“Go the back way; through Langston.” Olsen requested. I nearly always do. “So. You know how I refuse to wear a condom?” he goes on to ask.
I dump the Chevy off 35 and float through the stop sign onto 33 headed east. “I know you claim to refuse. Never heard if you do or don’t. For sure, you never refused me.”
“I’d never refuse you, sweetie.” he says.
“Really? Your wife left you and you wanna do the fake gay thing? [With me?] You know what they say about homophobes.”
“Man, fags’ll say anything to get you to think that you’re repressed or some such shit.” Olsen pulls off his OSU ball cap and dips it into the airstream.
I wrote the above a ways back but never posted it. I am not sure why not. I’ve posted plenty shorter. I need to tweek this to make it more clear that the driver is gay.
On the way home yesterday I came up with a handful of exchanges between the driver and his buddy Olsen. It flet like good dialogue, but I couldn’t really make a full conversation stream out of the pieces. It reminds me of the piece I did with the actress discussing things with her assistant a ways back.
I should make it clear that I’m not gay. And I don’t have any close friends that are that could provide me guidance in the accuracy or authenticity of the following conversations. Were I to significantly expand this piece I’d do more research. For now I’ve just used my imagination. The driver shouldn’t be offensive; Olsen probably should.
These aren’t in order…
“So you wouldn’t fuck a girl at all? Even a hot one? Do you even think hot girls are hot?” Olsen asked.
“No. No. Yes.”
“OK, good. Wait, what? Would you fuck one or not?”
I’ve always tried not to go into detail with Olsen. He’s not ready for this conversation–neither am I.
“No, I wouldn’t fuck a girl not even a hot one. Yes, I do know the difference between hot and just regular pretty.”
“My wife’s smokin’. You’ve know that. You wouldn’t fuck her?” Olsen pauses. I know what’s coming. “Not even in the ass?”
“Nope. Not even in the ass.” I’ve tried to keep things short. Tried to keep things factual and basic. I can feel it’s not going to work better than I can feel the Oklahoma evening air rushing int he open window.
“You know I’m not gay because I like ‘fucking people in the ass’, right?”
“But you do?”
“Have sex or like it?”
His look tells me to stop playing word games.
“Yes on both.”
—
“You can’t be gay. You drive this truck.”
Admittedly, the truck isn’t very gay. A 1978 Chevy Fleetside red with a white stripe down the side. It’s a classic Oklahoma farm truck. Beat up bed. Dented and rusting back bumper. Even has a gun rack–empty except for my rope and calf string. I point to the plastic Bugs Bunny I superglued to to the dash.
“OK. Gluing that there was gay.”
“I don’t mean gluing gluing it. I mean Bugs. Bugs is gay.”
“What the fuck are you talking about? Bugs Bunny isn’t gay.”
I give him a wink about as flamboyantly as I ever can be.
“Jeezus. Ugh. Please don’t ever do that again.” Olsen shivers like I’ve shown him a dead body. “I’m just saying that fags don’t drive trucks. Hell women don’t even drive trucks.”
“Now, what the fuck are you talking about? Jamie drove a truck. Christy drove a truck. Joan drives a truck. Hello! Your soon to be ex wife drives a truck.”
“Yeah, but once you’re fucking them they want you to drive them around. It’s like they have the truck just so they can get driven around in it.”
I have more of this stuck in my head. Hopefully I’ll get to it later today, but for now I’ve got to get the work week started.
Day 254