck I think? tonight.

Kevin didn’t understand how Mad Libs worked and added nouns, verbs, adjectives as he went rather than compiling a list, then filling in the blanks.

December 9, 2003

Kevin found a handheld fishing game in one of the cars, left the garage, hopped into his truck, and headed out to buy batteries for the toy. He then spent the rest of the day bass fishing, occasionally pausing to brag all about his catches while I did all the work.

December 11, 2003

Gator had come in to work right after cheesing it up for a professional family portrait. She’d changed out of her dressy clothes in the shared washroom and forgot them in there.

When Kevin found this pile of curiously formal Gator-sized clothing, he joked that she must’ve been stripping for her new boss, Dave. Then, he tacked the clothes to the shop wall and stuffed the chest area with paper towels.

I thought it was hilarious. I’m not sure how Gator felt when she saw this. “Actually not so bad”, probably.

Oh, and this is what the shared washroom looked like:

There were also four or five Playboy calendars in there. I was surrounded by boobs as I pooped.

March 6, 2004:

Kevin had been notified earlier in the week that I needed to leave early one day to visit the walk-in clinic before it closed. When I reminded him that I needed to head to the clinic, he asked:

“ARE YOU GOING TO SEE NINE COLLEGES?” (He sometimes appeared to be yelling at me when he spoke.)
“Huh?”
“You know… Nine colleges.”
“What the fuck?”
*points to crotch* “Nine colleges!”

Kevin never learned any sign language: he happened to be exceptionally easy to lip read. Still, I didn’t always catch what he was trying to say.

When he realized that his repeated crotch-pointing wasn’t getting across to me, he reworded it, “pussy doctor”. Finally, I understood that he’d been trying to say “gynecologist”.

---

It would take me hours to round up all the examples of Kevin’s wildly unprofessional conduct as our superior, but I think you get the idea.

Now, here’s why Gator is kind of right when she claims he wasn’t so bad:

Neither of us ever felt threatened by Kevin. Kevin immediately drove me to the clinic when I got a piece of glass in my eye. He often gave me rides to the train station. I wouldn’t have survived as long at a dull, uncomfortable job (imagine cramming yourself inside assorted dirty vehicles five days a week) if it weren’t for Kevin’s antics.

I know I took at least one photo of Kevin, but I have yet to come across it. Instead, here are a bunch of toys glued to the shop walls to represent each of us.

So, during my original blog’s Kevin Era, it was averaging more than 100 hits a day. Of course, this was before Facebook, back when people loved blogs. As Facebook gained traction, I saw my hits drop, perhaps because millions of others had opened up their lives to the world. Therefore, my services were no longer required. Possibly, it was because I no longer had a character like Kevin on which to report.

Since a few of you are still into blogs, the one who inspired me to start blogging all these years ago, Gator, has made her long-awaited comeback!