Redneck Press with Fried Chicken and Coffee

The first girl that came out was a lava lamp. As if her arms moved through water. Her warm motion prac­ticed and secure. Shad­ows gath­ered under her breasts. Cop­per light ovaled across her belly, licked down her thigh. Her eyes never focused. Not once. I thought she'd look at some­one, per­haps the lawyer with the court­room voice and glint­ing watch. Maybe the bouncer with the rough knuck­les and thatch­work stub­ble. But no. She was aloof. Unat­tain­able. Full of the dis­tance ten­dered by power. The pale head of a scar wrig­gled out the top of her red g-string and plunged back under with her motions. A quick, scabrous expo­sure. I sat there and watched the scar, hop­ing it'd reap­pear. Those glimpses of the real are precious.

This was years ago. Back when I worked at a tech­nol­ogy shop in Dal­las, when I com­muted three hours a day and read books about UNIX and drove back home wearily, delighted in the dust of the road that weaved to our house. Lunch at the strip joint was T's idea. He'd appeared in my office door around 10am, shirt­sleeves rolled up, his hairy fore­arms thick and pur­pled with veins.

—Titty bar for lunch?

I hes­i­tated. I always did.

—Don't be a pussy. It's only 8 bucks. All you can eat buf­fet. Tons of titty to look at. You'll want to go home and bang your wife after. T held up his fin­gers in a V and slith­ered his tongue through the ges­ture. —No bet­ter way to spend lunch. Let's go. We're all going.

All was a group of geeks that I worked with. The UNIX team. Ter­mi­nal users. Command-line kung-fu. Thick, stubby fin­gers on most of them, made for pound­ing key­boards and fondling plas­tic pens with chewed tips. Bel­lies that had never known flat. Mouths ripe with tech­ni­cal acronym. Our faces glowed in the oper­ose jihad of com­puter mon­i­tor radi­a­tion. We were all bet­ter than our cubi­cles, smarter and big­ger than our jobs. Right? None of us resem­bled our walls. None of us were aver­age grey men. This was always the fear in the hive, the mum­bled rumor of the farm. We'd look around at the white­boards, at our droop­ing plants, at the office dust glint­ing in the hair on our arms and think that surely there must be a mis­take. Surely we have just been overlooked.

The bar was shad­owed and loud. Some men were stiff in their seats. Sweat­ing glasses squeaked under their fin­gers. Oth­ers so relaxed they might have been on a couch in their house, their hands mov­ing con­ver­sa­tion­ally in the air, their faces open in a very human, mas­cu­line way. Some had a dark, des­per­ate look and huffed their hot breath into the clink­ing ice of their empty glass. A few women as well, with thin arms draped over broad shoul­ders in suits. Naked knees at eye level. Clench­ing ten­dons, an etch­ing of mus­cle along a calf. Goose­flesh around a nip­ple. Bel­lies wet with light. Music that thumped in the gut. A scar of some sort in everyone.

The UNIX team was quiet. Stu­dious in their eat­ing for the most part. Chicken ripped from bone with bared teeth. Gelati­nous sauce quiv­er­ing on the tines of forks. The reflec­tion of a breast swelled in the cold hol­low of my spoon. T wan­tonly gazed at the women, punched those of us in the shoul­der sit­ting next to him. —Imag­ine pin­ning those legs back behind her ears, he said. —God, I'm going to fuck my wife so hard tonight. With his eyes, he ges­tured down at a bulge in his pants as a dancer moved past. She never focused. —I think it scared her, he said to every­one on the way back.

The boss was wait­ing for us when we returned to the office, tap­ping his pen on the desk. —The Kansas City upgrade needs to be reap­plied. It was messed up last night. His eyes focused on T. —They're run­ning on half-capacity with no backup. You've got to watch this shit. No more screw-ups!

We retired to our chairs and grey walls, the thrum of the machines around us. A cool hiss of recy­cled air. The light in the office was unre­lent­ing, harsh in its expo­sure. T worked his fin­gers into his dry scalp, scratch­ing. He shrugged his shoul­ders at the rest of us. —Wasn't that last bitch hot? We should go again. Some­time real soon.

I thought he was going to put up the V sign again, but his hands slid into his pock­ets and he slid into his cube out of our sight. Mon­i­tors flick­ered on. Gray walls rose around every­one. Our thoughts ren­dered into stran­gling wires. We approached our lives and work with the same lack of focus that the strip­per offered us. Our fin­gers thick­ened and blunted to our tasks the way her body curved into hers. We manip­u­lated that which doesn't exist. At least the strip­per worked in the realm of the phys­i­cal, in the cur­rents of deep need and that which is inescapable. Our toil was con­tained in a screen. A plas­tic, hum­ming square, only able to endure as long as the black cord wasn't yanked from the wall.

Brad Green's fic­tion has appeared or soon will in The Blue Earth Review, Sto­ry­glos­sia, eli­mae, Word Riot, Thieves Jar­gon and sev­eral other jour­nals. He's cur­rently at work on a novel. Read his blog at http://​ele​vateth​e​o​r​di​nary​.blogspot​.com.