The Tiny Penis Brigade
Miles Stearns


We were driving down the highway in our sedan as the lanes merged to form one long and continuous line of cars which could have been a train if we had wanted to conserve energy as a species. She was looking out the window at the farms and houses which passed like stills in a museum. We were paying over four dollars a gallon for this exhibit and thus far it is looked like a classic American countryside.

As I was admiring the anonymous paintings I glanced into my rearview mirror because that’s what you are trained to do in traffic school: check your mirror every five seconds. Five seconds is a bit too often for my taste but I do like to be a responsible driver so I check it every thirty seconds or so. This is most important when one is on the freeway as there may be a cop or a semi or something barreling down upon you like a cheetah in a concrete prairie.

This was one hell of a prairie. We were confined to the tour zone of the prairie where they line up the people from all the countries and parade them around to the animals in the wild. The animals all pretend like they are going about their animal business and snicker to one another:

“Look at these foolish humans. So white and weak. They have to surround themselves in cages of steel and glass - and willingly!”

“Yes,” agreed the other animal as they walked casually through the tall brush. “They must love those cages. I heard from my cousin that they will sometimes come and take animals far away and put them in cages as well.”

“Impossible!” exclaimed the first. “They must know how animals hate being contained in such an unnatural manner. Just look at us here in this expansive plain - we are so elegant and refined! And with so much space!”

“I don’t think they understand,” continued the other. “They are confused all the time and spend the majority of their days stationary like fat pillows making boring love to other pillows.”

“Hahaha” the first laughed and they sauntered along into the trees.

We were making decent time at the moment in our line of cars, just three or four miles an hour over the speed limit. We were comfortable there with the Big Mama Thornton on the radio; it bellowed deep into the cab of our silver Honda Accord as if Big Mama was trying to fill our car with the blues we were trying to leave behind.

“Damn,” she said suddenly, looking into the side view mirror. “Who the fuck is that?”

I shot a quick glance in my rearview to see a large and raised truck passing a smaller sedan by leaping into oncoming traffic and then cutting back into our lane behind me.

“Where does he think he’s going to go?” I asked rhetorically.

She was busy looking over her shoulder and over our car full of our life which we were hauling across the United States. We had left California a couple months ago and were currently in the Puget Sound of Washington. This was not the first raised pickup we had run into on the many roads which crisscross our nation like grill marks on a giant and overcooked steak.

“What an asshole,” she remarked.

I looked back in my rearview only now I could not see anything but the chrome plated grill of the truck, he was so close to my bumper. I began to ease slowly onto the brake.

“Please don’t,” she said. “Assholes like this are crazy. I don’t want to get shot.”

I looked at her in her anxious halo of imagination. And as I felt myself wanting to accommodate her fears I also wanted to upset the man in the big truck. I wanted to upset him because he was silly, raising his truck up so high and driving so aggressively. He already had a powerful truck capable of driving through mud and swamps and whatnot - why did he need to raise it? He didn’t. Furthermore he didn’t need to tail me so closely as we were in a long line of cars and I had nowhere to go and couldn’t let him pass.

I imagined him then as a crazy asshole: One giant gaping sphincter in a big black truck screaming obscenities to the world and mumbling incoherently to himself before he shit all over his cab.

“Whatever,” I thought. “I don’t need to deal with his shit. I’ll just tune him out.”

So I turned up Big Mama and she told me all about how she had a little red rooster who was too lazy to crow for days.

“Damn straight, Big Mama,” I thought to myself.

I had a big asshole who was too excited to slow the fuck down and was leaving a trail of crap all over the freeway. I knew she’d understand.

Up ahead I could see that the highway was widening back into two lanes. I carefully plotted my course of action: just as the lanes opened up and the slower cars merged to the right I remained in the left hand lane, accelerating steadily. The psychotic asshole stayed right where he belonged, behind me, until he began to freak out and tried to dart into the right lane and pass me before the next car. But I had prepared for this and my steady acceleration placed me too close for him to cut in front of me. I then began to enforce.

Enforcing is what police cars do when they want to slow traffic down on the freeway. They drive next to one another but one of them remains just far enough behind the other to cut off any passing room. It is a very annoying and effective tactic.

“Seriously,” she turned the music down and faced me. “You need to let him pass.”

I was smiling. The nutty asshole was back behind me again and swerving a bit in anger. I was getting to him and it was worth every second.

“Alright,” I conceded and pulled over into the right hand lane.

We could hear his motor as he floored it and passed me and the car in front only to be forced to cut back into our line our cars as the lanes merged again.

“What a tiny, tiny, penis he must have,” she said shaking her head. “We should make bumper stickers that say TINY PENIS BRIGADE and slap them on the back of trucks like that when they are parked.”

It was a good idea. I should patent it - maybe this story is some sort of a patent.

Tiny Penis Brigade Bumper Stickers

Patent Pending: Miles Stearns

In all truth, if I saw those stickers I wouldn’t care if someone violated my patent. I would sue but emotionally I would side with them.

Along with the animals in the prairie we watched the member of the Tiny Penis Brigade stubbornly push against the next car like he had pushed against mine.

“That poor driver,” she said in regards to the person who was hopefully now easing onto the brake to upset the lunatic sphincter.

Just then the car in front, that little barrier we had between us and the madness, skipped off the freeway onto the off ramp and disappeared into the paintings like a last minute addition. It was just us and the back of the asshole and it didn’t look any better than the front.

“Oh my god,” she said, pointing to the truck and trying to contain her laughter.

On the back window there sat a large Monster Energy Drink sticker, coffee being too bitter for his delicate taste buds. And there, hanging from the hitch like two silver ornaments of shame, a pair of plastic balls.

About the author:
Miles Stearns is a twenty-something writer currently residing in Portland, Oregon. He spent the better part of the past year traveling the country and converting his limited funds into writing. He is now trying to figure out how to turn them back. Find him here.