Davis

“AND THEN, AS IF THE wind told me what to do, I opened myself to him, willing him to center his soul into mine.  Driving his manhood forward, he took me in one swift, hard motion.  His hands gripping my hair and driving his tongue between my lips, halting my scream—”

“Shut the fuck up!”  I shout into the cab of the truck at my friend’s voice coming through the car radio.  I’ve got my phone hooked up to the audio system, but right now I’m wishing I didn’t learn how to do that shit.  “What the fuck are you talking about?” 

“I’m reading to you.”  His deep laugh does nothing to settle me.  “This fucking book was on my mom’s kitchen counter when I got home!  I don’t know whether to throw up or be turned on.  It’s filthy. And this is the page she had dog-eared.  You want to hear more? This shit’s wild—”

“Put it away.  Jesus.  Don’t read another fucking word to me.  When are you leaving there?”  I snap.  My usual grumpy nature dialed up another notch.

Donald, ‘The Tank’, Richardson and I have been friends since the moment I tossed his roughneck ass onto his first rig job.  I don’t know what it was about him, but I’ve loved the little shit from the very first day, when he sang fucking old Kenny Rogers and Hank Williams at the top of his lungs while he did all the bullshit tasks I assigned.

“I’ll leave after I get laid.” He laughs. “Christ, we were on the last job twenty-six days straight.  My dick’s gonna fall off.”

I roll my eyes and grip the steering wheel tighter, looking over my right shoulder before I change lanes.  Driving my pick up and hauling my forty-foot home on wheels behind takes some defensive fucking driving skills.  But after nearly twenty-years of moving around I’ve yet to get in an accident.

“Don’t tell me that shit.  How many fucking times have I told you I don’t give a  about your dick, your sex life, or now, your fucking mom’s dirty books.  There is something wrong with you.”  A twinge of jealousy that he has a family to go back to ticks at me. 

My dad vacated my life before I was out of diapers. My mom lived a hard life, and died in a car accident coming home from her night job as a waitress the day before I graduated from high school.  After that, I don’t know, I just drifted.  The place where I grew up, my family’s land, isn’t even far away from here, but I guess my nature is to be on the road.  After my mom died, the only real relation I had was my Aunt Becky.  Mom’s younger sister and I are close in our own way. We are the only other family we each have.  I check in on her at least once a month, she’s had MS for years and I know her health issues are becoming more of an issue. 

“Aww, you’d be in a better fucking mood if you gave it a try now and then.  Jesus, man, I don’t get you.  I mean, don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re a good lookin’ fella.  If I had a vagina instead of this huge rhinoceros cock between my legs, I’d make schoolgirl eyes at you and tempt you into my sweet—”

“Shut the fuck up!  You ever, ever talk to me about your cock again, I’ll bury you so deep they’ll find you when they set the next rig.”

The truck hums under me.  It’s a twelve-hour drive to the new drill site; just one nameless city in Texas to the next.  Same deal every time.

“Deal.”  Tank’s voice comes through the car radio.  “Okay, I’ve got a date tonight, then I’m heading that way.  If you weren’t such an ugly son-of-a-bitch you’d have one too.  I don’t get why you don’t even take the day off in between jobs, man.  You don’t know what the term ‘leisure time’ means.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow.  Oh,” the thought just jumps into my head before I hang up, “remember to stop by that farm by your mom’s house and get my order.  I called her yesterday.”  We’re setting up on a new drill site, remote north Texas, and I’ve got to stock up on food before we settle in.  Sometimes it can be a week or more before you get a break to run into town. And where we’re headed, from my research, it’s an hour plus drive to anything coming close to being called a town.  “Don’t forget, Tank, I know what you’re like.”

Tank coughs then goes on. “Yeah, yeah. You and your organic obsession.  Probably going to figure out one of these days that organic food causes cancer, you know.”

“Good bye.”

I click off, twisting my neck and listen to the three cracks.  The cramps in my shoulders remind me that I’m not fucking twenty anymore.  Lifting the drill pipes and hauling two-hundred-pound rig fittings around is beginning to wear on my body.  But I love the physical work, the sweat, being filthy at the end of the day.  I love it all.

Fuck, I need coffee. My other obsession. I like to find independent coffee shops rather than the big chains. I’m not one to be snapping selfies, but I started a few years back just taking my picture at each unique coffee shop where I stop.  I guess it’s become one of the few traditions in my life.  Downtown Lubbock has a place I’ve never been, The Proving Grounds it’s called, so I’m headed there.

My exit is two miles up.  After my coffee stop it’s north past Amarillo until I nearly hit the Oklahoma border. 

The nomad life suits me well.  Never found a reason to settle down anywhere.  I’ve seen almost all the country and I don’t waste time sitting in front of a television screen or fucking around on Facebook or Twitter or whatever the fuck those things are.

Hauling my home behind me also leaves me with nearly zero expenses compared to most others my age.  I pocket almost all my pay, and it’s fucking good pay.  I barely spend a dime of it. Nothing interests me.  I like good food, there’s that.  But outside of eating well and buying a new truck with cash every couple years, I’ve not found much I care to consume.

I know guys on the rig that go on and on about spending most of their pay on their wives or girlfriends, and I kind of understand the thought process behind that. Then there’s others whose pay check is almost gone on a single night of companionship, and that I’ll never understand.

They go on about house payments and god knows what else.  Truth is, my fucking luck at dating has been a horror show.  I gave up about six years ago after my last date with a woman, Lucy Felder, friend of one of the rig workers at the time.  He set me up while the rig was broken and we were all sitting around for three days waiting for parts to come in and get things up and running again. 

He said she was a nice girl. Showed me a picture.  Decent looking.  A little too much make-up for my taste but I figured what the hell.  Give this dating thing another try.  I’ve got no delusions about who I am, how I look.  I guess rugged has been used but I’m not pretty boy.  My nose is crooked from a few too many fights, both with fists and the rig.  My left eye has a scar running from my brow down under my cheek that I got when a pipe burst open my first winter as a rough neck. Sliced my face open like a peach.  There’s nothing smooth about me.

I’m part Neanderthal and part road warrior, and looking in the mirror has never suited me, so I don’t put any time into worrying about what’s looking back.

So, when I got set up on that last date, my expectations were ground level if not lower.  I figured if I got some decent conversation I’d call it a win. 

I pulled into the restaurant where we were supposed to meet.  Inside, I grabbed us a table and waited.  Fucking hell, it was an hour later she finally pranced through the door wearing what I swear must have been the outfit she left her job at the strip club in.  Acrylic high heels and all.

Inch long fingernails filed into dagger points with what must have been a day of drinking already on her breath. 

Shit... what was I supposed to do? I’m a fucking gentleman until it’s time not to be, so I pulled out her chair and she plopped down, dropping her purple purse on the floor. The contents spilled out and she laughed her guts out as she picked up a roll of Trojans, holding them up and asking me how many and what size I might need.

I did my best to make it another five minutes, but I just couldn’t.  When she put her foot under the table between my legs and started giving my cock a massage, that was when I decided.  No more.

She was just one in a ridiculous string of dating disasters that spanned more years than I care to count.  As I was leaving the restaurant, with a cab on the way to take her ass back to wherever she came from, because hell if I was letting her drive, I called up the fuck who set me up with her and fired his ass. Have sworn off women ever since.

Now, I’m coming up on my fortieth birthday.  A bank full of earnings, hauling my house to yet another job site and for the first time, shit... maybe it’s the muscle cramps in my neck playing havoc with my brain, but I reckon it has more to do with the old pick up I just passed, some girl sitting in the center of the front seat, leaning her head onto the shoulder of the guy driving.  Seeing the look on his face, even the quick glance I got was something you can’t fake.  He was fucking happy. 

And everything in me said he was fucking happy because of her. 

I shake my head, hear the snap of my neck again.  The pain shooting down my back and wonder how it would feel to have a head on my shoulder.