The Pussy Page 2
Every girl with weird teeth will fuck you, and they will make it apparent that they are going to fuck you at the star of the date. Every girl who mentions being insecure about being short will fuck you, not realizing that their smallness is a huge asset since all men secretly want to fuck children. Tall girls, I don’t know; tall girls disgust me. Girls who say they are into video games will not fuck you. Too many nerds coming at them maybe; they get stuck up. Girls who are into French poetry will fuck you till your sac falls off.
Shit Jobs: McDonald’s
I was sixteen and my mom made me get a job. Again. Learn the value of work. She was right, it’s a lesson I retain decades later: the value of work is less than fucking zero, a negative eating away at your soul and your life. So, thanks. I applied at the McDonald’s in Kingston, Mass.
You had to buy your own McDonald’s shirt and special synthetic pocketless pants so you couldn’t walk out with a ninety nine cent hamburger warmed to ass temperature. They took the money out of your first couple checks. The checks came three weeks late; they’d docked sixty eight bucks for the uniforms they’d sold you, and taxes were taken out, something like a third of your check. At that point you’d been working dozens of hours in the sweltering hissing clamoring kitchen, alarms constantly blaring, six hundred degree grills an inch away from the meat of your hands, swabbing the greasy tiles over and over with a filthy mop every time there was a two second lull in orders, getting yelled at– you got your check and it was fucking nothing. You had known what taxes were in an abstract sense, the ten per cent federal tax bracket, but what you didn’t know was state tax, city tax, FICA, SDI… weird acronyms… your check came an ungodly amount of time later and there was nothing left. The value of work. Cleaning the toilet, a filthy log of shit breaching in piss yellow water with toilet paper snaked over the bowl and onto the floor about one out of every four times you went in there– the value of work.
Girls were up front and boys were in the back. In theory it was an equal opportunity workplace free of gender discrimination but not a single girl worked the spattering grill or dollied sixty pound cases of frozen beef patties down to the dark freezer or hauled trash bags the size of refrigerators full of imperfect meat out to the dumpster. Not a single guy ran the cash register or talked to customers. People want to see a smiling girl with perky tits. I don’t blame them. The girls worked up front and didn’t flirt with us or really talk to us at all. They were the house slaves. They had to take the heat when we fucked something up; they were the ones getting scolded that “I told you no onions.” They must have seen us as fuckups and miscreants.
My job was the Quarter Pounder With Cheese and McLean grill. It is an excellent station, if you ever work at a McDonald’s. The volume is significantly lower than hamburger/ cheeseburger/ Big Mac and you’re not dealing with a big deep pit of face-melting frying oil. Plus, the Quarter Pounder was my preferred sandwich as a civilian. When people ordered what I made, I mentally congratulated them for making the correct choice. The hamburger is a trifle, not really food at all; you polish it off in two bites and feel like you’ve eaten greasy air. The Quarter Pounder is a real sandwich. A connoisseur’s sandwich.
You take the patties from the freezer to the left of your grill and drop them on the griddle surface frozen. They hiss and steam. There’s a clamshell lid with another heated surface that you lower on top of them, and the meat is done in ninety seconds. The clamshell grill is a proprietary McDonald’s technology that a training video has explained to you preserves maximum freshness and sanitation in the meat. A light flashes and a distinctive bell sounds and you lift the clamshell lid and spatula the burgers onto the buns you’ve prepared. You have caramelized the buns in a toasting unit which has its own distinctive lights and a buzzer that you will hear in your dreams. A training video has explained that you caramelize the buns to prevent them from absorbing the condiments and becoming soggy. I liked that they didn’t condescend to you– they kept the word “caramelize” instead of some proprietary corporate buzzword that was less hard to say. Caramelize. Ketchup, mustard out of big metal cups with handles where you pull a trigger and it dispenses the perfect amount; pickles laid with care not to overlap, onions. You drape two slices of cheese offset at a forty five degree angle so there is cheese in every bite. The videos are good at explaining why you do things. They didn’t need to; they could have just told me put the cheese at a forty five degree angle because I fucking said so, but they took the time and I appreciated it. Wrap the sandwich in the snug origami-like proprietary McDonald’s fashion. Quarters up.
You get a rhythm. Lunch rush comes and you are anticipating the buzzes and beeps and chimes and lights; you are ahead of the game and the heat lamp rack is not wanting for fresh Quarter Pounders for even one second. No shrill “WHERE ARE MY QUARTERS??!?” from the cashier girl and no quick huddles from the manager on how you have to up your game. I can’t have guys keeping us behind on this team, OK? “Grill orders,” which is the bespoke no onions type of stuff– most grill crew hated those. I loved them. You knew you were preparing a sandwich for one particular person just the way they liked it. A machine spat out instructions on receipt tape in purple ink and you had to run over and grab them and hustle to make the sandwich. When you fucked one up the manager would walk back with the tape and point out to you what it said and ask you: how did this happen? You forget that it’s McDonald’s; it’s literally the least prestigious job in the world, people laugh at you for having it, and your net income is two dollars and fifty cents an hour. You are terrified and you feel bad about yourself. The value of work.
You get a rhythm, and it gets fucked up by having to restock the patties, go to the back and get more buns, empty and sanitize the ketchup dispensers. If things slow down at all the manager will constantly bark at you for a sweep and mop. Wrestle with the filthy greasy mop in the sink and maybe cut your hands on some industrial tomato slicing device soaking there. Not one second is wasted; you are a perfect machine working constantly. McDonald’s is the best managed company in the world, right down to the slightly subnormal woman with a weird limp who smokes unfiltered Pall Malls who’s in charge of your shift– she has been indoctrinated perfectly in how to make your day tight as a drum. You aren’t grilling, you take out the trash, you sweep and mop. Drill sergeants aren’t this good. Her name was Wendy but she insisted on being called “Romayne.”
We would fuck with her. She hated being called “Wendy” so when she turned her back we would start singing “Wendy” over and over. Me and Glenn, a kid from Marshfield who ran McNuggets and french fries. Glenn was funny and smart. I was funny and smart too, and it was the first of many shit jobs where I’d find another funny and smart person and we’d kind of marvel at “what the fuck are you doing here.”
I’d be bummed out when I showed up for a shift and Glenn wasn’t there. We had an imaginary ranking system for all the cooks– you start out as a Grill Knave, moved up to Grill Apprentice, Grill Soldier, Grill Master, Grill Wizard, Grill Lord. The highest level was Grill God. Only one man had ever achieved it and he’d ascended into the Golden Arches and become a hamburger himself. You now know him as Mayor McCheese. We had long running stories about defending our McDonald’s from the conspiracies of the Burger King, Big Dave Thomas, and Colonel Sanders.
We’d get a really good riff going and then “Romayne” would come yell at us for a sweep and mop. Not one second wasted. They will get as much out of you as possible for as little as possible, and rightly view human interaction between employees as wasteful. This is good management. Some companies call this “time theft,” talking to the people you work with. They own time. They own your life, and you are stealing it. The value of work.
I took a week off because I was in the school play. When I came back they had completely gutted the store and reorganized all the machines. A new process had been instated by corporate for each food item, to insure that every McDonald’s meal was even hotter and fresher than before. They had in
stalled something called a “Q’ing oven.” The “Q” stood for “quality.” If a customer asked what it was, you were to say “it’s just something we do to make your food taste better.”
The Q’ing oven was a microwave. But you were NEVER to refer to it as a microwave. In fact, they said, from now on, you are NEVER to use the word “microwave” while inside the store. Whether you are at the register, at the grill, or in the break room. Whether your shift has begun or not. If you are heard using the word “microwave,” you will be fired immediately and escorted from the building.
It was the “big” manager who gave this talk, Mark. The one who went to Hamburger University. The degree was framed in his office where there was a mop bucket and an ancient Tandy PC he would use to enter our hours to the second. That’s how you knew it was some serious shit– him talking to us was like a presidential address. And the word was so doubleplus ungood that Mark seemed scared of saying “microwave” even in the sentence “you must never say the word ‘microwave.'”
Mark wasn’t a bad guy, although I never forgave him for the time I fried my hand on the clamshell grill and got a blister from my pinky to my elbow, and he just scotch taped a bandage on it and made me work the rest of my shift. But he was human. He was just beaten down from fear of losing his job at McDonald’s, fear of bringing nothing home to his family. He just got so indoctrinated with corporate bullshit that he had to spend his days making a room full of teenagers terrified of saying “microwave.” The value of fucking work.
I left, but not before earning a ten cent raise as a “senior grill crew” member and a special pin for how long I’d worked there and how little I’d fucked up. Every job I’ve ever had since has been exactly the same. Someone clogged the toilet and some asshole is yelling at you to fix it, and you’ll get fired for saying what shit really is.
Epilogue:
I checked them out on Yelp. See how the alma mater’s doing. They have one star. “Order had errors. Fries were not warm. Sauce pumps were all empty. My meal came with a drink and I had to remind them. Counter was dirty. My filet only had half a piece of cheese and no extra tarter sauce like I asked.”
Fuckin Grill Knaves.
God Damn Do I Want to Fuck My Intern
Christina. Christina from Colombia. She is not hot, but she is 23 years old and looks 15 and wears puffy white skirts sliding down at the back to show half an inch of innocent pink cotton panties; sheer blouses where you can see the outline of her bra; she sits with her legs open. You can’t see pussy but you know it’s there. You imagine it under all that soft white fabric. The girl knows how to do laundry; her skirts are always white and fresh. There must be some pheromone going on because I just get this sense around her of wanting to fuck urgently, like a jackal. She is innocent; she comes off as a girl who hasn’t been with a lot of boys in her life. But that sexuality. Colombians.
I was fucking Gertrude drunk and half asleep and in the darkness I saw her face as Christina’s. She is in my subconscious. I was so drunk I really thought it was her for a second, and I was elated. The dream was coming true.
She is subservient. When she texts and emails she calls me “Mr. Tacos.” A little tongue in cheek but it gives me a deep and profound boner. She asked me if I ever get lonely. Every pore of my being was screaming that what would make me less lonely is you bending over this desk and giving me your tight little virgin cunt, but I was working too hard and just told her I didn’t really have time to answer the question. I actually prefer to be alone at work. Even with an office mate whose womb you want to plunder down to the very marrow of your bones, you know, if you’re not going to actually do that, better to have the quiet.
I could have her. If I wanted. But I can’t. I couldn’t make a move, and I couldn’t run with it if she made a move, which I think she would do if we were ever drunk together. It would be too weird seeing her at the office; we don’t connect like that. It’s not a flirty, sassy banter type relationship, it’s wanting to ravage a budding child. She must be ovulating today because it’s especially bad. I’ll need to cum into a Staples® brand C-fold paper towel in the office bathroom later, thinking of her. The seed that should have been hers.
I want her very badly, and I could have her, but I can do nothing about it. Sexual harassment laws-- the Sharia of our times.
Autopilot
He was awake. Hands on a steering wheel. Trees rushing by. Most cars were self-driving these days but he enjoyed it the old fashioned way. Everything was coming back to him. He was on his way home. Emily was making a chicken pot pie. His favorite.
The day was over and he remembered nothing. The new stuff was perfect. Used to be you’d get an image peeking through once in a while, an emotion of some kind. The phone would ring and you’d get a little stab of fear. You’d still have no idea what it was about, but you’d flinch. Now, nothing. Waking up, nice hot coffee, kissing Emily goodbye. The drive to work; starlings swirling over the river. Pull up to his parking space– it was in god damn Siberia, but, who cared; he would forget the walk. Twist the dial in the crook of his elbow left, right, left again. Then he was awake and driving and the sun had moved. Ten hour shift gone by like it never happened.
People couldn’t ask “what do you do” anymore. That was almost the best part. He was old enough to remember the way things used to be, when that was everyone’s second question after “how are you.” He wasn’t exactly ashamed of his job but he never quite nailed down the one line explanation for it either. So he’d had to think about it in detail for a second, and thinking about his work made him remember his work, and suddenly his mind wasn’t at a party by the punch bowl but back under buzzing florescent lights getting reamed out by some prick.
Now, no one could ask because no one had any idea what they really did all day. It was like anesthesia. Count backwards from one hundred, you make it to about 96 and then you wake up and the work day was over. They put a reservoir of the medication right in your arm these days. You turned a dial in a combination only you knew, for safety, and the correct dosage dripped out for however long you wanted. Almost everybody had one, even Emily, who didn’t work. Just in case some trauma happened, or for a long plane ride.
He’d been in a sales gig when it came out. He hadn’t wanted to use it. But when it started to take over work itself had changed. They sold newspaper subscriptions over the phone, the Los Angeles Times. The guys who didn’t remember had nothing to lose, and were merciless. Screaming rejections were water off a duck’s back. They stuck to the script; they created a sense of urgency; they made a call to action. They crushed objections. They hammered the Ben Franklin close. Lonely old ladies who couldn’t afford it suddenly couldn’t afford not to buy the L.A. Times for more years than they would live, even if it meant giving up their cats to the kill shelter. The guys were machines and they were fucking the poor for something they didn’t need, but they didn’t give a shit. 7 o’clock rolled around and it was like it never happened. Except the big numbers they racked up.
Still, he had felt it unnatural. He enjoyed talking to people. He would draw at his little cubicle as the robodialer tried 323-462-0001, 323-462-0002… if someone couldn’t afford the newspaper, he wouldn’t sell it to them. He fell behind. His manager took pity on him and had him transferred to another division. Saul Krauss of the Connecticut Krausses, owner of The Los Angeles Times, had purchased America Online and merged the two companies. He was transferred to America Online Customer Retention. Just as well because the manager started forgetting right after that. He became a superboss and cracked down like Mussolini on the team. They sold the L.A. Times to every household in the state and were now calling through to sell every household a second subscription.
His new job was to handle people who called in to cancel their A.O.L. They provided a specific phone line for cancellations and at the other end of it was him. He got twenty dollars every time he talked someone out of cancelling and was docked five dollars every time they went through with it. What k
ind of stuff do you use A.O.L. for, he would ask. It was meant to sound like a technical question, like, maybe the web sites you’re looking at use up too much bandwidth, and that’s why your service is so terrible. Maybe you need to clear your cache. But really it was meant to get them remembering their internet fondly and start blathering on about their lives. The pictures of their grandkids they looked at. They would get a warm feeling, remembering a less lonely time, and a positive emotional connection to A.O.L. would be established. They had tried to ship the job to India but the Mumbai college kids weren’t able to establish the same empathy; there was something untrustworthy in their accents. At $199.99 per subscriber per year the stakes were too high. You had to pay an American.
The job got to him. Conning old people out of their cat food money. And of course the screaming, the cursing, the threats. God dammit you cancel this right the fuck away or I’ll call the Attorney General and have your job. There were follow up calls he had to make to people who’d backed out and it was always how DARE you call me during DINNER! Well don’t answer the phone then, jerkoff. But it hurt. To do the job well you had to open some part of yourself up to these people and when you were opened up they’d scream at you. Back then he was killing himself to get through those ten hours and get back home to her.