My Truckstop Bravery

There is a constant shift of smells here at the truckstop. Mostly its exhaust, which gives me a slight headache. Sometimes its basement-cats piss smell. Whatever, it's bad. But that's okay. I'm allowed to do this, there's a satellite radio, indie rock calms my nerves, I can catch up on the new bands I forgot about. A shriveled-up driver, lots of gray beard, comes by and we talk about his car charger, it still works good for him. I tell him that's what I like to hear. I'm hungry, but all there is here is fried chicken. Can't eat that all the time. There are a lot of obese people here. Really obese men whose rolls of fat fall out freely from their already huge t-shirts. They make jokes as they walk past, they complain about how the new trucks aren't built for them. They like to talk to me because they haven't talked to anyone for awhile. They carry laptops.

I gotta tell you, William Shatner's new album sounds really good, and poignant, if you can believe that.

Cigarettes are a way of life. They tap their ashes on the floor as I tell them about plan prices. My boss who talks like Harvey Keitel and has lived a more exciting life than him, smokes and sells like a ex-con with something to prove to the real world, which he does. He's got two boys and he can't get a driver's license. But he knows more about cell phones than anyone I have ever met. He wants to have sex with every young girl that comes through here. He makes me feel desperate, but my life is so much more together than his, and that seems wrong, somehow.

These men, they yell at each other, complain about their trucks, laugh, and drink gallons of liquid in giant sip cups. Their women rub their backs lightly as they wait in line at the counter, getting tickets for showers, laundry, oil changes. Doughnuts, doritos, mountain dew, black trucker coffee. Staples of road-life. No one talks and jokes with the middle-eastern drivers.

Descriptions of vistas on cape cod, in arizona mesas. One trucker to another, in front of me:
"who else could see things like that, working some 9 to 5 job." Mocking me...

There's a cardboard cutout of Apmela Anderson, wearing a skimpy outfit, hawking Sirius Satellite radios on her breasts. I hate it, she's always starring at me, truckers want to take her, make jokes, the next one who wants it I'm gonna sell it to him, after I get off, for whatever cash he's got on hand...

Everything's interesting and boring at the same time.