Vulnerable.

2/10/20

Before becoming the detailed maintenance man for night shift nearly a decade ago, I was a closer who worked in the kitchen. I grew to detest working back there, which was one reason why I jumped at the opportunity to get the new position when it was offered to me. Hence my frustration now, over a decade later, when they still throw me in kitchen when they’re short-handed, which is all too fucking often. So when I was just getting ready to collect trash after clocking in today and Marjie told me that she needed me back there for half an hour, my face betrayed my irritation.

“Just a half hour,” she repeated, promising.

They always promise. How long will the half hour be this time? Sixty minutes? Ninety?

“Oh, no problem,” I replied rather sarcastically. “I love working back there. Nothing in the world I’d rather be doing.”

“Liar,” she said laughing, “but look who you get to work with. Right beside her.”

Oh. Fuck.

“Shut up,” I said.

I hadn’t seen Kara when I’d come in, but I knew that was what she had meant. My initial irritation with having to work in the kitchen was immediately replaced by excitement and anxiety. As I walked back there, our eyes immediately locked. There was a lot of eye-gazing back there — and for what had to have been longer than thirty minutes, I might add.

We even talked. I saw what I thought was a hickey on her neck. She said it wasn’t a hickey; it was a burn to cover up a hickey. She had been in a polygamous relationship, she told me, got raped, and tried to cover it up because she knew they wouldn’t believe her. They left her anyway, she says. When she brought up rape, she originally referred to it as “the r-word.” What kind of hit me as strange was how casually she brought it up, how devoid of emotion. Her words, energy, body language — they seemed ominously dissociated with what I’d associate with rape. Then again, I’ve never been raped.

The constant eye-gazing seemed to keep heightening in intensity, the energy building in me nearly to the point that I didn’t think I’d be able to contain it. This didn’t escape her notice, either.

“You seem frustrated,” she said. “Anything I can do to help you with that?”

I was tongue tied. I said nothing. “Yes,” I thought to myself. “When an astoundingly hot girl with beautiful eyes and psychic-furnace energy says that to you, the answer is fucking yes.” Aside from being tongue-tied, terror rose in me as something rose in my pants. My mantra became: you will not get a boner in the kitchen. You will not get a boner in the kitchen.

Do breathing exercises. Down boy. Down.

“You’re going to have fun with me,” she said.

Gus clocked in, relieved me from my position in the kitchen — the only time since as far back as I can recall when I felt reluctant to leave the kitchen — and I proceeded to collect trash from around the store.

Within the hour, she left.

A day or two prior, I had been high and drunk, looking at her Facebook profile. I forget if I accidentally hit like or deliberately hit it only to realize what I had done and immediately regret it, as I had already reacted to two things on her profile earlier and feared it might make me seem like a creeper. Or betray me as the creeper I am. In any case, I promptly attempted to unlike it, though ended up reacting to it with laughter, and then finally eliminated any reaction altogether. I cursed myself, as I immediately realized she was still going to be able to detect those two reactions. Now, entirely sober, I was once again on her profile and gave the photo the heart reaction.

An hour or two went by at work and she suddenly messaged me a wave. Though I’ve accidentally waved to people before, now I couldn’t figure out how to do it, so I just messaged her, “Hey.”

She told me I looked pissed earlier, which is something I’ve heard from women before — long ago, of course; we’re speaking, after all, of those ancient times in which I actually got laid. Evidently pissed and horny produce similar facial expressions and body language when it comes to me. I assured her I wasn’t pissed, just frustrated — another form of aggression.

She said she liked it. And that she had never met someone that she connected with like she connects with me. I felt immediately suspicious when she said that, but I had actually felt that way myself, so I told her that I was glad she felt it, too. I added that I was also happy she didn’t mind the prolonged eye-gazing. She said she thought it was sexy. That it really turned her on, which was certainly how I had been feeling and what I sensed from her. She asked me how bad I had wanted her, and I confessed: painfully bad. And then she asked me what I would do to her if she was naked in front of me right now, and I told her, wondering as I was doing so, as I had with most of this conversation, if honesty was truly the best policy.

I blatantly asked her if this made me a sick fuck given our age difference, and she said of course not, as she was into older men. She asked if I wanted to know what she would do to me, and then said that, first, she would want me to fuck her face. And not that I would mind at all, but I couldn’t ignore the fact that this was something she wanted me to do to her, not something she wanted to do to me.

Then she asked me when I got off. I knew she meant work, though I had the impulse to answer sarcastically. When I told her 11 o’clock, she said she was going to come see me.

I smoked a cigarette and then dug the wintergreen gum out of my bookbag in my car. Despite having made it sound like she was coming to see me after work, I for some reason assumed she was coming in soon. I was right. In the midst of cleaning the dining room, Steve, Brodie and Kara stroll in the doors and head to the front counter. Brodie’s the first to come over to see me. He’s wearing glasses now, and I ask him about it. Evidently, he was always supposed to be wearing them. He looked kind of self conscious about it, but I assured him it made him look more sophisticated.

As I was talking with him, Kara walked up. My energy immediately changes. I can feel her energy, feel her eyes and I meet them. The ocular sex vibes are astounding. They’re like invisible laser beams shooting from her unearthly peepers. She keeps at it and I find it difficult to focus on anything else. Ultimately I grab her shoulder for a moment just to discharge some of the energy.

I hugged her before they left, and as I did so, she dug her nails into my back. I feel charged. I feel like I desperately want to do things to her now. Not later, now. I don’t know how I manage to contain it, but I do. I’ve had practice in this area — holding back.

Marjie, half-joking, yelled at her for distracting me. Steve laughed and announced they were leaving as he literally pushed her out the door. I’m so full of energy I’m ready to pop.

In passing, Marjie makes the comment, “Be careful. She knows you’re vulnerable now.”

When I encountered Marjie again later, alone in the dining room, I asked her to elaborate.

Allegedly, Kara had been trying to get with Steve — an idea which kind of disgusted me, I confess. And apparently the beardy guy who was working the back drive-thru booth the day I first saw her, who she seemed to be so close to, this was the guy who allegedly raped her. He insisted that she forgets shit when she’s drunk and in fact it was her who jumped him. Brodie also slipped recently and almost announced how she likes to do this when she’s drunk and she clasped her hand over his mouth and told him to shut up.

If something seems too good to be true, it probably is, and this? It had seemed too good to be true from the get-go. Downright surreal. The doubts and fears that were collecting inside of me as Marjie told me this, the paranoia and anxiety — it still didn’t put out the fire Kara seemed to be building in me, stoking in me.

I don’t think I can suffocate this fire — and sadly, this is the case even if all of this amounts to nothing, which wouldn’t surprise me.

It would kill me, but it wouldn’t surprise me.