December 2009, Vol. 8, Issue 12

Welcome back to the new semi-Holiday issue of Truckin'.

1. Stiff Santa by Paul McGuire
The Beverly Center had one strict rule -- never under any circumstances remove the bunny head in public. That would mortify young children. Josh turned to Ritalin to solve his problems... More

2. Christmas Money for Misty by Johnny Hughes
Misty laid her best story on Sam, her road story. She was temporarily broke, like most casino folks, but she was to inherit the historic Morgan Ranch, 473 oil wells, 47,000 acres, and a bunch of cows in the Texas panhandle... More

3. The Hobby by Milton Burton
The driver himself was a small-time coke pusher and wannabe heavy metal musician named Ronnie DeLoach who would never make it big, partly because he was void of any real musical talent. But mostly this sad fact could be attributed to his very limited life span... More

4. Dick-Hole, Part II by Bobby Bracelet
Most guys will yank it twenty times a week but they won't feel their balls for lumps. I see it all the time... More

5. Absence of Fear by George Tate
The turns became hard to handle and Gatlin knew it wouldn't take much to be over a guard rail and down the side on his back, load, tractor, and all. He suddenly cleared his mind and focused on the words, "Turn off the engine, that's it."... More

What a Long Strange Trip It's Been...

From the Editor's Laptop:

The December Truckin' is late and my sincerest apologies for the delay. But hey, it's here, right? The semi-Holiday issue includes two Christmas-themed stories from Johnny Hughes and yours truly. I'm always honored to publish a story from Milton Burton. He's back with a stunning piece of fiction titled The Hobby. George Tate made his debut last issue and he returns with another trucking tale. Bobby Bracelet finishes off the second part of his penis story.

The scribes write at Truckin' for free and you'll be doing me a huge favor by helping get them well-deserved publicity. Tell your Facebook friends. Tweet your favorite story. Print up an entire issue and leave it in the bathroom at home or at work. You never know when you're in need of reading material. Please help spread the word.

If anyone is interested in being added to the mailing list or writing for a future issue, then please to contact us.

As always, I sincerely writers for sharing their bloodwork and taking a leap of faith with me. And lastly, thanks to the readers for your unwavering support.

Happy holidays,
McG

"Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper." - Mark Twain

Stiff Santa

By Paul McGuire © 2009

Josh used to have the life we all dreamed about. The flattering blurbs in Ohio University's alumni magazine made his peers insanely jealous. He was on top of the world until two major incidents contributed to his world imploding; losing his job after a major studio canceled his TV show and a bitter divorce.

Josh lost his job as the head writer for a sitcom in the wake of the writer's strike. He was unable to find work after that downtime which contributed to his wife ending their six-year marriage in favor of a new lover -- her transsexual personal trainer, a former weightlifter from Austria named Gretel.

They say that you lose 50% of all of your assets when you get divorced in California. Not the case for Josh. After all the lawyer fees and other bullshit, he was left with less than 10% of his acquired wealth. He toiled for almost two decades in Hollywood only to be left with a 2006 Honda, his golf clubs, and $175,000 in cash. At least he was able to keep his award from the 2002 Portland Film Festival for best original screenplay, but that keepsake wasn't worth a dime.

After two years without steady work, Josh was down to his last $10,000 and sold his golf clubs. No one in town wanted to buy his scripts in an stingy era when studios banked on sequels and established brands. Love stories about zombies and vampires sold like hotcakes, but erotic tales about magical elves with ESP and alien hybrids seemed uncool in comparison. Josh came close on landing a reality show writing gig on a few instances, yet always got beat out at the last second.

Josh temped at a law office for a while, but he hated commuting to downtown L.A. from Culver City. In the Spring he swallowed is pride and took a seasonal job at the Beverly Center as the Easter Bunny. He wore a pink bunny costume and posed for pictures with rich kids in the middle of the mall. The gig paid well but the downside was an unbearable and suffocating fur costume. Josh drank water constantly to stay hydrated, but too much made him have to piss all the time. If he drank too little, he would pass out.

The Beverly Center had one strict rule -- never under any circumstances remove the bunny head in public. That would mortify young children. Josh turned to Ritalin to solve his problems. The pharmaceutical drug, originally given to children with ADD, had had a different effect on adults. The speedy, cocaine-like euphoric high kept him blasted for many hours on end. It also cooled Josh's body down for some odd reason which is why he ingested a pill before every shift.

Josh suffered from a nasty side effect -- spontaneous erections.

By no means was Josh a pedophile or attracted to children. Rather, he was fondly aroused by MILFs, cougars, and nannies. He couldn't keep his eyes off of the women who brought the children around. The 40-something cougars had bodies like 20-something co-eds courtesy of the best plastic surgery in town. And he had grown attached to the nannies and au pairs. They were mostly young South American and Central American women. San Salvador. Nicaragua. Chile. Argentina. He loved them all. Their skin. Their hair. Everything about them. Between the spicy nannies and the sculpted cougars, Josh could not contain his erections.

He had to constantly shift so the children did not land on his stiff member. He also had to make sure that the handler, a half-Korean, half-Canadian lesbian with a mullet named Sandy, did not place the kids on or near his erection.

Josh attempted to tape his penis to the inside of his boxer shorts, but that proved to be too painful. He tried freeballing, but he'd get pink fur all over his junk and his testicles. His only solution was to relieve the pressure at least once an hour. He'd lie to Sandy the handler and say that he had a bladder issue.

"Flomax doesn't work despite what the ads say," was Josh's excuse.

He'd scurry off to the break room, peel off his costume, lock himself in a stall and masturbate on the toilet seat thinking about having threesomes with a Venezuelan au pair and a cougar from Brentwood. After he shot his load, Josh would re-dress and head back outside to take photos only to get riled up by the women and repeat the process an hour later.

When the Christmas holiday came around, Josh was still out of work and unable to find a steady writing job. He interviewed at the Beverly Center for a Santa Claus position. At first he thought that he was denied the job because he was Jewish, but Josh realized that Sandy the lesbo-handler must have ratted him out for taking too many unscheduled piss breaks. Josh emailed applications for Santa positions at malls in the Valley, but he only got a call back from a mall out in West Covina that desperately needed Santas. He didn't want to take the gig because the commute was too long, but he had no other choice.

Josh developed a routine. He'd wake up, hit up McD's drive through, wolf down a breakfast burrito, crush up a Ritalin while stuck in traffic on the freeway, snort it up, and listen to talk radio for the rest of his commute. He loved the political shows mainly because the people who called in to chat were complete morons. Their lack of understanding of the political system gave him an added ego boost, but at the same time he was interested in writing a stage play about a conservative talk show radio host who was a closet S&M freak.

Josh detested Christmas music but that was not always the case. Growing up Jewish in a predominantly Christian suburb of Dayton (with communities of Amish in the surrounding towns), Josh never minded Christmas. His family embraced the holiday (mainly so they weren't completely ostracized) and proudly displayed a Christmas tree and a Menorah. Shortly after Josh moved to L.A. to become a writer, he grew increasingly angry about the consumerization of Christmas and the evilness of Black Friday (the shopping holiday after Thanksgiving). He detested how the media and department stores colluded into extending the Christmas season to over a month.

It was only the first week of November and Josh had already been working as Santa in West Covina for two weeks. The worst part of the extended Christmas season was the overplayed Christmas music that the mall pumped over the PA. Many of his favorite radio stations also joined in on the Christmas conspiracy. Plus, it barely looks like Christmas in Southern California, so everyone has to go overboard with decorations and music in order to remind/sell people that 'tis the season to buy useless shit for materialistic relatives who don't deserve gifts in the first place.

The erections returned for Josh during his stint as Santa. He had a higher volume of customers and he was only allowed to take a break every two hours. He was forced to sit with a bulging erection while kids screamed and kicked and pissed all over his red Santa pants. They greedy little rugrats terrorized him.

His elves were no help in reducing the sexual tension. One sultry elf was a young college student with a tramp stamp who spent all of her breaks getting stoned in the parking lot with the baristas from Starbucks. When she noticed his boners, she did everything possible to accidentally brush up against it or place kids on his lap within striking distance.

On his breaks, Josh sprinted to the bathroom to jerk off in the stall while conjuring up images of the big breasted cougars in various sexual positions. There were not as many exotic-looking nannies living out in West Covina, but there were a significantly higher amount of young mothers. MILFs. Most of them were single moms, but it was nearly impossible for Josh to work his game and try to sweet talk a MILF while his erection was stabbing her kid in the leg as he begged for a Wii.

Josh gave up on the MILFs and cougars. He focused on the pool of talent at Starbucks to unleash his vented up sexual fury. One of the freaky Goth girls who worked the cashier offered sexual favors in exchange for Ritalin. Every night after his shift ended, Josh parked his Honda behind the Best Buy where he and the Goth girl took key bumps before she blew him with a Santa's hat still sitting on top of his head.


Paul McGuire is the author of Lost Vegas.

The Hobby

By Milton T. Burton © 2009

At first Sam MacCord didn't think the van was going to stop. But at the last moment the brakes squealed and it pulled up beside where he stood on the narrow oil-topped road. The driver took his time about rolling the window down, just as he took his time about everything. He was a skank, with long skanky black hair and a Mephistolian mustache and a grungy goatee. He wore a black leather vest over a white tee shirt and spiked leather wrist bands. Heavy metal music pounded away on the sound system, and the fetid air that came out of the van's now-open window reeked of marijuana smoke. The driver's companion was a skank too, only she was female. Dressed much the same as the driver, she had a pretty but sullen face, dark, scraggly hair, large breasts, and long legs that protruded from a pair of cut-off jeans and rested, ankles crossed, on the vehicle's cluttered dash. Sam put the driver in his early thirties, the girl maybe a half dozen years younger.

Her name was Debbie Pond, and her chief activities in life were snorting coke, gobbling downers, and functioning as a sort of ambulatory receptacle for the seminal emissions of any male skank in her immediate proximity who could be induced to part with some of his dope. Or at least that was how things had been until she met the driver of the van. The one time she'd strayed after hooking up with him, he'd whipped her so hard with his heavy leather belt that she couldn't stand up for over an hour. Not only had that helped Debbie get her head straight as to where her real interests lay, but deep down she'd secretly liked it. As a consequence of that lovely evening, she'd come to look upon their romance as a match made in Heaven.

The driver himself was a small-time coke pusher and wannabe heavy metal musician named Ronnie DeLoach who would never make it big, partly because he was void of any real musical talent. But mostly this sad fact could be attributed to his very limited life span. Although Ronnie didn't know it, at the precise moment he reached languidly toward the dash to switch off the music, he had less than twenty-four hours to live. "Yeah?" he asked in a voice that was full of annoyed disinterest.

Sam smiled pleasantly. "I was wondering if you could tell me where a woman named Linda Popper lives."

DeLoach didn't answer right away. That was another aspect of his personal style, one he'd gotten from the cheap action movies he loved where the cool dude always took his time responding to questions. Instead he spent about ten silent seconds looking Sam over. What he saw was a trim man in his mid fifties who stood maybe five-ten and was dressed in dark slacks, a rust colored shirt, and a dark gray Ike jacket. His head was bare, and his short hair, which was had been coal black in his youth, was now running heavily to gray.

"Linda Popper?" Sam reminded finally.

DeLoach jerked his thumb over his shoulder indicating the way he had come. "Back there," he told Sam.

"Right," Sam said, nodding in agreement. "That's what I've been told, but the problem is that I've already been back that way, and there are several houses." He gave the driver a friendly smile and a diffident shrug.

"Whadda you want me to do?" the skank asked. "Draw you a freaking map?"

"Maybe you could tell me what her house looks like--"

"It's yellow," the driver said impatiently, rolling his eyes. "Pale yellow. The last one on the left about a mile on down."

"Thank you. I really appreciate your--"

But before he could finish, DeLoach slammed the van into gear and roared off down the road. It had rained off-and-on all that week, and somewhere along the way the van had been in mud. As it sped away, a thumb-sized daub of damp red clay flew off one of its rear tires and landed on the front of Sam's jacket. But Sam paid no attention to the mud. Instead, he whipped a solid gold pen and a 3x5 card from his inner pocket and quickly jotted down the van's license plate number. Then he flicked the blob from his jacket and cleaned the spot as well as he could with a monogrammed linen handkerchief.

Had DeLoach been more astute and less interested in playing it cool, he might not have been misled by Sam MacCord's modest demeanor. He might have noticed that the man's pale blue eyes were both glacially cold and obscenely happy--eyes that could make cats hiss and puppies whine and send small children screeching for their mothers. But such subtleties were lost on Ronnie DeLoach. The alpha male in his little cluster group, he was master of all he surveyed. He had a crew of admiring buddies who acknowledged him as their leader, he was boning a submissive doll with big knockers who would drop to her knees at the snap of his fingers, and he had a few hundred bucks in his pocket. And to top it all off, a couple of grand nestled sweetly in his savings account down at the bank. Everything a man of his limited horizons needed. So why bother to read the message in somebody's eyes or even extend a little common courtesy? Especially some old doofus standing out in the middle of nowhere asking directions.

Sam MacCord put his pen and the card back in his inner jacket pocket and whistled softly to himself as he cranked his rented Lexus coupe and glided off down the narrow road.

#

The door of the yellow house opened a few seconds after Sam knocked, and suddenly there she was. She was older now--fifteen years older--and small wrinkles showed around her tired eyes. But she was still slim and pretty and her short hair was still the same copper-blonde he remembered. A close examination might have revealed a few more signs of age, but Sam MacCord didn't give a flying damn. She still took his breath away. She wore a pair of trim khaki slacks and a dark green sweatshirt from some college in Louisiana. At first her face showed surprise, and then he thought for a moment she was going to cry. "Sam?" she said hesitatingly. "Is that you?"

"Of course it's me. Have I changed that much?"

She gazed at him in silence for a long moment, then shook her head. "You haven't changed at all except that your hair has gone gray." It was then that her eyes misted up and she said sadly, "Oh, Sam, I want to hug you so bad, but I don't feel like I have any right to."

"You've got every right in the world," he said and reached out and took her in his arms and pulled her toward him. For Sam it was like regaining feeling in a limb that had been dead for years. They stood that way for a long time while he was aware of little beyond the sweetness of her body, the fleeting, cinnamony odor of her perfume, and the slow, rhythmic ticking of the old German clock on the mantle behind her.

Finally, as if by mutual agreement, they pulled apart.

"I don't know what to say," she said, pulling up her sweatshirt to dab at her eyes.

"Why do you have to say something?"

She gave him a halfhearted shrug. "Want some coffee?" she asked. "I was just about to have a cup."

"Sure."

"Then come on back in the kitchen. I just made a fresh pot."

She took his hand and led him, little-girl-like, back through a house that was neat and surgically clean, but cheaply furnished. The kitchen was big and sunny, and outside the windows he could see a row of early spring daffodils blooming bright yellow.

She poured them both a cup from a shiny percolator that stood on the counter. A homemade pound cake emerged as if by magic from the cabinet above the sink. Linda set a plate before him and handed him a knife. "Have fun," she said.

"This almost makes me think you knew I was coming," he said. "You remember how much I loved your pound cake?"

She nodded. "I didn't know, but I'm sure happy to see you." He ate for a while in silence, then finally she asked, "Why did you come, Sam?"

"Mr. Van Horn asked me to look you up on his behalf."

For a moment there was a flash of disappointment in her eyes. "I see," she said.

"No, you don't," Sam said firmly. "The truth is that I was about to beg off and tell him to find somebody else, but then I realized just how bad I wanted to see you myself."

"Really?"

"Did I ever lie to you? I admit that I've got a lot of faults, but did I ever tell you a single lie."

She shook her head and smiled sadly. "It's just that for so long I thought you were mad. I mean, I dumped you for Freddie Popper and--"

"I never was mad at you, Linda. I was hurt, but I didn't blame you. Freddie loved you, and back in those days he was more stable than I was. He had more to offer a woman, and I understood that. Hell, in your position I would probably have done the same thing."

"Really?"

"Sure."

She shook her head and dabbed once more at her eyes. "And you were always wound up so tight, Sam," she said. "That worried me, too."

He laughed. "I remember. You always told me I needed a hobby or something to calm me down, spend all the excess energy."

"You do seem a lot calmer now."

"I've slowed down a lot. Hell, I'm fifty-five-years old."

"I'm forty-two."

"You don't look it, Linda. You're still beautiful."

She blushed and looked down at her coffee cup. He reached over and patted her hand. She was naturally shy, and it was one of the things he had always loved about her.

"Me and Freddie had two good years," she said. "He'd gotten out of the life, and he was working at a straight job and making good money. That was before the cancer hit him." He sipped at his coffee for a few moments while he stared intently at her across the table, then he said, "Linda, did you know of Freddie pulling any jobs that last year? I mean before he got too sick?"

"I suspected he was doing something. I think he was trying to get some money together for me to have after he was gone."

"That's exactly what he was doing, and that's where Mr. Van Horn comes in."

"How is he?" she asked. "You know, he gave me my first job when I came to Dallas. I'm really surprised he's still around."

"He's almost eighty, and still going strong. But back to our business. Do you happen to remember a heavy-duty thug named Carl Whittle who used to hang around Van Horn's nightclubs?"

"You bet I do. He was a scary guy."

"Right. Well, he and Freddie took down a big bank in Austin about six months before Freddie died. A nightime burglary. Then that fool Whittle got all pilled up a couple of days later and got stopped for weaving all over the road. He had some currency bands and a few bearer bonds from the robbery in the trunk of his car, but none of the cash. He went down for the job, but he never ratted out Freddie. He never gave him his cut of the take, either. I guess he figured that since he was going up for at least ten years there was no reason he shouldn't just hang on to the whole score, especially with Freddie due to check out pretty soon, anyway. He got word to Mr. Van Horn where the money was stashed, and the old man laundered it and invested it for him, taking his ten percent off the top just like he always does."

"I never heard anything about any of this," Linda said. "I do know that Freddie died bitter about something, though. And he was worried sick about me. He even wanted me to look you up after he was gone."

"You should have."

She shook her head. "I couldn't do that, Sam."

He chose not to argue with her. "Anyway, Whittle drew fourteen years. He was lucky. The only evidence that tied him to the burglary was the bearer bonds, and he could have been fencing them. The jury knew he was guilty of something, but they were unwilling to hang the whole farm around his neck. But Mr. Van Horn started hearing rumors about Freddie being his partner on the job. So when Whittle fell out of the joint and came to him for his money, he asked him about it."

"What did Whittle say?"

"He told the truth. Hell, if he hadn't and the old man had found out later that he'd lied, that would have been all she wrote for Carl Whittle."

"Really? Mr. Van Horn was always so sweet to me."

"Sure he was. Because you never gave him any reason to be anything else. But he only let Whittle have half of the money. The other half is yours, Linda."

"Really? How much?"

"Two hundred and forty-seven thousand dollars."

She was stunned. "Two hundred and what?"

"Two hundred and forty-seven thousand. Mr. Van Horn has had it in a blind trust all these years, and the taxes on the interest and appreciation have been paid yearly. It's yours, Linda. You're going to need to come back to Dallas with me and sign some papers, but that shouldn't be any problem. You have a job, I suppose."

She nodded. "I'm the hostess in a real nice restaurant in Oxford. It's a steak and seafood place."

"Can you take off a few days?"

"I guess so."

He stared at her a minute, then sighed and screwed up his courage. "Linda, I want you to put your money up where nobody but you can get hold of it. I don't want you to spend a nickel of it. You don't have to. I'm rich."

"Huh?"

"We missed one chance fifteen years ago because I wouldn't settle down. I don't want us to miss this one."

"Sam--" she began plaintively.

"Linda, please listen to me. For all practical purposes I'm out of the life now. I haven't pulled a job in years. Right now I own a very lucrative sports book in Dallas. Some of the biggest bigwigs in town do business with me, and I belong to a couple of upscale clubs. Hell, I'm respectable now. I even get invited to a wedding or a party now and then in Highland Park, if you can imagine."

"Gee, Sam. This is all so. . ."

"Are you involved with anybody at the moment?"

She shook her head. He leaned forward and looked her right in the eyes and spoke as persuasively as he could. "Linda, I'm fifty-five years old, and I don't have time to be coy. Hell, there's no need for it. We slept in the same bed for better than a year, so why beat around the bush? I realize now how much I loved you then and how much I still love you and what a damn fool I was to let you get away."

She smiled wistfully. "Aww, that's so sweet of you to say that, Sam."

"You're going to have to come back with me to do this legal stuff to get your money. Mr. Van Horn won't have it any other way. He always liked you a lot, and I think he just wants to see you one more time. While you're there I want to show you my home. I've got a nice house in North Dallas and--"

She laughed. "You own a house? I can't believe it. Back when we were together you didn't even like to rent an apartment. You always wanted to live in hotels. You said your idea of Heaven was around-the-clock room service."

He laughed with her. "Not only do I own a house, but I've learned to cook, too. Isn't that something? I'm really pretty good at it."

She shook her head in wonder. "You in the kitchen. I can't see it."

"Come back with me and you can."

"Aw, Sam. . . If we only could. . ." her voice tapered off.

"I won't pressure you. If you like what you see, we've got a future together. If you don't, then you come back to Mississippi and no hard feelings."

"When would we go to Texas?"

"I'd like to leave here the day after tomorrow. I've had a little something come up that I need to tend to in the morning."

"I guess I could," she said. "I'd have to call work and let them know. I've got some vacation time coming. Maybe I'll just take a week off."

"Do that. I'll make plane reservations as soon as I get back to my motel."

She giggled like a little girl. "I've never flown in a plane in my whole life."

"Never?" he asked in amazement.

"Nope. I'm really kinda scared of flying."

Thirty minutes later they were at the door. "Sam. . ." she began shyly.

"Yeah?

"Do you want to stay here tonight?"

He smiled at her and reached up and brushed her cheek gently. "Of course I do, Linda. But I got a couple of things to do, so I can't. How about if I come and stay tomorrow night? Then we can get up and leave the next morning."

She nodded. He started to give her a chaste peck on the forehead, but she melted into his arms, crying. "I'm so glad you came," she said through her tears.

"Me too, Linda."

#

A mile down the road he pulled out his cell phone and dialed a number in Austin. The man who answered was a supervisor in the state bureau of motor vehicles who had been on Van Horn's payroll for years. "Do you recognize my voice?" Sam asked.

"Indeed I do," the man replied dryly.

"I need the name and address of the owner of a van with Mississippi plates."

"Give me it to me and your phone number too. I'll call you back in a couple of minutes."

Sam rattled off the information. "And see if you can pull up the picture on the owner's driver's license, too," he said. "I want to make sure I've got the right guy."

"Will do."

He drove leisurely on, enjoying the early spring afternoon and the tender green of the world around him. After about five minutes his phone buzzed. "Yeah?" he said.

"That van is registered to one Ronald DeLoach. You want his address?"

"You bet," Sam said and pulled over to the side of the road and wrote quickly on a 3x5 card. Then he asked about the photo.

"Yeah, I got it," his contact said. "Want me to fax it to you?"

"Just describe the guy."

"Skinny, Long black hair, goatee, thirty-three years old. A really scroungy looking young toad."

"You're a good man, Lewis," Sam said. "Forget you ever heard from me."

"Don't I always?"

#

The next morning Sam parked two blocks down and around the corner from the bungalow the skank rented on a narrow, shady street in a blue collar neighborhood in Oxford. The front door lock was a cheap in-the-knob affair. Sam pulled a pair of channel-lock pliers from his coat pocket, and after one sharp twist he was inside.

The place was cleaner and neater than he expected but not as tidy as he would have been comfortable living with himself. The living room took up the whole front of the house. It was furnished with cheap modern furniture, and posters for various heavy metal bands were thumb-tacked here and there about the walls. The largest, at the end of the room, was a large framed photo of Van Halen. A fancy sound system occupied one wall, and in the place of honor right in front of the faux fireplace a small ceiling-mounted spotlight shown down on a coal-black Fender electric guitar that rested on a fancy chromium stand like some ancient pagan god awaiting a sacrificial virgin.

Sam's shoes were rubber-soled, and he was good at what he was doing. He checked the house quickly. Besides the living room and the attached kitchen, it contained only two bedrooms and a small bathroom. The smaller bedroom was empty and looked like it hadn't been used in some time. The larger of the two contained a mammoth king-sized bed fitted with black satin sheets and a black coverlet. In it slept the skank. The girl was nowhere to be seen, for which Sam was deeply grateful. Had she been present, he would have quietly left the house and put the whole matter in the future reference file.

A wooden kitchen chair rested in front of a small dressing table to one side of the bed. Very carefully Sam moved it beside the bed and sat down. Then he fired up one of his small Cuban cigars and blew a great puff of smoke toward the skank's face. The boy's nostrils twitched and he stirred a little under the sheet. "Wake up, Rock-Away Johnny!" Sam said loudly.

The skank's eyes opened. "What the. . .?" he began.

"Tell your ma! Tell your pa! Our love's a'gonna grow!!" Sam sang melodiously. "Ole Rock-Away Johnny. Top of the morning to you, Johnny me boy."

The skank shook his head and blinked his eyes a few times. Then they widened in disbelief.

"That's right, my friend. I'm the guy you were so courteous to yesterday on the road out near Water Valley." The skank blinked some more. "How the hell did you get in here?" he finally asked.

"Through the front door. Getting into locked places is my trade. Or at least it used to be. Where's the girl?"

"Who?"

"The girl who was with you yesterday, idiot. Where is she?"

"Oh, her. She went home to see her mama for a few days. The old bitch is sick."

"The old bitch? That's how you talk about your girlfriend's mother to strangers? You're such a lovely fellow, Johnny."

"My name's not Johnny," DeLoach said sullenly for lack of anything better to say. He was confused. Last night's mixture of whiskey and cocaine had dulled his normally dull senses even more than usual.

"I know that," Sam said. "But as it happens, I didn't care for the name your no doubt genetically defective parents bestowed upon you at birth. So I changed it to Rock-Away Johnny for the short time you have left here on this vast and turbulent globe we call Mother Earth. Any objections?"

The skank was getting his wits about him, and his basic personality was beginning to emerge. "Yeah. I don't like it," he said.

"So?"

"So who the hell do you think you are coming into my crib like this?"

"Who do I think I am? The last time I looked at my driver's license it said I'm some guy named Sam MacCord, so I guess we'll just have to roll with that. You know, like in the old Johnny Horton song."

"Who?"

"Johnny Horton, the king of rockabilly." Sam sang once again: "Where the river is winding, big nuggets they're finding. North to Alaska! Go north, the rush is on!!"

"Man, I don't like that redneck shit."

Sam smiled and sang on: "Yes, Sam MacCord was a mighty man, and the year was ninety-one."

"Well, you don't look too damned mighty to me. I think I may just get out of this bed and kick your sagging old ass."

"Wrong, Johnny," Sam said happily. He reached deftly inside his jacket and withdrew a silenced Ruger .22 target pistol and pointed it right at the boy's head. "You're not going to do anything of the sort because your ass-kicking days are drawing peacefully to their close."

"Huh?" DeLoach was suddenly mesmerized. He'd never seen a gun from the business end before, and he didn't like it. "What's that thing for?" he asked stupidly.

"When the time comes I'm going use it to blow you right out of your shoes. Metaphorically speaking, of course, since you don't seem to be wearing any shoes at the moment. And a .22 doesn't really have that much blasting power. They're great for brain shots, though."

The great Rock-Away Johnny, nee Ronnie DeLoach, stared at Sam MacCord and his gun while his drug-addled mind tried desperately to get a handle on the unusual situation he was finding himself in. He didn't really believe that this goofy old fart was going to kill him. It just wasn't within his capacity to believe that anybody would kill him for no good reason. After all, he was a cool dude. And even more than that, in his rather limited social circle he was THE MAN, and nobody whacked THE MAN. But he was savvy enough to realize that you didn't just walk into Wal-Mart and buy a silencer for $19.95 or whatever. Silencers were highly illegal, and had been for about a zillion years. In fact, he knew a guy from Shreveport who'd once drawn five years hard time just for having one of the damn things. It hadn't even been attached to a gun. And that definitely looked like a silencer on the end of the automatic the goofy old fart was pointing his way. Which meant that its owner was almost certainly some kind of authentic heavy, maybe a CIA spook who'd gone a couple of turns around the bend with all the Casper The Ghost crap those guys had to put up with. He pulled himself up a little in the bed and gathered his legs in close to his body. It was beginning to look like he was going to have to get physical.

Sam watched his movements, smiling all the while and reading the boy's mental processes with pinpoint accuracy. Rockaway Johnny was getting notions. Ideas, even. Sam loved it. "You're number nine," he said.

"Number nine what?"

"Assholes. You're the ninth despicable, ill-mannered asshole I've been in this very same situation with."

"I don't get it."

"You don't?" Sam asked cheerfully. "It's really very simple. You see, some people hunt. You know, quail, pheasant, deer. Things like that. Others fish or play golf or bridge or refinish antique furniture. Then you have these guys who're into coins and stamps. And I know a couple of little old ladies who collect dolls from all over the world. But with me, it's assholes."

Johnny was authentically mystified. He was having a very difficult time following Sam's logic. "You collect assholes?" he asked in a puzzled voice.

Sam MacCord laughed. He felt great. "In a manner of speaking," he said. "I don't keep them, though. I send them on their way."

"Huh?"

"That's right, I dispatch 'em. I find 'em here and there, and then we have a little chat, after which I send them on someplace else."

"Where?"

Sam shrugged. "Wherever it is we go when it's all over."

The skank grimaced. "Aw, man, let's drop this shit. It's freaking me out."

"What's freaking you out?"

"All this talk about when it's all over when we both know you're not going to shoot anybody."

Sam sighed, mildly exasperated. One of the things truly vexed was when people told him what he wasn't going to do. Which in his view was extremely presumptuous of them since he often didn't even know himself. But at that particular moment it was crystal clear exactly what his next move was going to be. "Wrong again," he said and quickly raised the gun and blew Rockaway Johnny's left earlobe clean off his head.

The fool's mouth fell open and he gazed at Sam like a man hypnotized. He reached tentatively up and felt his ear, which was beginning to bleed freely. "You shot me!" he said, his voice full of wounded dignity.

"That's right. And I intend to shoot you some more in a few minutes, but I thought we'd talk some first."

"You shot me!"

"Didn't anybody ever tell you that repetition is tiresome? Grab a bunch of Kleenex out of that box on your bedside table and squeeze them up against your ear if you want it to stop bleeding." The skank stared at him dumbly. "Go on," Sam said, motioning with the Ruger. "Get some tissues."

Rock-Away Johnny scrabbled a handful of Kleenex out of the box and pressed them gingerly against the side of his head, his eyes still warily on Sam. Finally he blurted, "You're crazy, man! Freaking crazy!!"

Sam nodded thoughtfully. "It's possible, and I'll be the first to admit it. In fact, I've given the matter considerable thought in the last few years." Then he shrugged and smiled. "But finally I quit worrying about it. I just figured, what the hell? I'm happy as a lark, so if it ain't broke, why try to fix it?"

Rock-Away Johnny couldn't formulate an answer to that particular question. The earlobe business was forcing him to drastically reevaluate his previous assessment of the situation. Indeed, he was getting religion where the subject of Sam MacCord was concerned. He was beginning to comprehend that this goofy old fart was one serious dude. "Why have you got it in for me?" he asked. "Why not somebody else?"

Sam sighed once again. "Because you're an asshole, Johnny. I've already told you that once. Can't you remember anything?"

"But there are lots of assholes!"

"Don't blame me. I'm certainly doing my part to rectify that situation."

"You can't just go around shooting people because you don't like them!"

"Can you think of any better reason to shoot them?"

"Uh. . ."

"Now if you were the sort of fellow who was inclined to historical research, which of course, you're not, you might check out the Dallas and Biloxi newspapers from about thirty years back. If you did, you're find me mentioned pretty often. Back in those days the reporters had me linked with an outfit they called the Dixie Mafia. It never existed, really, to be perfectly truthful. The term was just a lurid journalist's creation that was used to describe a bunch of us fun-loving ole country boys who did a lot of robbing and killing back then. Even the Texas Rangers handled us with tongs and gloves, so to speak, and my own name was linked to some pretty heavy scores and a couple of contract hits. But you didn't know any of that yesterday afternoon. You thought I was just some old guy you could get away with treating as shitty as you wanted treat him. Bad mistake."

"Yeah, but. . ." The boy's voice trailed off.

"Yeah, but, yeah but, yeah but," Sam repeated. "You sound like a spoiled first grader." He stood with agile quickness and took one step back away from the bed. "And you're starting to bore me."

This was the worst cut of all. Nobody had ever told DeLoach he was boring. His buddies all competed for his attention, and the women were his for the taking. When he talked, people listened. "You old bastard--"

"Hush!" Sam said loudly.

Startled, Johnny stopped speaking. He just couldn't get a grip on where this man was coming from.

"Try to exit with a little grace, my young friend," Sam said. "After all, grace is one of those delicate, elusive qualities that separates us from the beasts of the field."

The boy was still puzzled. Wha--" he began, but before he could finish, Sam MacCord raised the silenced pistol, took quick aim and gently squeezed the trigger. And so Rock-Away Johnny passed from this life, a small, neat hole in the precise center of his forehead and a look of profound bafflement on his scraggly face.

#

The Delta MD 80 lifted off the runway at the Jackson airport, bound for Dallas. Sam and Linda were in the first class section where he'd insisted she take the window seat. She was nervous and clutched his hand tightly all through the takeoff roll. "Jeze!" she said once they were airborn. "Do they always climb at this steep an angle?"

"It depends," Sam replied.

"On what?"

"Different things. The load they're carrying, the weather, the type of plane. This Douglas 80 series is real agile. A lot of fun."

"Fun? You call this fun?"

"You'll get used to it after a few flights."

"Am I going to be flying more?"

"If you want to. Have you ever been to Europe?"

"I've never been anywhere, Sam. Heck, I've waited tables most of my life."

"Just relax and enjoy the view. As soon as we get to cruising altitude the flight attendant will be around with the drink cart and I'll get you a scotch. You still like scotch?"

She nodded, and looked out the window. He held her hand and said no more. After a couple of minutes she peered at him again. "Why are you smiling so big?" she asked.

"Oh, I was thinking about something I must have heard my grandfather say a thousand times."

"Yeah? What was that?"

"He claimed that to be really content a man needed a good woman, a rewarding trade, and an interesting hobby."

"And. . .?"

"It sure took me an awful long time to have sense enough to hang on to that good woman."

She squeezed his hand and leaned over and kissed him gently on the cheek, then turned to gaze once again in fascination out the window where the soft, green Mississippi countryside was rapidly falling away as the plane climbed swiftly into the bright spring sky.


Milton T. Burton was born and raised in East Texas. He has been variously, a college history teacher, a political consultant, and a cattleman. He has published two crime novels with St. Martin's Press, NY titled "The Rogues' Game" and "The Sweet and The Dead." His third book, "Nights of The Red Moon" is due to be released by St. Martin's in the fall of 2010.

Christmas Money for Misty

By Johnny Hughes © 2009

A sudden shower drenched Misty Morgan a.k.a. the Movie Star, as she was known in Las Vegas poker rooms, as she was walking to the Silver Arrow Casino in Rio Hombre, New Mexico. Her sheer white blouse, her revealed nipples, her beauty, her cascading, thick, curly,brunette locks were discussed for weeks. She seemed to put her long hair over her nipples, then move it, then put it back, in a hypnotic fashion.

When folks told Misty she was the most beautiful woman they had ever seen, it was about as common to her as good morning. There were three poker tables running. Misty bought chips in the two, five blind no-limit Texas Hold 'em game, and the rest is New Mexico history.

Cory "the Kid" Bradley, the poker room manager, fell in love with Misty, as men often did, before she peeked at her first hole cards. Cory was very good looking himself. He looked kind of like George Clooney. Misty noticed, as she usually did not. He brought her a towel, and offered her a free casino coat, food comps, and silently, just to himself, his life-time devotion. Three regulars grumbled, as they always do. After a mega-rich Texas rancher, drunk in the morning, started the "yore so purty" talk, she said she had been Miss Amarillo. She heard his remark about the "winner of the wet t-shirt contest is...." The rancher was raising every pot, and winning half. Misty laid a prop on him before her seat warmed up. "I'll give you a five dollar checker every time I win a pot, and you give me one when you win a pot."

"Make it ten," the rancher said, doubling her score. Misty hardly ever won a pot, but her stack was building. Cory knew to watch her like a paranoid hawk. Prettiest hustler off the road anyone had seen, but a hustler off the road none the less. The old Route 66, the Mother Road, America's highways had been delivering scam artists since Moby Dick was a sardine.

When Misty Morgan sat down at a poker table, she always unbuttoned two or three buttons, exposing delicious, eye candy. Poker is a social activity where staring at others is not only accepted, it is part of the game. She'd limped out of Las Vegas broke after a year of winning.

After about two hours, Misty was $900 winner. The Texan had left his hot air balloon tied in a red ant bed. Financial Sam, 91 years old, was the producer, dropping millions around Albuquerque, and not even denting his stack. When Sam headed for the buffet, Misty asked if she could go with him. Sam felt hearing was over rated, and rarely turned on his hearing aid. She had to shout three times, and now everyone in the casino questioned her motives.

Misty bought Sam's buffet. Sure enough, Misty laid her best story on Sam, her road story. She was temporarily broke, like most casino folks, but she was to inherit the historic Morgan Ranch, 473 oil wells, 47,000 acres, and a bunch of cows in the Texas panhandle. Financial Sam said basically, "Sure, you are."

Iggy "Little Drummer Boy" Thomas, computer wizard, Asberger's, ADD, mildly bi-polar, and universally hated, beat the twenty-dollar limit like it was a drum, and he'd sing out, "Ah rump pa pum pum." He searched everyone's name he could find in the Internet search engines, and gossip was his hobby. Iggy announced the next day that Misty, 30, had been Miss Amarillo, and had a warrant out for borrowing money, and defrauding a 93 year old man in a casino in Arizona. Margaret "Mother Hen" Eppler was a retired school counselor from Big Spring, Texas. She spent ten or more hours a day at any poker table that had Texas Hold 'em, and comforting words for the afflicted were her road games. She was tighter than Phil Hellmuth's hat band.

Margaret called Misty to the edge of the poker room, and told her of Iggy's announcement that filled the most gossipy poker room in America. That's because so many were regulars. Cory "the Kid" took Misty to the comp room, and gave her three Silver Arrow casino coats: two shiny, one heavy, winter coat, three embroidered shirts, six hats in varied colors, and a week's worth of buffet comp tickets. Misty took them out to her car, and didn't show back up until two weeks before Christmas. Margaret, Kat the dealer, and Betsy Underground, the six-foot-six stripper, were right outside the casino where Kat could smoke on her break. As many as six women would go out together. Misty, Betsy, and Margaret stood there talking an hour. They invited Misty to the all womens' support group meeting that very night at Margaret's apartment, near the casino. None of these folks appeared to have any real money, but Misty agreed to go anyway. When she sat down in the short-handed, no-limit Texas Hold'em game, the table filled up before she had finished unbuttoning the second button. That's what always happened when Misty Morgan played poker.

Margaret had a Ph.D, and a whole string of credentials, but what Misty heard when she got to the counseling session was the roar of a blender making margaritas, and what she smelled was the best, and strongest home-grown marijuana. Kat, Gracie, and Betsy were all three rolling joints, which was overkill. Gracie was also a poker dealer. There was a bright, decorated Christmas tree. Margaret's little Santa Claus bric-a-brac collection was everywhere. Elvis was singing, "Blue Christmas" on the stereo. April Perez was the last to arrive. She brought tamales.

Kat weighed 104 pounds and had on 40 pounds of Harley-Davidson apparel, and decoration. To say she was a biker, was like saying Sea Bisquit was a horse. After a couple of hours of life stories, the roar of the blender, and the reefer, the worst tragedies brought gales of laughter. Misty knew more short cons than Amarillo Slim, the other famous person from her home town. She had already checked the medicine cabinet. Then Misty discovered that nine quarts of rum had no tax stamps. Further furtive examination of the cabinets found them packed with rum, smuggled from Mexico, and for sale. And neatly packaged home grown marijuana worth a few thousand bucks. Margaret had a sideline or two. Margaret and Kat were whispering about the price of the home grown. Kat proposed a prop bet that Betsy at six-foot-six, and Misty at five-foot-nine, had the same proportionate measurements. Misty was a math wizard, and bet $200 with four of them that they were not. Finally, after measurements and arguments, the bet was called off in the name of feminine unity. They were proportionate. Trust me.

When there were only six drunken, stoned women left, Misty said, "I want to tell you how we can steal the bad-beat jackpot." They all promised that even if they did not go along with the con, they would keep it a secret. Swearing secrecy is as easy for a woman as blinking her eyes or writing a dear Square John letter. The Silver Arrow Casino was fourteen years old. Nobody had ever won the bad beat jackpot. It was $318,000. Cory "the Kid" Bradley's father and uncle owned "the Shop," the most legendary poker room in West Texas for thirty-five years. He grew up knowing everything about poker, and could run a tournament better than anyone in New Mexico. He was often loaned out to other Indian tribes. The one thing Cory did not know was that the house is expected to steal most of the bad beat money

Misty told them that when the casino poker room was closing on Chrismas Eve, we'd ask for a few hands of women only, and photograph it for the story she was doing for New Mexico magazine on women poker players and dealers. She handed a forged press credential on letterhead around for all to see. All the dealers want off to be with their families. Kat and Gracie will offer to be there until the last. Cory had said the poker room would close around 1 p.m., depending on interest.

When Misty had them sit down at the kitchen table where she could show them the cold-deck move, they all began to believe slowly that it would work. Misty had a big straw hat. She'd sit right behind the dealer, and bring in the cold deck, the prearranged deck. Margaret would start with a A,K and someone in on it would start with A,Q and both would make full houses. If aces full got beat, then the jackpot would go to those at the table. She showed them the move. The hat would come off with her right hand to block the overhead camera, and the rigged deck would go in under Kat's right arm with her left hand, as Kat put the other deck in her lap, right after the cut. Then, in the excitement of the bad beat jackpot, Misty would clean up, getting the old deck from Kat's lap, with the same move. They tried it with Gracie, also.

Almost as if she were mentioning the weather, Misty told them she would get a double share, and that she had Cory "fixed", which was a skillful lie. There was a long silence. Exchanged glances calculated their chances. Finally, Margaret spoke, "If she can do the move drunk, she can do the move sober. Getting all women at the table will be the hard part. The overhead camera could ruin everything."

Gracie pointed out that Misty and the dealer, either her or Kat are the only ones at any risk of being caught, and wondered aloud if the dealers share could not be a little higher. Misty was marvelous, putting it in gambling terms. You get a full share, but have a fifty per cent chance of no risk. April Perez said Misty would make a good double-talking politician. Misty explained they needed one more poker playing woman. Kat suggested Tattooed Nicky, one of the only lady loan shark collectors in Albuquerque, and there was a chorus of objections. Margaret said she had the perfect person, but would reveal her, or invite her to the next party. Then she swore them to secrecy, something they were getting used to. Kat raised her right hand each time. She had them draw names to exchange small, gag Christmas gifts, and not tell anyone who they got. Betsy asked, "Where is the nearest Harley Davidson store."

They were back at Margaret's apartment the next night with the blender roaring, and steaks and chicken on the grill. Nita Morales came. Talk about some sour faces. Margaret said she had full trust in Nita, and who would be better? Who was more well known around Silver Arrow Casino?

Kat and Gracie had both been dealing a little, three-table, $100 entry, Texas Hold 'em tourney when Mrs. Morales, as she was always called, attacked this Senior Engineer from Sandia on the very first hand, saying, wrongly, that he shorted the pot. He called her "a bitch", and eight of her relatives jumped to their feet to defend her honor. Hector Morales, 20, kept holding his hand sideways as if he had a gang gun, and saying, "I'll cap you. I'll cap you." Three old, tired, security guards were coming out of the side door, putting on their coats, as if in slow motion. They threw the engineer out, and refunded his entry. He fled. Mrs. Morales insisted they blind off, not pick up his stack, and they did. Even with a third of the field, all of her relatives ran in the mud.

After the ritualistic swearing of secrecy, Margaret told all the women one or two at a time that Mrs. Morales was 100 per cent trustworthy since she stole every single day from the gift shop with the assistance of her cousin. Her relatives in the Sheriff's office, and the highway patrol could help, if need be.

There were three more parties at Margaret's apartment. Mrs. Morales regaled them with stories of her large family, and their political careers. They were all beginning to really like her. When they were really drunk, Kat said, why wait until Chrismas, let's cold deck a table full of men tomorrow night. The cold deck move was getting seamless with practice. All the ladies watched the practice with growing confidence. The two women would move their arms in unison. Misty explained any early introduction of the hat or weird moves would queer the deal. It had to be Christmas Eve. April Perez said, "I will have enough money to keep my daughters in the Montessori School until they are thirty if I want to."

They were all rested and ready on Christmas eve. Misty was all over the casino, shooting pictures with this big Nikon camera with a zoom and a flash. She took several of Cory, whom she hugged several times in Christmas joy. She showed anyone who looked remotely like an Indian her letter from prestigious New Mexico magazine. She got pictures of several women wearing the big straw hat, with a stand of turquoise as a hat band. The casino was clearing out. Even the slot players go home Christmas eve. They have a lot to feel guilty about. When the eight dollar limit game broke, all the women moved to the two five no-limit Texas Hold'em game, where Kat had just started dealing. They asked Financial Sam to sit out where they could do some photos of a real all-women's game. He was glad to. Gracie took the camera, and kind of took charge, as Gracie will do.

But Iggy Thomas raised a big fuss citing civil rights, sex discrimination, and tribal laws, to get started. Misty whispered that she would sleep with him if he would hush, and head for the cage to cash in his chips. Kat said she would stomp a mud hole in him. He headed to cash the chips in track-star fashion. Just as soon as the poker game got down to all women, Misty put on the hat which was the signal. Cory would have seen the move if Gracie hadn't blinded him with the flash from the camera. He was the best bird dog in New Mexico, but Misty counted on his silence. She thought of offering him a share, but an all women's take down was her goal, and it worked. When Misty exchanged glances with Gracie, Gracie put the camera in Cory's face and hit the flash. The cold deck move, and the flash went together.

There was a lot of yelling, and hugging, and the magic hands sat there on the table. Financial Sam had been a hundred yards away, but he knew what had happened as soon as he returned. Iggy knew something was up. He'd rather have the useless promise of Misty sleeping with him than a share. He was also afraid of Kat. Cory told the tribal elders he had reviewed the video tape, and saw nothing wrong. "We have to pay it, and pay it fast," he told them. The casino paid it, with separate checks for each woman's share. They met at Margaret's apartment to settle up, and really enjoy Christmas, and celebrate in memorable fashion. Misty told them, in confidence, about the historic Morgan Ranch she was going to inherit, and promised them all a share some day when there is pie in the sky, and we find the Big Rock Candy Mountain.


Johnny Hughes is the author of the Texas Poker Wisdom.

Dick Hole, Part II

By Bobby Bracelet © 2009

It's nice to know that, if everything else fails, you can still get authentic Italian cuisine at Olive Garden.

Anyways...

I walked into my ultrasound feeling good. Despite my friend putting the fear of the untimely boner in my head, and despite the thoughts of nut cancer (The best cancer, hands down. Suck it, boob cancer!) or the threat of sexually transmitted diseases, I was walking tall.

On a quick side note...

Does anyone else need to wear counter-weighted tighty whiteys to help offset the uneven weight distribution caused by enormous junk?

Keeps the back pain-free?

Just me?

The major suckiness factor involved with seeing my doctor for this sort of thing is that I know all the girls who work there. I may have even let one of them take me on a date. So the embarrassment factor was high. That was probably my only true concern.

Ultrasound lady figured different.

I had gone to the bathroom to drain the weasel and give it one last pep talk before some strange lady was going to be fondling him.

Let's be a good boy today, OK?
This will be clinical fondling.
I don't want to see any shenanigans, alright?
Whoa! EASY BIG FELLA!

I heard her asking about me before I saw her. It was at the moment she turned the corner that I realized there wouldn't be any worry about boners. This woman was as unattractive as a thin woman could be.

She was clearly impressed with my looks, which is probably why she launched straight into one of her patented anti-anxiety speeches.

I'll bet you stayed up all night last night, worried about this. You probably couldn't sleep worth a shit.

Nice. An obscenity.

I wasn't anxious or worried about having her fondling my thrice confirmed huge junk, so at this point I was actually intrigued. Her style was undeniable.

Most guys will yank it twenty times a week but they won't feel their balls for lumps. I see it all the time.

Wait. You see guys yanking it twenty times a week or you see guys not feeling their balls for lumps? I'm confused.

But it's really nothing to me. I've been doing this for 30 years. I've seen so many butt-holes and dick-holes that it ain't no big deal to me anymore.

I'm not going to lie. I kinda wanted to ask her how mine stacked up.

"How's my butt-hole?" I'd say, "In comparison to all the butt-holes you've seen."

"Impressive, right?" Making the universal sign for world class butt-hole, "It's gotta be top ten. Am I right, or am I right?"

But what I actually did was explain that I wasn't all that worried about it.

She explained that I'd be getting up on the exam table and covering my midsection with a sheet. I told her the sheet wasn't big enough. In my mind. Maybe I was a little nervous. But not of the findings. I was still a little nervous that mini-bracelet would decide to make an appearance.

She asked why I was in and I explained that I had what I thought was a hernia but my doc figured it might actually be an infection and wanted the ultrasound to be sure. She responded to this by drawing a crude set of nuts on the exam table paper and explaining what balls look like before asking me to clarify what I had said using her scribbled nutsack as a map. This was definitely going to be interesting.

She must have decided to try and relate to me because she was using slang or expletives for everything.

As an example, she explained how sexually transmitted diseases can be obtained.

HER: Let's say you and I are going to fuck.
ME: Did I lose a bet? OK.
HER: You're clean, but I have Chlamydia.
HER: If you fuck me you have a 70% chance of getting my Chlamydia.
ME: OK.
HER: Now, let's say I'm clean and you've got Chlamydia.
ME: I still wouldn't fuck you OK.
HER: If I fuck you I've only got a 5% chance of getting Chlamydia.
ME: So you're saying you think that if I have it I got it from her?
HER: Well, I'm just saying.

It seemed to be a habit with her that she would rather dance around the question she really wanted to ask, trying hard to be cool and on my level with her choice of words. It took close to 3 minutes of banter before I was able to uncover that she was attempting to ask me if Elizabeth was faithful to me.

She first asked me how often I saw her. Then she asked if she was "sexual," to which I had to ask for her to clarify how she meant that. Once I explained that, yeah, she gets it good and I'm the giver, she moved on.

"Is that enough?"

Um, how do you mean?

Oooooooh, you think she might be banging other dudes while I'm 501 miles away!

Classy.

So the subject moved back onto Chlamydia.

"Did the doctor swab your dick-hole?"

No, and I don't understand what you mea....Oh, you want to know if the doctor swabbed me to check for bacteria, or whatever. No. He didn't think it was necessary.

HER: Oh, because if he did it that's a normal thing. I didn't want you to be worried about it. Chlamydia is very common and you can have it and never know it. Hell, I've had Chlamydia. The doctor told me he wasn't a hundred percent sure but that he could give me an antibiotic to cover it, among other potential causes. He also said I should just give my boyfriend at the time a course of antibiotics to be sure to kill it if he has it as well. No sense having him come in to get his dick-hole swabbed when he can just take an antibiotic.

No joke, this lady said "dick-hole" at least 50 times while I was in the room. She dropped F-Bombs all over the place. She also spent what seemed like an inordinate amount of time rolling the wand over my nutsack. (Medical term)

My biggest concern was accidentally unleashing the monster. She had me holding my baby maker up towards my chest so that she could have free reign of my balls. Eventually I figured the combination of my hand on my penis, with what amounted to lube on my ball-sack, (medical term) and a woman slowly working her wand back and forth over my nuts, was going to be all I needed to come to attention.

Thankfully it never happened. (Because, in the past, my unexpected boners have been known to poke holes in the ceiling before I can do anything about it. That shit gets expensive.)

Alas, my boys were healthy and oddity-free. The doc started me on an antibiotic that covered normal infections rather than one that could treat Chlamydia. He didn't believe I had anything more than either a little bacterial infection or maybe even a small hernia that was hard to detect. In the end, everything came back clean and the antibiotics didn't really work.

It appears I have a small hernia after all.

No more worries about my dick-hole. I'm clean. Ultrasound lady says that you could eat off my dick-hole it's so clean.

Well, no she didn't. But it wouldn't have surprised me if she did.

If any of you ever need an ultrasound, give me a call. It's worth it for the entertainment value. Plus, she's a dick-hole expert, so you'd have that going for you. Which is nice.


Bobby Bracelet is a penis pills salesman from Michigan.

Absence of Fear

By George Tate © 2009

West to East on I-70 headed for Denver, Colorado is the most beautiful drive a person could ever imagine in their wildest dreams. The mountains and scenery are breathtaking. Living on the edge of death is the most fun a person experiences in life. People only dream of these scenes in their mind's eye before morning consciousness takes the thrill from them.

Hey, it's like that guy said at the table night before last in Vegas, "Don't play poker with me baby, I ain't 'fraid to lose." Sure enough he didn't lie. He couldn't lose. Sad faces left at 4 o'clock in the morning Pacific, but Mr. No Skeered was smiling all the way to the cashier.

As the beauty of the roadside went past, he took another sip of coffee, bitter shit that he paid too much for at that mud hole of a truck stop at Glenwood Springs, Colorado. Having gotten up late he had been on a dead run to deliver an overweight, oversize load to the yard in Denver by 12 noon. This load was a bitch from its beginning in Fontana, California. It was odd pieces of equipment in all shapes and sizes that had to be permitted by the traveled states because it was too heavy and a bit wide. A crane boom had to be loaded on its side and made the whole stinking mess shift and creak. It was unstable and the trouble was trying to get a secure chain and binder on the load, the web straps were much too light and the chains and binders had to be checked on a regular tick. What a pain.

For the most part the trip through California, Nevada, and Utah were gravy. The Vegas poker game was to relieve the tension of the load, including all his piled up anger and tension since her passing. Losing the $500 didn't help, but the drunk on the free liquor didn't hurt.

Now in Colorado it was going to be an uphill grind, upward through the Eisenhower tunnel and down, real down!

Gatlin Hughes was a Louisiana oil patcher, born in Shreveport and raised on crude and raw gas, Community coffee, and crawdads. When the oil business went bust in 1984 his unemployment benefits went far enough to send him to truck driving school. There he learned the in and out of driving, and he met Barbara Turnbull. Shapely, blond, and cute, she was to become the driving force of his life. She too had felt the pangs of the oil bust. At 38, her first marriage was long gone and her two children were grown and married. She was an unemployed land secretary searching for an avenue, preferably OUT.

As luck would have it they both graduated at the same time. After the ceremony the graduating group partied at a local Bossier City bar. It was there they decided to team up. Gatlin had an eye on Barbara from their first meeting. He knew he needed to make a move. He was a tall, thin drink of water with not too many rough edges for a 41 year old. He had never married. They both loved each other, the road and the life they shared. The pain that was coming, shouldn't have been, but was.

On the road she began to suffer. Returning home, the doctor had frightening news of an illness he deemed incurable. Soon her life was at an end and Gatlin was dead broke, running on empty, and aimless. The loneliness returned full force, with it was his doubt and dismay.

Gatlin drifted into thoughts about past runs through this area. Spring was always a nice time of year, the snow and ski crowd were gone and travel eastbound into the Johnson bore was light. Gatlin was glad because with a wider than usual load he spent a lot of mirror time keeping that crane elbow off the left wall. Going through the tunnel required him to take his half out of the middle which was very unpopular with people behind.

The bore is 1.7 miles from start to finish and two lanes wide. The straight pipes on Gatlin's old '90 classic Pete sang as the tunnel entrance went by. The old Pete was powered by a 550 Caterpillar Engine with a 15 speed transmission and brake saver. Barbara always loved how the jakes rumbled on the downside of the tunnel. Just a kid at heart she was always testing the wild side.

"PPPPSSSSSSSSSSSSSTT," that was an unfamiliar sound. Gatlin sat straight in the seat and gave his full attention to the truck. Any strange sound needed immediate attention, especially escaping air. Inside a tunnel sounds are amplified and this was not the usual sound that a brake air dryer makes during its drying cycle. Brakes were chief worry at this point, Gatlin was over two miles up and loaded to 89000 pounds. He didn't hear it again but decided to stop at the Colorado Chicken Koop at the bottom of the hill and check for a problem. In a minute or so he would know how BAD his call was on this decision.

The rumble of the pipes was gone at the tunnel exit and Gatlin began grabbing gears for the downhill run. The uphill climb worked out fine today and the old Pete didn't miss a beat. He was glad because he was late and he needed to get to town. He wouldn't have to sweat getting up speed it was all downhill from here to Denver. The jakes and brake saver were on and he was set to roll downhill in 5 low, a gear he believed would not extend the RPM's beyond range. Staying off the brakes was critically important as brake fires on this side of the tunnel were common. He began a slow descent to the first turn, stabbing his brakes to keep the RPM's out of the red.

Gatlin thought about the time, 39 minutes to the CDOT koop and one and a quarter hours from the tunnel to Downtown Denver. He could make it. This was a very steep grade which turned into a wooly run after the koop at Dumont, Colorado. The first part was a cake walk compared to the 6% grade yet to come. Winding his way down the hill he began to work the brakes a little harder and noticed that he wasn't slowing down. The old Cat could take the pressure and the jakes and retarder were working, engine oil pressure and oil temperature were ok and the brake saver was working, but the truck was not slowing like it should during his brake stabs.

"PPPPPPPSSSSSSSSSST."

"What the hell," he thought. He just kept on stabbing the brakes shortly he looked in the left mirror during one of his stabs and saw the telltale smoke coming off the trailer. It wasn't going to be long before this little cloud of smoke was gonna blaze. He had to stop “PPPPSSSSSSSSSSSTTTT” this truck, NOW.

Coming to the reality stopping this weight with marginal braking was like pissing in the wind, Gatlin started checking his options, he was over revving and the engine and oil temp had begun their rise because of both engine and brake saver stress. The brake saver uses engine oil as a mechanism working against the engine RPM's to slow the drive train. The spent hot oil returns to the engine to be cooled. In this case cooling is impossible. The Jakes use engine compression to do the same job but the over revving produces engine heat and breaks down the oils lubrication ability. To make a long story short, because of continued over revving everything is HOT and going to BOIL. Oil Temperature is at 200 degrees and water is the same.

"So far ok but not so good," were words from Gatlin's mouth that no one heard.

Stopping on a downhill with little breakdown room was dangerous and Gatlin went over all the options. He made the choice to go up one gear and begin to drift the turns, the speed would pick up but the brake use might be less. The shift came smooth and the speed came up, Fifty-four miles per hour topped out his comfort zone and he begin doing the switchbacks using the whole road while braking in the turns to slow down. He was still seeing more smoke off the rears and the "PSST" became louder. He had made it a little over half way to Dumont in a pretty short amount of time, the engine heat and oil temperature were rising rapidly now close to 212 degrees. Trying to slow the wagon below the REDLINE became impossible and he had no brake pedal to mash. At this point, he knew all he had were the trailer's brake system controlled by the "trolley valve" on the right of his steering wheel. His trailer brakes were already hot and trying to stop the vehicle using only those brakes was a fire looking for a-happening.

Sharp turns were becoming harder to maneuver and the use of the trolley valve became less effective and produced more smoke from the trailer tires. The whole system was getting to the end of its rope. Suddenly engine oil temperature and water temperature shot up, the speed of the truck did the same, and during one of the turns Gatlin noticed a streak of liquid on the road that was now following his travel path. The brake saver seal had blown out because of heating and Gatlin was now in a free fall while losing engine oil, there was no way the Pete's compression brake alone could ever slow him at this speed.

Gatlin was at the end of his wits. He began to think about Barbara's death and how he wished at the funeral he could join her. His mind flashed a picture of the truck falling off a steep ravine. "At least it would be quick," was his afterthought. From deep inside came a primal urge that began at the small of his being and exploded when it hit his mouth.

"YAAAAEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEYYYYYYYYIIIIIIIIIIIIII!!!!!!!!!!!!"

He was now filled with adrenaline. His fear was tossed to the side of I-70 and in its place was a feeling of immortality.

"Let's ride!!!!!!"

He began to take full corners catching oncoming rails like a stock car pro. He had now lost all his primary air and the trolley valve was getting weaker on each use. Smoke was everywhere in the cab and trailing for as far as he could see behind him. The Dumont scales were coming fast, he past the overhead sensor and a quarter mile later left the koop in a cloud of smoke that drifted into the pines. Barbara was present, he felt her, and he felt assured, he wasn't afraid.

Air brakes, without air, lock down against the hubs. This is fine for stopping a truck at slow speed but not at sixty five miles per hour with 89000 of weight on board. The binders lock down and then BURN UP. The fire on the trailer became very visible; flame shot from the hubs along with sparks from the metal calipers.

"TURN IT OFF."

Words came from the blue of Gatlin's mind. They were real he heard them. He had to jiggle his head because of non-belief but he knew it was Barbara.

"It won't be long now, baby," Gatlin screamed at the windshield.

The next turn loomed ahead and right before it was a sign marked "6% GRADE" with a picture of a truck on a rapid descent. "Whoa WE are gonna ROLL now, YEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!"

Gatlin was on a rampage in a truck with three axles on fire doing in excess of 70 miles per hour.

"Turn it off," the words were quiet and serene in an environment of chaos. The truck began to drop into a snakes trail. The turns became hard to handle and Gatlin knew it wouldn't take much to be over a guard rail and down the side on his back, load, tractor, and all. He suddenly cleared his mind and focused on the words, "Turn off the engine, that's it."

Reaching for the key he switched off the engine and the motor suddenly went dead. The truck was slowing but not stopping and the fire was really raging. The truck was in gear and with the brakes locked down the speedo was still reading 55 miles per hour while laying down a smoke trail thick enough to cut with a knife. On this turn Gatlin scraped the rock wall on the left of the trailer while narrowly missing a car that moved into his travel lane to avoid hitting the back of the trailer. Gatlin began to sweat.

A long straight descent came up with another grade marker at 6%, "Well let's get it," Gatlin screamed. He was beyond caring, just wanting the ordeal over one way or the other. The hand he was dealt didn't make a difference, all he wanted was the result. If he died he would be in her arms again. He wished for the negative outcome. "SOON," came again from the blue of Gatlin's mind. It was her voice clear as day. At almost the same time a large turn loomed ahead, Gatlin swung the truck to the left taking all the turn and missed another tractor by inches then the turn switched back to the right and in the hairpin he saw his trailer tires clear a foot of ground.

He saw his saving grace; at the bottom of this hill was an emergency turnout. That was the most beautiful sign he had seen today. Behind him his front driver side trailer tires exploded from the heat and took the rears with them in an eighth of a mile he was on the rims going 40 mph. He was half a mile from the sandy grave where all of this would be over and could see the grooves his rims were etching in the highway. Entering the sand was the best feeling of all as the whole truck began to bounce and sink as though being covered in quicksand. The fires were out but the dead truck was a smoking hulk wallowing in the beach sand that stretched one quarter of a mile up the side of the mountain.

He jumped from the top step into the sand and walked the few yards to pavement. He felt surprisingly alive, calm and collected. Lighting a cigarette, he spotted the Colorado DOT's blue lights in the hazy smoke. He took a deep breath and sighed, "Well baby, can ya save me from the paperwork too?"


George Tate is a former over the road driver of fourteen years that love's travel, wild wimmin', Pisano Wine, and Omaha 08. When they are a package, watch out.

November 2009, Vol. 8, Issue 11

Welcome back to a new issue of Truckin'.

1. The Stoop by Paul McGuire
I convinced him to meet me at shit hole in the East Village instead of stalking the hooker. He showed up to the bar totally rejected, like his heart had been ripped out of his chest and nailed to his forehead... More

2. A Young Man and Road Gambling by Johnny Hughes
One time coming out of Mexico with my pals, we had the cash stashed for the 300 plus miles home. Smuggling rum brilliantly, we had the backseat floorboard covered in bottles of rum. It was brutally cold, and we had our coats over the rum. The guys in the back had their knees up real high, and we got caught... More

3. Brain Storming by Betty Underground
One comment leads to another and like the winding road that brought him to that beach house, we are all over the mountain of topics that are just 'life'. The non-specific, yet charmed, lives of two souls who have a lot of blanks to fill in and it seemed this time I was doing a lot of the filling-in... More

4. Dick-Hole by Bobby Bracelet
Chlamydia is sort of like the strep throat of the genito-urinary system. It's killed by an antibiotic, but while it's there it causes symptoms that really aren't any worse than strep, just more embarrassing because of the area of the body... More

5. The Ride by George Tate
While fueling he noticed a young long hair in a robe and sandals looking much like a scriptural disciple who had begun to walk across the I-10 bridge then down the east bound ramp towards Phoenix... More

What a Long Strange Trip It's Been...

From the Editor's Laptop:

The November Truckin' marks the debut of George Tate who shared a chilling road tale. Since we're on a road theme, Johnny Hughes penned a piece about his rough and tumble days as a gambler in Texas. It's been a while since we had a story from Bobby Bracelet, and yes, this one involves a penis... his penis to be exact. Not to be outdone, Betty Underground returns with another one of her sultry tales. And I wrote a New York City story about friends I knew a decade ago.

Truckin' needs help with promotion. The scribes write at Truckin' for free and you'll be doing me a huge favor by helping get them well-deserved publicity. Think grass roots. Tell your Facebook friends. Tweet your favorite story. Print up an entire issue and leave it in the bathroom at home or at work. You never know when you're in need of reading material.

If anyone is interested in being added to the mailing list or writing for a future issue, then please to contact us.

As always, I sincerely writers for sharing their bloodwork and taking a leap of faith with me. And thanks to the readers for your support.

Be good,
McG

"Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity." - G. K. Chesterton

The Stoop

By Paul McGuire © 2009

Ryan Mansfield was on a mission.

His girlfriend Mindy went to the Hamptons for the weekend without him. He never liked the scene. He hated the bumper-to-bumper drive on the LIE while Mindy bitched and moaned about the awful traffic.

He came up with a passable excuse -- a work project that required his attention. Sure, he could have put in a few extra hours during the week in order to take the time off on the weekend, but Mindy did not know that. She didn't know about a lot of things.

Mindy took off for the Hamptons at 3pm on a Friday. By 6pm, Ryan was sitting on his couch and eating a sausage pizza while thumbing through the sex ads of The Village Voice. He had already hit up an Asian massage parlor on his way home from work and he was scouting out prospects for the evening. The plan was to get shitfaced with the guys and try to pick up drunk 20-something chicks in hipster bars Murray Hill. If that didn't work, he'd go home and ordered up a Latina hookers via the Voice. It was as easy as ordering up a pizza.

I hung out with Ryan on Saturday afternoon. We watched the Mets game and all he kept talking about was his romp with the hooker from the night before.

"She said her name was Desiree."

"But what was her real name?"

"La'Tonya. She was half-black and half-Puerto Rican. And she let me fuck her twice because I got her stoned. I only paid for one time but I got to hit that twice. I think I'm n love."

Ryan told me about his plan to call her up again, which he attempted fourteen times from the time the Mets game ended and the time he finally gave up around 11pm. I convinced him to meet me at shit hole in the East Village instead of stalking the hooker. He showed up to the bar totally rejected, like his heart had been ripped out of his chest and nailed to his forehead.

"I can't believe she didn't call me back."

"Maybe she was busy."

"That's what I'm afraid of. I'm sick to my stomach thinking about all the guys she's having sex with right now."

"Get it out of your mind. She's a hooker. That's what she does."

"I can't take it. Why won't she call me back?"

"Maybe because you called forty times and sounded like a psycho just like Favreau in the scene from Swingers. She's a pro. She does this for a living. She knows when guys get emotionally attached. If she can milk them for cash -- she'll do it. But if she knows they are borderline serial killer rapist like your sorry ass, she has no incentive to take a risk with a potential schizoid."

"Can you call her?"

"No way. I don't want a hooker."

"No, just call to see if she answers. I know she's avoiding me and screening my call. I just need to know. So pretend that you're a john looking to arrange a date. We'll call from a payphone."

"Why don't you call."

"She'll recognize my voice."

I agreed only if Ryan bought me another beer. We retreated around the corner and found a payphone. I dialed the number and Ryan insisted on listening in. She answered on the first ring. I asked her if it was Desiree. She said that her name was Crystal but Ryan recognized her voice. He grabbed the phone out of my hand. He didn't get out five words before she hung up.

A dejected Ryan started walking and sulking. I had not seen him that upset. And all of that misery over a hooker from the back of the Voice. After about fifteen minutes Ryan snapped out of his sullen march.

"Follow me!" he demanded and took off in a race-walk.

We made a couple of turns and ended up on Lexington Avenue. The street was empty and all of the Indian restaurants were closed. A couple of yellow cabs were double parked in front of a bodega. That's when I spotted someone standing on the adjacent corner. Two other women in short skirts stood about twenty feet down the side street. The both walked over to Ryan. Three hookers and the two of us. None of the hookers were what you would call attractive. Two of them were skinny but the third hooker was thick and possibly pregnant.

One of the thin hookers gave Ryan the hard sell. $50 for a blowjob.

"Right now."

"Yes. Right. There."

She pointed towards the shadows of 29th Street. I squinted a saw a stone staircase leading up to a three-story brownstone.

"You gonna blow me on the stoop?"

She nodded. He grabbed her hand and they walked off. I looked at the other two hookers and shook my head. I quickly crossed the street and entered the bodega. Two Middle Eastern cabbies were shooting the shit with one of the guys behind the counter. I bought a Snapple iced tea and a piece of pound cake, which was stale, but I ate several bites while I waited for Ryan to finish up his blowjob.

"How did it go?"

"It was scary and exciting knowing that you could get caught. I couldn't come at first. But she was rushing and I finally got off."

"You know that she was a trannie, right?"

"Nah..."

We walked in silence for a block before Ryan stopped me and said, "I worked out a deal. I only paid $40 instead of $50."

"So you got a discount on the trannie hooker."

"Yep, so who's the sucker now?"


Paul McGuire is a writer from Los Angeles. He's the author of Lost Vegas.

Brain Storming

By Betty Underground © 2009

Around most men, I never really get nervous. And not because I'm uber-confident and get it all the time, no, it's really more that I'm oblivious to attention directed at me; pretty sure they are interested in someone else so I don't feel pressure and in turn, stay pretty cool headed. It's a mild case of social retardation I blame on never honing my dating skills at an early age. Being complacently tied to the same, and hot mind you, man for the span of my twenties, I never developed an ability to overtly flirt. Though I've been accused of it, I consider it a well-timed accident.

Not lacking in feminine wiles, I've successfully attracted a good lot of men; by accident. Lookers, most of them and despite a propensity for soaking themselves in cheap beer and preferring an evening of hootin 'n hollerin at some display of sports to a night with a hottie like me and some wildly intellectual conversation about reality TV, they were really good boyfriends. When you line those guys up tip-to-toe they don't amount to much more than a sitcom that is cancelled after the first season leaving my "action" full of enormous gaps of time; I'm pretty sure if you stood next to me and yelled at my last relationship, you'd get an echo. It's nothing I get terribly worked up over and certainly makes the chance encounter EVEN THAT MUCH BETTER.

It was a Wednesday and I had been busy cooking; preparing the quiche and scones, and frosting the cupcakes I made the night before. The kind of day when I wonder how I've ever found time for a job when there is so much involved in entertaining guests. Hollywood would be there later in the afternoon and since she'd been kind enough to hop a shuttle, the only effort required from me was picking her up in town; which didn't even involve putting on shoes. Before she arrived I had a little business to take care.

I had enlisted the help of a friend who specializes in all things aesthetic for a graphic design project I was stumped on. Certain people have a knack for being able to ignite creativity and since I'd long since been convinced we shared the same taste in nearly everything, I was confident that he was the right one to bounce ideas around with; or at least worth looking at across a table for a few hours. It's great to have the occasional loosy-goosy work week that affords an opportunity for an afternoon of conversational ping-pong, and we had both lucked out this week.

A gravel road is very unforgiving if you intend to creep your vehicle up it, so I knew when he had arrived. I'm a bouncy greeter; likening my enthusiasm to that of a child when she hears the ice cream truck coming, I'm frequently out the door and dancing around the drive-way before my guests roll to a stop like I have to pee; which I usually don't, or at least best I could recall this day I didn't.

Like some chariot of magic, as his car rolled down the driveway the morning clouds were given a stiff shove-off exposing blue skies and a summer sun. So we'd sit on the deck and sip iced tea and attempt a focused conversation. Impossible. Even with the span between visits requiring us to take mental notes of what things we want talk about next time, we never get to those things. One comment leads to another and like the winding road that brought him to that beach house, we are all over the mountain of topics that are just 'life'. The non-specific, yet charmed, lives of two souls who have a lot of blanks to fill in and it seemed this time I was doing a lot of the filling-in.

One of the first things I learned being a poker player was to become aware of my own "tells"; that might also be the only I learned as a poker player which is why I don't play so well. Or when I do, it's totally accidentally. Sitting at the felt, I have nerves of jello; I knock over stacks of chips, fold on the blind and hyper-ventilate waiting for an orbit. (btw: that is about all the poker lingo I know, and I'm sure it's not accurately used). But that's poker; I know I get nervous there, and like I said up there, with men, I don't really get nervous. This day we sat jabbering away like two Jewish sisters and on my part, there were some admissions and blanks that I was required to address in order to get to the brainstorming on the creative project. Ya know, I put stuff out on the internet and largely over-share my life with strangers and friends alike, but I remember looking down at my hand and having trouble steadying it as I told him. NERVES? Nah... I must be hungry. "Are you hungry? Quiche sound good? I made quiche. We'll have quiche," and I escaped to the kitchen to get us a nibble still rambling on.

Eating helped, but I still felt off center. Tapping my foot and fidgeting as I pushed the words out between a fissure of nerves. Nerves? I was nervous. Unnerved. Deliciously unnerved. I'd rationalize it away under the guise that it was the content of the discussion and not the presence of being. Shake myself loose from my awareness of the unsettled feeling and eventually find a pace to settle into that felt normal. And then time ran out. Snapping back to the responsibilities of life beyond the dirt drive-way and having to say our good-byes. Much like greeting guests, I'm always sending them off on their vehicles rather than the threshold of the door. I like that time you spend finishing the conversation: the last minutes of dialogue when neither wants the time to end, so you linger and fill the space between you with things of little importance.

And then you hug, or at least I always hug. I had friend once, Bonk. Bonk told a group she was introducing me to that I was not a hugger before I arrived. No idea where she got that idea; I might not have hugged her but mainly because I wasn't sure I ever trusted her and her hair smelled like patchouli - my least favorite smell. These people shook my hands, which is fine, and then said," we heard you were not a hugger." Bonk and I stopped being friends after that but I made-out with AND HUGGED at least one of the guys I met that night. So, I'm a hugger. Never got good at the European cheek-kiss thing because that is a risky move if someone doesn't know it's coming, but I've been known to get caught in the moment and plant a kiss on someone. I don't usually think about it and naturally land it with near perfect accuracy on the lips. It is a precursor to the hug though; the order is very important here. A kiss before a hug is just a "good-bye". A kiss after the hug is a "please don't leave, but if you must, here is something to remember and hopefully I'll see you again super soon."

I remember hating the moment standing by his car doing that thing I do where I stop being in the moment and I am lost in some endless rambling but in my head I am over-thinking. "Damn, really, this is it? You really have to leave? When will I see you again? Why can't we hang out like this everyday? Will you come back tomorrow?" all this while white-noise is pouring from my lips and I am so somewhere else I need an atmospheric reentry and a map to find my way back to the present. Or, he could kiss me. SNAP! back to reality and I finish off with a hug. Good-bye.

So what happened next is where dream and reality get completely muddled.

Giving what I'd describe as a perfect hug; aware of his palms pressed on my back and the linger that waits for an exhale before a dizzying recovery. Some hugs you just never want to end. Some you just want to lay down right there on the ground together a short period of forever and never let go. That's what a perfect hug leaves churning around in my head hours, even days after it's ended. I hadn't been more relaxed the entire afternoon than I was right there in that hug. It took a few seconds for me to realize we'd unwrapped but the air between us had disappeared once again and his lips were softly dusting across mine. I steadied myself, hands on his arms and eyes closed, imprinting the moment in my mind before opening and mirroring the smile across his face. I stepped back, fingers tucked into the back pockets of my frayed jean shorts and shooed him away with a flick of my head. "Go." I managed to utter through the grin. "Get out of here."

"I know what it's like to kiss you because we made-out in my dream last night."


Betty Underground is a writer from Northen California.