An oil rig is the last place you'd expect to find a gay guy but sure enough my best friend Sean was gay and he worked as an engineer. The guys suspected he was gay but since he wasn't flamboyant and outworked all of them no one ever gave him a hard time about it. It didn't hurt that Sean was a monster of a human being. At 6'4" with zero body fat he didn't just look like an ox he could lift valves and pipes that others needed a crane for.
I was happy to have him as a friend. I was hired straight out of college as a hydraulic mechanic even though my degree was in engineering. Coming from college doesn't put you in the good graces of a bunch of roughnecks who see working your way up as the only way a man should work and the fact that most of my work was inside didn't improve my "college boy" image. I try to stay in shape but at 5'8" and 146lbs I felt intimidated by some of the larger personalities surrounding me. So when Sean was kind and nonjudgmental it made an impression on me. He was the one to show me around when I first got there, and before you start thinking he was hitting on me let me assure you he wasn't, I watched him help everyone who needed it.
A deep water rig is a maze. The accommodation section is built like a hotel and the drill floor looks similar to what you'd see in the movies but the rest of a rig is difficult to picture. There are 2 engine rooms to run our generators located on either side of the stern, a mud put room to house all the drill fluids that will be sent down hole, a sack room for mixing the chemicals that go in the mud, and a ton of deck space for all our drill pipe and casing. I know I have just made things more confusing but believe me that's how I felt when I first got on board. Several times I had to stop people and ask them where I was and how to get out.
Most of the large equipment is run by hydraulics and while there's plenty I need to do on deck no one ever talks about the mountain of paperwork rigs produce, so my life became confined to a 15x20 office located between the moonpool and the first floor of the accommodations. When I say office you shouldn't think about someplace with commercial carpeting and cubical. My office had a single computer facing a gray painted steel bulkhead and keys permanently stained with grease. The deck was cheap linoleum tile with an embedded trail of dirt running from one end to the other. Behind my crooked metal desk was a control panel that ran the 20' length of the wall.
Most of us had a noon to midnight schedule or vice versa, but Sean's schedule was 6-6 days all the time, and since he had to walk through my office to get to the accommodation section he would always stop by and bullshit.
When I first started offshore Sean wasn't out and most of our conversations were about work and family. However, when he did talk about a significant other he never used an identifying pronoun, and there were a lot of people that would warn me that they thought Sean was gay. I'm not gay but always found it funny that people would warn you that someone was gay like they were gonna jump out from around the corner and rape you, but Sean never made a pass at me so it was nice to just have someone to visit with.
It took about a year but I finally fell into a rhythm of work and the guys started accepting me as more than just the college boy and several of the guys ended up being pretty close friends. Sean still stopped by time to time to bullshit and guys still gave me shit about it but now the jokes were in jest only.
It was a hot summer, one where you take a change of clothes with you on watch because if you spent anytime at all outside you were going to get soaked through with sweat. Most of us were used to the heat but that in no way makes it comfortable. It had been a long day and I was freezing in the air conditioner after having been outside and no time to change. Sean came in as I was trying to close out my last permits.
"What the hell are you doing up so late?" I asked. It was almost 10 o'clock an I'd never seen him up past 9.
"Had to switch watches for Tommy. His wife's in the hospital and he had to go in today." We talked a little while longer and complaining about too much paper work and too little pay then Sean got up to leave.
"Hey before I go, me, Ryan and Mike were gonna watch that movie Shooter in my room tonight if you wanna watch."
Sean had invited my to watch movies with him before and it always felt weird, especially with the rumors about his sexuality and my strong suspicions about it. I know it was wrong to think that way and contrary to what I said earlier but that doesn't change the way it felt. However, Ryan and Mike were definitely straight so I felt more comfortable and told him I'd be there after I got a shower.
Like I said the accommodations were set up like a hotel, the mess hall and conference room were on the first floor, and the higher up you went the higher the position on the rig. My room was on the 3rd floor and it felt wonderful to finally be clean and out of my work coveralls and into some clean gym shorts and a t-shirt.
Sean's room was on the 5th floor. His room was about twice the size as mine and he didn't share it with anyone else. The room had a single bed on the right wall and a settee facing the center of the room against the left wall, between the bed and settee was a large flat screen and on the opposite wall was a single regular chair. Ryan and Mike were already there and the movie had just started. The only spot left to sit was in the center of the settee so I settled in between Sean and Mike.
The couch wasn't quite wide enough for the three of us so I was a little cramped. As a guy I like to lounge when I sit which usually translates to partially reclined legs spread but sitting like I was I could do neither. The one thing that did make it better was that Mike was wearing blue jeans and Sean pajama pants so nobody's legs were really touching.
Mike was about average as roughnecks go; average height, powerful frame, full short beard and hairy arms. He was rough in both appearance and personality, but all in a ll a good person once you got to know him.
Ryan on the other hand was non-typical of most guys out there. He was our rig clerk, so spent almost all day inside answering the phone, creating room assignments and crew changes. I think he was closer to my age and while lean he was tall, probably about 6'2". Ryan always had a clean appearance with his perfectly fixed blonde hair, collared shirt and clean shaven face. Tonight was not much different, he still had on his red office shirt but was wearing a pair of shorts instead of blue jeans. He had also manage to take up more of the side chair than seemed possible with his sprawled out way of sitting.
"You want a coke or something?" Sean asked me gesturing to the mini fridge in the corner.
"Some water if you have it." I told him, getting up to grab a bottle.
"Yeah, I think there's one left in the bottom, you're welcome to have it." Sean said.
In the movie the guy was sighting in a rifle and Mike asked Sean what kinda rifle he thought that was.
"I'd have to guess a 50 cal. something or other, seems to be what all snipers are using these days." Sean told him.
"Never shot a 50, you?" Mike asked
"No, but I hear the recoil isn't too bad. I'd love to give it a try one time." Sean said.
"Fuck all that. I've got a 30-06 that does anything I need it to." I said chiming in.
"Well that's a good point." Mike said.
This started a whole discussion about Carlos Hathcock a what he used in Vietnam and how the modern day sniper would fair against him.
As the movie continued so did the discussion of things we'd done that were like what Mark Wahlberg's character were doing. Mike claimed to have made a 400 yard shot once and Sean talked about having to fight his way out of a bar one time. Even Ryan had a story about getting chased by the cops for tearing up a construction site one night. However, when I tried told the story about ripping a 3 wheeler in half by catching the back tire on a telephone phone no one believed me. Well, to be honest they believed that I wrecked the 3 wheeler but not that I had a branch from a pine tree wedge into my side.
