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The prodigal trucker quickly discovered a side benefit of his nomadic profession. “There were plenty of available women, and not just hookers or lot lizards. I stayed true to Rose, but there was no law against looking. The truck-stop girls always seemed so friendly and flirty. I was a big good-looking guy and every eye turned my way when I walked into a restaurant.

“I would usually head out from Yakima to Seattle around 3:00
A.M
. and stop for a quick coffee and flirt with the girls at the Husky Truck Stop in Ellensburg. Those girls sent my heart into overdrive. They would sit at my table and brush against my thigh. My hard-on always told me to get the hell out of there.

“Driving over Snoqualmie Pass on I-90, 1 would talk to Lady Rose and Cherokee at North Bend—more harmless flirting. Usually I would make ten or twelve stops, drive home, and start the cycle all over again the next day. Rose and I were deep in debt and needed every nickel I could earn. Days and nights ran together. I hardly saw my kids at all.

“I was still having bed problems with Rose. It was like she was getting bored with it. Or maybe I didn't know how to do it right. She'd act like sex was a duty, not fun. She would say some of the things that my mom said when I was listening outside the bedroom. Why did the Jesperson men always have to argue their wives into sex?

“Sometimes we had loud fights. Rose would yell, ‘Put it away! Stick it in a keyhole!' The only time she showed any interest was when she wanted to get pregnant. If I asked for a blow job, she acted like I was a pervert. Yet I knew that oral sex was a regular thing with other couples. This was the 1980s, not the 1950s. It finally reached the point where I had to take care of my own cock.

“But nobody could masturbate twenty-four hours a day, so I took off on long bike rides or jogs to relieve my sexual energy. On trips to Seattle I would pull the truck off the road and climb seven miles to the tower on top of Tiger Mountain near Issaquah. Whenever I was near the Columbia River Gorge, I would park on I-84 and run a few laps between Multnomah Falls and the lodge, maybe ten or twelve miles in all. That way I made myself too tired for sex.

“After one of my Columbia Gorge hikes I was cooling out in the parking lot when up walked this good-looking lady in a pink sweatsuit and Coke-bottle glasses. She told me she wanted to hike to the Falls, but she was a little nervous since it was getting dark. I offered to get my flashlight and guide her. When we were coming back down the narrow trail, I thought about taking her to my truck and enjoying her company for a while—just a little diversion, nothing too heavy. I tried to figure out how to ask her in a nice polite way. The worst she could do was turn me down.

“But as we got closer to the parking lot, I started to fantasize. That other no-good mean part of my personality thought how easy it would be to take her. For starters I could yank off her thick glasses and grab her breasts. If she freaked, I might back off—and I might not.

“I made a mental list of everything that could go wrong. She could scream and attract other hikers. She could report me to the cops. She could kick me in the nuts.

“Then I thought,
After I fuck her, I can throw her over the edge. She'll fall six hundred feet. Who could prove she didn't slip?
By the time they found her body, I'd be back home playing with my kids.

“I planned every step in my head, but in the end I chickened out. Over coffee in the lodge I asked, ‘How did you know I wouldn't take advantage of you up there?'

“She said, ‘I could see in your eyes that you're a nice man. You would never do something like that.' Before she left, she gave me her phone number in Pasco, Washington. I never called. I was a married man.”

Keith returned from a long haul to learn that his mother's lymph-node cancer had metastasized. Mother and son hadn't been close since he was small, but the prospect of losing her made him shudder. “Mom was the glue that held us together while Dad was working or hanging out with his cronies and I was struggling to make a living and all my brothers and sisters were marrying and moving away. Without Mom we wouldn't have had any family at all. When things were at their worst between me and Rose or between me and Dad or my brothers, she was the one who smoothed things over. We couldn't lose Mom.”

 

Just after Keith's thirtieth birthday, in April 1985, his father called with bad news. “Mom and Dad were living in the Alps Mobile Home Park in Moxee, and he told us to come right over. When Rose and I got there, he was running the show. He says, ‘Well, Keith, you'd better go in there and kiss your mom good-bye.' It was like a slap in the mouth. I wasn't raised to kiss my mom, and it made me uncomfortable.

“I sat on the bed and said, ‘Mom, I find it hard to kiss you good-bye because I never kissed you before. All my life we never hugged or kissed.' Maybe she hugged me when I was a baby, but I didn't remember. I said, ‘Mom, this is kinda like breaking the mold now. The only reason I'm gonna kiss you is because you're dying.'

“I crawled into bed and hugged her, but we never really kissed. We talked for maybe twenty minutes. She said, ‘Keith, don't raise your kids the way we raised you. Never, never hit 'em.'

“I said, ‘Mom, I'll raise 'em with love and understanding.'

“She said, ‘It's good you took off some weight, son. I hope you keep it off.' I told her I would. She said, ‘Try to get along with Rose and Dad.' I promised.

“When I left the bedroom, Dad grabbed me and said, ‘What'd she say?' It was like he was worried that she'd blurt out a family secret. I just turned away. Mom was on her deathbed and Dad was still trying to control the world.

“Mom died two weeks later. I was relieved that she wasn't in pain, but I didn't feel too bad otherwise. Maybe that was a sign there was something wrong with my emotions—I don't know about things like that. Brad cried at the funeral—mama's boy. We had a memorial service at the funeral home in Yakima. Everybody commented that I didn't show my feelings. Well, the truth was that I didn't have any special feelings. It struck me as funny that the others were bawling. I said, ‘What's the big deal? She's ashes now.'

“A month later Dad told me he was going on a trip to Canada with Betty Clasen, like he was asking if it was okay. I said, ‘Since when have you asked us for permission to do anything? When you want to do something, you do it anyway.' Within a year they were married.”

Keith's trucking job with Jerry's Steel ended in November 1986, when he was displaced by a rookie driver: his boss's son. “I called in from Seattle and was told that I was finished at the end of the day. Three years of faithful service and no apologies. No ‘thank you, Keith.' Just ‘You're outa here!'”

He fell behind on mortgage payments, lost the equity in the mobile home to the bank, and relocated his family to a seedy little house. He blamed Rose for poor money management. One of his complaints was that she fed the three children at McDonald's too often. Rose argued that he wasted money at truck-stop restaurants and should look for a job that kept him near home. That way he could economize with a lunch bucket and thermos.

Keith disagreed but tried to be understanding. “I knew what was eating Rose. She was tired of being alone with the kids and always being in debt. Now I was out of a job. I collected unemployment for a few months, then ran a punch press and went to work for the Yakima Holiday Inn as security officer and bouncer. In February '87 I got a job running heavy equipment from 6:30
A.M
. to 6:30
P.M
., so I was juggling three jobs. Caffeine pills and Jolt kept me going. The Holiday Inn paid five dollars an hour plus tips, and I made another twenty to sixty dollars a night by stealing door charges from the dance hall. I knew it was wrong, but I had to make our payments.”

 

One night Keith caved in to the pressure. “Rose accidentally overdrew our bank account. I felt like hitting her, but I'd made up my mind to end the Jesperson family's cycle of violence, no matter what. So I slammed my fist into the front door and made a big hole. I yelled at her to never do that again. She left for a few hours to let me calm down. I never fixed the door. It was a reminder to both of us to make sure there was money in the account before we wrote checks.”

Later Keith had to admit that he was no more adept at money-handling than his wife, and after a few more months they were floundering in debt. They went through credit counseling twice and finally had to declare bankruptcy.

Just before Christmas 1986, Keith was feeling frazzled and upset when he drove his son Jason to Yakima to pay a social call on old friends Billy and Ginny Smith. In eleven years of marriage, Keith had often fantasized about Ginny. “She was slim and had a very good-looking body and long brown hair, but I never made a move because she was married to my best friend. A short time after little Jason and I arrived at Billy's house, he told me he would take the kid to the store while I kept Ginny company. I thought this was a little strange because us men usually went to the store together.

“Jason and Bill were barely out of sight when Ginny gave me a tongue kiss. Here was my favorite fantasy coming true and I couldn't do anything about it. Billy would shoot me dead on the spot. He was that kind of guy.

“Ginny went into the bedroom, and I just sat there and tried to act like it was a joke. When she came back out and grabbed my crotch, I said, ‘I can't do this! I've never been unfaithful to Rose. Billy will catch us and I'll lose my best friend.'”

“When they got back from the store, I took Bill aside and told him that Ginny made a pass. He didn't even flinch. He said it was all planned. They were swingers and Ginny told him she wanted me for Christmas. He said, ‘Hey, man, get in there and give her a good fuck.'

“When I realized he was serious, I kind of staggered into the bedroom. At first I didn't know how to start, but then I thought I might as well pretend to be her lover. She took off her clothes and unzipped my fly. She was very playful, gave head and loved receiving it all ways. What a difference between her and Rose!

“Just as I finished my first orgasm, Billy came into the bedroom and got into the act as well. I asked him what my son was doing and he said he was watching TV in the living room. A good hour passed before I got dressed and took him home.

“The next night I couldn't get back there fast enough. Billy and I took turns on Ginny. After that, I didn't want to share her. Maybe Bill read my mind, because he warned me not to go near the place when she was home alone. That made me want her more. I would ride my bicycle and meet her while the kids were at school. She said she liked my thick size because it filled her up. We'd have sex in the shower, then in bed and on the floor.

“We did all the things that would have made Rose call 911. Then I'd go back home and wait for Billy to call up for a threesome. For the first time in my life I was getting all the sex I needed. Then he got a job in another town, and they moved away.”

 

During 1987, his thirty-second year, Keith reverted to fantasy sex again, often involving force, plus an occasional uninspiring session with Rose. His truck-stop flirting accelerated, and he seldom passed a stranded female motorist without pulling over. “It opened up my conscious mind to think about having sex with them. My fantasies ran wild.”

 

Late in the year he met two teenagers from the Yakima Valley. “They got into my truck to check it out, and all of a sudden I had a couple of horny young girls on my hands. I did my best to satisfy them. I saw them often, and we had an understanding that I was married and if they wanted to party, we'd party—no love or long-term relationship. Mary was gorgeous in height and weight, and her body fit my body nicely. We enjoyed each other on several trips south as I smuggled her along for our steamy experiences.

“Sometimes one of them was busy and I screwed the other. But then they began to fight over me, and it freaked me out since they only lived four miles from my house. To avoid another
Fatal Attraction,
I tried to find a girlfriend further away. I realized that the head between my legs was controlling my actions, but I couldn't stop.

“It was unnerving at times. Rose got suspicious calls, and I had to make up excuses. Trucking allowed me too much freedom, I guess. I began to find girls everywhere. I even bedded our baby-sitter after driving her home. I had the sex drive of a stallion, and I could perform all night and half the next day.

“I would park in rest areas and watch the lot lizards making their moves. It was tempting, but I stuck to my rule of not paying for it. I avoided my fellow drivers, refused to play follow-the-leader in our mini-convoys—three to six trucks headed in the same direction and stopping together. I didn't want any strings on where I went or what I did.

“One night I was in the restaurant at the Texaco truck stop at Exit 161 off I-5 in Oregon when I noticed a woman in her late thirties or early forties. We talked, I bought her dinner, and she got into my truck. Her name was Nancy Flowers, divorced, living alone between Gold Hill and Rogue River. We kissed and my hands found her breasts, and we were just about down to the bare skin when she said no at the last minute. With Nancy no meant no. I still wasn't into taking women against their will, although I did it every night in my fantasies. We just steamed up the windows for a while. I got her number and told her I'd call.

“On my way back from California, I phoned her from Gold Hill and she picked me up and took me to her place. She had an octagon-style house in the woods. After we had sex she woke me at 7:00
A.M
. so that I could make my delivery in Seattle on time. From then on I slept with her whenever I was in the neighborhood. She was forty-four, and I was thirty-three. I never told her I was married, but I think she kind of knew.”