I was between jobs and recently divorced when Superstorm Sandy tore up the East Coast of the United States. Road crews were overwhelmed with storm damage, so I enlisted in a corps of travelling laborers for some quick money. I was assigned to the mundane but necessary task of holding a pole with a sign atop it. One side read stop, the other read slow. My task was to communicate with a coworker a half mile away by walkie-talkie and let one lane of traffic pass at a time.
The company was as good to us as they could be. They put us up in nearby hotels when possible, but one assignment proved far more adventurous. I had been assigned to a team that was installing a culvert under a washed out road in the hills of West Virginia.
My coworkers on the job weren't just a bunch of laboring grunts like me. The group consisted of twenty-some men and women including engineers, company representatives, and surveyors. But as varied as we were, there were no hotels or even houses for miles around. A mile up the road, we were set up with two huge bunkhouse-style tents—one for the men, the other for the women. Two shower tents were erected on either side of a tank truck with a row of portable toilets behind them.
I had no problem with the primitive accommodations, but the thought of sleeping on a cot with a dozen snoring guys around me was appalling. As I was coming to grips with the idea, I heard a woman's voice call out, "Hey, there are single tents in the supply truck!"
Bolting over to the truck, I scoffed up the last one just before a pretty young woman of Pacific Island descent. "It's big enough to bunk together," I offered. "I'll behave."
She scrunched her cheek and turned away. Chivalry almost got the better of me as she walked off, but I once again pictured myself wide-awake between two snoring Paul Bunyan types. Sticking the tent under my arm, I walked about a hundred feet from the common area and found a spot where I had enough privacy to step out and pee between the bushes in the middle of the night.
Arriving at camp after the first day of work, I was surprised to find several more utility trucks and cars parked on the grass. As it turned out, another team had stopped to join us. After a long day of work, they had decided not to drive the extra sixty miles to their own camp. I was all the more happy to have my own tent. Moreover, I was excited to find the number of women had doubled.
Camaraderie formed quickly at the after-hour campfire. Men and women joked and flirted, mostly in innocent quips. I tried my luck with a few of the girls who weren't wearing wedding rings, but to no avail. Near twelve on the moonless night, most members of the team had retired to their bunks. As the last of the women strutted off into the dark, I poured water on the flames and tamped the coals.
Shining my small flashlight on the ground, I walked to my tent and kicked off my boots outside, then unzipped the screen and crawled in, laying my flashlight on the sleeping bag. A dainty hand covered it and clicked it off, leaving me in complete darkness. "Hush," whispered a soft voice. "It's anonymous or it doesn't happen."