On Friday as always I built the damn machine. As always I washed each individual part—the hopper, the spigot, the nozzle, the pump, the washers, the gaskets, the nuts, the screws—with scalding-hot water and soap. I dried each individual part with the clean yellow rags from the clean laundry bag. I took the sterile, dry parts back to the brown card table that housed the base of the machine and built the rest from the base up. I got three flats of glass from Ryan in Shipping downstairs, then loaded them up on a cart and rolled the cart into the freight elevator to bring back to Production. I went into the main Production station, passed all the rest of the workers filling little bottles with the Original product by hand, and got a plastic tray from the stack on top of the cubbies, where my lunch and the lunches of the rest of the workers were kept. I brought the tray back to the table with the machine and set it down; I was about to go to Batching to get a five-gallon bucket of the Limited Release product, as always, but Big Kate came in with a bucket already in hand.
“Is it my birthday?” I said to Big Kate. She laughed. Big Kate liked me and I liked Big Kate. She left me alone and I met our quotas with the machine. She’d taken me off regular production and put me on the machine right when we got it in, a few weeks after I’d started. Big Kate said I was the only one in Production with the necessary attention to detail to sterilize and build and take down the machine every day. I think she felt guilty that I worked alone while the rest of the team got to sit around and talk shit while they filled. But I liked working on the machine. I hadn’t said so in the interview—no boss wants to hear you’re a loner—but I was happier working alone. Two things I wanted from my job: money and health insurance. It was a huge bonus if I didn’t have to work with people, get to know them, answer their questions.
“Just found myself in the neighborhood,” Big Kate said. She wobbled as she put down the bucket by the table. Big Kate was four-foot-eleven and knew the owners, Bryan and Harvest, from the early days of the company—she’d never worked production a day in her life. She smelled like jasmine perfume and cigarettes. Her voice was high and raspy, like a Muppet who chain-smoked.
“Plus I need a box of boxes,” she said, closing one eye and pointing at a stack of cardboard boxes behind me.
“Step into my office,” I said. Big Kate laughed and walked by me. Like every Friday, it was Boxing Day, when our whole twenty-six-person Production team stopped their weekly projects (filling and lidding shit) to get the product ready for retail (folding boxes, then putting the filled/lidded shit in the boxes). All of Production, that is, except me, because I worked the machine Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Basically, I worked in a storage closet. I poured the bucket of product I’d received from Big Kate into the hopper. Then I plugged in the machine and turned it on. Next I filled up the plastic tray with thirty-two glasses I’d brought up on the cart (we called this “gridding”) and positioned the first glass beneath the spigot. I pulled a lever attached to the base of the machine, which engaged the pressurized pump that shot the product from the spigot into the glass, a loud one-two punch of air and product. This was where the skill came in: With both hands on the tray, I moved the tray about an inch every half second so that the machine shot product into each gridded glass, one by one. Once all thirty-two glasses were full, I disengaged the pump and got to work on screwing on all the lids (or “lidding”). I always had a large box of lids underneath the brown card table that I replaced when it was empty, usually twice a week. I asked Big Kate to tell the janitorial staff to leave my box of lids where it was. I was an efficient, skilled employee who excelled when I planned ahead.
*
Later that afternoon, after my lunch of peanut butter and honey sandwich on rye bread, Big Kate came back to my workroom with a woman in tow. Big Kate looked ill at ease. She smiled falsely. It was rare for Big Kate to visit my workroom for anything other than to retrieve a box of boxes—and she had certainly never brought a stranger with her before.
“Is this your star student, K-Bug?” said the woman. She looked familiar—or, at least, I felt like I should know who she was—but I could not place her. She wore a white jumpsuit and high heels.
“Yes, this is Matthew, one of our newer hires,” Big Kate said. “Our resident Mr. Machine. You two haven’t met yet, right? Isn’t it such a treat to get this surprise visit from Harvest?”
I bit my lip. One of the owners. I’m not great with introductions. Didn’t Harvest and Bryan move out of Seattle like three years ago? I thought they’d moved to L.A.
Big Kate gave me a look like Don’t fuck this up for me.
“Good to meet you,” I said to Harvest. “I’m Matthew. Mr. Machine, if you prefer.”
“Why are you so cute!” Harvest said. I watched Big Kate relax her shoulders. “K, can you grab me a chair? Can’t wait to be part of making this magic happen!”
I raised my eyebrows.
“Harvest wants to put in a few hours on production,” Big Kate called from the other room. She hurried back in with a folding chair like mine. “But she forgot we’re boxing today. Plus, I thought she’d want to see our new filling machine in action! Prove to her we need two! If we really want to optimize our workflow, I’m telling you, Harv, this is the way.”
“Oh,” I said. I didn’t know how I felt about that—would the other machine worker work in here? On another brown card table? They wouldn’t try to fit two machines on this card table, would they? There was barely enough room for one machine. Or maybe they’d work in some other storage closet? That would be fine with me. Next time Harvest came to visit, she could buddy up with them.
“You fill, I’ll screw,” Harvest said as she sat down. She covered her mouth, realizing what she’d said.
“Ha! Been there, done that,” Big Kate said, putting a hand on Harvest’s shoulder. “We usually say ‘I’ll lid’ instead.”
“Cute!” Harvest said, scooting her chair toward the table. “Then I can’t wait to ‘lid.’”
*
“So where did you go to school?” Harvest yelled this so she could be heard over the sound of the machine pumping product. “I know all the schools around Los Angeles. Bry and I might head to the ’burbs when we have little ones. God, the adulting never stops, does it?”
“Ha,” I said. “Small private school up north. Definitely suburban. Very small. I doubt you’ve heard of it.”
“Come on, try me. I drive all over to meet with our vendors. Was it a nice school? I love a good recommendation.”
“No,” I said, “definitely not.” I disengaged the pump and handed her the tray for lidding.
“Oh, then definitely tell me! So I don’t doom my future children to a similar fate!” Harvest did not even touch the tray after setting it down on the table between us. On a normal day, I would be at 320 glasses filled and lidded, working alone. At least 320.
“Well,” I began. I did hesitate. I know I should have lied. But I don’t lie. It’s why I came out to Big Kate the first time I met her, in my interview. I don’t like to be surprised and I don’t like to surprise other people. I like everyone I meet to have the facts up front. “It’s called La Reina High School.” I engaged the pump and spoke louder. “Catholic school. I’m Jewish. I went for the academics.”
“Oh, oh, I know that one! Where Amanda Bynes went! I was such a superfan before she went crazy,” Harvest said gleefully. Then she frowned. “Wait, isn’t that an all-girls school?”
I disengaged the pump. I still didn’t have a go-to way to disclose. The silence in the room made it worse.
This time, I went with: “Yeah. I used to be a girl.”
Harvest looked at me. She picked up a lid. “Pardon?”
“I’m female-to-male transgender,” I said, a term I didn’t particularly like to use for myself, but one I deployed regularly due to its lack of ambiguity.
“Wow. Oh, wow! Katie didn’t tell me!” Harvest cried out. She was lidding now, and quickly. She had some skill with lidding—I’d forgotten that Bryan and Harvest started out selling a crude version of today’s Original product at farmers markets around Seattle.
“Probably a violation of something if she did,” I said, and smiled to let her know I was joking.
Harvest laughed hard. She was quiet for a minute, so I engaged the pump. One-two punch. But I had only filled eight glasses before she spoke again.
“So have you had the surgery?”
I raised my eyebrows, but in a less friendly way than I had before, when Big Kate had been there. I took a breath and finished filling the middle row. People often asked me this after I disclosed, but they usually took more time to work up to it.
“I’ve had top surgery,” I said, slowly and clearly, still filling up the glasses. I did not want to have to repeat myself or turn off the machine. There was something comforting about the machine noisily ejaculating in the background, and I did not want Harvest to see that she had upset me. I did not like Harvest, but she was my boss, Big Kate’s boss—the boss of my boss.
“No, I mean the big one,” Harvest said quickly, as though she didn’t want to embarrass me.
“Sorry, what?” I disengaged the pump and handed her the tray for lidding. “I couldn’t hear you.” I thought she might not say it again.
“You know . . . down there?”
I thought answering questions about the surgery would get better as I got older, but it got worse. Yes, because I still don’t have a confident and concise answer, after all this time; but also because I thought I’d build a certain muscle that would make the fielding easier. But the fielding does not get easier. It tears you down. Then you stay down.
“Not yet. Big operation,” I told Harvest, taking back the tray and starting to grid.
“Do you want to, though?” Harvest had stopped working again. I stopped putting glass on the tray. It surprised me, this question, but not in a bad way. There were not often follow-up questions, and if there were, they never concerned what I did or didn’t want. Harvest had hazel eyes, I noticed. No one with such hazel eyes had looked at me so intently in a very long time.
So I answered her very honestly.
“I’d need time off, money, help with recovery. Big headache. Plus I’m scared of going under. I’m convinced I’ll die or the surgeon will botch it. It’s just easier to not.”
“That sounds really hard, Matthew,” Harvest said, with genuine reverence.
“Thank you,” I said.
Harvest held up her hand. “Wait. Is that not covered by the company plan?”
“Oh,” I said. I knew for a fact it was not.
“It must be. And if it’s not, it should be! We’re all about forging your own path here. Me and Bry want all of our company’s policies to reflect our values, obviously!”
“It’s not,” I said, emboldened by Harvest’s righteous anger on my behalf. I started thinking and feeling very fast, trying to find the words for what I wanted. I felt my stomach lift.
“Let me look into it, Matt,” Harvest said. “I’ll make it happen.”
She looked at me affectionately and reached forward to take my hand, which I offered her enthusiastically.
“In fact, I have an idea for a little trade,” Harvest said. She dropped my hand and began to lid again. “A little favor to ask our star worker.”
“Oh?” I said.
“So I have this niece,” Harvest began.
I engaged the pump and smiled. I had gotten this question before—Will you talk to this kid about being trans?—and I always answered yes. I myself didn’t meet another out trans person until I was nineteen. “Great,” I said to Harvest.
“She is great,” Harvest said, more loudly. One-two punch. “She has some . . . gender questions. She’s thirteen and says she’s been a boy inside ‘forever,’ but it’s really only been two years. Me and Bec and her husband—Becca, my sister—are totally supportive of the LGBT. Like I said, so important to forge your own path. We just don’t think it’s right to let kids take serious drugs like these hormone therapies. I keep telling Bec, you think your kid’s suicidal now? Wait till she has a beard she can’t get rid of because she thought she wanted to be a boy in eighth grade and a girl in ninth!”
One-two punch. I disengaged the pump and the room went quiet again. My hands felt hot. Harvest was waiting for me to say something. She suddenly looked wrong at my table, in my workroom—the harsh light made her white jumpsuit look even whiter, unnaturally white, against the gray of the walls and the dark brown of the card table and the light brown of the boxes of boxes. She looked all wrong. My hands felt hot.
“It’s so lucky I met you, Mr. Machine!” Harvest said when I didn’t respond. “Because now you can talk to Greta and explain to her that hormones are for grown-up people—that starting now would be a terrible mistake. I read most kids grow out of gender dysphoria anyway. You can tell Greta your success story about transitioning in your twenties. She’ll see how normal and manly you are and be convinced to put it off. That’s where Bec and I are at, it’s what I would tell my little one: If you want a sex change, fine, but not under my roof! Same with having sex. Sex, sex changes, these things are for adults. Right? Like what parent in their right mind—”
I handed the tray to Harvest. My hands felt hot but they were steady. When she reached to take the tray, her arm swung wide and hit the lever that reengaged the pump. The machine began spitting product directly onto the table in marble-sized gobs every half second. Harvest dropped the tray in surprise and glass rolled off the table and shattered on the floor.
“Oops!” Harvest cried, reaching for the pump’s lever. “Let me—”
“Wait,” I said. But Harvest was already pulling the lever toward her, which increased the speed at which the spigot shot out product to every quarter second.
“Fuck!” Harvest cried.“My jumpsuit!” Product filled the surface of the table. She kept trying to disengage the pump.
I screamed directly into her face. “GET YOUR HANDS OFF MY MACHINE! GET THEM OFF! GET THEM OFF RIGHT NOW! YOU’RE RUINING IT!”
Harvest froze. She took her hands off the lever. I quickly turned the lever toward myself to disengage the pump.
It was quiet in the little room. Harvest and I stared at each other. Product spread to the edge of the table closest to me and started to drip on my shoes. She looked alarmed, even frightened, and I knew that she was not going to improve our health insurance and that she was not going to let me keep working on this machine. I knew that she was going to blame the shattered glass and the wasted Limited Release product and the stains on her jumpsuit on me, the trans loner who had screamed in her face. If I didn’t get fired, they would put me in the main Production space with the rest of the workers, where I’d have to sit around a table and fold boxes and make meaningless conversation and answer meaningless questions for eight hours a day.
Harvest opened her mouth to speak and I ran.
I ran down the hall. I heard Harvest calling after me. I turned fast into the main Production space where the rest of the workers were folding boxes. I grabbed my backpack from my cubby. I saw Big Kate at the head of one of the Production tables, laughing at a joke someone was telling, then seeing me while she was laughing, then her laugh turning into a frown, then cocking her head. I put my backpack straps on my back and ran back out the door of the main Production space as Kate yelled, “Where’s Harvest?” and then, “Where are you going?”
I didn’t turn around. I ran out the front door of the warehouse. I ran for four blocks until I was sure Big Kate wasn’t coming. Then I slowed to a walk.
It was raining.
As I walked up Capitol Hill, I took out my phone and clicked around on Seattle Craigslist under general labor. Seattle: INSTACART DELIVERY DRIVER FLEXIBLE HOURS. Fife: AMAZON WAREHOUSE WORKER EARN UP TO $18/HR. Monroe: PRODUCTION DISTRIBUTION AND FULFILLMENT EXTRAORDINAIRE. I kept scrolling. I would get another production job, but I would work in a real factory this time—mass production, no small-batch bullshit, with bigger, louder machines where you couldn’t talk to anyone else at all on account of all the noise, a factory floor filled with so many workers that it would be easy to disappear.
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“The Machine” from Crawl: Stories by Max Delsohn. Used with permission of the publisher, Graywolf Press. Copyright © 2025 by Max Delsohn.
