The DQ Dude

We’d talked all morning about getting to Ft. Stockton and having a Whataburger. Oh yah – double meat, bouble cheese with extra onions and jalepenos. Chris was going to have the Whatachicken  with cheese and bacon. He said, “and it’s good for you too”. I laughed.  

We drove the entire length of the city and discovered to our dismay that there was no Whataburger. Dammit – so we went to Dairy Queen.  

It was rush hour there at lunch time – a vast ghetto presence, a few cowboys, and one DQ Dude. We sat at the only table open and right across in front of me was this 35ish white dude sitting with his  75ish year old mother who was balancing her checkbook. Across from him was a table with three girls – not one of them pretty by San Marcos standards – but well endowed.  

I watched him for a bit and thought him to be acting a little unusual. He was watching the girls with particular interest and kept smacking him lips like he was drooling. Every once in a while his mother would say something to him and he would turn toward her, look down and had this expression on his face like he’d been whipped with a stick – “yes mummy”. Anyhow – to my surprise – after all, we are sitting in the lunch rush hour at the Diary Queen – the DQ Dude was loping his mule under his shirt tail – right across from his mother. Every time he looked over at the girls he’d put down his burger with his left hand and go to town with his right. The look on his face and expressions were – if I could describe them - moist, lascivious, giddy, exuberant, obsessed - and with words like "Oh My God" or "Yah Baby" repeated over and over in one's thoughts. It was the perfect demonstration one might see in a documentary movie about freaky, repressed perverts who live with their aging mother in a small West Texas town - as captured by the surveillance camera.  The girls finished their meal before he’d gotten to finish up with his lunch special. He watched them intently every step of the way through the store and then out into the parking lot.  

I mentioned to Chris, the ongoing display behind him. He said –“that’s so fucked up”. My thought – it is so fun to travel and to see the world in a different light and to return home better informed.