In an earlier story, I mentioned a gay drinking buddy that I had called Penny and I feel!ike briefly expanding on that.
As I stated, I was working night shifts in a factory at the time and it was a time when production was temporarily reduced so the only departments working nights were those supplying parts for the day shift, ie paint shop, press shop, machine shop and wiring section and each of these was working on reduced manpower. All temporary workers had been temporarily laid off and most other production staff had returned to days (yes, British industry was that badly run at the time and, for all I know, still is).
Anyway, being a long time night worker, I remained on nights, transferred to the wiring section and I wasn't at all happy about it.
I was happy to still be on nights with its fifty percent higher wage but I was not thrilled at being in the wiring section for several reasons. One was that it was tedious, fiddly work, another was that we all sat at individual work stations so that there wasn't the banter that I was used to as most communication had to be with raised voices and overheard by everyone else and, finally, the section was 'manned' mainly by women, well over twenty women to myself and two other men.
Don't get me wrong, I like women and I get on with most women (I was brought up with three sisters and no brothers so getting on with women was natural and essential) but being outnumbered by women for ten hours at a stretch can feel intimidating especially when most of them are at least ten years older than you. Try it if you don't believe me and if you think that men can't be sexually harassed, take my word for it, they can. I did get on with the majority of the women and I enjoyed the casual teasing and flirting but, just like men, some women can by seriously creepy and go way too far and make you feel really uncomfortable. And the two other guys weren't any help at all because they were both simpering losers who couldn't get laid in a brothel and came across as more feminine than the women that they fawned over.
Ok, that's background.
Amongst the women, was one called Penny, she was about my age, gay and loud and, for some reason, she called any woman that she was interested in 'Shell' (I've no idea if that's a general gay thing or just her personal quirk and I'm not sure why I mention it but I do tend to ramble). She was about five feet four, slim and I don't think that she was technically an albino but, other than Edgar Winter, she was the closest that I'd ever seen. Her skin was almost translucently pale and her lips were almost the same colour as her skin, her short hair was pure white and, unless you got close up to her, it looked as though she had no eyebrows or eyelashes. Her eyes were a very pale bluey grey but there was no pink so I guess that rules out albino but she definitely stood out in a crowd. That might all sound a little odd but I found her quite attractive but, then again, she did have a pulse.
Description over and on with the tale.
The main building of the factory was, of course, one huge open space and the wiring section was a tiny sort of afterthought at the edge of that space and was only delineated from the open space by having all the tall grey steel lockers placed in an L shape at one end to provide some privacy for getting changed. Most people just removed their coats and replaced them with overalls but, each evening, Penny would go to her locker in the corner and strip down to her knickers and take a long time over putting on her overalls and covering up. It was obvious to me that this was done primarily for the benefit of the other women but my two male colleagues sat there every evening with their tongues hanging out and, if I'm honest, so did I for the first couple of weeks but then it became boring and then tedious and then annoying and I think that most of the women felt the same.
Penny had a slim body with broad hips and a flat belly but her tits were just conical bumps, not much more than fried eggs but with disproportionately large brown nipples. It was almost like looking at a topless boy and maybe that's why I quickly lost interest but I didn't just get disinterested, I got more and more irritated and, rather than a titillation, I began finding it more and more insulting. That might not be the best description of my feelings but it'll have to do.
It got to the point when, one evening, I took a chair and placed it behind her locker and, taking a fire bucket off a hook nearby, I placed it on top of her locker. The bucket was painted red with FIRE stencilled on it in black paint and the water in it was probably years old with an oily scum on top and countless dog ends floating on the surface and god knows how many soggy butts sunk to the bottom and if used on a fire, it would probably accelerate it rather than put it out.
I waited for Penny to approach her locker and disappear from sight below me and I waited until I reckoned that she was stripped down and then I poured the contents of the bucket over the locker. I heard a scream and a gale of female laughter then I replaced the bucket and went off to see the results.
Yes, I know, in hindsight, it was a horrible, mean thing to do and that it was basically criminal assault and that, if she'd reported it, I would have been instantly sacked and probably been facing a day in court but what can I say, I was basically an impulsive, unthinking idiot.
I found Penny surrounded by chuckling women and looking like a drowned rat with her white cotton knickers almost transparent, hanging off her bum and only staying up by being caught on her bush of pubic hair. She was wiping the water from her eyes and, when she saw me, she let out an animal roar and charged at me and, laughing almost hysterically, I turned and ran off down one of long passageways with her running after mr in just her soggy knickers. I reached the press shop and there were lots of obstacles in the way so I had to slow down and, at some point, she must have picked up a backing plate of thin sheet metal about six inches wide by about thirty inches long. I felt an unbelievably sharp pain as it crashed down edge first onto the top of my head and, when I instinctively reached up, I found a lot of blood.
We were both panting from our exertions and, temporarily satisfied with her revenge, Penny turned and headed back to our section with me trailing behind at a safe distance. I didn't go to the medical room because of all the questions that would be asked and, after a while, the bleeding stopped but it stung like hell for the rest of the night and most of the next day making it hard to sleep.
I said that Penny was temporarily satisfied with splitting my head open because, several hours later, I was working away when I smelt burning and felt heat and, jumping off my chair, I found that Penny had screwed up the pages of a newspaper, stuffed them under my chair and set fire to them.