Kyle and I sat there in the front of the truck, staring at Sean.  It was a little job, at a little house, so neither of us was in a big hurry.

 

"What do you think we should do?" 

 

Sean always freaked out when he was in charge.  Of course, that didn't stop Carlos from handing him the clipboard with the day's jobs every now and then like he had this morning... 

 

Whatever.  They were all "cake jobs" that day, so Sean had hardly been given command of a battleship.  Still, the clipboard carried much responsibility once handed, and, for Sean, a whole side order of neuroses and over-the-top "I'm in charge" bullshit. 

 

There was a pecking order, etched in stone, at outdoor job sites everywhere.  The guy driving the truck was the first natural leader, but the moment he was approached by some guy with a bunch of typed papers, he was out.  The "papers" guy had nothing on the man with the clipboard, though.  With a clipboard, you had the working man's Rod of Lordly Might.  And you'd be surprised where you used to be able to get with a clipboard back in those pre-9/11 days.  Looking official enough--even in a T-shirt and flip-flops--and carrying a clipboard could get you into buildings, through private gates, onto airport runways.  Anywhere.  The only time the clipboard would fail was when someone in sunglasses rolled up in a golf cart talking on a walkie-talkie.  After all, you've got to pick your battles.

 

That day, at that house in the Boston suburbs, the only golf carts were at the country club at the end of the road.  So Sean was The Man, in charge of two stoned, hung-over nineteen year olds in the front cab of a Ford F350.

 

Now when Sean wasn't in charge of a job, he was worthless.  He'd either loudly second-guess every decision or just lean against a truck with a look on his face like we weren't sharing cake with him.  Of course, a week couldn't go by without someone threatening to kick his ass for fucking around, at which point he'd half-do the easiest thing on the job.  He was all about the letter of the law.

 

When he had to be the spirit of the law, it was a mix of tragedy and comedy. 

 

The biggest problem was that Sean wasn't exactly the sharpest stake at the shop.  Of course, he wasn't even smart enough to realize that.  In fact, if he was half as smart as he thought he was, he'd be two Einsteins, three Isaac Newton's and a Marie Curie, for good measure.  As a result, whenever he got the clipboard, he'd turn it on super-thick, in the process becoming a Word-of-the-Day calendar, freely throwing around words like "discombobulated," "recalcitrant," and "lugubrious" with little care for their actual meetings.  The day he asked a stunned homeowner what he thought of the tent after we'd "brought it to fruition," the man laughed 7-UP out his nose onto the dance floor we'd just installed.

 

Anyway, the point is, he sucked at being in charge, so we were not going to let him have it any easier.

 

"Dude, what if they've got a wicked mean dog or some shit like that, dude?"  Kyle raised a good point, although we were about to walk into the yard with poles, ropes and sledgehammers, so the dog didn't have much of a chance. 

 

"Yeah, man.  We could get rabies or some shit like that..."  I wanted to make sure that Sean couldn't raise the "poles, ropes and sledgehammers" point.

 

"There's no fucking dogs, guys.  I already walked around the house twice."

 

Kyle and I stared quietly out the front window of the truck, over-doing our eagle-eyed scans for strays, wolves or dingoes.

 

"OK, dude.  Maybe there aren't any dogs, but we dont' even know where to put it...  Look, it doesn't even say on the fucking clipboard, dude..." 

 

Kyle made sure to pull the clipboard out of Sean's hands to make this point. 

 

"Yeah, man--last thing I want is to have to move the fucking tent after we put it up."

 

Sean was visibly annoyed at this point. 

 

"Guys, the tent is 40' by 60' and the front yard is full of trees.  I'm willing to bet it goes in the 50' by 70' space in the back yard."

 

"Yeah, dude, but which way?"

 

We both just stared at Kyle.  He was on his own there.

 

"I'm just fuckin' with you, dude.  But if you're wrong, you're totally taking it down and putting it back up by yourself."

 

"OK, OK.  Just get out of the fucking truck."

 

"All right, dude.  No need to be hostile."

 

We rolled out of the cab, making sure to stop and do a bunch of fake stretches and knee-bends before heading to the back of the truck to help Sean.  It really was an easy job, just a tent, a "forty-wide," which was a nice manageable put-up as far as tents went.  The three of us had all the shit lugged into the back yard in no time, at which point, of course, it was time for a break.  Even Sean took a break with us, as he certainly couldn't pretend there was anything remarkable about this one.

 

Suddenly, out of nowhere, Kyle's eyes lit up, and he pointed so fast we thought his customary tight-T-shirt was going to rip right off his back.

 

"Whoa, dude!  Look at that!"

 

There, sitting on one of those full-length folding chairs on the back deck, was the top-half of a leopard-print bikini.  Kyle looked at us, his eyes so wide, I half expected them to pop out of his giant head.

 

"Dude, holy shit--a bikini!"

 

"Brilliant, my dear Watson," muttered Sean.  Forced literary references from books he never read were another treat when he was in charge.

 

"You know what that means, dude?  It means there's some bikini chick who sunbathes topless at this house.  Why the fuck did we have to come when no one was home, dude?"

 

We all stared wistfully at the bikini top on the chair.  To all of us, that bikini top represented more than the chance to get a brief glimpse of a stranger's tits before she awkwardly covered herself.  It represented the TentCo Fantasy.

 

There were a few things that everyone at the tent company shared.  We all enjoyed at least a couple of selections from the substance spectrum, we all had been arrested for something that seemed like a great idea when we were fucked up, and we all enjoyed porn tremendously, some of us to the point where it got a bit creepy to talk about when you were stuck in traffic in a truck with two other guys.  But we worked through it, because our love of porn also gave us hope.  Hope that one day, one of us would get to live the TentCo Fantasy.

 

The TentCo Fantasy was hardly an original idea.  If you've ever seen the "pool guy" scene from the early 90's porn classic Gang Bang 4, you've already got a pretty good idea what the TentCo fantasy entails.  To be plucked suddenly from lacing a tent, tying ropes or swinging a sledgehammer and forced to submit to some rich nymphomaniac's every whim and then tossed back out to the cheers of the rest of the crew, that was the ideal.  Even an awkward hand job from a drunk housewife would've been a welcome change of pace. 

 

Naturally, there were stories of TentCo Fantasies.  But they could never be verified.  There was always one missing link, one vital piece of the mystery that had yet to be found.  Don Waits had once fucked some girl in a TentCo tent, but that was more coincidence than anything else, as he was actually attending the party under the tent.  And Carlos, just for good measure, would sneak into the trucks on weekends and do all kinds of sick shit with his wife in the cab of Truck 17.  So those didn't really count.  A real TentCo fantasy was a veritable Great White Whale.

 

We were all willing Captain Nemo's, of course.  After spending day after day hanging out with a bunch of drunken stoned twenty-something guys, you were psyched simply to see a woman drive up next to the truck with her skirt hiked up to "cool off" a bit in traffic.  It happened a lot more than you'd think.  But even that got old and nerves could get frayed, to the point where one day Kyle and Don had gotten into a bit of heat for writing "show us your cunt" on a styrofoam cup and flashing it at every woman we passed.  The TentCo fantasy would've made it all worthwhile.

 

So we stood there that day, all treasuring whatever TentCo fantasy was flashing in our heads for those wonderful seconds.  Kyle finally broke the silence, rudely intruding on the imaginary blowjob I was getting from that woman who had beckoned to me while I was swinging a sledgehammer outsider her bedroom window...

 

"Dude, do you think the TentCo Fantasy ever happened?  Or will ever happen?  I mean, seriously, you'd think it would have to..."

 

He had a frantic look in his eyes.  As if the TentCo Fantasy NOT happening was as un-thinkable as gravity reversing or the sun disappearing.  Sean was pretty philosophical about it.

 

"I dunno.  I mean, we're a bunch of strangers just wandering into people's yards, and we're all pretty sketchy.  I mean, if I was a woman, I sure as hell wouldn't fuck any of us."

 

I nodded, but Kyle was un-convinced.

 

"Yeah, dude.  But look at us.  We're a bunch of tan young guys who play sports and swing sledgehammers and shit.  I mean, that's got to be on somebody's fantasy list, right?"

 

He had a point.  Even Sean shut up for a moment, but, again, our silence was broken, this time by a pudgy fifty-something man in a pink muscle shirt.

 

"Oooh, a crew of strong boys!  Would any of you like a drink, a margarita maybe?"

 

That job ended with four disappointed guys.  I've never seen Kyle so angry at being right.

 

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