The other customers were so into their lattes and iThings that a crocodile could have slithered through unnoticed. So they sure didn't see my silly grin, or the cute barista who'd sparked it. During a lull in the order line she'd leaned forward, cupped her apron-covered tits and mouthed a sultry "Fuck me, Brian. Right now." Then she'd shot me a goofy grin of her own.
Of course I'd do as Jo asked, but later.
For all this to make sense, even to me, I have to rewind the calendar a few weeks. Imagine a swirly dissolve: I was sitting at this very table...
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"He shoots, he scor... ooh, off the rim!" Would have been a three-pointer, too, from three tables away. Usually when I arc a crumpled page at the waste bin, I nail it. If 'usually' means like, 30%. I made a mental note go for the rebound on my way out.
I'm not much of a sports person, but I was a little punch-drunk on metaphors at the moment. That never happens in my day job as a tech writer - I haven't seen a figure of speech in all my time there - but when I'm writing for myself I can spread my wings. Ha, did it again.
The crumpled paper deserves a word. Maybe it's an affectation, maybe just a way to separate my writing 'lives', but I reserve the laptop for work and scribble in pencil for fun. Almost none of it ever gets transcribed. This, what you're reading, first saw life on a lined yellow pad in this very cafe. It feels so meta.
They know me here. I pay my table rent. I'm not that leech in the corner nursing a flat white for hours. Lucky for me they serve a great ham and cheese croissant, rich little cakes, pumpkin spice whatnots - enough variety to keep me from falling into a rut. The staff is OK with me because I'm a nice guy and I tip like a fat clown on a unicycle.
My job doesn't care if I'm actually in one of their impersonal flexi-cubes, only that I meet my quota while on their LAN. Through some Faradayan quirk this place gets a solid signal from the office half a block away. So I look like I'm there but the laptop can just be idling beside me while I scratch out stories and, theoretically, My Novel.
I was about to wad up another abortive stab at compelling fiction when I noticed Jo hovering at my elbow. I've known Jo for a while in that casual way you 'know' servers, tellers, cashiers and so on. The cafe was often busy but right now we were the only ones in the place.
Jo's younger than me, maybe 20 to my 25, with no visible tats or piercings (me either). About 5'6 and 135, cute and cheery with soft brown eyes and light reddish-brown hair with a slight curl just below the ears. Nice package, looking good in the company uniform of white blouse and some sort of overall-apron deal.
"Oh, hi Brian. Uh, how's the writing going?" She seemed nervous. Uh-oh?
"Hey Jo. Ah, the usual. I think struggle is required. No such thing as a Caesarean when birthing a masterwork. Not even an episiotomy. I'd take a saddle block, though, if you carry anesthesia here."
She gave a nervous titter - not sure about my babbling but accepting it to keep the talk going. Nothing wrong with a nervous titter, by the way. Any kind of titter, really.
Then I saw what she was holding: a sheaf of smoothed-out yellow pages I suspected were once scrunched up just short of the basket. I guess I hadn't made as many rebounds as should have.
She saw me see and blushed a bit. "I'm sorry. But you threw them away so I thought... I mean, we kind of wondered what you write about and... oh god I'm not really that girl but I figured I could get to know you a little better by... is this really what you're writing? Like, sex stuff?"
I don't want to leave her hanging here but I should explain. Of course I'm writing the next Great American Novel. Who isn't? But honestly, a lot of times when I'm moving the pencil what comes out isn't greatness or even novelness. We're taught to honor the process: a writer writes; don't block the flow even if it's just going down the drain. So between gouts of epic prose I'll often fill the page with lesser stuff. Like a boxer in the gym, a batter taking strokes, just keeping the machine lubed. Erm, oiled.
"Well, not just that but yeah, sometimes when I'm not feeling inspired I'll dash off something... racy. Or mysterious, or scary. Just keeping my hand in." I nodded at her pages. "I guess you picked up some of the racy ones?"
"Oh. But I mean, the things, the people, what you write about, does all that come from like, experience?"
She seemed to be struggling. I had to give her props for the guts it must have taken to approach me, then to stick with it.
"Well, I don't know what you have there so I can't really say. Can I read it? Re-read it, I mean?"
She held out the sheaf and I took it. What I'd written:
"It was hot in Ellen's bedroom. She'd thrown off the covers and lay naked on the sheets, splayed wide, her hands busy at her lightly furred vee. But as good as her fingers felt, she knew she'd soon reach for the toys in her bed stand. It didn't seem... clean to stick her fingers into all the places she needed to reach."
Hey, I tossed it, remember?
Ellen went on to do some, yes, unclean things involving a butt plug and a big rubber dong supposedly modeled after a porn actor named Mandingo. Was this drawn from life? Ah, maybe, surprisingly. But I don't dildo and tell.
"What can I say, Jo? Sometimes you write what you know, other times you add what you imagine. There's some fantasy in everything we read, even the news. Did this little scene make you tingle - in a good way, a bad way...?"
More blushing. "No, I mean yes. I just wasn't sure if people, if girls, really thought that way, did those things. Or if y'all just made it up."
"You're what, 19, 20? Didn't you talk about this in high school with your girlfriends... and boyfriends? One of your pals must have owned a vibrator, right?"
"No! I never... we didn't go to normal high school. Our family was, I don't know, just different. Poppa didn't trust government schools so my brothers and I got taught at home. We learned all the subjects, momma was a good teacher, but..."
"No sleepovers, no dick pix in the girls' room. I get it. You missed out on stuff, not all of it good. Well, what Ellen does there isn't perverted and your reading about it, or even doing it, is just fine. Of course I would say that, I wrote it. But trust me, it's the mildest sort of fantasy. There is some sick shit out there but this... this isn't it."
This put her more at ease. "Yeah, I liked it. I imagined doing it. The butt stuff made me squirm a little, but I knew when I read it there's more to learn. Do you, could you let me read some more like that? Things real people do for, um, real sex?"