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By Root 229 0

me to build an organizer for his desk, as a test of my abilities. We went to his office and he showed me what he had in mind: something that would sit at the back of his desk and span its width, with larger slots on the bottom and narrower ones on a second level. It had nothing to do with Porsches, but I took him up on the challenge and made the thing out of rosewood plywood in my mother’s basement. Then I came by with samples of a couple different finishes on a scrap of the rosewood and let him pick the one he liked. I spent about a week on the project, and only charged him for the materials, which came to fifty-six dollars. I remember the amount because I was embarrassed at how much it had added up to. Should I not charge for the jar of stain, since there was quite a bit of it left? I decided I would charge him for the whole jar, and felt a rush of boldness in making this decision. This wasn’t the commune, this was business, and that leftover stain was my profit. As absurdly timid as this decision sounds, it felt like self-assertion. It was exciting to be an entrepreneur, a capitalist rather than a communist; the vice of selfishness was suddenly a virtue.

Lance accepted the desk organizer and seemed happy enough with it. I was hired. I was given a locker and a set of cov eralls that were way too big, with someone else’s name stitched on a patch. Then I was given my first assignment. In retrospect, I think I must have expected this to consist of fondling a turbocharger, or perhaps licking Pirelli P7 tires (how many other fifteen-year-olds had this fetish in 1981?), because I remember the feeling I had when I was directed instead to the sink overflowing with dirty dishes upstairs. Lance lived above the shop, and his pad was a complete sty. I spent the first several days listlessly cleaning it, feeling hopeless and pissed off.2

Soon enough I moved on to a job on the first floor, in closer proximity to the Porsches. I had admired these cars for years, based on nothing more than their shape, the sound they made, and a vague mystique of fast; I didn’t know much about their particulars (other than the tires). I was stationed at the parts cleaner, which looked a lot like the sink upstairs. But now, instead of using water that came out of a tap, I was using engine degreaser circulated by a pump and a stiff wire brush, with strict instructions that the brush was not to touch any gasket surfaces (for fear of marring them). The parts cleaner was located in a dark area between the well-lit shop proper, where the light-hits station KOIT-FM played on the speakers, and the fenced-in outside area. Here there was a rectangle of filthy concrete floor perhaps ten feet by twenty feet strewn with grimy parts, which needed to be cleaned. Initially, handling them was an experience of dissonance: these were Porsche parts, which I expected to be imbued with mystical qualities, yet here they were, covered in road grime. They didn’t seem “high performance,” they seemed banal and shitty. I wasn’t handling whale-tail spoilers with “Turbo Carrera” in elegant chrome script, I was handling transaxle support members and spindle carriers: the unseen stuff with unglamorous functions.

Lance would periodically have me take some of these cleaned parts and spray-paint them black. Then he would install them on cars, and take pictures of the “new” parts in place. It became clear that in stepping off the reservation of the commune and into the world of commerce, there were some psychic adjustments I was going to have to make.

Lance and I weren’t yet sure what to make of one another, and I took it as an invitation to get acquainted when he asked me to come along as he test-drove a 911 on which he had just done the brakes. I had never actually ridden in a Porsche before. We were going to ride across town and pick up some clutch parts over on Fourth Street in Berkeley. We got in the car, and for the first time I heard the distinctive exhaust note of the Porsche flat six as the driver does, transmitted to the interior, with the sharp edges of the raspy growl rounded