Ch. 10: David Smith goes along to get along.
I, eighteen-year-old David Smith, had now been Canford town's Sock Room community servant for two months.
It felt like two years.
Though for the last few weeks, I had been working all day Saturday (with no extra remuneration on my weekly Unemployment Benefits payments), at least for now, and despite the importunate clamourings of the Sock Room 'regulars' in particular, the sock-changing facility wasn't yet open on Sundays.
So, although I could no longer enjoy that Friday feel-good factor (and today was Friday) with the whole of the weekend to look forward to, I knew that things could be even worse. A lot worse.
And soon, they probably would be.
*
Things weren't too great now, of course.
Ms Harriet Harmman, the Community Service Liaison Officer and local Authoritarian Female Party representative, as a means of making me 'earn my keep', and giving me a powerful incentive to find gainful, tax-paying employment, had assigned me to Canford town's Sock Room to hand-wash the females of Canford's dirty socks.
But, as diabolical a day job it was, I wished with all of my heart and soul to be just left alone, not picked on and antagonised and preyed upon by sock-changing girls and women, and just allowed to get on with my dreadful drudgery in peace.
Because now, my repugnant remit was no longer confined, to just hand-washing and steam-ironing the dirty socks that the civic-minded females of Canford went out of their way to deposit at their town's Sock Room.
Now, the sock-changing females of Canford wanted, expected - and, were getting - much more, from their Sock Room community servant.
Foot massages, now, were almost de rigueur.
My across-the-road neighbour from hell, Mrs Norma Newlove, had set that ball rolling.
Even that, in the scheme of things, wouldn't have been so bad.
But Mrs Newlove had set another, and a much bigger ball rolling.
Because when a few weeks ago, Norma Newlove had also occasioned my having to respectfully and apologetically kiss, and reverently and remorsefully lick and suck clean her Sock Room crony Cheryl Chubb's days' unwashed, filthy dirty, stinky feet - her Monday-morning feet - 'tongue-bathing', had become all the rage.
I was now spending at least half of my time, at the on-demand service of whomsoever Sock Room attending females happened to be occupying the twelve well-padded black leather 'Lazy Girl' recliners sited on the 'Spectators' Gallery' overlook.
Stopping immediately, whatever I was doing, and standing against the five-foot high bare brick wall beneath the overlook's two-barred safety rail to attend at the foot of the recliner of whomsoever sock-changing female had summoned me. Either, to massage (in the traditional sense), or to tongue-bathe her feet.
But, as hideous, as heinous, and as humiliating an imposition as it was, I knew I had to go along, to get along.
*
And, speaking of heart and soul, in truth, all that was keeping them together, and was holding me together, during my turbulent times of trials and travails, was my girlfriend Tina - the heaven, of Burger Heaven.
Tina and I were going steady. And ... well, let's just say we were now past the hand-holding stage.
But I was worried about Tina. Worried sick.
Tina Marshall and her Burger Heaven counterperson colleague and friend Janice Middleton, who was also her flatmate, had several times now been brought before Ms Harmman for publicly protesting against the Authoritarian Female Party and their 'female-friendly' policies.
Night after night, Tina and Janice were out on the streets, decrying everything the AFP stood for and espoused. Demanding the revocation of their female-friendly doctrine, the immediate dismantlement of their community servant exploitative apparatuses, and the discontinuation and absolute abandonment of all of their Placement schemes.
Above all, Tina, and Janice - who'd helped Tina tend me back at their flat after I'd assumed upon myself Tina's Standard Six public bare-bottom caning punishment in the High Street Stocks - were demanding the prompt and permanent closure of all of the country's Sock Rooms.
But, as laudable and benevolent and self-sacrificing as their motives and actions were, for their own, sakes, I wished they would throw away their anti-AFP placards and banners and their loudhailers, and just keep their noses clean.
Because Ms Harriet Harmman, the Community Service Liaison Officer and local Authoritarian Female Party representative, had warned them that they'd now exhausted her patience. She had given them every chance and every opportunity to reform and conform. But now their continued troublemaking and dissent, as exemplified by their rigid and intransigent anti-AFP stance, had left her with no alternative but to give them their final warning and her unequivocal ultimatum: Behave - or else!
Behave. Or Ms Harmman would have no recourse other than to use her AFP vested summary jurisdictional powers to have Tina and Janice arrested, stripped of their female-friendly rights (which anyway they'd spurned - denounced and rejected), and interned at the recently opened and already infamous Correctional Centre, down near Brighton - Greystone Prison.
I'd heard about the place ... The disturbing descriptions. The unsettling stories. The disquieting rumours.
From the Governor to the Staff Canteen pot washer, Greystone Prison - originally a male-inmate-only prison, but would now soon be admitting female prisoners too - was staffed entirely by females.
The prison officers (some of them man-hating lesbians, if the rumours were to be believed), who wielded canes and were reputed to be a law unto themselves, were all glamour-model gorgeous and wore skimpy, deliberately provocative pale blue uniforms. And because of this, they were known as the Jailhouse Blues.
And the reason I was so worried - worried sick - about Tina and Janice, was because I knew that when it came to Prime Minister Caroline Flynt, her all-female member government and their so-called female-friendly policies ... Tina and Janice wouldn't go along, to get along.
*
Because I was now spending at least half of my time, either massaging or tongue-bathing the feet of whomsoever sock-changing females happened to be occupying the twelve black leather 'Lazy Girl' recliners sited on the 'Spectators' Gallery' overlook, my dirty-sock workload was just getting more and more out of hand.
Dirty socks were just left to pile up on the floor beside their respective colour-coded wheelie bin receptacles.
The greater part of my dirty-sock workload consisted of the long, white sport and leisure socks: the sock of choice, of the majority of the Sock Room attending females of Canford.
As and when I was able, via the automated hydraulic apparatus I emptied one of the overflowing wheelie bins of dirty white socks into the industrial sized hopper signed: 'White Socks Only!' But even that giant hopper was overflowing too.
Sock-changing females, upon seeing the wheelie bins over-capacitated, just casually tossed their pairs of dirty socks onto the ever growing piles.
Some of the Sock Room attending girls and women glowered at me disapprovingly. Others would go further, verbally berating me with hurtful haranguing admonishments and strongly worded adjurations to greater sock-washing efforts.
But just as long as there was a clean pair of socks waiting for them on the shelves, most Sock Room attending females would leave it at that.
But the sock-changing females of Canford were beginning to kick up a stink about their stinky socks left lying around and stinking the place up.
Why should they have to put up with it? Why wasn't I earning my Unemployment Benefits handouts? Why wasn't I keeping my dirty-sock workload overspill down to an acceptable level? In short: Why wasn't I pulling my finger out?
Some of the Sock Room attending girls and women would ask me these questions and put other related queries to me while I was actually in the midst of massaging or tongue-bathing the feet of a reclining female who'd summoned me from my work.
Sunday opening was inevitable - and it was bound to happen soon.
The only reason there were sufficient pairs of socks on the shelves, was because the female Socks r Us delivery van driver Stella from Heeling was delivering two big consignments per week, on Mondays and Fridays.
Two weeks ago, in front of an enthused Sock Room audience, retrospectively Stella had administered the Standard Six caning punishment to my bared bottom for my offence the week before of Talking out of Turn - a sanctionable violation of the female-friendly Crimes Against Females Act legislation.
Responding to the clamorous urgings and egging on of the Sock Room attending females who'd been present, Stella had taken her sweet time, prolonging the punishment proceedings pitilessly.
Stella certainly knew how to use a cane. And man did she let me have it!
Stella hadn't left it at that, though - she said she wanted me to learn a valuable lesson: A community servant didn't Talk out of Turn to her, without incurring severe and long-lasting repercussions - no siree!
Stella from Heeling had told me that from now on, she would no longer be troubling her own, Sock Room community servant with her dirty socks. No: She would in future be depositing her days'-worn dirty white sport and leisure socks with me to hand-wash - on Mondays and Fridays.
Once again, another sock-changing female had left me wondering why I couldn't keep my fool mouth shut.
*
In fact, since then things had gotten even worse.
For the last three weeks, it wasn't only that Friday feel-good factor, I'd lost.
