You have to be creative to have fun in a small town. That means things like hay rides, cow tippin’, skinny dippin’, etc.

But most of time, people just get together, hang out at somebody’s house, maybe light a bonfire or throw in a crappy scary movie, and then just drink themselves into oblivion.

The summer during my sophomore year of college, I was tossed right back into this quaint little small southern town environment when I headed home from school. I had taken a job as a line cook at the old restaurant I’d worked at since high school, so I was reunited with some of my old cronies and also made friends with a few of the new guys. But mostly, I spent time with the waitresses. Since I was the only gay guy at the restaurant, I just tended to relate a little better to the ladies!

One night, my friend Karen invited me to head out with everyone after to work to J.T.’s place. J.T. was the ‘new’ bartender. Really, he’d been there for nearly a year, but he was new to me since I had never met him before I’d returned home. He was a great looking guy. Tall, lean, dark, close-cropped hair and that perfect amount of prickly stubble on his chiseled cheeks and jaw. But he was a player, and a jackass at that. In the couple weeks that I had been back at the restaurant he had already dicked over (quite literally) two of the waitresses, one of whom was Becky, one of my oldest friends here.

I know it’s tough to place all the blame on the guy when he’s known to be the type who takes what he wants and leaves; I mean, it’s not like the girls didn’t know what to expect. Still, somehow every girl always thinks they’ll be the one to change the bad boy and make him settle down. Whatever. Becky was a sweet girl and I held it against the guy for taking advantage of her.

So when Karen said the after work party was at J.T.’s, I was a little hesitant to accept her invitation. But with a little coaxing, she got me to agree to tag along, if for no other reason than to ‘watch out for her and Becky’.

So, when the last few customers left and we finished mopping up the kitchen and closing down the lines, I said I was gonna run home and shower and change and then head back to meet her to leave for the party. Karen stopped me and explained that J.T.’s place was a long way away and that there was no need to clean up since everyone else would be going in their work clothes as well. I argued that there was a stark difference between a waitress heading out in her ‘work clothes’ and a line cook heading out, wreaking of frying oil, smoke, and whatever else was smeared into his jeans and cook’s smock.

Then Karen explained that J.T. had a big pool and that most people ended up in there to ‘get the smell off’. Again, reservation set in. I didn’t have a suit to wear and I wasn’t about to go skinny dipping with all my very hetero kitchen-mates around. I explained to Karen that’d I have to run home and get my swim trunks.

“John, seriously. You’re being way to formal about this whole thing. We do this every weekend. It’s just the