Part of the 'Butt Monkey' series of stories by Robert Furlong
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Driving over to Rugby for a meeting with a prospective customer, my car started spluttering on the A4304, and refused to respond when I tried to accelerate. Half a mile on, the engine was threatening to cut out altogether, so I pulled into the next lay-by, which was thankfully not too distant.
One might assume, as an engineer by trade, that I'd know my way around the innards of a car. In fact, I know embarrassingly little about what goes on beneath a car bonnet and have never had even the slightest inclination to find out. I can fix a vacuum cleaner, no problem, and could probably even get the better of a broken washing machine if given enough time. But present me with a car that won't respond when you turn the key in the starter-thing, and I'm practically clueless.
I know how to phone the AA, though, and that usually gets me out of most pickles I find myself in.
After a forty minute wait, which I mainly spent on the phone to the Rugby office trying to get through to somebody competent enough to delay my meeting, a recovery van pulled up behind me and a young lad got out. I say 'young lad' but he must have been about thirty. He was tall and quite skinny and the fringe of his hair, which he'd gelled up, was bleached to a blondish-auburn colour. It was his hairstyle, and his jovial manner, which made him seem young, but the lines around his eyes betrayed that he'd been working outdoors for a good few years.
"Mr Furlong?" he asked, walking up to me. He had a cocky swagger to him which I instantly warmed to.
"That's right," I said and offered my hand for him to shake. I like to establish an air of formality on such occasions. Maybe I'm a bit old fashioned.
As he was checking my membership card, I glanced at his name badge. "Duncan Flood", it read. "Roadside Assistant."
He asked me what the problem was.
"It was making spluttering noises for the last few miles," I explained. "And the accelerator pedal had no effect."
"When you say 'spluttering', what do you mean?"
What was wrong with the word 'spluttering'? It seemed a perfectly adequate description.
"Well, it was faltering," I tried, struggling to think of a way to explain what the car had been doing without using the word 'spluttering'. "It was as if it was coughing... like maybe the fuel wasn't getting to the engine or something..."
The thing was spluttering. That was the only word for it.
He looked dubious; like I really had no idea what the hell I was talking about.
"Let's have a look under the bonnet," he suggested in a voice which was just on the polite side of patronising. "How do you open it?"
"I think there's a catch in the glove compartment," I replied.
Or was that where it had been in my old car? If I couldn't even get right something as basic as opening the bonnet, the guy was going to think I was a total numpty.
He opened the passenger door and leaned in to take a look in the glove compartment.
"Actually it might be underneath – in the footwell," I offered, trying to remember what exactly I'd had to do last time I'd opened the bonnet to fill up the screenwash. It was somewhere over that side of the car, I was sure.
He seemed quite occupied with looking in the glove compartment and I left him to it. Standing out front, watching other people driving past, I wondered if perhaps he was trying to find one of those tools that are specific to each car, like the alloy wheel-nut spanner which I have lying around somewhere.
After a minute or so, a catch deep inside the car clicked and the bonnet popped up slightly.
Duncan came around to join me at the front of the car and lifted the bonnet, clipping it into place. He nosed around under it, busying himself with checking that everything was plugged in where it should be and that there was nothing loose.
I took the opportunity to check out his backside as he leaned over the bonnet with his high-visibility jacket riding up. He was wearing a blue pair of heavy-duty trousers which didn't give a lot way, but I suspected he'd have quite a nice, firm bum hidden away inside them which, in view of how thin he was, wouldn't be too meaty but would have its own particular attractions lurking between his cheeks.
While I was idly checking him out, he surprised me by saying, without lifting his head from the car engine: "Some of that stuff in your glove compartment was a bit... er... bizarre, Mr Furlong."
"Bizarre?" I repeated. "In what way?"
What was in there? A packet of mints, maybe? A small road map?
He kept pulling at wires and tightening connections as if we weren't having this conversation.
"Those pictures. Drawings of men licking each other's bums."
I felt the blood drain from my face. "Drawings?"
"Yeah. And some articles. I didn't even know blokes did that kind of stuff to each other."
I didn't know what to say. I had completely forgotten that I'd left the wodge of information I'd received from Cameron in there.
He stood up and smiled at me. "Is it a gay thing?"
"Actually, no," I stammered. How on earth was I going to explain this? "I meant to throw all that away..."
"Seems an odd thing to have in your glove compartment," he chuckled.
"Someone gave it to me," I said hurriedly. I felt like a child pointing a finger and saying, "He did it, not me!"
"People give me a lot of stuff," Duncan grinned. "But I've never been given anything like that!"
I was struggling to think of why I would have information like that in my glove compartment. "I... er..."
"Look," he cut in, his expression becoming more serious. "I'm going to need to run a few tests. Get a bit of kit out of my van. You might want to sit in your car. It's a bit cold out here."
"I'm fine here," I managed to say.
He shrugged. "Suit yourself."
He fetched what looked like an old CB radio from his truck and started wiring it up to my engine. I stood alongside feeling like I was a pervert and a rather gormless one at that.
After taking a few readings, he asked, "So are you into that kind of stuff then?"
"What kind of stuff?" I replied. I knew exactly what he meant but I wanted to buy a bit of time to think up an answer.
"Licking other blokes' bums," he said flatly.
I considered my response. It wasn't likely that he was going to turn nasty with me. I knew his name and could make a complaint with his company. But at the same time I didn't really want to share my sexual fantasies with a stranger.
I decided to play it fairly neutrally.
"It was something I found out about on the internet a while back," I said.
He kept running his checks and, if you were watching us from a distance, you wouldn't even know that the two of us were talking.
"Have you ever done it?" he asked.
