Alaskan Oil Field Affair: A Tale of Forbidden Love and Unbridled Passion I had just started my new job, my first job out of college. Working on drilling tools in the northern oil fields of Alaska. It might sound terrible until you hear about the perks, so bear with me. Well, it's the arctic circle so it's cold. Really cold. During the winter it can drop below negative 40 degrees farenheit... and that's before the wind chill factor. The summers are nice, around 65 degrees usually. You really hope for the wind to come or the mosquitoes will eat you alive for the three months that the summer lasts. It's completely dry up there, and I mean that in a couple ways, there is no alcohol and you better bring some chapstick. Also, when you're up there, you're up there for weeks. Almost everyone on "the slope" works there on rotations. We fly up there and we work, twelve hour days, seven days a week, for two weeks. But the next two weeks? Oh man, we fly back to wherever home is and we get the next two weeks to ourselves. Two whole weeks where most of us ignore our company e-mail, disregard calls from our bosses, and play with the money we earned during the last two week hitch. Did I mention that you don't have to spend a dime while you are at work? The flights are paid for, the meals are paid for, and you can grab as many snacks as you want from the cafeteria. Then there is my favorite part, the housekeepers. In our building on the slope, there are housekeepers that clean the camp, take out the trash in our rooms, and make our beds every day. But this story is about a housekeeper that did a bit more than that, just for me. I had been working for my company for about a month now and was was starting to get a feel for the place. My mentor and main coworker is a real piece of work. Of course, I mean that in the nicest way possible. Barely 40 and he acts like he is younger than myself. He was supposedly very much over weight but has recently lost all of it after surgery. …but everything was about to change
