More Adventures with Ponyboy

I smell a big fat rort. The question is, how likely am I to get burnt.

The background: I have an offer of a job, or at least a contract presumably leading to a job.

The issue: This firm employs Ponyboy as assistant manager. This is dubious. The man's lips look like a diseased watermelon (the red bit). The interview process was suspiciously easy, consisting of sexual innuendos about Japanese girls, token resume flipping and lacklustre conversation about sport. This firm also asks for a hundred bucks 'registration' and then when you are offered a contract (they act as outsourcing agents, making me a 'self-employed proprietor' or some wankery) they give me five hundred dollars, for doing nothing. It's not a cash advances. It's a goodness of heart thing. I smell a large rat. However. I am becoming a little desperate. Ponyboy is good value in a horrible, car-crash kinda way. The office is big and thirty years old; it's no fly by night. And p'raps the five hundred is intended to make up for the shitty pay. But! (back the other way) - a hostelmate gave me horrified looks and a story of a friend who lost his hundred dollars.

The reason this comes up is that I was asked to return to the Z___ corporation today for a batch of Training with Ponyboy. It's not as if I have other things to do, and I thought it might be entertaining, which it was. Within the first five minutes, he had come up with several pearlers.

Sample comments, taken out of context for your reading pleasure:

- South Americans? We had a guy from Argentina in our class in second grade. He was a sissy. He cried all the time because he spooked real easy. I dunno, there was something about the Falklands war, but aw (here he trails off into a shit-eating grin)
- Man, you can't trust the natives here (accompanied by a dismissive nod out the window). And no matter how much English you teach them, they never learn. (This from a man who's lived here for, oh, a decade, without picking up more than a shred)
- Recycling? Here? You must be joking. They only do that in civilised countries.

After this early morning onslaught, I started thinking about it. Everytime he said something borderline racist, he would smile like a guilty child, as if he were aware of his own atrociousness. Eventually, I worked up the courage to ask if he actually liked Japan at all. Sure, he says. I like it plenty. Mind you, I've been a bit down on it since I've started living at my in laws (he's somehow acquired a Japanese wife). I call it the Homestay from Hell, he says and bares his teeth in anticipation. My mother in law has caught me waxing the monkey (his term) a few times now. Now that's hell.

There it is, right there. He simply doesn't give a shit, broadcasting his masturbatory habits to most of the office. That sets off another employee close by, who relates a sordid story about Nova multimedia employees who work the overnight shift, teaching English via a broadband video connection. The main manager perks up at all these wanking stories - I and my fellow trainee are looking at each other almost continuously for some confirmation that this is actually happening - and throws in a crack of his own. 'Training' slowly resumes and we learn card games for the lil kids. Ponyboy is bored immediately. Discovering my fellow trainee works as security at local bars, he quietly plies him with questions about whether he can 'mac' chicks, operating just under his manager's nose by making loud encouraging noises. He then seizes the opportunity to reminisce about his drug taking past, before remembering the good ol days in Kobe when he used to ride around on his bike with five bottles of beer, drunk all the time. See, he's not entirely unconcious of the effect he has. There is awareness there that what he says is entirely at odds with the behavior expected of a manager to a maybe employee. But he simply doesn't care. A truly bizarre man, like so many freakin' expats. The misfits of one society taking refugee in the anonymity of another. They're like ex-cons, fugitives from the pressure of their society. Also, Ponyboy walks like a penguin, arms held behind his shoulders as if in a prelude to breaststroke. Did I mention his lips?

The 'training' day also included watching a more advanced group of 'trainees' present sample lessons. Everything was going swimmingly until one 'trainee' handed around envelopes, containing little pictures of a dog and a cup and a guitar, ready to be stuck to a picture of a room. We were then to make nice sentences like: the guitar is on the bed. The cup is sitting on the desk. Unfortunately, he'd managed to entangle a condom in one of the envelopes - mistake? purpose? - and handed the envelope to his fellow trainee who opened it only to discover a brazen little prophylactic staring at her. Ponyboy erupted in loud girlish titters, squealing like a stuck pig. "Man, his mom is here! She's just there!" In the corner was a quiet little Filipino lady, staring at her blushing son and accusatory condom. Needless to say, the lesson dissolved under the weight of Ponyboy's sniggers and lewd commentary. He's like a horny Peter Pan, a man with no desire to Grow Up and Behave, which might be nice if he was a child-adult, but much less so as an adolescent-adult.

Tomorrow, I will ask the likelihood of actually obtaining work. I need money, but I'd also like not to be delicately fucked by a company.

Oh - in the morning, on the train there, I experienced my first full subway crush. Men in green uniforms and white gloves push the seething mass of humanity in on itself; faces appear from nowhere, squashed against the window like bugs. Being in it was amazing. You didn't have to adjust for corners - the crowd did. It was my first full dose of physical human contact in a week now, and surprisingly, I found it strangely wonderful. Here I was, actually pressed up against the strangers I'd spent the week watching and waiting and hoping for interaction. And cheap at the price! 200 yen for the feeling of actual connection to someone else.