The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future in

Auto Body Repair

I know you--your locker's just across the hall from this office. Yeah, while those other boys have all those swimsuit models stuck in their lockers, you've got all those muscle car pictures--probably something Freudian going on there, and I'm sure a psychoanalyst would have a field day with it, but my job isn't to diagnose your problem; I just need to tell you how to make a living from it.

You won't find a lot in our school auto shop--it's all about the mechanics and you're all about the cosmetics. Soon you'll be skipping out to go do joe jobs for the body shop down the street, and it's more relevant than anything you can learn here. There's something satisfying about putting the big suction thing on a compressed panel and pulling it back to shape, or in seeing a crappy looking primer wagon turn into something red and shiny.

After you serve your time as a minimum wage peon, you'll eventually win an apprenticeship. You'll learn about the different qualities of paint, when to repair a fender and when to simply replace it. You'll also learn about safety equipment--the goggles and the ventilator that you're supposed to wear when spray painting cars, but you know the old pros in your shop will laugh at you if you come in looking like some Darth Vader wannabe so you file that information in the "forget it after the test file". When you're 40 and coughing up blood you'll wonder about the wisdom of that decision.

You stay on with the same shop once your apprenticeship is complete, but your old boss retires and he sells it to a shady guy who already owns a couple of other shops in the area. Nothing changes too much except you notice the lights on more when you drive by late at night, and you're told not to ask dumb questions about the origin of some of the replacement parts that show up in unmarked vans.

It doesn't take long for you to understand what's going on in the shop is often on the wrong side of legal, and your employer and his associates make it clear that telling anyone would be even worse for your health than the metal-flake carcinogens you inhale in the paint room daily. Car theft is at an all time high, and the demand for efficient and discrete "chop-shops" has grown accordingly. Soon you're part of a team that can dismantle a Porsche or BMW in under an hour.

You aren't exactly sure when you became an accessory to crime, but you only report the legal half of your actual income and you find yourself more uncomfortable when you pull up beside a police car at traffic lights. Then, you make a crucial miscalculation which changes your life.

Your boss comes in quite upset about something and calls you away from the '68 Camaro you're painting with special instructions. There's a car coming in right after closing, and you're to stay late and completely dismantle it on your own. You agree, but in your head you're thinking about the fact you've got your third date with a cute girl you met at a bar a couple weeks before--what with all the skipping school and looking at car pictures you were a bit of a late bloomer in the dating game--and you decide you'll just come in early the next day, a Saturday when the shop is closed, and take care of it.

Unfortunately, when you arrive early Saturday morning, the police are already executing their warrant. The car you were supposed to have disposed of is towed into the evidence garage, where the blood and other evidence it provides helps put away your boss for 15 years. From the muttered threats you hear while the cops are scouring the shop, you quickly realize that getting out of town is your only chance of survival.

You spend the next few years wandering from place to place, taking jobs for cash in small bodyshops so as to avoid showing up on any computers where friends of the mob could track you down. You never form any meaningful connections with people, and the loneliness is agonizing. Then one day you give a ride to a young woman you meet in a highway diner and she invites you to the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert.

You are amazed at what you find baking in the middle of nowhere. It's like a cross between Mardi Gras and the Mad Max movies, and in a fit of artistic inspiration, you pull out your torch and welding kit and turn your old pickup truck into something that draws rave reviews from old and young burnouts alike. For the first time you feel safe and happy, surrounded by next generation hippies who introduce you to the pleasures of peyote and invite your advice on their bizarre motorized scupltures.

As the festival winds down, you're invited to a number of different wilderness communes, and decide your best chance of happiness is to stick with Unity, the girl who brought you there in the first place. She's almost 20 years your junior, but you feel younger and happier than you have in ages and can even feel hopeful about the future for a change.

Unfortunately, you hadn't realized that "Woodstock Charlie", with his dirty bandanna and scraggly beard, was actually Carlo "The Fixer" Giavisi--the mob was very happy to supply the festival goers with all the mescaline they needed, and Carlo realized after the first day who you really were, which gave him time to call in the help needed to finish you off.

Your only chance will be your newfound friends. The mob is out of its element in the desert and when the black SUVs show up your well-honed paranoia kicks in. You tell a few of your folowers what's going on, and they rally around you. It's a surreal scene as dirty potheads driving a variety of vehicles that might have escaped from a Dr. Seuss book shoot the few shotguns they own at gangsters who can't really tell which one is you. They're under orders not to kill indiscriminately as the negative publicity might lead to a crackdown on the unfettered festival that provides them with such a good annual drug market.

In the confusion you escape, but you receive a small cut from a rusty edge of your truck sculpture, and while hiding in a remote commune with Unity, your untreated tetanus almost kills you before you seek medical treatment. Unfortunately, the shootout in the desert had attracted more attention than you realized, and the police show up at your hospital bed to arrest you for your years of chop shop work.

Your plea bargain involves testifying against more of your former colleagues, and if the guards in the solitary confinement wing are morally strong enough to resist the mob's bribe offers, you might live long enough to make the witness relocation program.