The Factory Whore

The greasy stroke of welding the midnight shift to mornings is my diesel engine plant; 40 miles east of the Mississippi river into Beelzebub country (Wisconsin), and though this place has a hard time keeping a man, I stay. I was made aware of the term “Factory Whore” by another welder a couple of weeks after I first began depreciating my body--physically, emotionally, and spiritually--hunched over shooting fire into the crevices of mufflers and emission systems for all your big and ugly trucks.

Without fail, Dee Dee came in every morning at 5 AM smelling like Froot Loops and Marlboro Lights. She had all the men, good, bad, and strong: the deft and muscular talent down on the production floor, the MBAs up in the office, the supervisors who plastered pictures of their children slaughtering teenage deer and elderly, obese birds. The plant is chock full of good ol’ boys, a small group of superb lesbians, and 25 Factory Whore-hating women. Even Dee Dee’s sweat was sexualized and seemingly rehearsed on its route from under her welder’s cap, traversing in a serpentine zigzag down to the tip of her nose, sitting there for a while before leaping onto her breasts and dying there on her nipple.

The Factory Whore can get whatever she wants without being scrutinized or reprimanded. She has power. So early on it dawned on me that I should become friends with Dee Dee, if not for the break from the agonizing boredom, then certainly for my fantasy building blocks. It was an appropriate time for me to introduce myself as soon possible, because the Factory Whore generally doesn’t last too long on the job before she’s caught up in some version of sexual mischief, blackmail, or otherwise un-ladylike behavior. As well, I was having my own eccentricities at home, such as pouring two glasses of merlot: one for myself and the other for my favorite internet porn-site.

I always made it a point to chat up Dee Dee every morning: When was the ex-husband getting out of jail? Did she love Judas Priest like I loved Judas Priest? And just how in the hell did her seven-year-old son set her Jeep Cherokee on fire with only his feet and a book of matches? I guess he had some kind of “short-arms” deformity and over-compensated for the worse on occasion. I think I loved her version of the Factory Whore. Like I said, you never really know how long you have with these sporadic anomalies. If my memory serves me correct, the last Factory Whore quickly and simultaneously zeroed in on the line supervisor’s penis and his corporate company credit card. And though the plant is about as big as a city square block; risking a blow job with a $10,000 limit in the janitor’s closet on 12 dozen cases of Gatorade and 16 boxes of plain waffle cones poses a few specific problems I need not answer. You just never know what you’re gonna get with a Factory Whore. I suspect there is always going to be “baggage.”

At least for Dee Dee, she performs with discretion while climbing the social ladder, greasy though ours may be, and passed out and bent all to shit in a Wisconsin diesel engine factory.

She was a shitty welder.

But Dee Dee had a troublesome, distractive apple of an ass. That ass held all of us in a state of tonic immobility, the way a leopard shark feels when it’s turned upside down, tummy revealed and stroked until its eyes roll back into its head. She knew what we all knew: her ass had a similar effect, plus that ass sang all of our favorite songs. And though most of these tunes lied to us about work and pay and girlfriends, wives and cars… we still listened.

It got so bad that nobody knew what to do with her anymore. She swept a little, chewed banana-smelling gum, and queried the deer hunters about their recent kills. She once told me that I was cute but too skinny and needed “some meat on my bones.” I replied by telling her I would meet her halfway if only she would take the wheels off her house. She laughed so hard her gum jumped right out of her mouth. Dee Dee was precious.

Dee Dee’s firing was imminent. Swift was her departure after working our factory stage for seven months, two-weeks, and three days. She had developed “relations” with the vending machine route driver. Evidently she saw beyond the horizon of pasty Honey Buns and red dye coconut-flaked Zingers. They began fucking on the very same bed of Gatorade and waffle cones except this time, the factory had security cameras installed. Consequently, they got the whole recipe on tape.

It won’t be long before another distraction saunters in with its belly ring and Dr. Pepper lip gloss. But I shall stand defiantly in the name of Dee Dee, my favorite Factory Whore. Those are big steel-toe boots to fill.

@decental