Brick Ass Cold

A few years ago, back when I worked on Coney Island, I suffered through some of the coldest days of my life. Coney Island in the January looks like a scene out of a post-apocalyptic movie. There is absolutely nothing there. Every storefront is boarded up. All the amusement parks are chained closed. My office was surrounded by vacant lots and run down apartment buildings. And the most depressing thing about it was the total lack of other people. There was nobody around. No people. None.



We were right on the water, so the wind would just grab you as you got out of your car and harass you all the way to the door. It was so brutal my eyes and teeth would hurt. I started wearing a pear of snow pants on top of my regular pants just to make sure my genitals would survive the 40 yard dash to warmth.



At any rate, one day we had a delivery and I happened to be heading out when the delivery guy was coming in. I held the door for him as he passed. He looked at me and said something that has puzzled me to this day.



"Thanks, man. It's brick-ass cold out there today."



I nodded on my way out, took a few steps and stopped dead. What? Did he just say "Brick-ass cold?" What the fuck did that mean? Obviously, it means cold. I figured that out. But why 'brick-ass?' Why 'brick?' What did the brick mean? What was the significance of the brick? Mind you, during my winters in Coney Island, I'd heard some strange ways of describing the cold.

"Fuck me, it's cold out."

"That wind is a dick in my ass this morning."

"I wonder how much sperm that just cost me."

"It's cold enough to turn gay out there."

"I think my vagina iced over this morning."



But this brick thing had gotten to me. I was determined to discover it's origin. I got out of my car and went back inside. To my dismay, the delivery guy was gone. Dejected, I headed back outside. I noticed on my way out, that a co-worker of mine was sitting at his desk, shaking his head. I asked him what was wrong and he told me that he'd just heard the strangest thing.

"I can't get it out of my mind," he said. "What does brick-ass cold mean?"

We immediately agreed that it was intended to indicate a particularly cold temperature, but the origin of the phrase continued to haunt us.



I was reminded of college in the late 90's when I was equally stumped by a turn of phrase. It was my sophomore year and I was walking through a campus parking lot when I passed my freshman year roommate, who was waxing his car. (For the purposes of detail, his car was a gray mid-80's Buick) I politely said hello, and commented on his waxing. He said the following:

"That's right. I want this baby to be shinier than my asshole."

I chuckled and kept walking as I didn't like talking to him. But as I did, I couldn't get the phrase out of my head. 'Shinier than my asshole.'



Here was a guy who was hoping his car could be compared to the single shiniest object that he could think of. And in that moment, the shiniest thing in his universe was his own anus. I began to wonder if his asshole did indeed have a shine to it. Needless to say, I spent way too much time thinking about another guy's asshole. Eventually, I turned to my own. I realized I'd never even seen my own asshole. For all I knew, it was pretty shiny. Impossible, I thought. With all the shit that comes out of there, a shine seemed impossible. But then why the analogy?



Then it occured to me. Mabye, there was something I was not doing to my asshole that other men were. Perhaps we were supposed to take better care of our asses. Should I be waxing and polishing my asshole, I wondered. For who? Was this why no girls wanted to touch me? Could they tell my asshole wasn't very shiny? The pieces seemed to fit.



I went to find him a few days later, and found out that the previous night, he'd gotten into a drunken fight with a dog over a pumpkin. He'd lost the fight, his hand was seriously wounded and he'd left school. With him, he'd taken any chance I had of solving the mystery.



I decided that he was simply an idiot. Unfortunately, this decision came after I was found bent over in front of the mirror in a men's room shining a flashlight at my asshole.



Regardless, I was determined to figure out what "brick-ass" meant. My co-worker and I ignored business for the day and set our minds to figuring this out. The best we could do was to assume that the delivery guy came from a family so poor, that they couldn't afford ice. So to keep food cold in their icebox during the winter, his parents would take a brick from outside and put it in with the food. As he grew up, our delivery guy would then begin to assume that bricks were in fact, the coldest things in the world.



To my delight, the delivery guy returned the following week. My co-worker and I shared our theory with him and asked him to please explain his expression.

"It's just a fucking expression," he said, shaking his head. "I had plenty of ice growing up. Morons."



So we beat him to death with a brick.