A Normal Life

A Normal Life

Disclaimer: everyone engaging in sex is 18 or older. In some cases, much older.

My name is Parker. Johan Sebastian. Not Bach, or Strauss. Parker.

When I was born my grandfather convinced my father, who convinced my mother, that I would be a great and famous musician.

Fer gawd's sake, I wasn't even dry and he'd had this revelation as he called it.

So for the first few years of my life I answered to Johan. Then I went to school. First the teachers made a big deal about my name, then the kids made a big deal about my name.

But you know how kids are.

After that I insisted my name, my only name, was Parker. Of course my folks weren't happy about it, but when I would only respond to Parker they eventually accepted it.

Grandpa never did. I didn't care.

I like to think I led a normal life.

By the time I was seven Parker was well established everywhere as my name. The few kids who tried digging at my name learned quickly. Yeah, I spent time in detention, but my name was Parker.

I did the usual things kids did back then; sand lot baseball, bike riding and fishing down at the lake in the summer. Scrum football in the fall and not much outside in the winter if it rained, snowmen and snow ball fights in the snow.

During the winter I'd build model airplanes I could fly in the summer when the winds were light. My favorite was a Beechcraft Stagger Wing when I was thirteen. I'd been working a paper route for over a year and used some of that money to buy the kit and radio controls.

Damn that plane was sweet. Bright yellow with blue high lights. I got the balance perfect. She even won a few awards at local model airplane shows. My first wife destroyed it in a fit of rage. I divorced her.

She ended up with some soldier who dragged her off to Georgia or some such place.

Fuck her. She wasn't even a good fuck once we married. Or house keeper either.

I wasn't the brightest student in high school, I made good grades - middle of my class.

I never really thought about college, my folks were barely middle class, making enough to get by and that was it so there was no way they could even take out loans, and I wouldn't have asked them anyway. So I knew I'd need a trade. I didn't know what, didn't like the idea of working with electricity and plumbers always seem to get called at the worst times.

My dad worked, and I do mean worked, as a Brick Layer. He'd come home dead tired, his fingers bent from arthritis, his back so stiff he couldn't pick his kids up. But he'd get down on his knees to hug us and ask about our days.

I knew that wasn't for me. Hell, Dad told me to stay away from it. He said find something clean to do.

Mom stayed home with us kids. There were four of us. My sister Janey was oldest by a year, then Clarice, then me - three years behind Clarice, and Norman a year behind me.

My folks never argued, well if they did they made sure we didn't hear them. They encouraged us to try new things (as long as we could afford them). Mom took us to museums, parks and free concerts. I heard Country, Folk, Jazz and Classical music growing up. She always had the radio on so there was Pop echoing through the house.

I was on the wrestling team in high school, started in the 120 class in my soph year and moved up to 126 for Junior and 132 as a Senior. I could win the local matches, but get my ass whipped in Regionals when the bigger schools brought in their best.

Sure I dated, being an athlete was a benefit for meeting up with girls. I didn't have anyone steady until half way through Junior year. Marlene. Short, five foot nothing, curves to die for. Greenish eyes and red brown hair. We were a pair until summer when her dad got a job across the state.

When you don't have a steady girl friend life is hard. But I survived the summer and when school picked up there were several girls to pick from. It didn't hurt that Marlene had told her friends I was always a gentleman with her.

That led me to Juana. Hispanic, light caramel in color with dark hair and eyes.

Smart. Top grades in almost all of her classes. Except language. She took French and it was killing her. I asked why she didn't just take Spanish. "I already know Spanish, I want to learn French."

We had a great year together. She went on to college. I heard she ended up in the U.S. Foreign Service. Hope those French lessons came in handy.

So for a couple years after school I kicked around in different jobs, usually I was the GoFer for someone on a construction site. Even on large construction jobs that would take several years you'd hear the older guys worrying about the next job. And these were the senior Journeymen. They always worked. The junior carpenters didn't have that guarantee. You can just imagine what the gofers got.

I stilled lived at home, but gave Mom a good part of any pay check towards my keep.

She tried to say no, but not real hard because even a hundred bucks a week made a big difference for them.

Janey had gone to nursing school and worked in a hospital and shared an apartment with two other nurses. She eventually married and had two kids.

Clarice had good enough grades for a full scholarship and was completing Business Management. She was recruited out of college, moved to San Francisco, has a wife and a cat.

Norman had a real talent as an artist and won several awards even while in school, he went on to become an Illustrator at an Ad Agency.

I finally moved out when I was twenty three. I'd landed a job at the Airplane plant as an Electrician. I helped run the wiring in new planes. Not a job that required a lot of education, but attention to detail and an ability to read a print. Every wire is numbered and every wire went to a specific connection on a specific terminal block. From there some went to the center or the overhead consoles or one side or the other of the main control panels. Then there were the sets that went to another compartment under the cockpit where many of the actual equipment like radios sat. That was a tight space, and sometimes those damn wires almost made connection and I've have to tug a quarter inch out of the bundle.

When I met my first wife she worked at a local diner where I often had lunch before going on shift. We hit it off pretty quick and within weeks we were fucking like rabbits.

Six months in and we had married. Yeah I was thinking with my little head. We fucked everywhere in my apartment. In every way I could imagine and a bunch of ways I couldn't. She loved ass sex, I tried it once with her.

It seemed to take a week of showers and scrubbing to get my dick clean after that.

Once we married the sex dried up. instead of every day, twice or more, it became once a week and missionary only. Yeah, I got played.

I was working swing shift at the plant. I'd get home about 1:30 in the morning and she'd stumble in at 2 or 3. Drunk on her ass. I don't know if she was cheating, and pretty quickly didn't care.

The final straw was one day I was at the kitchen table working on the Stagger Wing when she accused me of caring more about the plane than her and smashed it with a skillet.

Straight down. Dead center over the cockpit.

I sat there for a several minutes, and then calmly looked at her and said she had one hour to pack her shit and get out. She opened her mouth and I told her her time with me was up.

To this day I don't know why I was so calm, I know I was filled with rage. Maybe something inside told me if I got up I might not be able to stop myself.

While she was packing, and she did make it under an hour, I was thumbing through the Yellow Pages for a divorce lawyer. After she left I called one told him what I wanted and when. He said come into the office pay a five hundred dollar retainer and we'd get it done.

The paper was served to her at the diner, in front of everybody the next day. She didn't fight it and it was done.

Even before the divorce finalized she had hooked up with some soldier and the last I heard, they had moved to Georgia.

A week after kicking the bitch out I learned about layoffs. Who knew a business like building airplanes was so damn cyclical? The company would book a shit load of orders and we, the employees would build them. Then some airline would go broke and cancel orders, or another would ask for so many changes it would stall the line.

The older guys were used to it. In fact, because of union rules, a senior guy on the layoff list could bump a junior worker who wasn't going to get a notice - literally take his job. And the bumping would roll down hill until it got to the newest employees. Like me.

So I had like two weeks notice that I would be on the street. It's supposed to be a month, but all the trickle down wasted half of it.

I took a couple days off and went job hunting. Preferably as far from aircraft as I could find.

As luck would have it I found a contractor wholesale distributor that needed help in their warehouse. It paid less than my then current job, but in ten days it was going to pay a hell of a lot more. And yeah, I asked about layoffs.

The company had been in business for more than thirty years. No layoffs. Ever.

So I settled in to a new life. No more swing shift, work eight to four-thirty, half an hour for lunch, the whole damn weekend off.

Life.

The warehouse supervisor, Henry, had been with the company since day one. Just the nicest guy. But he hated leaving his office, so any paper work, invoices, pay schedules, what ever that had to go to the front office had to be hand carried by one of his staff.

Guess who that would be, yup, the new guy. Me.

Hell, I didn't mind, I was getting paid whatever I did. besides, there were some nice looking women upstairs. most were married, several much older than me, but there was one...

When ever I came into the office she would look up and give me a little smile. Nothing flirtatious, but still enough to get my interest. so when I could I'd stop by her desk just to chat for a minute, maybe learn a little about her. Nancy. A couple years younger than me. Honey blonde hair, green eyes, a smile to die for.

The company had a lunch room, well, break room. Like so many other businesses. We brought our own lunches, but it was a pleasant place to eat.

I'd usually just have my lunch on the loading dock, but when she mentioned never seeing me in the lunch room I knew to change locations.

The first time I walked in and she saw me, well, her smile lite up the room. I'm reasonably certain I was hooked then. I just didn't know it.

Lunches slowly became dates, which became her visiting at my apartment, and then her staying over. That led me to proposing.

But Nancy wasn't one to be rushed. First I had to meet her folks, then her sister and then her brother. Yeah, meet the big brother. About five years older than me, three inches taller and fifty pounds heavier. Just the nicest guy I ever met. Except for one thing he said. "If you hurt my little sister you'll never walk straight again."

We get along fine.

A year after proposing we married. For a honeymoon we headed on a camping trip around Mt. Rainier. We found some really wonderful campgrounds that we kept going back to year after year.

And a couple so crowded we vowed to never return.

We lived in my apartment for several years while saving to buy a house.

Meantime she and I were slowly progressing up the "corporate" ladder. It wasn't really a corporate thing, as more senior people retired - no one ever quit - and others hired behind us, we naturally became leaders. She first as assistant office manager, then me as assistant warehouse supervisor. Mid way through my second year Henry retired and Randall took his spot. Louis became assistant.

Then Louis did a stupid and got a leg crunched by a fork lift. I saw it. Never gonna forget the scream from him. Or all the blood.

That moved me up to assistant.

The first thing I did was have everyone, myself and Randall included go to a fork lift training course at the local vocational school.

The company owner wasn't happy about the missed production from us, but didn't like the large safety fine Louis's accident caused even less.

For our fifth anniversary we signed the papers to buy our house. For our twentieth we burned the loan papers and put the deed in the safety box.

In the meantime Nancy had become Office Manager and I became Warehouse Supervisor. We had decide early on we didn't want kids. No major reasons, just didn't.

That let us live as we pleased. We made love all over my apartment, and later the house. I can honestly say Nancy was ready and willing any time and any where. I even tried leaning Tantric Yoga. It kinda took, I can last a lot longer. We spent many a camping night with her looking up at stars shining between trees while I did my best to give her the best orgasms.

Most nights I succeeded.

Once we had the house we saved for a motor home. hard ground and cold tents was getting old.

We found a twenty five footer on a Ford chassis, one of those with a big bed in back and another above the cab.

We roamed the whole of the western United States, did all the tourist things like Yellowstone and Yosemite, the Bad Lands and Devils Tower.

We damn near got blown over driving down through Wyoming and came close to running out of gas in Nevada (it's a long way between towns on some of those roads).

We went sapphire mining in Montana and bought souvenirs at Four Corners.

In other words - we had a normal life.

Then Covid hit.

Because of some of the material we handled we were deemed essential and stayed in operation.

BUT everyone was on reduced hours.

The office staff all worked from home on their computers, and those of us on the warehouse floor split our hours so everyone got something.

Hey, we had to adapt, and we made it work.

And then the shit hit home.

Nancy came down with it. I don't know from who, or where, and I guess it doesn't really matter now.

She went into the hospital.

I never got to see her again. I couldn't even go into the building.

So her mother and brother and I stood outside. Six fucking feet apart, masked, and waited.

I got her ashes back almost a year later.

~~~~~