Hump Day

Hump Day

(Everything Everywhere Over and Over and Over Again)

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The Maggie Chronicles

Chapter 82

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(To the Reader: Ordinarily I don't write introductions for my stories at Literotica; I let the stories speak for themselves, for better or for worse. But this time, I want to point out that the one you've opened is a very long "short story," at least by my standards. It's this long for a reason, again for better or for worse. So I beg you to allot 90 minutes or so for reading it -- hopefully not spread across too many days -- or if not then perhaps just skip it. If you skim it for five minutes looking for "the good parts," then you are almost certain to be disappointed. If you read it from start to finish and still are disappointed, by all means let me know. Let me know if you like it, too. And if you feel like you have to go back and read it again to figure out what you missed, then Bingo, that's kind of what I expect since there's a lot to unpack. Whichever way, thanks in advance. -- PrimalDual)

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I hate my job. But I'm nothing without it.

I sat at the bar, for the moment anyway, and stirred my drink with the swizzle stick. Three cucumber slices garnished it; I was more used to a lime in my gin and tonic. Isn't G&T an old man's drink? Don't worry. I've been told before that I have an "old soul." A woman I dated last year when I was first out of college used that phrase, saying I had lived many lives before this one, that I had many more lives ahead of me too, and that there was magick with a K in my destiny - it was the first and last time I'd ever gone out with a woman so much older, a cougar with treated blonde hair and yellowing toenails if you want to be graphic about it - the lesson she gave me in Sex Magick that night involved a lot of woo-woo philosophizing, an abbreviated and frustrating hand job, and a scented candle, climaxed if I may use the term loosely by her mounting me for a few minutes of conventional intercourse. No, I didn't opt for a second date with that one. Old soul, huh. I wanna live.

Tonight, the concierge at the conference hotel had recommended this place, "if you want to meet some locals," as she interpreted my question about somewhere to go that didn't cater to the convention crowd. This was after I had turned down her suggestion of both of the hotel's own bars. I wasn't interested in overpriced drinks bought by overpaid people on under scrutinized expense accounts - my company would cover only my reasonable and necessary lodging and food expenses, and I was on my own if I wanted liquor. I didn't want to spend additional time with out-of-towners like me either, especially if they happened to be know-it-alls in the industry, who wanted to set me straight about the realities of technical topics which I had studied in depth and which they actually knew nothing at all about.

So on this late summer evening I had gone out, on foot for similar reasons of cost versus value, and the choices were few. The neighborhood in DC was bland and relatively commercial. YOLO? That was the name of this bar. You Only Live Once. Hackneyed, also bland, and not a small measure fatalistic even. Plus it offended my sense of grammar -- it is clearer as You Live Only Once, right? YLOO isn't catchy, though. And I'm a techie, not a professional copy editor.

There were TVs strategically placed around the main room, with the Nationals game on one of them, an Orioles game on a second, a talking-head football show on another, news on another - all of them except the football one on mute with closed captioning. More of a 2024 sports bar atmosphere than a singles bar, not that I was looking for a hookup while at my very first conference as a new employee. This place might be better hunting grounds if I were female, anyway.

While waiting for my drink I had taken stock of the couple dozen or so folks who were there in a room with capacity for perhaps two hundred. A pair of guys playing an air-hockey game in the corner - they weren't conversing or trash talking or gloating, there was just the clack-clack of their game. A handful of people were seated pairwise in booths around the perimeter, some obvious couples, some obvious friends, some not obvious what the connection might be. Two women were seated on high stools at a round table and talking between themselves at the far end of the room; one older guy sat by himself at the other end of the bar from where I was. The place wasn't silent, but without the background TV sound and some kind of dance music also playing at extremely low volume and to which no one was dancing, the ambiance would have been nil.

This bland tavern, with its bland name, in a bland locality, was acceptable but not much more. So I'll forgive you, if at this point you are thinking this story itself will be bland, bland, bland. And if that last comment makes you think I'm some sort of Omniscient Narrator, then be forewarned: you'll be pretty unclear on some of the facts and details presented, no different than me. I want you to feel how confused I was.

So now that my drink had arrived, I offered to pay but the somewhat heavyset bartender asked me whether I wanted to run a tab, and I said sure, even though I didn't intend to have more than the one. She asked me a few benign questions - where was I from, whether I was in town on business, did I have kids (I joked that I didn't know). She asked whether I was looking for companionship, which honestly sounded like either she was a pimp, or she was coming on to me. I said that it wasn't really what I had in mind - I just wanted to relax this final evening after three long days of being 'on' all the time when interacting with potential clients at the conference. She shrugged and said I should keep an open mind.

She reached beneath the bar and handed me a disk, which looked like a casino poker chip, only a little bigger. It was red and white, with lettering that said "RANDO". I asked what that meant - she said that that was the name of the place until recently. YOLO, RANDO, what's the difference, I thought. Life's short, life's random? Not my style of thinking, truly.

I asked what I was supposed to do with it, and she said to just hang onto it until later. She turned and walked into the back room before I could ask whether it had to do with running a tab. So I slipped it into my trouser pocket. I wanted to know more about whether things would pick up later in the evening, or maybe it was more of a weekend place, but with her already gone I turned my attention back to the room and took a sip of my drink. It was good, with a high-quality juniper overtone and a little bit of citrus in addition to the bitterness from the quinine.

The round high table in the middle of the back part was at a visual focal point of the room, and I was unsubtle enough that one of the four women, not just two as I had first thought, now seated around it caught my eye and smiled. She looked pretty but older than me by at least a decade, probably two. Yep, another cougar. I surveyed the other parts of the room, finding nothing of greater interest than the first time.

I concentrated on the baseball game for a couple of minutes, seeing an overmatched Nats rookie strike out by first looking at a fastball down the middle, flailing at a breaking pitch in the dirt, and looking at a third offering which caught the high outside corner. It was mid-September, and the team looked like they had clearly waved the white flag on the way to ninety or a hundred losses again.

I looked around to see whether anyone was also watching this ballgame, or the other one, in case maybe some conversation were to be had. Hell, I'd even be willing to talk about the pre-season football highlights from a few days ago being shown tonight. When I glanced again at the round table, the other woman who could see me, younger looking than the first and also very pretty, gave a pronounced nod of her head. Despite knowing that no one was seated to either side of me, I checked around, as though expecting she was signaling somebody else. I looked in her direction again and she motioned me with her index finger.

So I walked over to them with my drink in hand, and the two whose backs were toward me got up and scooted their bar stools toward the others so that I had room to pull another stool up and sit among them.

"You sure are slow to take a hint. Or an invitation," the one across and to my left, who had been first to initiate contact, said with a cold smile.

I asked whether they were watching one of the games, and none seemed to be interested in the one-time National Pastime. They were much more interested in knowing about my personal details, though. I'd been warned, at orientation months ago for my new job, about giving out too much information to strangers, even at the conference itself, so I was wary, especially having already let my guard down a little with the barmaid. I told them basically only what I had told her, that I was from Wichita and was here for a conference on Information Theory at the Herriott. I omitted that this was my very first conference, thinking that it marked me as naive. I tried to direct conversation back onto themselves, and with a bit of prodding I learned that they all worked in the same building a block away, each for a different firm.

They had met over the course of time in the luncheon deli located on the first floor of their building and had found it fun to meet after work like this every Wednesday, the so-called Hump Day, in lieu of fighting rush-hour conditions to get home for one night of the week at least. They customarily ate dinner together at one of the restaurants on or around Connecticut Ave, and then would move over to this particular, favorite tavern. I wasn't sure why it was so special to them, and they didn't really answer when I asked.

In this circle of friends there were more than just these four women, but four happened to be their number that evening. I won't bore you with all the small talk, but over the course of the next half hour or so I gleaned the following information about each of them.

Denise. She worked for a non-profit dedicated to bringing economic change to American society through governmental means. Yeah, basically she was a Socialist, maybe a Commie, ha ha. She had a boyfriend who was a motorcycle enthusiast and who was enroute to a rally fifteen hundred miles away. She was about my age, or maybe a little older but probably not yet 30. Unusually short and rather thin, with short mouse-brown hair done up in trendy spikes that were tasteful and cute, she didn't boast much of a figure but looked pretty strong or at least wiry and agile. Her attire was similar to the others in that she had on a jacket and skirt combination with pumps, but whatever blouse she had on underneath the jacket was low cut enough that a lot of her upper chest was exposed, which was acceptable enough for an office environment, I supposed, since she had no cleavage to speak of at all. A tattoo peeked out from under the jacket sleeve on her right wrist, and I wondered how many other tats might be hidden under her clothing.

Margot. She was director of Human Resources for a conservative Political Action Committee - apparently a well-funded one if they were large enough to need HR. She was a bit exotic looking, with green eyes and dyed bright-red hair, and she was dressed in a captain's blazer, buttoned in front, with an expensive looking blouse underneath, undone three buttons down, which accentuated her somewhat minimal cleavage. She was a little taller than Denise, maybe 5-foot-4, and of fairly trim build. Older than the others, indeed the cougar who had first signaled me, she was nonetheless quite attractive and probably had been downright stunning when she was younger. Besides her work, the one tidbit she made sure to let me know was that her husband was ten years older than herself, which would put him somewhere in his late-50s probably, and that he had suffered a heart attack three years earlier which left him unable to, as she so delicately put it, "perform."

Rachel. She was a partner in a law firm, which Margot spelled out to me was pretty impressive for someone still in her mid-thirties, though not too unusual for someone from Harvard Law School. How someone like her had come to socialize with these others was slightly mysterious. Her husband, she said, worked from home in Bethesda, at some sort of technical job, and looked after the kids during the week when she came into the District. Not only was she smart and capable, but she was also very pretty in the face, second perhaps to Margot, with hair that was natural-looking chestnut brown in color and permed in tight curls. Her facial makeup was applied more subtly to her naturally olive complexion than the older woman to her right, and Lili had taught me to understand that makeup was meant to complement her eyes, which in this case were hazel. (Oh, sorry. It's hard to stop thinking about Lili.) Anyway Rachel's attire was similar to Margot's, a medium gray power jacket and skirt combo, though in a style that did not focus attention as much on her medium-large bosom. The combination was accessorized by short-heeled black pumps.

Annamarie. She worked as some sort of aide at a health non-profit. She was the youngest of the four, and this was her first job after graduating from nearby George Mason University, which I had never heard of, but they assured me was a good school to be from. She didn't divulge much about herself, except that she came originally from Ohio. She wasn't a knockout beauty or anything, but was an attractive enough blue-eyed dishwater-blonde, with shoulder length hair that had a bit of curl to it. She looked like the tallest of the four, though not likely anywhere close to my own height of just above six feet. Neither obese nor a twig, her weight was proportional, and she seemed solidly built, which is to say, she was surely the heaviest of the four women by twenty pounds or so - 165 maybe. Less than me for sure, anyway; that's probably my limit for a woman, if I'm honest. She, like the others, looked healthy, though maybe the softest of the group in terms of working out at a gym or anything.

Okay. So they were, in their individual ways, all nice looking. I could rank them for you, maybe Margot/Rachel/Denise/Annamarie, but none was worse than average, which by my view of things means it's not worth splitting hairs. Prettier than Lili - I couldn't help but compare that way. By looks alone, it was pleasant being with them, and potentially flattering to be seen with them.

But they didn't let me get away for long from fielding more questions about myself. "You don't want to hear about my job," I told them. And they didn't wait until my glass was empty to signal over to the lady bartender to bring another round for everyone, including me. I was okay with that. They certainly didn't care about my job, and the questions were generally good natured, and I wasn't getting any bad vibes about being scammed, but they were keenly interested that I had recently broken up with my girlfriend. Indeed, the cross-examination, as Rachel the lawyer lightly termed it, tended toward the ribald, and it got worse in that regard over the course of half an hour, with the references to Lili becoming more and more direct, beyond ribald and simply frank, or maybe presumptuous. One example: Margot asked whether I could "keep it up for more than an hour for Lili," and when I tried to brush the question aside she followed with, "or, at least, get it back up quickly after you come prematurely." I didn't do very well at hiding my embarrassment and my reply was rather fumbling, and Denise 'rescued' me by asking even more pointedly, "or, at least, can you hammer a ten-penny nail into a two-by-four with your cock?" I simply had no ready answer, and she continued, "because, that would be, y'know, interesting." Another seemingly pointed question was my attitude about women's feet, and after saying twice that I didn't have much opinion one way or the other, Margot told me, "good," because a foot fetish was a deal breaker for her. Rachel was less crass in her interest but flattered me transparently that my ex must not have known a good thing when she had one. Annamarie alone kept her part of the conversation relatively G-rated about work and hobbies, but her input was minimal because the others kept steering it back to their flirtatious interests.

Abruptly, the titillating conversation paused, and the women took a quick vote. Oh, I am only guessing about that, of course, and it wasn't conducted by Robert's Rules of Order or anything. But that's still what you'd have to call it - a vote, or a consensus. By any name, it was evident that a decision point had been reached, and they all nodded 'yes' to something unstated. Rachel spoke for the group.

"If you're up for a little fun tonight," she began, "then have we got a deal for you." I didn't say anything, and probably registered only confusion. She went on, "I don't think we told you what we call our little group. We're The Hump Day Club. Every Wednesday, we get together, those of us who don't have other commitments. We come here. And we pick out a man we'd like to, ahem, get to know better." Part of this they had already given me information about, but this last part was new.

"Get to know *much* better," Margot added with an air of helpfulness.

Denise, as I already had come to expect, cut to the chase. "They mean, to fuck. Because it's, you know, Hump Day. Get it? Interested?"

"All of you?" I said, feeling very much on the defensive and sensing I was being pranked, or perhaps mocked, but unwilling to simply chicken out of what I was sure to be nothing more than an elaborate joke even if it was at my eventual expense.

"No, dear," Margot said, using a term of endearment for the first time. "We're not lesbians or anything." Denise scoffed loudly but Margot ignored her. "It would be with just *one* of us. Your choice. You choose. So choose wisely."

"I don't..." I began, not even sure how I was going to complete that thought.

"First," Rachel continued, "first, you have to understand a few rules."

Margot had reached into her purse and pulled out a little carton and interrupted the other beauty. "No, first, we have to know, can you fill one of these out?"

She pushed the box toward me. It was labeled Magnum and was a three-pack of condoms. I knew it was some kind of large size, though I had never used one of that brand before. "Um, I guess?" I ventured. I mean, I didn't have any size anxiety, even if Lili had occasionally been disparaging, but I didn't know for a fact that putting one of them on might not be like shoving a flashlight into a DC Metro tunnel.

"You guess?" Denise chortled, then added with just a bit of uncharacteristic kindness, "don't worry, she's just messin' with ya."

"Speak for yourself," Margot said smugly. "Some of us might want to know."

"Not sure that's something *I* would brag about," Denise fired back at the elder member of the group. "I don't care, even if he's a peewee, 'cause I can make the most of *any* situation. Which," she added, shifting the target of her remark, "I'm sure you're not. A peewee I mean. How tall are you, 6 feet?"

"Six one," I stated.

"You short ones should leave the tall ones for us," Annamarie chimed in.

"Ladies, c'mon," Rachel chided. "Let me finish." She turned again to me. "Actually, the use of condoms is one of the rules. But I'll get to that. First, you know what a safeword is, right?"

I took the package of rubbers and stuck it into my back pocket, tired already of looking at the intimidating product name. "No," I confessed, maybe a little defensively but seeing no value in trying to bluff anything. She went on by explaining a simple system, of 'yellow' to mean pause and discuss, and 'red' to mean stop completely and part ways. She asked twice if I understood, and I twice gave my assent, adding that I wouldn't keep doing something someone else didn't like, anyway.