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Bang One Out

“C ome on, Rex. Let’s go. Time to work.” We walk through the cold night air over to the barn. I wanted to work on this pair of knives the other night, but my head just wasn’t in it. Tonight though, there’s a sense of relief in me, a sense of calm, and I can think of nothing more I want to do.

Well… almost nothing anyways.

I would have definitely liked more time with Ronni, especially if we were alone.

It’s fine though. I needed to work on this. This is the second time I’ve tried this particular steel combination. I rushed, working angrily, and screwed it up the first time. I wasted all of those hours making the last set of billets, the layered blanks of steel, that get turned into blades. I had to make another set, but now I’m almost out of the steel I salvaged for one of the two layers. I better not mess it up again.

The process for making these blades is long and can be pretty frustrating some times. First, there’s picking the right combination of steels to use. Then it takes hours and hours to weld layers upon layers of the two steels together to make a billet. It’s definitely the mind numbing part of the process. For these knives, I had to melt down the old steel I found around the barn and cast it into a shape that I was able to make into the layered billet.

After making a new set, I finally get to have some fun. That’s what I’m doing tonight. The fun part. I let out an audible laugh that overshadows the sound of the flames from the blazing hot furnace.

Fun.

Fuck yeah, I definitely had some fun tonight. Well, all day really.

My body feels like it’s on fire. It feels electric. And it’s not the two thousand degree furnace I’m standing in front of. The images, the sounds, the feelings. The memory of the whole day is flooding back through me. Ronni pulling my hair to bring my face into her while she wrapped her legs around me while she came. The feeling of cupping the back of her head and tugging her braids while her lips worked on my dick. Her hushed little moans and whimpers while I fingered her in the mudroom. All of these things I’ve only barely let myself dream of happening today. It’s everything I’ve ever imagined and so much more.

Fuck me. This is intense. I need to clear my head if I’m going to bang one out tonight.

Normally when I work on knives, especially the forging part, it’s when I’m depressed, thinking about how alone it feels here sometimes. Other times when I’m angry, my mind shifts that depression into a feeling of unfairness. For some obvious reason, banging and pounding hunks of red hot steel for hours gets all of that out of my system.

A release.

I look back at the furnace, the larger of the two blanks is an intense shade of red, ready to be worked. I pull it out by the temporary handle and put it in the forge press. I start hammering the red hot block of metal over and over until it’s nearly a quarter the thickness it started, then fold it over on itself before hammering more.

When the metal starts to drop below its working temperature, I place it in the furnace again to get it back to that shade of blazing red. I’ll do this for hours and hours, creating layer after layer of thin, hardened, forge welded steel to get something good enough to turn into a finished knife eventually.

While I wait for the steel to get back to the right temperature, I look over at Rex. He’s somehow sleeping on his bed in the corner of the barn despite all the noise I’m making. A smile forms on my now sweaty, dirty face. I’ve always been jealous of his ability to just sleep, anywhere, any time.

There’s an eerie silence in the workshop while I wait for the steel to reheat. Normally by now, my heartbeat is pounding and my breathing is labored. But something is different tonight.

The anger, the sadness, the rage that normally fuels me are gone, replaced by something so different. A sense of calmness, a clear mind.

Normally, I try to do anything to distract myself from how much I miss my old friends and family. How much I miss having Ronni in my life. I’ve tried dating but never felt a real connection to any of them, always comparing them to her. It always felt like my brain was a chaotic mess, the sound of radio static.

Tonight though, my head is crystal clear.

I realize I’ve been working slow. Steady and focused. The emotions that have clouded and filled my head for so long are gone. At least for now.

All I can think about is her .

The feeling of her touch, her lips, the sight of her smile, and the sound of her laugh.

But now, instead of a distant memory, like looking at a piece of art in a museum I can’t touch, it’s real.

“Fuck.”

I say the word out loud, breaking the silence in the barn.

Is this what it feels like to feel whole? To be happy?