Pity Fuck
Copyright August 2023 by Fit529 Dotcom (Started 2021)
== Disclaimers: ==
Everyone's over 18, they're all in college
All the names have been changed because life is embarrassing enough
== Chapter: Struck and Flat ==
I awoke lying flat.
Slowly coming to awareness, I realized I was lying on the floor in a clothing shop.
I looked around.
Okay, it was the Save-U-Thrift store...?
It looked familiar, but thoughts were coming slowly. The feeling was like waking from a deep dream, it felt like. How long had I been out?
Looking upwards at the ceiling, then slightly to the side at racks hanging over me, I realized I was behind some shelves near the back so no one had noticed me. Not many people were in the store, so it wasn't surprising.
Why I was there came back to me. I still hadn't moved much. I just lay there, getting my bearings.
Tuesday afternoons were the best times to go to a thrift store... so... was it Tuesday?
People donated stuff on weekends, and it took the staff a day or two to get things priced and onto shelves.
Some memories were returning. I'd come there not for the timing (fortuitous as it was) but because I really needed a frying pan. My apartment purchases had only included the one, and my roommate had run cold water on my old one while it was hot, twisting it into a warped mess.
I wasn't happy!
Aggravatingly, I'd watched him do it, screaming to stop but... too late. He didn't know -- basically, he's an idiot. Granted, for sure, I was also an idiot about some things, but even I knew that you don't put a super-hot frying pan under cold water.
All this flashed in my head (why I was there, where I was) looking upwards at the ceiling.
The problem remained how I'd ended up on the floor.
Time to stand up, so I tried. The store was big, but in a college town it got lots of business, I'd not be alone forever.
Getting on my feet was a process! I was still discombobulated. Why, though? What had done this?
Looking on the floor next to me, I saw a small, dull, used-but-ornate wood box, with dulled-metal (silver?) inlays. It came back to me -- I'd picked it up, and realized I could press the buttons on both sides at the same time and maybe it would open. I think it did, maybe... and I think I got an electric shock before things went black.
The sticker on it said $3, which in thrift store terms meant they had no idea if someone would buy it. I'd been in this store a lot, I knew their patterns.
Really, I had to shop there for essentials - I had nearly no money, I was a destitute college student.
Looking at the cause of my demise, I figured I might as well be the _complete_ sucker and buy it. It did look interesting, and if the box shocked people enough to make them pass out, great, I'd let my roommate pick it up. It'd serve him right for wrecking my pan.
That reminded me, I had to get a pan.
Wandering over, I found they had no pans.
That is, they had two pans, but both were Teflon and scratched to high heaven, so, no, they had no pans. I didn't need teflon shards in my food. I really just needed a big cast-iron skillet. The hardware store next door had them, but they were pricey and I was on a student loan budget of zero dollars and one cent for non-essentials. Well, almost -- the $3 box I was holding was justifiable revenge money if I could trick Dave into pressing the buttons.
Grumbling, I dreamed up elaborate plans of shaving one of his eyebrows when the box made him faint. Fun to think about. I'd never do it. I did like him well enough, but in a friendly tolerate-the-idiot-college-roommate way.
Trudging up to the front, the older lady (a new employee, I didn't recognize her) was behind the counter. She was wearing nice clothes, too nice to be working in a thrift store for minimum wage, so that meant she was slumming it -- doing this job so she could feel better about herself. I didn't fault her, she seemed nice enough. Maybe she actually was a good person.
She looked at me, and I could just tell looking in her eyes that she was saying to herself, 'he needs help'. Granted, she was probably right. I'd just gotten over being sick after an asthma attack and then not being able to sleep all night because the inhaler always makes me wired-up twitchy.
As I got to her register, she looked at the box I was holding. Feeling sad for myself, I started to drag out my wallet. I was sad about my state of affairs and the fact that $3 was a real expense.
She said, "Oh, I see that's mis-marked. That should be 50 cents."
Something about her tone said she was taking pity on me and I should accept the new price as a gift.
Handing her a dollar, she made change and got me a paper bag. "Here's a paper bag," she said conspiratorially, "so no one has to know you shop here."
Her attitude was odd, but I shrugged it off. Something about being knocked out had made me groggy, so I just trudged out, shoved the box in my backpack, hopped on my bike, and headed back to my apartment.
Outside was again the October-cool wind of northern Wisconsin. I went to the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point, U.W.A.S.P., a fitting name for being filled with White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. The wind's uncomfortable-cool cut through my coat, but at least it was still above freezing.
Riding home, I hoped no one else would be burning leaves and set off my asthma again. On super-windy days, usually no one did, so that boded well.
My next class wasn't until 7 am the next day. Because of my asthma, I'd missed one class, Beginning Piano. I'd signed up for it to balance out my engineering workload but it had eaten up huge amounts of time practicing.
It wasn't lost on me that lots of my classmates already knew how to play and were taking it for the easy A, but I was just trying to be able to play scales with both hands at the same time.
Walking in my apartment, I saw my roommate Dave and his girlfriend, Carla, a girl frankly out of his league, sitting at the kitchen table. Carla was amazing. Dave was, well... sorta okay, I guessed, but not the brightest bulb. Sure, he was ethical, reasonably nice, okay looking maybe, but I profoundly didn't understand why she chose him.
He said, "Hey."
I was dejected more than angry. Angry went away with the cold wind. "I went to the thrift store. No pans, dammit. I need a new pan. I can't not have a pan. My cooking sucks enough as it is."
Carla considered, "Awww... What kind?" She had also witnessed the warping event the previous night since Dave was trying to impress her with his "mad-skillz" at the time.
I considered what could have been an offer from her. She had money, could afford anything, so I decided to try for the best kind I knew. "Hesitate to say this, but ... I've been watching this show, 'The Naked Baker' and she cooks on Amino a lot." I was naming a super-high-end set of cookware. I decided to hedge my bets. "... but also on cast iron, too. So, either way."
Her gaze got quizzical and kind of distant, like she was imagining, "So, is she naked, baking?"
Ducking back to hang up my coat, I answered sheepishly. It was kind of odd to talk with a girl about this stuff, but what the heck, she'd asked. I said, "Uh, yeah. It's ... sure, it's nice to watch her naked, she's pretty, but... mostly, she just explains things really well. It's aimed at people -- guys, really - who are super-n00bs at cooking. That's, uh, Exactly Me. She just makes sense, keeps it simple." I chanced being honest, "Plus, she's naked, way cool. Like, show up for the free boobs, also learn cooking. Kinda fun. And, she tells jokes, too, so, eye and brain candy."