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Chapter One - Aiden
“Aiden, do you have a big package for me?” my customers leered at me when they said it. It was a friendly leer, but still a leer.
Every time I heard that line — a few times a day — I had to pretend it was original and hilarious. “Oh, that’s very clever, Mrs. Dankworth!”
I wasn’t allowed to show any displeasure. I especially wasn’t allowed to point out that my big package could be delivered only to one woman — not just any random woman. A woman who would see me as more than just a package to be tossed on the cock truck. I wanted love. I could live without the complimentary package inspection that was offered to me several times every workday.
I’d spent four years in college and another four years in graduate school. During those eight years, most of my socializing had been with nothing but dusty books and cranky old professors. Driving a UPS truck was a radical departure from that. It was going to be a time to socialize. Maybe it could even be a time to meet someone special, someone to love, someone to love me back, someone with whom I could even start a family.
But it never happened that way. It was just the “package” pickup lines that I got every day, sometimes accompanied by suggestive stares at my crotch. It was usually women who made those come-ons. My beefy physique made them assume I had a big package. They told me so. My masculine demeanor led them to assume I was a player available for anyone. They told me so too. Even in New York City, everybody assumed that their UPS driver was available for flings. What could possibly be sexier than a muscular guy wearing a tight brown uniform with short form-fitting shorts?
Usually, my female customers who asked about my package, asked to see my double loading dock or wanted the measurement of my longest side were just joking. Some did really try to put the moves on me and invite me inside their homes. But after five years on the job driving a UPS truck and standing in people’s front doors having their eyes roam my body, I could handle it. I could handle anything.
Maybe if a polite, shy, well-spoken, sweet girl had extended the offer of love to me, not just an offer of an impromptu package inspection, maybe I would’ve run into her arms. But that never happened. Those polite, shy, bookish girls would never put the moves on their UPS drivers. It was an evil paradox. The women I would’ve loved to get to know were precisely the girls who wouldn’t hit on a random UPS driver. And the women who were always “just fresh from the shower” and “accidentally” wearing only a small towel when they opened the door for me were always the kinds of sleazeballs I didn’t want in my life.
If a customer invited me inside for a personal package inspection, I had a pre-prepared line about being on a very tight schedule. That was true. There was one GPS tracker on my truck, and another one clipped to my belt. I was always being watched. My supervisor would be automatically alerted by the monitoring software if I did so much as spend too long fetching a package from the cargo area. And I wouldn’t risk my job, or even my afternoon, for just any random customer.
Would I risk my job for love if there was someone special? Sure. I’d risk everything, actually. But there wasn’t anybody special on the horizon — not anybody that made me feel anything.
My UPS delivery schedule was the tightest of tight, every movement electronically controlled. But I would’ve pried that schedule wide-open for a chance at real love.
My friends and grad school classmates had accused me of becoming a UPS driver just for meeting women. I certainly met many women. At their front doors. For delivering their boxes. It never went farther than that. Maybe girls weren’t into my rugged-outdoorsy-writer look. Maybe girls didn’t know that their daily front-door visitor in brown shorts was lonely and that I was very much single, perpetually single. It was mostly that the kinds of girls I was into wouldn’t be the kind to ask their UPS driver inside.
