The Call

The high-pitched screech of the old steam whistle finally called the day to a close. The sweltering heat of the shop floor had turned my vision hazy. Wearing the soldering shield all day, I’d practically lost ten pounds from just sweating my ass off. It dripped from my hair, ran down my face, through my mustache and down into my shirt.

With forty or fifty guys working away in this unbearable heat, it reeked like a locker room. Of course, management wasn’t down here. No, they sat up above in their air-conditioned offices, making a mess of things and probably jerking each other off. Dainty-handed, never spent a day under the sweltering sun, spoon-fed sissies the lot of them. Unlike the guys down here, those dweebs upstairs were either so rail thin I could snap them with one hand, or a shuddering mass of lard that could barely take a dump without running out of breath.

The kind of guy who worked here earned his keep, no one else’s. Nose to the grindstone, laboring away for pay, every one of us could bench press a refrigerator or push a truck up a hill and still have enough gas in the tank to hit up the bars, eat a twenty-ounce steak and pull some ass.

Tossing my heavy leather gloves that stank of stale piss onto the workbench, I gave a nod to the guys filing past me. A couple waddled by with big ol’ beer guts.

Well, maybe not all of us could pull ass.

“Hey, Skinny,” I called out to my mate two machines down. He was anything but skinny. About three hundred pounds of fat, it was astounding that he could walk around all day without falling over. “Where we goin’ tonight?”

“Was thinkin’ Oasis,” Skinny said as he got closer, his three chins pouring sweet as he wiped himself with a severely overworked towel around his neck. “Gina should be workin’ tonight.”

“Aw, c’mon man, again?” I asked with a sigh, joining the line as we headed for the punch clock. “Don’t matter how much cash you drop at the bar, those titties ain’t gettin’ in the car with you.”

“Never know,” he said with a shrug.

“Sledge, tell me you got something better in mind,” I asked the solid walking mass of muscle that pulled up. “At least a titty bar. I’m backed up bad and need me a little thing bouncing on my lap.”