Zamboni Thoughts #1

An installment series about driving an impossible vehicle

Last fall, the city of Northfield, Minnesota posted something intriguing on their Instagram.

Something irresistible.

tell me you could scroll past this

I showed the post to Davin.

“Ha ha,” I said. “What if I became a Zamboni driver?”

Davin peered at my phone. “Yeah, what if?” he said. Polite. Non-committal. He looked back down at his Fine Homebuilding magazine, instantly reabsorbing himself in an article about the pros and cons of spray foam insulation.

His response made sense. In the past, I’ve said things like, “I’m going to get really into leatherworking,” and “What if I became a jewelry designer? Like fine jewelry,” and “How long do you think it would take to become a triage nurse?”

This – the Zamboni thing – was like that.

I saved the post anyway.

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I’d been at loose ends. Fresh off the whirlwind of the summer, when Moby Dyke was released and I got to go on a little book tour and meet so many incredible queers and talk into microphones and sign books and go to gay dance parties and flit around on airplanes and generally pretend, for weeks on end, that this was normal life now, the summer book season had ended, and that stuff was mostly done.

And since I’d been working nonstop on my book for the last two years, I suddenly had an enormous amount of free time.

It was getting chilly outside. As the nights got longer and darker, I didn’t really know what to do with myself.

I needed structure. I needed something different. A new hobby, maybe.

And I couldn’t stop thinking about the Zamboni.

It made no sense. I am entirely uninterested in:

• hockey

• ice skating

• sports in general

• leaving my house on a regular basis

but how fun would it be to learn to drive a huge-ass ice truck??? Imagine sitting on a Zamboni like a KING, making the ice surface go from looking like chapped lips to looking like it’d been slicked over with a thick Fenty lip gloss! Come ON!!

I decided to apply. Just for fun. They’ll never hire me, I thought. Dozens of bros have probably already applied.

The application took five minutes, and I remember thinking how nice it felt to apply for a job I literally did not care about getting at all. It was one of those applications where you’re supposed to both attach your resume and type out all your past job experience into little boxes.

For fuck’s sake. To be a Zamboni driver?! Already annoyed, I copy-pasted, “No. See resume,” into all the little fill-in boxes. Like a brat! I did not care!

Weeks went by.

Then they called me. I was startled – I had totally forgotten about my joke Zamboni application. They wanted to interview me? At City Hall???

bet you thought City Hall would look less like your elementary school

I went. I wore a sweatshirt. (To a job interview!) It took a large, gruff man named Tom two minutes in a conference room with me to establish that I had zero experience with manual labor, no history with driving big vehicles, and no experience operating large machinery.

But I found myself, sitting at that conference table, suddenly trying to convince Tom that he should hire me. I could do it! I mean, how hard could it be? I could drive a car, and this was just a giant car! Leaning back in my chair like an asshole, I jokingly said to Tom, “OK, so: when it comes to the level of difficulty, with “1” being a kid’s tricycle and “10” being a rocket ship, how hard is it to drive the Zamboni?”

He looked at me, expressionless.

“It’s an eight.”

No hesitation.

“An eight?"

“Yep.”

I didn’t believe him.

“I think I can handle it,” I said, trying to keep my face straight. An eight. OK.

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Twenty-four hours later, I got the call. I was the newest Ice Arena Attendant for the City of Northfield!!!

My training would start in one week. And how was my schedule looking for next month?

“Why?” I asked.

“Because you’ll need to come in every day you can – hopefully every weekday – to train. You get a lunch hour at your job? You can train then.”

“Every weekday?” I croaked into the phone.

“It’ll only take you about a half-hour each time you come in. The Zam takes a long time to learn how to drive.”

“I don’t think I can come in every weekday,” I said.

“We can do every other, if that works. The important thing is to get you on the Zam. Season’s starting soon.”

“What season?”

There was a brief, pained pause on the other end of the line.

“The hockey season.”

“Oh.”

“You’ll need to wear a hat, gloves, and shoes you can walk on the ice with. And a jacket. Stuff you can move in.”

A slow horror dawned on me. I’d just signed up to work at an ice arena. Somewhere freezing. This had never once occurred to me!! I am not kidding!!

Tom’s voice brought me back. “Oh, and make sure it’s stuff you can get dirty. And wet. We drive the Zamboni, but we’re mostly janitors.”

“Janitors?”

“See you Monday.”

He hung up. I set down the phone, a brand-new Zamboni driver.

Mostly a janitor.

What did it mean, “shoes you can walk on the ice with”? Like… cleats? Ice cleats?

I had two options: I could call Tom back and tell him to forget the whole thing, or I could show up on Monday. Just to check it out, you know?

And I was pretty sure golf shoes had metal spikes on them. Like cleats. And Davin had golf shoes.

Those would work, right?

Y’all, I had no idea – NO IDEA – how much I didn’t know.

I was about to find out.