Kill Whitey

Webster hated everyone, especially Jesse. Growled and hissed at Jesse every time the guys came over. But he loved me and I loved him back. My apartment would have been a much lonelier place without him.

I bent over. Webster allowed me to pick him up. I scratched the top of his head and behind his ears. He purred a little, enjoying the attention and forgiving me for neglecting his food dish. After a few minutes, his tail started swishing, the signal that he didn’t want to be held anymore, so I put him down and fed him. Then I checked the answering machine. There were no messages. There never were. Just like my cell phone.

The apartment was quiet. Always quiet. I hated how it made me feel. I turned on the stereo, put in some Machine Head, and tried to kill the silence.

Despite my short schedule at GPS, my social life wasn’t exactly active. Usually, I hung out with Darryl, Yul, and Jesse after work. On Sunday afternoons, I visited my folks and had dinner with them. Mom would always ask if I was dating anybody. Dad would always mumble to himself. I think he thought I was gay. Sometimes I thought about fucking with him, telling him I was, that I had a life-partner named Andre and we were in love. But my Dad’s got a heart condition and that shit wouldn’t have been funny if he had a heart attack.

Occasionally, I’d go see a movie by myself or go to a ballgame or a concert with the guys. But that was pretty much it. No girlfriend. It was hard to meet girls. Sure, I had the occasional fling here and there—one night stands or weekend trysts. But nothing permanent. Nothing meaningful or serious. I’d given up on the bar scene. The women I met in bars usually turned out to be batshit fucking crazy, and most of the time I didn’t find that out until after I’d dated them for a few weeks. They were all drama queens or attention whores or just generally unhinged—and one had been married (she’d revealed this to me on our fourth date, when her husband came home from work early).

There were women working at GPS of course, but none in my load area, and it was difficult to meet them while on the clock. I couldn’t exactly walk into another load area and say, “Hi, I’m Larry Gibson. I don’t know you but do you want to go out some time?” First of all, I couldn’t be away from my trailers for that long, or I’d back the whole line up. And secondly, I didn’t want to look like a stalker—just approaching strange women and asking them out. My Mom once told me I should go to church and meet a nice girl, but I wasn’t a church-going guy and doubted I’d have much in common with any woman I’d meet there even if I had been. Online dating seemed too weird to me. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I’d tried a singles night at the local Borders Books one time, and that was a disaster. Turned out women didn’t hang out in the hunting section too much, and I had no interest in chick-lit or poetry or current affairs.

Bars. Churches. Bookstores. There just weren’t many places in York County to meet women.

But now I could add the Odessa to my list.

Thinking again of Sondra, I ate two granola bars and washed them down with a beer. Breakfast of fucking champions. Webster stuck his face in his bowl and sniffed his food. Then he turned his tail up at me and stalked away.

“Fuck you, too, buddy.”

My apartment wasn’t much. Bedroom, living room, bathroom and kitchen—all furnished with stuff I bought from yard sales and thrift stores and Wal Mart. The only really nice things I had were my big screen plasma TV and my stereo, both of which were high end. I’d spent more money on them than I had on my Jeep Cherokee. I had a pretty extensive DVD and CD collection to go with them, as well as complete NFL and NASCAR subscriptions with my satellite provider, and an Xbox and a Playstation. I had a computer that I hardly ever turned on. My email inbox was as empty as my answering machine and I could look at porn and play games on the TV.

That was pretty much it as far as belongings. Everything else was perfunctory. The bare essentials. Bachelor pad 101. The fridge was never full, except for leftovers and pizza and beer. Most of the bathroom cupboards were empty. A few rolls of toilet paper and some toothpaste. There wasn’t even much furniture, really. Most of the rooms seemed bigger than they were, simply because there wasn’t a lot of stuff in them.

It was my home, but it was also the loneliest place in the world.

My crib. My prison.

I finished my beer and then went looking for Webster. I found him curled up on my bed, taking a nap. He opened one eye and looked at me with disdain. Sighing, I lay down beside him and closed my eyes. Webster changed positions, snuggled up against me, and did the same. His fur tickled my nose and his purring rumbled in my chest.

Before I fell asleep, the last thing I remember thinking was wondering where Sondra lived and if she was as lonely as I was when she went there.

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