The oil rig was loud and dirty and somehow both hot and cold at the same time. It was all right angles and grimy corners, pipes belching steam. Unpainted steel, the smell of cigarette butts and spilled gasoline. Lift this, screw that, loosen those, tighten these. It was all so pointless. It was ugly. It looked ugly, it smelled foul, it sounded alien and harsh and hateful, it felt anodyne and sterile, and the air tasted of poison and loneliness.
From Graham the Lover
Their home was at one end of a long hall. It wasn’t a real barrack, it was a dead-end hall with a disused first-aid clinic in it. They done bunk down here cuz it was more private and roomy than the barracks, and this whole part of the rig was mostly unused. Rig E19 was made for a bigger workforce than it required — automation at work, factories on autopilot, solar power smokestacks be colliding hadrons, barcodes as the Mark of the Beast, black holes for souls, this nigga knows which way the wind blows! — so Lem and Steel shacked up in this big empty dead-end away from the resta the rig. They done set up curtains where they living area began.
From Steel the Roughneck
Steel spread out the blankets on the floor to provide insulation. Covering up the cold steel would help bunches, he thought. The remaining blankets he hung up on the outside wall with duct tape. It got cold as hell — Rig E19 was in the North Pacific, near Alaska. Santa Claus wouldn’t even go here. Rudolph’d go on strike for sure. For sure! That outside wall faced the cold Pacific seaspray, so it was icy as a snooty bitch. The blankets was thin, but they would do for now.
The resta the rig was cold, but the living areas was all heated and done up with blankets and even more space-heaters. It was toasty as toast in there. Fresh out the toaster!
From Steel the Roughneck
This rig was built for more workers than there were — lots of the job had been automated in recent years — so whole wings were no longer used. Mr. Chow said they could bed down wherever they wanted. Buck and Lem chose a corridor that dead-ended at a disused room. They claimed everything from the intersection with another corridor to the dead-end, and they used the extra room for storage. The dead-end was curtained off with sheets and done up with extra mattresses, pillows and space heaters.
He tapped the sheet being used as a curtain. A mat lay right there, like a welcome mat but Mason knew Lem well enough to know it’s real purpose — there were peanut shells under the mat. Lem and Buck stepped over the mat when coming in and out of the dead-end. If anybody snuck in when they were gone, the shells would be smashed under the mat, and they’d know someone had been there without permission. Mason stepped over the mat.
Most nights, Buck and Lem showered with each other. This was the winter contract, which was understaffed — more than half of the roughnecks here a couple days ago had left during their leave. Buck didn’t realize how many fewer workers there would be. That was because, Lem explained, the rig was less efficient in the winter, and Mr. Chow actually lost money pumping oil until it warmed up. He kept it going regardless because otherwise the rig would fall apart and be inoperable in the spring, but it continued with a skeleton crew mainly tasked with maintenance. The drill did run, and oil was pumped, but only the minimum needed every day to ensure smooth operation.
Otherwise it was a lot of cleaning, inventory, weatherproofing, organizing, etc. It was intensely boring and not much work. The chill was intense in the unheated corridors now that it was winter. Buck got a thrill out of walking to the shower every night, which he still did in his briefs and sandals (though he now wore his sandals with two pairs of socks). He thought it was hilarious how steamy his chest was, and it set his heart racing. Most night it was literally cold enough to take his breath away, and he could barely breathe the whole way to and from the shower.
Lem did not do that. He was leaner and lankier than Buck, and like the other roughnecks, Lem wore several layers of clothes in the corridors. So Buck got naked in the showers in seconds, while Lem lazily undressed and smoked a cigarette (which he did only to annoy Buck, because Buck kept hassling him about hurrying up).
From Buck the Roughneck
He and Lem got to know each other as they shared a living space — not a real barrack or even a room, they claimed a disused dead-end corridor. They hung up sheets and blankets and towels to make a wall blocking off the dead-end from the rest of the rig, and they covered the floor with mattresses and pillows. With enough space heaters, it made a cozy home fer a nine-month contract.
Content
- Arabs got good hat game
- Drink when it floods, nigga!
- He was a hands-off dumpling
- If it ain’t Christ, it ain’t right!
- It proved Mister Chow don’t know nothing about black men. Or bwack men neither.
- On gastronomy
- Portugal’s a fucked-up place
- You know Steel stays listening to Some Nigga
- You lick a ho pussy? You eat a nigga nut up!
Freebies
- Roughnecks Got Oral Needs!: Chapter 1
- Roughnecks Got Oral Needs!: Chapter 2
- Roughnecks Got Oral Needs!: Chapter 3
Books
Description
Buck was sprawled out on the “bed” — just a stack of pillows and cushions and blankets on the floor. That was where they both slept. They used their bunks for storage.
That’s because sleeping on the floor was more comfortable than the bunks. For Buck, the main reason was that he was six-foot-eleven, and the bunks were seven-feet-long exactly. He had to squeeze in, couldn’t stretch his legs, couldn’t raise his arms, couldn’t sit up without banging his head, and getting out was an awkward and ungainly struggle.
The other big reason was that rig E19 was as cold as a witch’s clit. It was in the North Pacific, and it was cold enough that the inner decks — which were exposed to the water — grew gardens of icicles. The bunks were built into the walls of the corridors, and the corridors were mostly unheated.
A few corridors were heated thoroughly, which was where Mr. Chow told them all to bunk. He let them choose though, and Buck and Lem preferred the privacy of the dead end. They rigged it up with blankets and pillows and space heaters — Mr. Chow provided plenty of space heaters — which gave off enough warmth for the both of them.
The space heater made the bunks much too hot. Some of the other roughnecks jerry-rigged up a system to aim the space heaters indirectly, but it was tough to find a good temperature in those little bunks. If the heat was aimed directly in, the bunk turned sweltering. If the heat was aimed elsewhere, the bunk froze solid. Most of the living areas were, like the dead end, set off with makeshift walls made of blankets and cardboard.
Nobody came to this dead end. There was a door marked “clinic”, but inside was just a bunch of old toolboxes and stacks of rotting first-aid gear. That was all there was, aside from six bunks, in this dead end.
That meant they could string up blankets to form a wall, making the dead-end corridor a room. The corridor itself was narrow, but the bunks were like shelves, and the clinic-cum-closet provided extra space. They kept the door open, so Buck’s feet could aim that way. He had plenty of room to stretch.
The blanket-wall insulated the “room” from the cold corridor, and it was heated by space heaters.
The one downside was that the bathroom was far away. They kept a piss bottle, but dookies required hotfooting it down the glacier-like steel hallway to the nicely heated bathroom. That was where they showered too.
From Buck the Roughneck