I must admit that I’m having a tough time wrapping my head around the fact that in six months the bakery will be closed and I’ll need to find another job.

 

 

 

 My always helpful uncle sent me this today…

 

A retired man went into the Job Centre in downtown Nanaimo British Columbia and saw a card advertising for a Gynaecologist’s Assistant. Interested, he went in and asked the clerk for details. The clerk pulled up the file and read, “The job entails getting the ladies ready for the gynecologist. You have to help the women out of their underwear, lay them down and carefully wash their private regions, then apply shaving foam and gently shave off the hair, and then rub in soothing oils so they’re ready for the gynecologist’s examination. The annual salary is $85,000/year, and you’ll have to go to Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan.”

“Good grief, is that where the job is?”

“No sir, that’s where the end of the line is right now.”

 

 

Personally, I think I’d like to work at a company like this…

 

 

Cheers,

♀ & sss

OK, I’m almost embarrassed to be posting this.  17 months between chapters is pathetic. As I said in the Prologue these characters  keep nattering at me and I guess they’ll keep at it until I finish telling their story. There’s no video at the end of this chapter.  I might add one later, but I wasn’t sure if that idea was really working or not.

 

6:47. The confusion only lasts for a minute or two. It’s warm, even down here. It must have been a real scorcher, but at least I’ve slept through the worst of it. I can smell the bacon grease  before I get to the top of the stairs. The dishes are right where I left them (surprise). The cat has pushed open the screen above the sink to get outside and the kitchen is full of flies. Fuck, what a mess.

 

I get the left-over pizza and a cola from the fridge. The breakfast of champions. I call the China Lilly to order some weed from Dave and his mom answers the phone. “Dave not here.”

 

It reminds me of that Cheech and Chong routine and I try to string her along. “It’s me, Dave. Open up I’ve got the stuff.”

 

But she has no sense of ha ha. “Dave not here”, and hangs up.

 

I decide to go for a drive and maybe I’ll bump into Dave and score some weed. That’s the plan anyway. While I’m looking for him I drive past The Great Impasta. Twice. I think  I’ll just stick my head in to see if Lynda is working. It’s not like I’m actually looking for her. If she’s there I might talk to her for a minute, but if not it’s no big deal.

 

Lynda’s there and she looks happy to see me. OK, I admit that I’m not disappointed she’s there. Her shift is done in an hour and she tells me I can wait if I want. She tells me she can only serve me pop because with the beer strike the cops are really watching restaurants for under age drinking. I sit at a corner table drinking water-downed root-beer and try to ignore the other two waitresses who keep looking over at me.

 

After work she wants me to drive to her house so I can talk to her dad. I’m thinking no way in hell do I want to deal with her drunken father.  I  tell her I’m not ready for that yet. I can tell she’s disappointed, but she doesn’t push the issue. I stop outside the China Lilly and tell her I’m just going to run in and see Dave for a minute. She says it would be really hard for her not to smoke up if I do and would I mind not getting any right now? Hell yes I mind. There’s no fucking beer and you want me to go without weed as well? She says even second-hand pot smoke is probably really bad for the baby. I ask her if she’s quit smoking cigarettes, trying hard to keep the edge out of my voice. She tells me she’s down to six a day, like it’s some big accomplishment. I want to tell her that six first-hand smokes are probably worse then a bit of second-hand pot smoke, but for some reason I don’t.

 

We get to my house and I tell her the Grumpies have gone to Vegas for the long weekend; like it’s something they do all the time. It just sounded better than ‘my rich uncle is treating them for an anniversary gift and it’s only the second time either of them has been on an airplane.’ We walk in the house and now added to the greasy, egg-coated dishes, pizza box, empty pop cans and flies, there is a half-eaten bird that the cat has left in the middle of the floor. The whole thing is pretty disgusting even by my standards. Lynda says she can’t believe my mother would leave with the house looking like this. Instead of telling her the truth, I say ‘well they left in a hurry’.

 

She offers to help me clean up the kitchen. I dispose of the bird, kill flies and dry dishes. She does all the actual cleaning. It gives us something ‘normal’ to do for awhile and makes things less awkward. She chatters about her job, school, her dad and sister. I ask about her mom and Lynda just says she left. Other than that I don’t  know what to say to her. If she’s uncomfortable she doesn’t show it, but I don’t really know  her so how could I tell? I go outside with her when she has her sixth cigarette and I manage not to nag her. While we sit there in the dark and she smokes I ask about the baby for the first time . She tells me she’s ten weeks and the doctor says everything looks fine. She heard the baby’s heartbeat for the first time. She says I should come to the next doctors appointment…if I want.

 

After she’s done her smoke we sit there not talking for awhile. I don’t know why I’m so nervous.  I lean over to give her a kiss. Our lips are dry and tight, our teeth click together, she tastes like an ashtray, my arms seem to get in the way. Worst kiss ever. I’m not sure what to do or say next and she just sits there. I want to get high. I want a beer. I want this to feel…right. Finally, I ask if she wants to have a shower. She jumps. I guess I was louder than I meant to be. She says yeah, sure.

 

We go inside and she asks if I can show her around the house first. She’s only seen the kitchen. I think maybe she’s stalling, but then I think I’m a jerk for not showing her around before. I give her the grand tour and finish with my bedroom and realize she’s seen this room before. We stare at each other until she asks if I still want a shower. I say yes and we both turn around to get undressed. When I turn back she’s got one arm across her boobs and her other one is in front of her pussy. I hate that this is so uncomfortable.

 

We’re in the shower and she says I can wash her if I’d like so I take the bar of soap and I wash her so fast my hands are just a blur. I wash her like its a race and if there’s any soap left on her when the water gets cut off (and that could happen any second) I’ll lose. Then I hand her the soap with a big dumb ‘beat that’ kinda grin on my face. She takes the soap and starts washing me. Slowly. And the light bulb in my head goes on. This is much nicer.  She starts at my shoulders and works her way down my chest. I never knew that my nipples are sensitive or that right below my hip bones is ticklish. She soaps up my cock and balls and ten seconds later I shoot my load.

 

Fuck.

She laughs. I swear this is the most embarrassing moment of my life.  OK, here’s the truth…I’ve only had sex with 3…no…2 other girls and like the night I knocked-up Lynda, drugs/alcohol was a big factor every time. I know she was going out with Carlos for like a year so she’s probably done everything, but still I’m eighteen and she’s only sixteen. I’m suppose to be the experienced one. I’m such a fucking loser.

Jennifer emailed me on Tuesday:

 

Hi

Deviant Dining is this Thursday.

I am wondering if you would like to be one of a few people I have asked to do live erotic nude readings through dinner. 

You would be expected to arrive coiffed in an alluring way, then once people start eating randomly each person asked to do so will stand up and walk over to the bondage chair.  There you will slowly take off your clothes, and sit down and do a reading of a piece of erotica that will be stimulating for all listening.  The piece should be 3-5 minutes long and you would need to find your own piece/s to read.  Self written, inter-net find, from a book etc.
You could strip down to the nude, or to a nice pair of silky panties and stockings. 

Are you up for this?
Let me know.

Jennifer

 

I said yes and immediately started fretting. Not about what I would wear…I had a brand new pair of very pretty knickers that I was saving for a Lounge event. That along with garter and black stockings is what I planned to strip down to and I wasn’t particularly concerned about that part of it.

 

I was worried about what I would read and how it would be received.  A lot of what is written here is anecdotal and I wanted to tell a story not just relate a sexy occurrence or fantasy. I hadn’t realized it before, but most of my erotic fiction is written from the female point of view. That’s just fine when the audience is reading the story themselves. Hopefully it’s written well enough that they hear and see the female protagonist. But if the audience is sitting in front of me…I just didn’t think pretty knickers would be enough to make a feminine character believable. In the end I picked this poem and this short story, both written from a male point of view.

 

I have a tendency to shake and the more stressed I am, the shakier I get. I was the second reader of the night and by the time I got undressed, I was having a hard time holding the paper still enough to read. I haven’t had much public speaking experience. I toasted that bride and this bride and made them both cry. Besides that, no, not much.

 

It’s a funny thing…this blog is quite popular so I knew that a lot of people had read the pieces I’d chosen. I’d had nice comments about them so I guess I knew that people liked them, but still I was really nervous about putting my voice to my words.

 

So, how did it go? Well, nobody boo’d or threw things at me. Is that what I was worried would happen? No, I guess not. I wasn’t expecting the applause and all the really nice things people said to me. It felt good.

 

When I got home from work the next morning there was a tweet from Jennifer:

You were fucking amazing this evening – I’m really proud of you!

 

I like Jennifer. She makes me happy.

 

Cheers,

♀ & sss

There’s a type of erotic fiction that I’d like to write, but I’m having a hard time making it work. I’ve long been interested in why we’re wired the way we are, why are we turned on by certain things/situations and the evolution of our fetishes. But I’m not thinking of it in any kind of clinical sense. The idea I have is to write an erotic short story that not only captures a character and his/her kink, but also gives some sense of where that kink came from.

 

One of the big problems I’m having with this idea is, the origin of a fetish often happens long before we tun 18. Our sexual wiring starts when we start, but to explore the things that happen as a child in a piece of erotica without being creepy is difficult.  If I strip away all that is erotic from the part of the story that takes place before the age of consent and turn on the smut in the second part it seems like two separate stories.

 

Here’s a couple of paragraphs that I was quite happy with. Lisa’s ‘oral fixation’ started when she was about 7 and her dentist, who looked like an old walrus and smelled of Old Spice and pipe tobacco pulled out a couple of her baby teeth. When she was 14 her dentist looked like David Cassidy. The Partridge Family was all the rage and Lisa had a huge crush on him. Neither of these men ever did anything inappropriate to Lisa, but a sexual connection was made in her mind. My attempts to combine those to parts in a way that flows and is erotic, but not creepy have failed.

 

Here’s another example. When Mini was 6 or 7 years old I took him to a local water park one summer afternoon. The park was crowded with kids splashing in the water and parents sitting in the shade around the sides. I noticed a little girl (maybe 4 or 5) sitting on one of the water jets. She was just sitting there rocking back and forth with a big smile on her face, totally unaware of all the other kids playing around her. I’d love to start a story from that point. Maybe that was the first time she noticed how nice that zone could feel. Maybe her mother notices what she’s doing and makes a huge public scene. Maybe that’s the start of a being an exhibitionist… A powerful image with lot’s of possibilities, but how to use it without being creepy is difficult.

 

♀ & I were talking about my wiring the other night. When I was in grade 4 I had a teacher who was verbally and pyscologically abusive . I had troubles eating and sleeping, the skin peeled off my hands and eventually I was removed from her classroom. When I was 10, my uncle married his first wife. From the time they got married until I was about 14 she took great delight in tormenting me. She believed I wasn’t masculine enough. She’d slap me around, pin me to the ground and tickle or pinch me until I wet myself then tease me about getting beat up by a girl. I don’t remember either of these women with anything resembling fondness, but when I look back on my dating history, I’ve always been attracted to dominate women.  I get that context is everything. I understand that tormenting a child like that is wrong, but tormenting an adult sissy like that is hot. I’d just like to figure out how to combine those two things into a single story.

 

 

Cheers,

♀ & sss

Writing has become very difficult lately. Or to be honest, writing that doesn’t sound like crap (to me) has become difficult.

 

But the muse hasn’t left me entirely and in some ways that makes this current dry spell even more frustrating. I’ll write a few lines or a couple of paragraphs and think ‘holy doodle, I’m on a roll now’, but then it leaves me and everything I write after that sucks.

 

Here’s a couple of paragraphs from a story called Oral Fixation

 

There were several ways Lisa’s dentist, Dr. Schmidt, could have reacted when he returned to his office to retrieve his wife’s forgotten anniversary present Thursday night and discovered, in Examination Room #3, Lisa bound hand and foot to the chair while his hygienist, Sook-li, worked intently on Lisa’s nether region. He could have watched quietly from the doorway then gone home to give his wife the shagging of her life or he could have burst into the room with a raging hard-on and asked to join in the fun or after seeing what was going on he could have left and then the following day in a calm and measured fashion he could have reprimanded (or even fired) Sook-Li and had his receptionist contact Lisa to tell her they no longer wanted her as a patient.

It was some time later before Lisa could think of any of those possibilities. Sook-li had the examination light aimed at Lisa’s crotch and the magnifying mirror was positioned so Lisa had an unobstructed view of her pussy. The hygienist had used two different brushes with the high speed compressor. She’d started on Lisa’s perineum with a stiff brush. She did all around her outer lips, spread her apart and did her inner lips with the same precision as when she’d done Lisa’s teeth an hour before. Then Sook-li switched to a softer brush. She moved it up and down along the sides of her hood, back and forth across the top of it, around and around her clit until it was so engorged Lisa thought it would burst. Then Sook-li put the ultra-sonic brush directly against Lisa’s clit and her brain just melted. It flowed from her pussy like a ribbon of sunshine, off the end of the chair in a sparkling waterfall and was now a puddle in between Sook-li’s sensible shoes. Being tied to the chair, she couldn’t actually see the puddle, but she was quite certain that’s where her brain was.

sss

There’s a link in the sidebar to the earlier chapters…

I work four days on and two days off at the mill. During my probation I work two weeks of days, then two weeks of afternoons, then two weeks of night shift. I go through that rotation twice. That way all the foremen get a good look at me and they all fill out assessment forms at the end of the three months and then Mr. Peters and two other managers decide if I have a job or not.

It’s mid-August and I’m exactly half way done my probation. I’ve just finished my first two weeks of night shift and I feel like a zombie. The good news is that going from night shift to day shift means I actually get three days off. The bad news is it’s been over 100 degrees here every day for the past week and there’s no relief in sight. You can’t even imagine how hot it is at work. We drink gallons of water and take salt tablets and our boots fill up with sweat. It’s gross, but the really bad news is we’re into the third week of a beer strike. All the beer here comes from two breweries and they’re both on strike and it’s stinking hot and everyone is thirsty and cranky.

The closest lake is an hour’s drive from here. There’s a river that goes through town. It’s cold as hell and flows way to fast for most people to swim in, but a couple of years ago they opened a nice park (upstream from the sewage treatment plant and the sawmill) and they built a huge horse-shoe shaped dock out into the river. The water is still as cold as hell, but at least you won’t get swept away and when it’s this hot out the river is damn near refreshing.

I consider stopping for a dip on the way home, but I’m just too tired. I’m going to have a cold shower and go to sleep in my subterranean basement before the house heats up.  I’m daydreaming about how good a cold beer would taste when I pull into the driveway and almost hit my dad as he walks behind his car. He tells me to park on the street. They’ll be leaving in an hour. He tells me my Uncle Charlie is treating them to three days in Las Vegas. He says they didn’t tell me earlier because they didn’t want any big parties happening while they’re gone. Mom comes out with a suitcase and says they trust me to be responsible and act like an adult while they’re away. I think if they trust me why did they wait until now to tell me they were going away? And what the hell does ‘act like an adult’ mean? We don’t really think of you as an adult. We just want you to act like one. Put on a good show for the neighbours.

Mom makes me breakfast before they leave and I promise to do the dishes before I go to bed. She says if I let egg dry onto the dishes in this heat they’ll never come clean and she’ll just have to throw them out and we’ll have to use paper plates and plastic forks and her mother scrimped and saved to buy her those dishes.  “He said he’d do them.” Dad says as he pushes her towards the door.

I ask them if they have everything: Tickets, toothbrushes, condoms. He says yes, yes and I took yours it’s not like you were using them. Mom slaps him on the shoulder. I ask if they want me to make sure the iron is unplugged. Dad says no it’s in the trunk. Mom pretends to look cross and gets in the car. It’s one of those family jokes. Whenever we went away, she was certain she’d left something plugged in or unlocked and she’d worry about it until Dad drove back home to check. One trip it was the iron and she got more and more upset about it. Finally Dad pulled over, got out of the car, opened the trunk, got the iron and put it on her lap and without saying a word started driving again. Funny stuff.

I stay in the cold shower until my head starts to hurt. One of the guys at the mill told me he buys a bag of ice on his way home from work, fills his bath tub up with cold water, tosses the ice in and soaks in the tub until the ice all melts. He lives in a second floor apartment though.  I drip naked through the house and can feel the temperature drop as I go down stairs. Even though the Grumpies aren’t here, I won’t smoke up in the house. I go outside and check my stash. Nothing but roaches. I pack three into a hash pipe and spark it up. The extra paper almost makes me choke, but I manage to hold it in. It tastes like dirt and ashes, but I don’t care. I’ll call Dave later.

I dream of Liz again. She’s here in my room and she’s smiling at me. Her big green eyes flash mischievously at me like she has a secret and she hasn’t quite decided if she’ll share it. She dances in front of me and it’s hard to focus on any one part of her. My eyes seem to slide all over, like she’s made of glass. I get little flashes…every fourth frame of a movie:  her curly red hair, skin so pale it glows in the darkness, a powder blue bra, then her naked breasts round and firm with tiny pink nipples, a splay of cinnamon coloured freckles goes down her chest between them and seems to cup each breast, a small curly triangle of red slightly darker then her head.

Then I’m on top of her. My face is buried in her hair and it smells like apricots. I hold a breast in my hand. It’s soft and yet firm. I pinch the nipple and she moans in my ear. My cock aches for her and it finds its way to her entrance like it’s always know the way. I feel her legs wrap around me and I slide into her warm wet pussy.  Her tongue slides in and out of my mouth with the same rhythm.

She starts to dissolve as soon as I start to come, like sugar cubes in my morning coffee. That feeling of being inside the girl is never quite long enough and I lay there half asleep, trying to hold onto it for a few extra minutes until the wet spot gets cold and I’m wide awake.

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I was sequestered in the office last weekend, busy writing the next chapter of Death & Taxes  surfing smut and playing Backgammon when I came across this little jem  at <Sex-Kitten.net> by my favourite PSO, MS. Angela.

You don’t know her? Seriously?  Even if your not in the market for trash talk (today) she’s a fine writer and has a very entertaining blog. Here’s what they say about her:

Angela St. Lawrence is the PhoneSex Operator of choice for the thinking man. While she’s been called many things by her clients (“The way she riffs on matters sexual and otherwise, she is my white Billie Holiday” & “A 21st century Anais Nin with just a touch of Machiavelli.”), mostly she just likes to be called Angela. Make sure you visit her award winning website– and her blog, Zen Fetish.

“Don’t kiss me on the neck.”

“Why? I thought you liked it.”

“I do. Just not right now. I just want to be fucked. Just stick it in.”

“Okay, but don’t bitch at me later.”

“Christ, shut the hell up and stick in it.”

And then he is pushing her over the kitchen sink, sliding her skirt up over her generous, round ass. Surprised to see she is not wearing panties, he thinks better of saying anything; she obviously isn’t in the mood to listen.

As he goes to push her right leg out further with the cap of his bent knee, she moans.

“Hurry up, damn it. Give me that cock.”

And so he presses between her legs, again surprised when the head of his cock glides so easily between her already-moist thighs to bob against her sodden bush. She grunts, wiggling her slit back onto the head. He feels himself slide into her–fast and deep–with hardly any effort.

As he starts moving in and out, he can hear the slick sound of her juices coating his pistoning cock and feel them oozing between the hair on his balls. The smell of her sex wafts up to surround both of them. He moves quicker; her animal need has quickened his pulse, sharpened his need.

She’s curled her fists along the edge of the sink, her white knuckle grasp helping her to push back. Her breaths are fast. She is grunting and groaning, then whimpering.

“I need it. Right there. Yes. There.”

And then she is crying and her cunt is rhythmically spasming around his cock as she begins cumming. The raw quickness of her orgasm pushes him over the edge and he is pumping his load into her, his face buried between her angora-covered shoulder blades.

They stay that way, hunched over the sink like twin embryos as they catch their breath.

And then she stands up straight, his dick sliding out of her and down her thigh–a slug, leaving it’s slime.

“Okay, leave me alone, now. I need to finish these dishes.”

There’s a link in the sidebar to the earlier chapters…

I dream I’m in a glass elevator going up the side of a tall building. I’ve never actually been in a glass elevator before or even a really tall building for that matter. The three-story hotel on Main Street is the tallest building in this hick town and the elevator is so slow you’re better off taking the stairs. I’m not usually afraid of heights, but as the car climbs I feel more and more uneasy. I want it to stop so I can get off, but I can’t find a control panel. A vast city opens up below me and I’m not certain that this really is a glass elevator. It seems to be just a narrow platform hurtling up the side of an impossibly tall building. My guts are knotted and it’s hard to breathe and there’s nothing to hold on to. The lift stops and I’m on a steep roof. I’m so high up that I can’t hear any noise from the street. I feel dizzy and sick. Suddenly, there’s someone else there with me and we’re struggling. I can’t see who it is, but it seems like whoever it is is smaller then me and yet they seem to over-powering me. We get close to the edge and I try to scream, but the wind takes my voice. I startle awake just as I drop off the edge.

The remnants of the dream evaporate, but not the fog in my brain. My subterranean bedroom only has one ground level window and I’ve blacked it out so the only light is the green glow of the clock radio and the click every minute as the next number drops down is often the only sound I can hear down here. It clicks and I look over at it. 6:05. I’m still staring at it when 6:07 clicks down. I can’t figure out how this number applies to me. Is it AM or PM? Am I late for work or have I only been asleep for a couple of hours? I feel the top of the clock and the alarm switch is off, but should it be? Maybe I forgot to set it or maybe I turned it off when I was still half-asleep. Rotating shifts are fucking me up worse then the actual work. I get out of bed and open the window. It’s light out, but it’s summer so 6:10 could be AM or PM. I sit back down on my bed and try to remember…anything. When did I work last? The shifts all seem to meld into one long shift. What did I do before I went to bed? Was I drunk? Possibly. Was I high? Probably. 6:16 and I still can’t find any markers to tell me even if I’m supposed to be awake or asleep.

Finally, at 6:19 I decide that AM or PM my mom would be at home and if I hadn’t shown up for work the mill would have called and she’d wake me up. I pull on a pair of shorts and go out the basement door. My own private entrance opens up underneath a wrap-around deck and faces out into our large back yard.  Here under the deck is my own little sanctuary. It’s covered and I can hear anyone approaching so this is where I keep my stash. There’s a good sized doobie in my roach jar, almost half a joint, so I spark that up rather then rolling a fresh one.  On this side of the house the deck reaches a large hedge that goes along the property line. Because of the shade from the deck, there are no leaves on the hedge down here. Our neighbour keeps the Model A Ford he’s been fixing up for the past 10 years parked against the hedge. It’s completely covered with a tarp except for this side. He figures our deck will protect it. I stand close to the hedge a piss on it through the branches.

I sit down on a milk crate to finish my joint and I start to remember stuff. Well I’m not certain what day of the week it is, but it’s my Saturday. I finished work at midnight last night and now I’m off for two days. Dave and I drank a couple of bottles of wine in his parents’ restaurant after it closed last night. He told me this hilarious story; the night before he’d come home liquored up and really high and decided he wanted to have a bath. They have one of those old fashioned claw foot tubs. It’s really deep and the spigot is really narrow and it takes a long time to fill so he had lots of time to get something to eat and have another beer before his bath was ready. Well, the booze and the weed and the food mixed with the hot water and Dave passed out right there in the tub. Lucky for him he only slid down to chin level, Unlucky for him was his mom coming into the bathroom the next morning and finding him naked and blue in a tub full of water. The way Dave described waking up cold and wet and naked and hung-over and his mom’s hysterical screaming and then his dad running in and both of them yelling in Japanese and broken English.  Fuck it was funny. Hell, that’s an even worse way to wake up then how I woke up today.

I go upstairs, eat last nights leftovers and go back to bed for another six hours.

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There’s a link on the sidebar to the beginning of this…

Other then the Indians Natives, Dave the Tokin’ Nip was the only non-white kid in our class. And the chuggers don’t really count. My dad calls them ‘apples’, red on the outside and white on the inside. He’s careful about who he says stuff like that to. It’s not like we live in some upper-crust elite suburb. It’s a small interior town and there are just not very many non-European immigrants here. I’ve never even met a real coloured black person before. Anyway, Dave’s always kinda stood out, you know? For some kids being different is tough, but for Dave it was all good. Stuff always seems to come easy for him; grades, sports, girls… and loads of friends of course. Part of that is he’s the go-to-guy when you need weed, but it’s more then that. He’s a lot of fun to hang out with. He doesn’t have an accent at all, but when he’s drinking or telling jokes he does this killer Asian accent. It’s funny as hell.

The bad part about Dave is he cannot keep a secret. I wouldn’t call him a ‘gossip’, he doesn’t go out of his way to tell people shit, he’s just friendly and chatty and usually high and stuff comes out. He swears he never told anyone about the wedding present, but he’s full of shit. Two weeks after she threw the beer bottle at me, Lynda starts calling the house. Because I’m still on probation, I’m working all different shifts at the mill and when I say ‘working’ I really mean it. I’ve never had to work like this before and I am bagged when I get home. Parts of me hurt that I didn’t know I had before. I have a couple of beers after my shift (the only good thing about shift work is anytime is miller time) and smoke a joint before I go to bed and sleep until it’s time to go back to work. The money’s great, but I’m to fucking tired to spend much of it.

Anyway, Lynda starts calling the house every day and my mom is all excited about it, like it’s Farrah Fawcett calling. I really can’t be bothered to call her back, but eventually she calls when I’m at home and awake. Mom hands me the phone grinning from ear to ear. Guess who this is? She mouths. The psycho bitch I knocked up? I mouth back.

Lynda’s all nice and sweet on the phone. She’s heard I’m working. She’s sooo happy for me. She’d really like to get together and talk about stuff. She promises not to throw anything at me. She doesn’t actually apologize for it, just says being pregnant fucks with her hormones. I agree to meet her the next afternoon.  Mom comes back into the kitchen after I hang up. She looks so pleased. I can’t stand it so I go down to the China Lily to see Dave and score some weed. We’re standing outside the back of the restaurant smoking a joint and I tell him about talking to Lynda. He says you know how to make a hormone, right? Don’t pay her. He kills me.

I meet Lynda at a coffee shop the next day and she still looks skinny as hell. She notices the way I look at her and the very first thing she says to me is her boobs are bigger. She says they could get way bigger and they’ll probably stay big even after the baby’s born. Seriously. That’s what she starts off with. The only thing I can think of to say is ‘super’. She tells me she’s been to the doctor and everything’s fine. She starts telling me about how bad alcohol can be for the baby like it’s something I never would have thought of on my own. She says smoking isn’t very good for the baby either, but the stress of quitting might be worse so the doctor just encouraged her to cut back.

She asks about the job and my parents and she tells me some lame story about her sister and stuff going on at the Italian Delight and I can tell she really is making an effort. Part of my brain knows that she’s only being nice because I have a well paying job and she needs me to support her and she’s probably heard about the wedding present. On the other hand, it’s 1981 and there aren’t many well paying jobs out there for a guy fresh out of school and we’re both stuck in this one-horse town and I’m going to be paying for this kid one way or another and for the life of me I can’t see a way off of this path.

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Wow. Can you believe it? A second chapter. There’s a link to the beginning of this on the side bar.

There are no shades of grey with my dad; no what if’s or maybe’s. He doesn’t rant or rave, he just says what he thinks and people listen. He’s got a deep voice like Johnny Cash and he always looks you straight in the eye when he’s talking to you. He’s also a big man, not fat really, but he just seems to occupy a lot of space. Whatever the reason, not many people contradict him.

He’s a foreman at the mill and his shifts almost always have the best safety records and they often have the highest production numbers. Every month, the shift that has the fewest injuries combined with the highest production gets a bonus, so the guys on his shift thinks he’s great. He calls them ‘his guys’ and they’re always coming over to the house asking for advice.

He’s the godfather to more kids in this town then practically anyone. Speaking of kids, he coaches Little League Baseball in the summer and one of the years I played, we went all the way to the provincial championship. We even got our picture in the newspaper. My mom kept the clipping.

I wouldn’t want you to think I just do what ever the hell he tells me to do. We argue lots. But this thing with Lynda being preggers, well after a couple of weeks he starts to make sense. He tells me that even if I don’t marry her, we’re still going to have this connection for a very long time and we should try to get along. He tells me to take her out and get to know her better. He tells me that since we’re both going to be parents to this child we should figure out how that’s going to work.

He asks me how I was planning to get started on my career as a roadie. It’s not like there’s a roadie school anywhere. Other then a local bar band I don’t even know any musicians. Then of course he had to remind me about the time I lit my buddy Dave’s car on fire putting in a car stereo. Actually we were hot knifing hash with a blow torch and ‘electrically inept’ just sounded like a better excuse.

In his mind, running away isn’t even an option. He tells me that if I run away Lynda will be on welfare and the government lawyers will chase me to the ends of the earth to collect child support. He says him and my mom will want to be able to see their grandchild and how will they be able to do that if I’m a deadbeat dad? And besides all that, the day will come when I’ll have to look that kid in the eye and explain why I wasn’t there for him. Of course my dad is looking me in the eye when he tells me that.

So I go to the restaurant and ask Lynda if she wants to go out after she finishes work. She looks at me real suspicious, like all I want is to get laid again. I must admit, I did think of that. It’s not like she could get any more pregnant. But she says OK and I pick her up just after 10 pm. She gets in my car and goes to light a cigarette. I tell her she can’t smoke in my car so she puts it back in her purse. I tell her I don’t want her to smoke while she’s pregnant. I tell her it’s my baby as well and I don’t want her to poison it. She gets pissed off and says I can’t tell her what to do and then says she wants to go home.

I stew about it for a few days and then I start to think maybe my dad’s right. Not about getting married, but about this kid being as much mine as it is hers. So I go back to the restaurant at the end of her shift. She’s sitting in the smoking section with another waitress drinking a beer. I get really pissed off and tell her she can’t drink and smoke when she’s pregnant, the baby will be all fucked up just like her sister. She tells me to go fuck myself and throws her beer at me.

My dad gets me an interview with Mr. Peters, the personnel manager at the mill. I’ve known him for years of course. I broke his kids collar bone playing flag football at a company picnic one year. Dad says I need to go through the interview process just like anyone else. The interview doesn’t start off very well. Mr. Peters comments on how much I’ve filled out since he last saw me. He says pretty soon I’ll be as big as my old man. Without even thinking about it I say, yeah, strong like ox, smart like tractor. Mr. Peters thinks I’m making fun of my dad and starts giving me a lecture. I don’t know if I should admit that I was calling myself a big dummy. So I don’t say anything. The rest of the interview goes good and I get the job. Well I’m on three months probation before I can get into the union then I get the job, but my dad says if I’m punctual, work hard and work safe I’ll get on for sure.

He says he’s proud of me, getting a real job and taking responsibility for my life. I don’t really get the connection so I tell him about my attempts with Lynda. It’s like I’m talking and he’s hearing something completely different. He starts going on about how much money I’ll be making in a couple of years and benefit packages and education funds for me and my family and pension funds- for fuck sake, I’m eighteen and he’s talking about my retirement. I try again. I tell him Lynda and I have never even been out on a date. We screwed once. She threw a beer bottle at me. He tells me about the wedding present he and my mom are going to give us. Then he tells me not to tell anyone, especially Lynda because that shouldn’t influence her decision to marry me or not.

A couple of days later I’m smoking a joint with Dave the tokin’ nip and I tell him what’s been going on with Lynda and how the grumpies are in total denial about what a head case she really is. Dave says so according to your pa, getting married because you knocked up some bitch you don’t even like is the right thing to do, but getting married to get a cool present is wrong?

It’s 1981 and even the music sucks

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