Redneckedness: Living with, loving & surviving a redneck Read online

  Anyhow, on that fateful day at the meat market, Fluf was behind the counter, blithefully butchering a feral hog. Horrified, I tried not to stare, as I am a Hypothetical Vegetarian, which is to say I eat meat but I feel bad about it, and I prefer not to eat anything while it still has a face.

  But standing there in Aisle Five, flanked by pork butts and bacon, I realized that I did, in fact, have a pig in my life, and this guy with the machete knew how to handle a pig. Not that I wanted him to filet my ex, but it was nice to know I had options.

  Later, we discovered that we both had misgivings about the other. He thought I was a social worker, and I thought he was an ex-con. It turns out both of us were mostly right.

  Chapter Three

  Redneck Habitat: Where to find a redneck, if you must

  My own personal redneck rode into my life the same way he rode out—riding to the rescue of a blonde. The first time, the blonde was me.

  It was my own fault for putting myself in a situation that required rescuing. The particular situation that led me to this particular redneck was, of course, another redneck, because everyone knows the easiest way to get over one redneck is to run right out and jump on a new one (I said the easiest way—not the best way).

  While rednecks can be found roaming freely most anywhere in the continental United States, there are proven habitats that tend to attract them in large numbers, and most of them are in Texas. These places include but are not limited to: anywhere that beer, bait and ammo are sold, any establishment where meat is fried, and anyplace they might get to see some boobies, including company picnics, tractor pulls and family reunions.

  A redneck will never look a gift boobie in the mouth, and will fall all over themselves to get a peek at even one, lone boobie. They don’t even care what they look like. You could have tits you can fold like a pair of socks and a redneck will still want to see ‘em.

  And, as one of my redneck friends informed me, the only bad boobie is a covered-up boobie.

  If you’re looking for a redneck to keep, the Home Depot is by far your best bet. Being at the Home Depot suggests that he is willing and able to fix things, has the money to pay for the things he needs to fix things, and if he pulls out that little orange credit card, you

  can surmise that he is able to make a commitment at least once per month. You may also surmise that if he’s getting things to fix things at the Home Depot, the home he’s fixing does not come with wheels and a trailer hitch.

  I met my own personal redneck not at the Home Depot, but at the South Austin meat market. Needless to say (or maybe not), both of my boobies were covered.

  On the advice of a friend who knew I needed to move all my personal possessions out from under the nose of Previous Redneck, I took myself down to the said meat market to enlist the help of Fluf, aka The Meat Market Man.

  I was immediately wary when she referred to him Fluf, but, being acquainted with my fair share of rednecks, I took this with a grain of salt. Besides, I’d left half my shoes at the Ex Redneck’s house. They weren’t my favorite shoes, mind you, but I wanted them back. Another woman could take my place in his bed, but I’d spit nails before she took my place in my shoes.

  And though I was fully clothed on meat market day—as I am on most days—Fluf later told me that there was sufficient evidence that my boobies were worth a little wait.

  With very little malice and absolutely no forethought, I waltzed myself into the meat market full of fear and false bravado, and with good reason. Fluf looked like machete- wielding, swarthy, southern version of Yosemite Sam.

  Not to mention the fact that I was told he could bend a crowbar with his bare hands— not a bad trait when you’re looking for someone to move all of your earthly belongings out of the house of another redneck.

  One thing I knew for sure was that he in no way resembled anything remotely related to fluff, at least until I learned the origin of the moniker.

  FLUF, I discovered much later, was an acronym for Fat Lazy Ugly Fucker, and was bestowed on him by friends at the Baptist Boys’ Ranch.

  If it is true that all good boys go to heaven, then boys on the fence go to the Boys’ Ranch, where they are taught survival of the fittest and fastest.

  Fluf was neither fat nor lazy or ugly, but he could indeed be a fucker when the occasion called for it, especially after copious amounts of tequila—a fact he seemed proud of, because he had a t-shirt that said, Instant Asshole, Just Add Tequila. But as I mentioned, these are all things I learned later.

  While I balked at the nickname, there’s one thing you have to know about rednecks is that they’ve appropriated the Native American custom of naming people for their attributes, abilities or behavior, such “Barn,” as in, her butt’s big as a barn door, “One Arm Amy,” on account of she only had one arm, and “Smidge,” as in premature ejaculation.” So, if you’re planning on saddling yourself a redneck anytime soon, you may as well pick your own nickname, or you’ll be assigned one and it will stick, whether you like it or not.

  Anyhow, on that fateful day at the meat market, Fluf was behind the counter, blithefully butchering a feral hog. Horrified, I tried not to stare, as I am a Hypothetical Vegetarian, which is to say I eat meat but I feel bad about it, and I prefer not to eat anything while it still has a face.

  But standing there in Aisle Five, flanked by pork butts and bacon, I realized that I did, in fact, have a pig in my life, and this guy with the machete knew how to handle a pig. Not that I wanted him to filet my ex, but it was nice to know I had options.

  Later, we discovered that we both had misgivings about the other. He thought I was a

  social worker, and I thought he was an ex-con. It turns out both of us were mostly right. Tentatively, we exchanged telephone numbers and I hightailed it out of there before he continued his assault on the hog and before I could change my mind.

  Chapter Four

  The Nekkid Time

  There’s an old Garth Brookes song that poses the question of what to do with a cowboy when he don’t saddle up and ride away.

  If you are unlucky, broke or just plain out of your mind, you get engaged. But before you do that, you have to meet his family. In this particular instance, his family—his grandmother in particular—was his ace in the hole.

  It turns out his mother and father died the same year my father died, when we were both four-years-old. I took this as a sign. He took this as a way into my pants. Either way, it worked out for a while.

  I met the grandmother who raised Fluf a few months after he and I met.

  Miss Jessie was a tart, tough little blue-haired Baptist lady who smelled like Avon’s version of gardenias and the Old Testament, and from the moment I met her, I was smitten.

  After our first big fight, Fluf went to his grandmother to intercede on his behalf. Instead of jumping to his side, she said, “Well, boy. Ya shit in your nest and fell back in it. Now you got a mess to clean up.

  We survived that fight, along with many others, due largely to a little old lady with a loving heart and balls as big as Dallas/Fort Worth.

  So, when she asked us to go fetch some things from her little rent house out in West Bumfuck, who was I to refuse? Besides, this would be Fluf’s and my first roadtrip together, and I’d never been that far west.

  Turns out I hadn’t missed much

  West Texas is approximately one billion miles away from Austin, and because the trip takes six hours, we decided we’d spend the night there and head back the following afternoon.

  Living in Austin tends to spoil you, and you forget that not all places on God’s green earth are green. Rotan, Texas is brown. The grass, when there is any, is brown, the dirt is brown, even the sky is brown because it’s filled with dirt.

  Saying so does not hurt a West Texan’s feelings, because they know it is unattractive, flat and dry, and in fact, they take great pride in the sheer endurance it requires to live there..but I don’t believe in endurance for endurance sake, and I’d have to be sittin�
� on an oilfield to ever want to live there.

  I’m not alone in this musing. Miss Jessie used to say if she owned hell and half of West Texas, she’d livie in hell and rent out Texas. And if she did, there’d be three hundred rednecks waiting in line for a lease.

  In truth, there is a terrible, desperate beauty about West Texas, like the Chisos Mountains that rip red and orange through the wide, blue sky.

  But Rotan, Texas has no mountains, and the entire town has one tree. It may not be the armpit of the world, but I’d put it in the top ten.

  About two hours into the trip, the air-conditioner in Fluf’s truck broke (things always

  broke in Fluf’s truck—in fact the whole thing was held together with duct tape and a prayer), so we spent the next four hours languishing in a heat so horrid that it was hotter than a two dollar tamale and smelled like ass.

  In its hay day, Rotan was an oil town, and the stench of long-dried up oil rigs blankets the town like a noxious fog.

  And the dirt. You would not believe the amount of dust and red dirt that can fly into an open pickup window and deposit itself in areas of your body that, until that moment, you were blissfully unaware of.

  Getting hotter and tired-er and dirtier by the mile, I informed Fluf that I had enough dirt on my body to re-pot a geranium and I would not be fit for company until I had a shower and brushed at least some of the dirt out of my teeth.

  Assured that no one was in the little rent house, and that I could in fact take a shower so long and hot it’d dry out the town. Calmed by this assurance (and the second or third beer he handed me), I settle back and contemplated brown skyline.

  Now if there’s anything a redneck loves more than his truck, it’s a naked woman in said truck.

  He popped the top on my third (or sixth) beer, and announced, “It’s nekkid time!”

  There’s a big difference between being naked and being nekkid. Naked means you don’t have any clothes on. Nekkid means you don’t have any clothes on and you’re up to somethin’.

  Rednecks are often big time sweet talkers, particularly if there may be an opportunity to see some boobies. I’m convinced it’s an evolutionary skill, because based on their housing arrangements (sacking out on a friend’s couch) and their financial planning (buying lottery tickets), no redneck would ever get laid.

  And in the interest of getting laid, he commenced to cajoling me to get nekkid.

  I was pleasantly buzzed enough to acqueiesse to this small, slight perversion. It was dark, there was no one in the god-forsaken place for miles—what harm would it do?

  It is one of God’s pure truths that if you tempt fate, you’re gonna get it triple fold. The moment the panties came off, flashing red lights appeared from nowhere and we were being pulled over.

  I was making a mad scramble for the floorboard when Fluf said, “Don’t worry. It’s just Curtis. He can’t see.”

  “What do you mean he can’t see?” “He’s blind.” “You have a blind cop driving around town pulling people over?” “He’s not really a cop. They let him use the light and pay for his gas, and he runs around handing out speeding tickets.” “So if he’s blind, how did he know we were speeding?” “He can tell by the engine sound.” “But how does he drive?” “He knows the road.” By this time, I was back to being naked, as any thought of nekkidness and flown right

  out the window. I clutched my shirt while Curtis the blind traffic cop was at the driver’s side window, ripping a ticket off his handy little pad.

  He was a small guy, balding and a slight pooch lopping over his belt buckle. And he had on the thickest glasses I’d ever seen.

  “Fluf? Is that you?” Curtis said, squinting through his coke bottle lenses. “Hey, Curtis, how you doin’?” “Oh I could complain but it wouldn’t do no good.” “Nice car. Who’d you sue?”

  Curtis offered a wide, half-toothed grin. “Some fool up from Fort Worth.”

  Fluf nodded, like suing someone and buying a car with the proceeds was the most natural thing in the world.

  And, after about five minutes of this witty banter, asking after Curtis’s mom-n-them, he bade us goodbye and admonished us to slow down.

  He said nothing about my near nakedness. I wasn’t sure if I should be grateful or offended. “He really can’t see,” I said. “Yep. Blinder than two-foot up a bulls ass.” And then he grabbed my shirt away from me and grinned. “Welcome to West Texas.”

  Chapter Five

  Inlaws and Outlaws

  If you know anything about rednecks and the promises they make, it will come as no surprise that not only was there no shower, but also no electricity, no water and no place to sleep.

  Oh, sure, there were the rugs we had been sent to fetch, but that was it.

  I stood by my declaration that I would have to have a shower and a place to brush my teeth, and politely declined his suggestion that I brush over the dry sink and rinse with Bud Light. I suggested that if he ever wanted to see me naked again, he should at least produce a bottle of water, and this suggestion seemed to light a fire under his butt (rednecks are noting if not predictable when it comes to the possibility of nekkidness).

  “No problem,” he said, “I know everyone in town and I’ll get you a shower.”

  Now, even I know that just because you know everyone in town doesn’t mean that everyone likes you, or that you’d be welcomed in with open arms at seven in the morning toting around a complete stranger in need of a shower.

  But I was being optimistic (like I had a choice), and we drove some more until we were on the outskirts of town and in the “driveway” of rambling little ranch house.

  Of course, the door wasn’t locked, so he walked right in, hollering to see if anyone was home—a habit that continued throughout our time together, and is probably still being carried out to this day.

  Fluf never met a stranger, and I have personally seen him walk right up to some as- yet unknown person in a restaurant, invite himself to sit down and commence to taking a piece of chicken right off said strangers plate.

  That’s the thing about rednecks. They can talk you out of your wallet and your panties and make you glad he took the trouble.

  “Do you know these people?” I said as he led me down the hall and into a bathroom where I could at last have a shower.

  “Every body know every body in a small town,” he said, opening doors until he found me a towel and some shampoo.

  Then he left me to scrubbing off the dirt as he went to go raid the refrigerator.

  And just when I had my body mostly clean and was working up agood pile of suds in my hair, the shower curtain snapped back, and a middle-aged woman with painted on eyebrows stood there staring at me.

  I screamed.

  She didn’t seem to notice that she had scared the living bejeezuz out of me because she was talking warp speed on the phone, saying, “Yeah, she’s right here in the shower! You should see her she’s real pretty!”

  Then Fluf came around the corner with a fried chicken leg, like nothing at all was odd in this scenario and offered me a bite of chickn.

  I declined the chicken while trying to cover as many of my personal parts as I could. They both shrugged and walked out of the bathroom, he still eating his chicken leg and she still on the phone.

  Hurriedly, I got the soap out of my hair and eyes and dressed before any more people paraded into the bathroom.

  “I was out back feeding the horses,” I heard her tell Fluf, “I gotta get going. Y’all comin’ for dinner?”

  Fluf thanked her and told her we had to be getting back to Austin, but maybe next time.

  I got dressed standing in the bathtub, hiding behind the shower curtain. When I heard the woman leave, I tentatively tiptoed out into the hall. “Who was that and why would she talk about me on the phone?” Fluf had moved on to wing, and said, “Oh. That’s just Patsy—my ex-mother-in-law.” I felt sick but felt a little sicker when he told me that the person on the other end of

  that phon
e conversation was his ex-wife. Who says they don’t know how to have fun in West Texas?

  # We did have fun in West Texas, and for five years we had more adventures than you can shake a stick at--many hilarious, some heartbreaking. But those are stories for another time. I suppose we grew up together, and I'm glad for that.

  Chapter Six

  You can dress him up and take him out, but honey, he’s still just a redneck

  Fluf didn’t believe in making reservations for hotels, motels or eating establishments. Oh, I’m sure he believed that reservations could be made, he just didn’t believe he was the one who would make them.

  And because he didn’t believe in reservations, we spent the first night of our honeymoon at The King’s Motel, which had a light up marquis out front announcing “WE GOT WATERBEDS!” all in capital letters. The motel did in deed have waterbeds, but it did not have functioning sheets.

  Low-riding cars circled the parking lot like blood-thirsty barracudas, and while I usually try to remain open minded, I was spooked.

  The place was in the dodgey end of Dallas, where people would just as soon kill you as look at you and Fluf had to park the pickup butt up against the door because the lock wouldn’t lock.

  I didn’t change into the sweet little nighty I bought for the occasion because I wasn’t

  about to get naked in that room, and because the sheets were literally torn, I opted put on a second pair of pants and a second shirt hoping to ward off mites, deadly microbes and any kind of bad juju lurking in the corners.

  Now, Fluf can sleep anywhere, at anytime, even standing up, and as he was about to drift off, he whispered, “Listen.”