All the Tits in the World

By Terrance Manning, Jr.

I once called myself a welder. I laid a mean root-pass with a 6010 stick, mostly migged, and once in a while, when money lined up, I practiced tig-welds with aluminum wire on aluminum exhaust pipes—mostly motorcycles. My buddy Harry told me I’d never pass a real test and if anybody stole a look at one of my cover passes, they’d laugh and ask who’s vomiting steel. But I’ve laid some pretty root passes, each orange crescent like a stack of dimes, hardening.

I’m a grinder now.

Nobody gives a grinder any credit.

“Hey jack, grind them tits off” I hear a few hundred times a day. Grind them tits. Grind them tits. I’m a tit-grinder, really. Without me, no welds could pass a real test. I’m like the clean-up guy, the shoe-polisher. I’m the real damn artist. I grind all the tits in the world so the strong welds look pretty.

And sometimes, at night, I think of all the dreams I’ve dreamed and never held, or followed. Not a baker, but the dough cleaner, the sweep. Never a truck driver. I liked to buff the rims, the gas-tank, the grated running-board on a Kenworth, all clean steel—I make that shit look like glass. Driver just drives. I made that truck pretty. Five bucks a rim. Always cash. I’m a grinder. A buffer. A sheared-off metal tit. A splash of weld. I’m the mirror. The shadow. I fill infinite valleys with infinite darkness. I am the night.

Image provided by Mark Goebel via Flickr's Creative Commons licence.