Blog Love Omega Glee: Making Makeup (24 April 2012)

It smells like strawberries in the makeup factory today. They're cranking out lip gloss and strawberry is the flavor of the day. At the far end among many large vats of cosmetic confections, a big vat of strawberry flavored goo is being mixed up with no real strawberries in sight. Occasionally, a smaller tub of the goo is taken over to one of the many machines across the rest of the factory floor and poured in, and out it comes in carefully timed squirts into vials, tubes, jars, and containers of all sorts. These containers have different brand names on them. Some retail for more, some for less, but they are all the same goo. At one of the machines, Jake sits holding vials up to a nozzle which every five seconds squirts a measured amount of goo. Once squirted, Jake sets the vial down on the conveyor belt, where it goes to someone who will tap it, someone who will wrap it, and someone who will cap it. Then Jake must scoop up another empty vial and the nozzle makes a whoosh and then comes more goo. Jake has been doing this for an hour, and he almost feels like a part of the machine, just a part that needs to eat.

A whistle blows. Breaktime! Hooray for break! Watch the workers leave their stations and stream back to the breakroom. Fifteen minutes to eat a snack, drink a coffee, chitchat on the phone, use the restroom, take a smoke, fuck a coworker in your car in the parking lot, or whatever you want to do with your fifteen minutes. Maxine, an older black woman with glasses who's worked here for ten years, fills Jake in on the routine. They both wear hairnets to keep their hair out of the goo, and don't bother to take them off during break. The workers of the world are gathered here to make up the makeup. There's Bonita who came to the United States for streets of gold but found only streaks of gold haircoloring. Maxine says that Bonita is her favorite. She eats lunch with her everyday, which is a half-hour long so eat it here because you don't want to be late getting back from some restaurant, and besides there aren't any good restaurants around here anyway. Here's Bill who likes Elvis Presley so much he sings along with the Elvis songs when they come on the factory speakers. Maxine says after a while you know the tapes they play by heart and you can time out how far along you are in the shift based on the song. There's Ginny. Maxine says she's sweet but stupid and got herself knocked up and don't get involved with her because she's looking for a new daddy for her baby. Here's Joe. He used to be nice but then he became a supervisor and now thinks he's hot shit, but he's really just cold shit; "I don't talk to him unless I have to. Lucy, now she's been here longer than me. She's good, you want to get on a line with her; it'll run real well. Her dad's American and her mom's Chinese."

Bonita, sitting across the table, chimes in, "Korean."

"Korean, you sure?"

"Si, I thought she was Japanese, and I asked her about how they did sushi in Japan, and she told me she's Korean. Really, she's American. She was born here."

"Are you sure she isn't Chinese?"

"Whatever she is, she's cute," Jake thinks, taking a sip of free coffee.

The whistle blows again. Like dogs conditioned to drool, the workers shuffle from the breakroom back onto the floor where they go to different machines breaking the monotony of the evening into several different monotonies. This evening will be the same as any other here, each night virtually identical to the others, industrially-produced, mixed in a vat, deposited in a container, sealed in plastic and cardboard, dumped in a box, shipped somewhere to a store near you, your money or your life, money for your life, dripping away in the machinery of time until the universe says it's quitting time.

Blog Love Omega Glee is a novel by Wred Fright about two bloggers who fall in love while the world falls apart, which is being serialized on his blog. To start reading from the beginning or read another installment, please visit Blog Love Omega Glee Central on WredFright.Com. If you like what you've read, or you've read all of Blog Love Omega Glee and want more Fright, then please read his first novel, which is available in print and as an ebook.