The obtusely charming Mr. Brown passes me another round of cosmopolitans. I am not in the habit of consuming alcoholic drinks during interviews, but Mr. Brown insisted we meet at his favorite bar. The Red Fox lounge is a veritable dive, complete with red interior and an ancient woman singing Lawrence Welk favorites on a withered piano. He raises his glass to mine with a wink and a smile. It strikes me that very few young people these days can pull off a wink and make it look good. I was anxious to learn more about his chosen profession, and why such a good looking, intelligent young fellow would decide to pursue a career in death.
I look at Mr. Brown's hands. His fingers are long and soft-looking, almost delicate, more want to play the violin than to reconstruct the flesh of decimated facial tissue. I ask him if this has always been his goal in life, and he laughs. "Oh, God no. I don't think anyone grows up thinking that this is a line of work they'd like to get into," he says. At 19, with no skills to speak of and no prospects for a college education, this business seemed at least more interesting than flipping burgers at the local fast food chain. He started by doing "removals", removing bodies from the scene of death to the funeral home. This is mostly grunt work, and all that is needed is two strong arms, a strong stomach and at least a small amount of sensitivity and respect for the dead. Now four years later he is an assistant mortician. "I can't become a full mortician until I've gone to school for it." Brown hopes to be accepted into one of the state's most prestigious mortician schools in the forthcoming year. He explains to me his duties, which include: arranging the details of the funeral service; obtaining information for the obituary and death certificate; preparing the body for the service, including tissue reconstruction and makeup in the case of open caskets; and doing removals.
I ask if the morbidity of the job ever gets to him, to which he replies, "Probably the hardest part is keeping distant enough to get the job done despite the sometimes gruesome circumstances of the death and not become totally disturbed, while at the same time maintaining a dignified respect for the dead and sensitivity to the grieving family." And how does this job affect personal relationships, with family members or girlfriends? I pardon myself for asking such personal questions. He smiles and says, "Well, I try not to take my work home with me." At this I struggle to suppress the image of Mr. Brown arriving at his home at the end of a long day, throwing the door open wide and heaving a body bag onto the living room floor as he boldly proclaims, "Honey, I'm home!" I must be terribly perverse. And then he looks intently into my eyes and tells me that he doesn't currently have a girlfriend. I am aware that my face is flushed, whether from the alcohol or the feeling I get that he is flirting with me, I'm not sure. As I'm wondering whether I could get used to the idea of dating a man who touches corpses all day and then wants to lay those same hands on me, beautiful, soft and smooth though they are... a grin sweeps over his face and he asks me if I would like to inspect the company van. Shocked back to the reason I'm even having this conversation with Mr. Brown, I cry, "You have it with you?! You brought it here?! To a bar? Isn't that against company policy or something??" He explains that on occasion he keeps the van, when he is on call for removals, for instance. He assures me that he is not on call at the moment, but this brings up the issue of what he can and cannot do when performing removals. When they remove a body, they are not allowed to have other people in the van. They are not allowed to stop, unless for gas. They are not allowed to eat or drink in the van. They are definitely not allowed to do the McDonald's drive thru to get burgers. This of course begs the question of whether you'd actually have any kind of appetite with a dead body laying five feet away from you.
He pays the bill and we walk outside. It's a white nondescript van without back windows. There is a small floodlight mounted to the back on the left side and the number 17 is painted in black near the bumper on the right. As he searches for the right key, I begin to feel a twinge of nervousness. "You don't have a body in there, do you?" I laugh nervously. "I told you, I'm off duty!" he cries gleefully. I think Mr. Brown is fully enjoying my childlike fear and curiosity. He opens up the back doors, turns on the floodlight, and gives me the grand tour. There are two stretchers; the kind everyone has seen on episodes of ER, and another that is collapsible, useful when bodies are found in those hard to reach areas. There are boxes of latex gloves and all manner of splatter gear: booties and extra long gloves and even slickers. There are towels, sheets, and body bags, which I'm surprised to see, are yellow. And there is dissolvable bacterial hand soap. Very important. He demonstrates how water and towels are unnecessary, rubbing his hands together vigorously as the soap begins to disappear. And I am mesmerized by those hands...
Mr. Brown related many stories of death, some terribly disturbing, some frightening, and some even funny. None of them, however, appropriate to print here. Neither is it appropriate to recount what happened in the back of the van that night, among the cosmopolitans swimming in our heads, my intrigue with his occupation and those wonderful hands.
Copyright 1997 Jennifer Chung
All rights reserved.
Touch my monkey!