Yeah, he thought, his mood already starting to improve. That’s the ticket. Dazzle her with some more smoke and mirrors, maybe get her some flowers or some shit like that, give her the usual bit about how he couldn’t stand living with Barbara any longer and was seriously considering just leaving now, before the kids were even out of school, and, before he went back to work that lunch period, he’d be dancing in the fire once again.
His thoughts were interrupted when he came around the Lexus that belonged to Dr. Carlisle. The view of the driver’s side of his monstrous truck was now open and he saw that a man was standing there next to his door. He was a tall man dressed in blue jeans and a t-shirt that had a lighthouse on it. His brown hair was a little frazzled. He had a mustache that looked like it needed to be trimmed. And he was looking directly at Dave, his eyes full of what appeared to be anticipation and ... maybe recognition.
Dave slowed his advance, feeling a slight sensation of discomfort creeping into him. He had no idea who the man was, but he looked to be formidable, perhaps even a bit dangerous? And he was standing between Dave and his truck with no apparent business there. Dave almost turned and went back into the office to wait until the man left, but then chided himself for being a pussy. He was in a public place, for Christ’s sake. What could this man do to him?
He continued his approach.
“Howdy,” the man hailed as Dave came within six feet of him.
“Uh ... hello,” Dave returned.
“Is this your truck?” the man asked, turning his head briefly to look up and down the length of it.
“Yes,” Dave said, feeling a little relief. It was just another admirer of his wheels. Ever since he’d put in the lift kit and bought the oversized wheels and rims, people often stopped him to talk about them. “That’s my baby.”
The man turned back to look at him. “Really nice truck, my man,” he told him. “Sorry about the dick though.”
Dave stopped, feeling himself flush. “Excuse me?” he asked.
“The dick,” the man said. “Obviously it’s not a very formidable one or you wouldn’t have to attempt a pathetic compensation for its inadequacy by buying and equipping a form of commuter transport that is more suitable to Papua New Guinea jungles than suburban Los Angeles.”
“What?” Dave asked, stunned and a little angry.
“Sorry,” the man said with a light chuckle. “I went a little Nerdly on you there for a minute.” He shrugged. “Sometimes that happens and I don’t even realize it. What I was trying to say was that it seems pretty obvious to the thinking person that the size of your truck and the manner in which you display it can only be inversely proportional to the size of your member. I mean, you went to college and shit, right? Somewhere in all that education, you had to have taken a psych class or two.”
Dave was now feeling a mix of emotions. Anger, confusion, shame—this last particularly poignant because he knew that his weapon really wasn’t all that formidable, at least not to the eye—although Laura always seemed to like it, even if Barbara had never really been impressed and had even made fun of it on more than one occasion. But to suggest that the size of his truck had anything to do with that ... that was asinine! And who the hell was this guy anyway? What was this shit?
“Look, partner,” Dave told the stranger. “I’m just trying to get home after a hard day at work. If you’ll just step aside so I can...”
“I mean, really, dude,” the man interrupted, as if he had not even heard him. “How can you claim this truck is anything other than a compensatory mechanism for a tiny dick? What is the name of this truck? It’s a fucking Ram Big Horn. Seriously, could they have come up with anything more phallic than that without obscenity charges? I would be willing to bet that when the suits got together to design your truck and then had the meeting about what to name it, they actually had a discussion about how it would sell really well with guys with small dicks.”
Dave’s anger broke—at least as far as his anger was capable of breaking when talking to someone who could probably kick his ass if he wanted. “Now you listen here,” he said sternly, pointing his finger at his tormentor. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I’ll have you know that my cock is quite large, large enough that I actually considered a career as a male pornography performer to get me through college.”
“Is that a fact?” the man asked him.
“That is a fact!” Dave said.
The man nodded his head up and down a few times, as if considering this information, and then suddenly shook it back and forth. “Sorry, my man,” he said. “I’m going to have to call bullshit on that. You see, I happen to know just what the size of your dick actually is.”
“Excuse me?” Dave repeated, flushing again, so angry now that he was almost ready to fight the man.
“Yeah,” the man said with a smile. “You see, Laura told me all about it.”
Dave felt that surge of dread again. “Laura?” he said slowly.
“Laura Best,” the man said. “She and I are, shall we say, acquainted with each other. Intimately acquainted.”
Dave looked at the man’s face again. This couldn’t be ... No! It looked nothing like him ... well, except maybe for ... No! He shook his head. And then his eyes dropped down to the man’s t-shirt again, the shirt that had a picture of a lighthouse on it. COOS BAY, OREGON, read the motto. THE REAL BAY AREA!
Coos Bay? That was where Laura had been these past months. Where she claimed she had been recording an album with Celia Valdez. Where, just today, she had claimed she had been sleeping with... “Jake Kingsley?” he asked.
Kingsley smiled. “Nice to meet you, Dr. Dave,” he said, stepping closer. “I think you and I need to have a little talk.”
“Now wait a minute,” the little weasel of a dentist protested. “You’re claiming that you are Jake Kingsley, the singer?”
Jake smiled. He was immensely enjoying this confrontation and could not wait to see where it led. “I could show you my identification if that would help,” he suggested.
“Your ... identification?”
“Or maybe I could just sing something for you?” He then belted out the primary chorus of Point of Futility, the song he could be pretty certain the dentist had to have heard multiple times before and would recognize since it was Intemperance’s most mainstream hit. He sang it out a-capella, but with all the tonal inflection he would have used had he been singing it into a microphone before an audience. The fact that it was a song about realizing when your relationship was over was perhaps an added bonus.
The dentist’s eyes widened as he heard this. “You ... you are Jake Kingsley,” he whispered, partially in awe, partially in shock.
“One and the same,” Jake told him. “Now then, going back to the subject of dicks. I must confess that I’m not the most well-hung specimen on the face of the Earth myself. I’m kind of average in member size, perhaps a tiny bit above. Like any guy, I’ve actually measured my shit before and I’m hanging at just a tad over six inches.” He shrugged. “Not exactly porn movie material, I’ll admit, but I get the job done—and trust me on this, I’ve done a lot of jobs in my time. Anyway, you want to know what Laura said to me the first time she ever put her hand on my Johnson?”
“I see no point to this conversation,” Dr. Dave said through gritted teeth.
“She said, and I quote: ‘It’s soooo big!’ But it really isn’t, just average. Now why do you suppose she would think that my manhood is so huge unless she was used to something considerably less than average for comparison?”