Tech Support Stories #2

     Five AM is not what you could call Prime Time for technical
support.  At least as far as actual revenue-generation is concerned.
The West Coast is finally in bed, the East Coast hasn't woken up yet,
Alaska and Hawaii can't call us directly, and we don't have a foreign
language department.  And any poor sucker up at this hour is either too
bleary-eyed or too frustrated to read the tiny little sticker that has
the tech support number.
     Not like we planned it that way, of course.  Heh.
     Anyway, five is a dead time.  It's a really good time to paint your
nails, wander around and have philosophical discussions, listen to
music, write (ahem), do your homework, cut your hair (your own or
someone else's)... anything.
     One particular night, I was discussing war strategies with a couple
guys, and in particular whether 'weapons of mass destruction' were
really viable as weapons, or whether they were merely deterrents of no
practical use.
     You can also discuss national policy at five in the morning.
     Anyway, I had just made the point that bio-weapons aren't really
developed yet, when another of the perverts started shushing everyone
and turned up his radio.
     Note, this was five in the morning, or did I mention that already?
Anyway, so it was kind of surprising to hear the graveyard DJ talking to
some female who claimed to be a Playhouse Playmate.  I guess that's what
they call bunnies nowadays.  Usually only the morning crew gets to meet
people like Playmates or porn stars or whatever.  In fact, I don't think
the graveyard DJ really gets to meet anyone, except maybe the pizza
delivery guys or something like that.
     And she was claiming that she wanted to go out with a 'nice guy'
the next night, because she was tired of rich assholes.  "I'd like to be
able to say I'm tired of dating rich guys," me and this gay guy said at
the same time.  The resulting laughter from that drowned out several
sentences after that and got me lightly beaten.
     "Hey, you should call," someone said to me.
     "What, me?  She said nice GUY, remember?"
     "Aren't all them women bi or something?" asked one, and another
(not the brightest bulb in our string) claimed to have seen her eating
some other chick's snatch in one 'spread' which started some more
laughter.  Sad, kind of.
     With an over-the-shoulder "Ah, shuddafuckup," I went into the break
room to fix a late dinner.
     And, THERE was the breakroom phone, hanging on the wall.
     Looking at me.
     "Stop it!" I snapped at it.
     It was still there when I looked back.  "QUIT IT!"
     The timer beeped and my nuklar-waved dinner - it said that on the
door, 'NUKLARWAVR' - was ready.
     And that damned phone was still there!
     "Alright alright," I sighed, and opened the door to let my dinner
cool off and went to the phone.
     I dialed, thinking, *What the hell am I doing?*  You never get into
radio stations when they're offering a free CD, much less some date with
a chick-who-gets-naked-for-a-living.  So it was kind of hopel-
     "Hello KXXX!" [Actual call letters deleted for the lawyers]
     "&^@$!" was the first thing out of my mouth.  I don't startle
gracefully.  "Oh, %^# sorry!  I got through?"  *No duh!*  "Um, I was
calling for the date thing?  With Angelica?"  That was her 'name',
Angelica.
     There was silence, and I thought that the DJ had hung up because of
me cursing, and I was going to start cursing again just about the time
he mentioned, "You're a girl?"
     "Well, yeah," I admitted.  "But, I mean..."
     Now, here's where I show off the social graces that not all the
perverts have.  Some of them would have said, 'But we decided that she
had to be bi because of that series she did with So-and-so, you know,
licking her-' which I knew just HAD to be a bad idea.  Saying that, not
being bi.
     So, what I said was, "I mean, if you limit the contest to just
guys, it's discrimination.  And, maybe she'd LIKE to go out with a girl.
Has she ever gone out with one before?"
     There was a flurry of girlish giggles, which made me a bit
nauseous, but then she said on the phone line, "No, not like this."
     "You're kidding," said the DJ.
     "No!" her and I both protested at the same time.  "I'm completely
serious," I continued.  "She's got to be better than my last boyfriend,"
I added speciously; the last boyfriend wasn't bad, just I wasn't his
type or something.  Or something.
     Both of them started laughing, and I held the phone away from my
head so I wouldn't start too, because I can be heard for blocks when I
get really amused, and then people would want to know what I was up to,
and I didn't want to talk about it.
     When the laughter stopped, I put it back to my ear.  "Okay, okay,"
the DJ said, "okay, we'll let you answer the questions."  They had come
up with three questions to ask callers.  Luckily, I can think on my
feet, because I hadn't heard the originals on the radio.  "Okay, first
question."
     Angelica asked, me I hoped, "What..." and then she started
giggling.
     "What what?" I asked back.  Scintillating, I tell you.  At least
she laughed some more.
     She cleared her throat, and asked in a rush, "What do you look for
in a woman?" before she started to laugh and then it sounded like she
fell off a chair or dropped the phone or something.
     I waited for a bit, then asked, "Do I wait for her to get back, or
answer it now?"
     "Um, you can answer it now," said the DJ, who sounded a little
breathless himself.
     "Well, what I look for in a woman... fun to talk to for hours," I
decided quickly.  "Everything else is secondary."  Especially when you
carefully defined 'fun', but I didn't mention that on the air; there's
too many ways to take that statement, many of which would not reflect
well on me at all.
     "That's cool," Angelica gasped.  Back on the air.  "Um, and, and
the second question was, is I mean, is, what would you get me for a
present?"
     I chuckled.  "I'm poor, lady.  Is this 'What WOULD I get you?' or
'What would I LIKE to get you if I had the money?'"
     She made a really unattractive 'yurp' noise and fell off the phone
again.  The DJ snorted for a few moments, then said, "Both."  You could
hear Angelica having hysterics in the background before he shut his own
microphone off.
     "Ur.  What I'd LIKE to get Angelica..."  *Think, stupid!*  My
shoulder hurt, and that provided the spark.  "...Is one of those full
body spa treatments; the massage, the facial, a manicure and pedicure,
foot massage, the works.  But like I said, I'm poor, and can't afford
that for her..."  Or me.  Damnit.  "...So what I would actually end up
getting her..."  I'd done this once for a girl and it went over well,
but she broke up with me so I figured it was ethical enough to re-use
the same idea now. "...Is a really nice silk rose, so she could keep it
and remember a fun time for as long as she wanted to keep the rose and
remember it."
     Momma must've kissed the Blarney Stone or something.  Or maybe it
was having to talk to lusers all night long, I dunno.
     "Wow," Angelica said, "That's really sweet!"
     'Hot ^#$&^ you think so?' I almost said.  But this would be a bad
time to say something.  Especially that.
     "Sooooo...." Angelica continued, "What would you do on the date?"
     "Ah.  You're new to town, aren't you?" I confirmed.
     "Yeah," she admitted.
     "Well, in that case, there's a couple of good-" and then I caught a
Big Clue.  "Oooh, no.  We'd get a pizza from [perfectly awesome pizza
place I shan't mention either], you like pizza right?"  I hoped so; some
image professionals didn't eat normal food.
     "Oh, yeah," she admitted, and giggled some more.
     "And then," before I could fall off whatever track of BS I was
following, "we could go to a nice park, there's a nice one on the lake,
and watch the sun set, and just talk a lot, 'cause I bet you have a lot
of cool things to say," I said, smiling to myself.  Privately, I thought
that she'd probably be limited to "Wow!" and "Cool!" and other
monosyllabic utterances, but that's one of those 'tact' things I'd
learned, not to mention when I thought that.  This job had done wonders
for my social skills, even if it didn't improve my opinion of the
general mass of humanity any.
     "Oh, smooth," commented the DJ, and I wanted to snap something nasty
at him, but I bit my Broca's area, virtually speaking, and managed to
not think of anything to say long enough to not say anything.
     "Um, that would be nice," Angelica managed to get out before
starting to giggle again.
     "So, we'll, uh," the DJ snorted or chuckled or made some kind of
noise indicating stifled merriment, "uh, we'll take a few more callers,
and then she'll pick which one she wants to go out with, so stay on the
line, okay?"
     "Sure," I said; as if I was going to hang up now.
     The phone clicked, and clicked, and I waited to hear a dial tone,
but I got lucky or the DJ missed or something, because I never did get
one.
     The cord was long, so I could go over and pull my dinner out and
start stuffing my face with it, which is exactly the reason there was a
long cord on the handset.  I was pretty sure I wasn't gonna win, and it
took a long time, and I almost gave up and hung up, but I figured that
at least it was keeping me away from 'real work' so I'd stick with it.
One pervert came in to see what I was doing, and I made hushing motions
over the phone and told him, "I'm busy, okay?" and he left.
     One other thing you learn, working on the phones all day; any time
you don't have to talk or listen, is good time on the phone.  I'll
happily wait on hold while at work for hours, if necessary.  It's not my
nickel then, and if I'm on a call, I can't be forced to take another
one.
     As long as I don't have to go to the bathroom, which I did not.
     I'd finished my dinner and was reading yesterday's paper when the
phone clicked again.
     "Hello?" I said, hoping it wasn't Call Waiting.
     "Hi," Angelica said nervously, and started to giggle.
     "Hi Angelica," I said back, rolling my eyes.  "What's up?"  *Got
the wrong button, didn't you?* I thought.
     "Um, you won.." she got out before she got the giggles and dropped
the phone again.
     "FaaaaaaanTAStic!" I shouted, in case they were recording this for
the rest of the radio bit.  *Oh, shit, how do I get out of work
tomorrow?* I was thinking.  "That is so cool-"
     The DJ pattered, "Alright, so stay on the line for a minute, okay?
And what station keeps you going all night long?"
     "KXXX!" I snapped off, really REALLY hoping I was remembering the
right station call letters.  Apparently I was, because he didn't scream
or anything, and then some other voice, one I hadn't heard yet, came on
and asked me a lot of stuff like my name and my age and my driver's
license number and so on and so forth.  Whoever it was didn't have a
sense of humor either, which was kind of sad.  Maybe he left it in his
locker or something.
     I swallowed my usual civil liberties speech and answered all of the
questions, and then he told me that Angelica would be at the radio
station at 7 PM the next day would that be acceptable.
     It took me a moment to realize he was asking me a question.
     "Uh, yeah, that's fine... listen, is this for real?  I mean, did I
really win and am I going on a date with her?"
     "Yes," he sneered at me, "what did you think?"
     "Sorry, I've never won anything on the radio before, much less a
date," I said back, deliberately going for an apologetic tone.  Weasel.
*Feel REAL guilty, weasel boy...*
     "Oh, well, yes, you really won," he said, sounding a little more
human.  "Do you know where the station is located?"  I said no, and he
gave me directions, and reminded me to be there at 7 PM.  And then he
hung up.
     I came out of the break room shaking my head, wondering what the
hell I was going to wear.
     And the rest of the perverts, damn them, gave me a standing
ovation.  The #&$^&ers had been listening to me on the radio!

     It took me quite a while to forgive them, and I ended up sulking
outside first because the amount of screaming and cursing I needed to do
to get my blood pressure back down would have interfered with what
little business we had.  And scared the mundanes, of course, but they
deserved it.
     Anyway.  It took me about twenty minutes, and then I realized that
I was going to go on a date with a (I guessed) fairly rich and image
conscious woman tomorrow night, and I had NO FUCKING IDEA what I was
supposed to wear.
     I wanted to throw up at the cliche of it, myself.  That didn't help
matters any.
     So what I did, was I went inside, bodily removed my gay bud from
his desk where he was faking diligence, told his phone he was powdering
his nose, and carried him outside.
     We said ill tempered things to each other until we got tired, and
then he asked me what I wanted.  I told him clothing advice, and - I
knew this was going to happen - waited for him to finish laughing his
ass off before I said, "No I'm serious!"
     "You should have thought of that before you called!" he snapped
back.
     "#$&^& your ^^$&^#," I told him.  "Now what should I wear, you
&^&^# fudgepacker?!"
     I've been called 'earthy in my speech,' which is a nice way of
saying that I use strings of four letter words for emphasis, sort of
like underlining.  And I use them a lot when I get irritated.  I've
managed to instill a mental block on doing that on the phone, mostly.
Although it's still not safe to ask me 'How's it going?' on a bad night.
     He laughed some more, and I wondered if he was actually going to
die laughing.  That would be sort of amusing all by itself, until I
realized I'd have to fill out some kind of damned paperwork for killing
him.  I know that's what they would make me do, is fill out about three
hundred forms, longhand, until I killed myself.  It's the American Way.
     So when he got done THIS time, he said, "Well, you might as well
act like it's a real date, so uh..."  And then we discussed some of the
nice stuff I'd worn to work.  We didn't have a dress code, at least not
over on the perverts' side, so I'd dress up for Fridays sometimes.  When
I felt like it.  And didn't sleep too late in the evening.  And had
something clean, and so on and so forth.
     Anyway, he had some idea of what I'd worn, and what I had in the
way of clothing, so we settled on a classic little black dress, classic
black jacket, classic heels, and other suchlike classics.  Well, he told
me what to wear, and I bitched and whined and moaned and failed to have
any other ideas so I told him I would.  Then he said he wanted pictures,
and I said I didn't think he was into that sort of thing, and he made a
nasty face, and then he said if he wanted to look at fur tacos, and it
went on from there as we went back inside.
     I was glad for the help, though.
     The next couple of hours were hell, though, because I kept trying
to look her up, and the damned site was pay-only, and I couldn't find
any pirate-pix sites with her before the damned day shift started
filtering in.  Some of the sites I found were not for their delicate
eyes - most of the day shifters were mundane to the core - so I had to
just sit on my anxieties and look up fashion tips.  Those didn't help a
bit, of course; they just made me feel really horrible and want to set
fire to my closet.
     I'm thirty years old; I should know better than to go look at
fashion magazine type stuff by now, especially before something
important where I want to look good.  Some things you never grow out of,
though.
     I managed to get the next night off; I had to threaten to announce
where I worked and everyone's name on my next call to the radio station
before someone chickened out and said they'd trade a Saturday for next
Friday.  I wanted to bite them all at this point but agreed, and then I
got to drive home in relative sanity since it was Saturday morning.
     Four large glasses of milk when I got home, and I was OUT.

     Eventually, I rolled over and looked at the clock, which said
"4:34" long enough for me to make sense of it.  Then I was screaming for
the shower, flinging my clothes off as I went.  This caused some
amusement in the house, as Maggie my roommate was apparently having a
pre-dinner gathering in the living room, but I did not have time to
kill her and all her friends, and she knew it.  If I'd had time, I
wouldn't have been screaming and dashing for the bathroom like I was.
     I washed my hair, which is always a project by itself, and then I
gelled the living bejesus out of it and razed the rest of my body with
various implements and condiments until my hair was stiffening and I
didn't have any leg hair any more, and then I got out.
     The living room was clear, so I recuperated on the couch whilst
eating a 'small' nerve-calming snack of a quarter-pound of chocolate and
some Dew.  This was going to cause my stomach to have the fizzies, but I
thought I needed the endorphin boost as well as the caffeine.
     This was worse than Prom Night, it was!  Of course, I knew what my
Prom date looked like before the event, too.
     Back to the bathroom to rinse out my mouth with sulfuric acid - I
should use H2SO4, it'd probably hurt less than UltraMint whatever - and
brush the brown out from my teeth.  "Wouldn't want her thinking I was
management," I told myself in the mirror, and chuckled.  I did my makeup
next, because I was putting off putting on clothing as long as possible,
since I was overheated already from the looooong ordeal in the shower,
and I didn't need to be dripping with sweat when I showed up.
     "OH #^&& I DIDN'T GET THE FLOWER!!!!" I reminded myself, far too
late for my peace of mind, so I ended up ruining three pairs of
pantyhose, scaring the cat into the other roommate's closet, and almost
ripping the front door off its hinges.
     The trip to the florist was pretty much a blank.  Nobody sued me
later, nor did the cops bust me, so I guess I did alright driving there,
but I was more worried about other things.
     A few minutes of hyper-adrenalized search found exactly the pink
rose I wanted to find, and it was only - hah! - eight bucks, so I paid
and got the hell out.  Next stop-
     I'd forgotten the directions to the radio station at the house, of
course.
     I said a whole lot of things after that, and belched a lot, while I
was driving almost by psychometry, and by golly if I didn't pull into
the parking lot with the station's logo on it at 7:03.
     "Well, science and rational thought triumph once again over
ignorance and superstition," I said to myself, as I always do when I get
somewhere and have absolutely no idea of how I navigated there.  One of
my less obnoxious habits.
     I got out of my car, and only then really registered that I'd
dodged a small crowd and a white limousine whilst parking my car.  "%$^#
&^$%!" I commented, and one guy looked up and yelled out, "Ellen?"
     "Yeah??" I said back.  I was feeling extremely nervous at this
point; limos made me anxious - at least it wasn't black - and so did
people recognizing me when I didn't recognize them.
     "Come over here," he said, which is sort of like saying in a
Western, 'Let's take this outside.'  I casually brushed my skirt, which
reassured me that I had my knives in place at the same time it dried my
hands off, and went over to the guy.  "Ellen," he said, "this is Jim,
our program manager," he introduced some other guy.  I shook hands with
him. "And I'm Greg, the station manager."
     "Nice to meet you," I lied politely.  I'm never happy to meet a
manager of any sort.  They excite my psychoses.
     "Well," Greg-the-station-brownnoser said, "Come over here and meet
Angelica, Ellen."  I made my face into something socially acceptable -
mostly putting my lips back over my teeth - and followed his lead.
     Angelica was... well.  She was a looker.  Blonde hair, blue eyes
that were not recessed and pig-like (always a bad sign), no obvious
feature flaws, makeup not overly done, a body thinner than I had been
since I hit double digits, wrapped in a white strapless formal, tall
white pumps encasing little feet, white-white teeth, boobs-
     I was startled; the breasts didn't look that large.
     "Hi," she said, in a voice which sounded exactly like the one I'd
heard on the phone.  Mundane twit.
     "Oh, uh, hi," I said back - model of poise and grace, that's me -
and stuck out my hand.  She took it and shook it, and someone took a
picture of the moment.  Angelica smiled, I tensed.
     She was shorter than I was - no surprise there - but rather tall
for a woman, being taller in heels than Greg-the-Brownnosed.  I guess
that was sort of standard.  She had a standard sort of smile which she
turned on the camera at that point.
     Someone said something I didn't catch, and Angelica nodded and
looked expectantly at me.  "Huh?"  At least I still had my
conversational wit.
     "Could you two hug for the camera?" some guy asked.
     I almost said no.  I hadn't really wanted, nor anticipated, being a
photo prop, and I resented being dropped into it.
     On the other hand, Angelica did look soft.  And I would probably
need photographic evidence to convince the perverts that I had actually
met this woman.  I sighed, swallowed my principles, and nodded.
     She was soft, but she didn't seem quite there as I hugged her.  I
was not surprised.  Doing what she did, she had to be used to fake
displays of affection and romance, and she'd almost certainly learned to
conserve her self during those times.  I couldn't blame her, really, but
it was like hugging a CPR dummy.  Whee fun not.  I'd have had more fun
kissing a cat.
     When the flashes stopped and she pushed away from me, I asked her,
"So what's the plan?"
     She turned to one of the guys, who spoke up, "Well, she's making an
appearance at a party tonight..."
     *Oh, and isn't THAT just fucking wonderful,* I thought angrily.
Nobody had bothered to mention this little tidbit either.  Maggie and I
argue about whether I know what introversion really is, but I have my
share, and being on display when I didn't really want to be and (I felt)
didn't have a choice about it really rankled.
     However, I managed to activate that new part of my brain which
censored my emotive displays, and put a bland look on my face.
     "Ready?" someone asked, and Angelica and I both nodded.  Some
anonymous guy opened the limo door for us, and I let Angelica get in
first.  That wasn't entirely manners; I'd never been in one, so I wanted
to observe what she did.  It wasn't that hard, so I slipped in behind
her and turned to shut the door.  I managed to get my fingers out of the
way before whoever it was outside slammed it, and then it was just the
two of us.
     And two other guys in suits, facing us.
     *Danger!* shrieked my reptilian brain complex.  And it always knew,
and I tried to listen to it.  "Uh," I commented and pointed, not having
quite disengaged the Customer Relations area of my brain yet.  Otherwise
it would have come out a lot earthier.
     "We're Miz Dawson's bodyguards," said one suit.  The other one just
watched me.
     "They're pretty nice," Angelica commented from the side.
     They have guns and I'm locked in a car with them, I didn't say.  I
just took a deep breath and forcibly relaxed back into the seat.
     "So-" Angelica and I both said at the same time.  I chuckled, she
smiled.  "Tell me about yourself," I got out before she could.  "How old
are you anyway?  Am I allowed to go out with you?"
     She giggled at that.  "I'm twenty-two," she said.
     "Oh lord a baby," fell out of my mouth.  Ever since I hit twenty-
five, and I realized the next positive birthday-related thing I had to
look forward to was getting a senior's discount, I've been slowly
metastasizing into an old crusty bitch.  Well, sort of jerkily.
     "I'm not!" she protested in this little-girl voice.  Creepy, it
was.  I wanted to ask her for some ID, but then she wouldn't have been a
nude-picture-subject if she wasn't at least 18, right?
     I sure hoped so.
     "How old are you?" she continued.
     "Um.  Old," I admitted.
     "You can't be that old," she disputed.
     I nodded back at her.  "Yes I can, it's allowed.  And," I continued
before she could argue, "I'm twenty eight.  And no, it's not 'again' so
don't even think it.  How old do I look?"
     "Huh?"
     Great, just as smart as I'd guessed.  "How old do I look?"
     "Ohhhhh," she said, staring at my face.  "About twenty eight, I
guess," she smiled.  Yeah, right.  Most people guess mid-thirties.  I'm
not sure why that is; I don't have gray hair - I'd enshrine it if I did
- nor do I have wrinkles.  In fact, I still pop zits and do the other
adolescent face-maintenance stuff.  You'd think that I'd look younger,
based on that, but informal studies show that I don't.  I figured it was
something about my '@$&*you' attitude, that younger women tended not to
have.
     "Where did you go to high school?" I asked, and to save some time,
I'll put her bio down instead of replaying the reporter-like
'conversation' we had on the way to the party.
     Angelica Dawson was not her real name, and I wasn't surprised by
this.  She'd gotten into the 'adult' business by dancing in San Diego to
make some college money, and had been offered a contract last year, so
she was exploiting it while it lasted, and then she planned to go back
to college with the money she saved.  *Yeah, right,* I thought, but
didn't say that.
     I've been told I'd make a better reporter than tech support, but I
remember from my journalism classes that starting reporters make
substantially less than poverty level, and that wasn't my idea of a fun
career.  I LIKE eating, and a roof over my head, and my own bathroom,
and the other perks of living in society.  Some of them.
     Anyway, she'd gone to some public high school in Idaho - the
potatoes must have done her some good; she looked healthy - and been a
cheerleader - ooh, surprise there not - when she wasn't on the
volleyball team - ditto - and in general been a B student but really
bored.  *B's?* I wondered, then chalked it up to the usual degradation
of education you find in public schools.  I've been an intellectual snob
since before I could pronounce the words.
     She'd gone to UC San Diego without a real major in mind, and gone
with a friend to a club, and found out how easy it was to make money
titty dancing, and thus and such and here she was.  She made quite a
good bit of money posing nude, which I guess was good for her.
     I know the official feminist party line is that such things are
degrading to women, but I can't really believe that selling images of
your body is any different than selling your intellectual production to
put under someone else's name or label.  And anything that gives women,
some of them not the brightest intellectual lights in the world,
thousands of dollars and doesn't involve either venereal disease OR
constant body-destroying exercise (pro sports), was a good thing in my
mind.  I resented a bit the constant societal/media expectation that I
as a woman would base my life and self-esteem on trying to look like one
of these, but that was a different kettle of crabs.
     She enjoyed the travelling she'd been doing whilst 'on tour', since
she hadn't really done a lot when she was younger and with her family.
I could sort of understand that, except I had no money and hated going
with other people.  If I'd been independently wealthy, I'd be traveling
a lot myself.  Mostly what she'd been doing, is just promoting the
magazine, showing up at the sort of places that Marketing had figured
there would be a lot of potential subscribers.
     I wanted to ask 'Oh, high schools?' but I knew that her answering
that question, or even acknowledging that I'd asked it, would probably
land both of us in more hot water than I needed.  So I kept my mouth
shut.
     She claimed she enjoyed meeting people all the time, but I got the
impression that that was part of the costume, somehow.  Maybe it was the
way she looked at me, or something, but I had a hard time believing it.
The rest of it I could check if I felt that interested.
     She was currently single, and had never been married or engaged.
Nor did she have children.  That implied either a bit of foresight on
her part, or enough cash to have abortions when necessary.  Either way,
I took it as a positive sign; I could explain the reasoning but it gets
kind of complex, and I can't prove most of it.
     When (if) she went to college, she wanted to major in teaching, she
said, and I almost laughed at her - YOU?  She'd be kidnapped by the
football team and never seen again - but then she added that she wanted
to teach first graders, and I could see that.  I still had a certain
sort of crush or something on my kindergarten teacher, and when I was
that young and stupid I liked looking at the prettier women. Before I
learned what being good-looking tended to do to others' personality.
Luckily, I didn't have that problem.  Heh.
     And then we were there, wherever 'there' was at the moment.  The
bodyguards got out first, and I wondered if it was a serious thing - I
mean, was it more than just thousands of wanking dorks with delusions of
eternal romance that fed the paranoia that paid these two bruisers?
Like, an ex-boyfriend sniper who went AWOL?  Or a pissed-off Mob capo? -
and they eventually waved us out of the limo.  I tried going first, and
nobody laughed - or shot at me - so I guess I did it gracefully enough.
I turned to help Angelica out, but she ignored my hand as she made it
out.
     A camera flashed, and I almost jumped.  Angelica's smile turned on
for the camera, and she took my hand as she troped towards it.  I have a
negative tropism that way, but... I sighed, internally, and tried to put
on a social smile for the *#@$ lenses.
     There were only a few more flashes, and then we were... walking
into the lobby of the Four Seasons.  Oooh, plush.  I didn't think they'd
let me in; I thought they had credit detectors installed in the door
frames.  Or maybe Angelica jammed the credit sensors, I dunno.
     I was going to offer her my elbow, and do the gallant thing, but it
didn't look like she was interested, so I sighed and did my best to keep
up with her.  She looked nice, if a bit under-clothed, because the white
dress was not only strapless, it had a low back to it too.  I wasn't the
only one that appreciated it as we walked through the lobby.  Some guy
met us at the door to the ballroom, and I instantly wanted to knife him,
so I figured he was from the magazine.  He was; some kind of marketing
department luser who was there to make sure that everything went
according to marketing specs and that she appeared maximally attractive
to the correct demographics, et cetera.
     Lookers as a movie was more accurate than I wanted life to be,
really.
     It also explained why I instantly wanted to kill him.  I hate
marketing whores.  I hate them worse than I hate corporate lawyers, and
that's saying something.
     I restrained myself - aaaagain - and he led both of us inside and
started showing us around.  He already knew about me, at least the radio
station contest part, and so I didn't really have to say anything at
all.  I had no idea what was going on, except the guys were relatively
young, and mostly quiet and bug-eyed.  Then again, I was next to Miss
April or whatever-she-was.  This seemed to impress them a lot.
Eventually, they'd look at me, and a large percentage of them had a
little frown, I guess as they tried to figure out what _I_ was doing
next to HER.  Then the marketing whore would introduce me - as Emily,
which I didn't bother to correct - and explain things, and their faces
would clear up.
     We ended up in a corner somewhere, with Angelica signing things and
both of us drinking champagne.  Woo ha.  And the people coming up for
the signing and conversation with 'THE Miss April' (or whatever month
she was) were about the same level of mentation as my usual callers at
work, except the boobs on display made them make references that I
didn't usually hear at work.
     STUPID references, which was the real crime.  'Is this your
girlfriend?' was the most common, followed by 'Are those real?' and
other stupidities.  I could have been getting paid for this kind of
torture....
     I was drinking as fast as I could get refills, hoping to pass out
before I completely lost it, but I didn't make it.  Some big balding
dork - you could tell he was a dork because he was combing strands of
hair over his bald spot - looked at her and looked at me and laughed and
said, "Too bad you're not dating a real man!"  I was starting to
hyperventilate at this point, with my arms folded in front of my
breasts, not coincidentally allowing me to feel the knives that were
sheathed under my arms, and it was taking most of my concentration to
keep my teeth un-bared.
     "Oh?" Angelica said, with that plastic smile on her face.  "Why is
that?"
     "'Cause a pretty thing like her," he indicated me, "couldn't
possibly protect you from all them-"
     It was probably the combination of 'pretty' and 'thing' that set me
off and started me growling, and the guy looked at me like he was
hearing things.  Then he got this dumbass smile on his face, and I just
KNEW he was going to say something incredibly stupid and white male-ish
and then I would berserk in the grand tradition of my ancestors and kill
everyone I could catch, and THEN I figured, Why wait?  So-
     Someone grabbed me by the hair from behind as I started to lunge,
and I turned around to find Angelica smiling at me.
     "Ellen," Angelica said gently, which surprised me.  "If you're that
hungry, let's go get something to eat."
     This reset my brain entirely.  For several reasons.
     One, it was FUNNY.
     Two, Angelica had said something WITTY.  Implying a totally
unexpected brain behind the makeup.
     Three, she was paying attention enough to remember my real first
name, even though no one had mentioned it in a long time.  I was
beginning to think I WAS Emily.
     Fourth.... I was kind of hungry.
     And fifth, that WAS what I'd had in mind when I talked to her and
the DJ on the phone.
     And sixth, there WERE things I'd rather be doing than mass murder.
     "GO home!" I hissed at the dork, and let go of my knives before I
turned around to Angelica.  This time, when I offered her my arm, she
took it.
     I booked out of there as fast as I could walk, and Angelica was
with me every step of the way.  The marketing whore got in front of me
and started to say something, but he realized JUST in time that I wasn't
going to stop for something of mere flesh - in fact, I was planning to
knee him, hopefully in the groin, and then kick him before I helped Miss
Angelica over his prostrate body - and dodged sideways.  'Wubba wubba
wub bub wubber?' came from the rear side, like a Charlie Brown cartoon,
but Angelica gave my arm a little squeeze, like 'You go girl!'
     I ignored the camera flashes, because if I'd paid attention I'd
have chased their asses down for meat too.
     The bodyguards fell in behind us as we exited the ballroom, and
when we got outside, a minivan sort of taxi was right outside.  I said,
"Thank you Goddess," for the luck, and went right up to the driver.
"Hey, you available?"
     "Yep," he said, and grinned.  Unlike New York, we have native-
English speaking cabbies, since this is a college town.
     "Great, you know where [pizza place] is?"
     "Oh yeah," he said, still smiling.
     Behind us, I heard 'wub wub Wub WUB' and it was getting closer.
     "Great, take us there and get us the hell away from the marketing
department," I ordered, and we got in quick, made room for the
bodyguards, and off we went before any of the zombies could catch us.
     The guards were trying hard not to grin.  "Did you say 'goddess'
back there?" Angelica asked.
     "Ah, yeah," I admitted.  "It's sort of reflexive Wiccan paganism,
helps keeps the Baptists away."
     She laughed, and it wasn't a plastic laugh, it was like a real
human did it.
     "Which marketing department?" the cabbie asked.
     Angelica and I looked at each other, and her eyes were flashing in
between alive and dead again.  I don't know how to describe it.
     But I knew that I had a choice, right then; I could go out with
Angelica Dawson, Plaything and nude model, who likes meeting people and
long romantic walks and the rest of the official bio.... or I could go
out with the young woman who was somewhere under the mask.  Whoever she
was.
     Not much of a choice, at least for me.
     I leaned forward and said, in a calm voice but loud enough to be
heard, "If I told you, I'd rip your head off and eat your brain, I am so
pissed right now.  But please, don't take it personally; I'm just
completely @&$&*ing sick of the marketing whores."
     Apparently he'd never heard the phrase before, because he started
to laugh, and almost ran into another car before he got control back.
     "No &#$&*," Angelica sighed, and - no lie! - reached up and took
off her HAIR.
     "&@$@$!" I commented as she scratched her real hair - blonde, but
darker, and a WHOLE lot shorter - because like I mentioned, I don't
startle real gracefully.  "I thought that was your real hair!"
     She snorted - actually snorted - and grinned.  "Nope!"
     And we both chorused, "It was a marketing idea!"  And laughed, and
laughed... a cell phone rang, and one of the guards reached into his
pocket, pulled it out and turned it off and stuck it back in his pocket.
And smiled.

     I was woozed from champagne absorption by the time we got to the
pizza place, so I was glad I wasn't driving.  Before we got out, I made
Katy - she'd told me 'Angelica' wasn't her real name in the limo, but
she hadn't told me what her real name was until she took her hair off in
the taxi - take my jacket so's to lower her profile even more.  It
looked good on her, which was no surprise, just irritating.  I knew that
everything would look good on her.  My knives - those two - weren't
visible even if I lifted my arms, which was exactly how I'd planned it,
of course.
     My profile was already altered beyond recognition, since she'd
taken the wig she'd been wearing and arranged it on MY head.  It didn't
look THAT bad, but I didn't like being a blonde, and I didn't look that
good either.
     The guards decided that since I was armed better than they were -
no lie! - that I'd be suitable protection, and just to make it
'official' she told them that they could go home and take the rest of
the night off.  They waved as they climbed back into the cab - the
driver of which had received an unhealthy tip, but I was extremely
grateful he hadn't stopped for the suits and ties behind us, and I
wanted to reward and reinforce that behavior.  You know, Skinner.
     And there we were.  Me and Katy.
     "Um," I started.
     After a few more moments, we both chuckled.  "Is this good pizza?"
she asked.
     "I think so, but I've never been to New York to have New York-
style, or Chicago to have Chicago-style... and I like their salads."  I
shrugged.  I did like the greenery, along with the heaps of cheese and
greasy meat, yumm...
     "You're not just gonna have a salad, are you?" she asked, sounding
a bit worried.
     "Oh hell no," I assured her.
     She laughed, and said, "I thought I'd have to stick to salads too."
     "Why would you have to do that?"
     She gave me a curious look.  "Because it wouldn't be polite?" she
said gently, like she was reminding me of something.
     "Oh, one of those," I said, and grinned at her.  "I don't like
polite.  With me, just pretend like you're alone, or with your best
friend, and if I don't like something I swear I'll tell you.  If you
think you have to be polite all night long, you'll make me nervous."
And I tended to sweat when I got nervous, which I didn't mention.
"Please?"
     "I can be pretty rude," she said in a warning tone.
     I belched at her.
     Paint me blue if she didn't come back almost instantly with one of
her own.
     "I LIKE you!" I shouted happily, and she laughed, and I took her
arm, and we went in.
     She wanted to order two pizzas, but I told her that even I had
never managed to eat more than three pieces of a large, and that was
without salad.  Which they made in bowls for us, and we ordered a large
WithEverything, and we sat at a table and ate.
     Once I got her away from the management whores and her image and
all that, she was a hoot.  She really did want to be a teacher, and that
was her real voice, but it seemed somehow less annoying with the shorter
hair.  Don't ask me why.  And she had the NASTIEST stories to tell about
other people in the business.  I almost blew Coke out my nose, and that
is NOT an easy thing to get me to do.  She was as bad as my gay friends
when drunk.
     And I thought she was pretty drunk, because I was sure I was.  I
hoped all the stories about champagne hangovers were lies, because I was
most likely going to have one tomorrow morning.  Ugh.
     Pizza arrived before I could get too depressed, though.  So did a
bottle of champagne.  "?" I said, trying to get my mouth to work as a
communicator again.  It had started salivating in preparation already.
     "Oh," she said, and smiled a real smile at me.  "I asked one of the
drivers if he'd pick up a bottle for us on his way out."  She made a
face, and added, "Mixing champagne and anything else is a surefire way
to get a deadly hangover tomorrow morning."
     "," I said, and then shrugged.  I'd heard that too, and I really
had no idea to make things any worse.  I decided I'd leave the carousing
plans up to the expert; she had to know more about such things than I
did.  "Great idea," I finally managed to get out of my mouth, and I
smiled back at her.
     I had a roll of quarters that had been destined for the laundry
machine, and somehow it had made the purse-to-purse transfer earlier.
Katy saw it when I paid my share of the champagne bill, and she insisted
until we got up and spent half of it in the jukebox the place had.  Her
music tastes were a lot closer than I had imagined they would be, too.
We both had a liking for real boot-stomping, headbusting music, like old
rock and punk and industrial.  She said she liked to dance to it, which
I guess you could say I did too.  I also liked to swordfight to it, but
I didn't mention that.  Not right then, anyway.

     We drank a lot of the champagne, maybe the entire bottle.  I'm
getting kind of vague because memory gets kind of vague after the music
part of the conversation.
     I remember drinking a bit of champagne out of one of our shoes, and
thinking how nasty all the foot sweat made it taste.
     I think we eventually ate all the pizza.
     I vaguely recall doing a table dance for the cooks, but I think
that was after the place closed.  I remember her hooting at me as I did
it, and I think it was her hand that stuffed a twenty into my cleavage.
But I wouldn't swear to that.
     I do not remember jail or cops, which is a GOOD thing.
     I vaguely recall shaking my head violently in reply to a question,
and then watching as the wig sailed off, into the chair next to me, and
then the wig just sitting there, like it was a guest at a dinner party.
I laughed so hard I almost wet myself.  So did everyone else in the
place.
     I also have a vague memory of someone - maybe me, maybe someone
else - trying to hurl the empty champagne bottle for a distance record,
and watching it shatter in the empty street quite a ways away.  And
applause, but I don't think it was for me.
     I remember hoisting her up and on my shoulder.  I think it was to
prove that I could, but it might have been time to go home.
     I also remember feeling so clever that some of my OTC drugs had
made the purse transfer too, that I had to show AND tell everyone how
clever I was being by having them, because I could drink a lot of water
and take aspirin before I went to sleep, and then maybe just wake up ill
instead of zombiefied.

     That's pretty much where reliable memory restarts; me waking up
feeling ill instead of feeling like an animated corpse.  An animated
abused corpse, the one Igor dropped on the bottom of the cart.
     I detected a bathroom through the fog and haze that were my contact
lenses when not taken out and cleaned, and in that bathroom there had to
be a toilet.  I rooted around by passive sonar and touch and found the
toilet seat eventually.  I hoped that it was attached to a toilet in the
usual way, but I REALLY had to go, so I 'consciously' decided to worry
about it later.  My feet didn't get wet, so I guess it was.
     When I got done, I unwrapped a little plastic cup and drank cup
after cup of cold tap water.  I stopped when I felt full, which made me
feel a bit better, before I staggered back to the bed.
     There was a warm breathing body in the bed - I could tell this
without trying to see, which was good because trying to see hurt - so I
snuggled up to it and went back to sleep.
     I'm particular about who I have sex with, but I'll sleep with
almost anyone.

     "Ellen?" someone asked, and it seemed like it wasn't for the first
time.  I felt a hand shaking my shoulder lightly.  "Ellen?"
     "Nugh!" I said back, and rolled over.  This shows that I was not
unduly tormented by a hangover.  Anyone who's lived with me could tell
you that if I don't feel well, that they're lucky to walk away from an
awakening attempt with only a bruise.  I've tried to kick people in
their throat before, when I felt really bad and they tried to wake me
up.
     "Ellllllennnn?" whoever it was complained, and it bothered me that
I didn't recognize the voice.  Had I gotten a new roommate that I wasn't
remembering?  And, of course, once you start wondering things like this,
your brain wakes up and you are awake.  A tragedy, but one that is
repeated every day; sometimes more often.
     "Nggg rng yugh," I said, more in the hopes of getting whoever it
was to leave me alone, than any real attempt at communication.  I rolled
over and opened my eyes, then rubbed and scraped them until I could make
out the person trying to wake me up.  It was the girl from last night,
the dancer.  "Oh, hi," I said, and smiled.  She looked mostly naked.
     I looked down, and I looked mostly naked too.
     Before prudence could stop me, I asked, "Did we have sex last
night?"  This is one of those rude questions you are just Not Supposed
To Ask Ever.  Naturally, it's about the second intelligible thing out of
my mouth.
     Luckily, she thought it was sort of funny.  "I was going to ask you
that!" she complained while she was giggling.
     Also luckily, I remembered her name while she was giggling.  I'm
usually horrible with names, but I also usually don't end up in bed with
someone I just met.  Katy, I thought with relief.  Now I didn't have to
ask, "Uh, what's your name again?"  That's another thing you're Not
Supposed To Ask Ever, if you just woke up in bed with them.
     I was so relieved about the one question that I forgot manners
entirely when I remembered the other one, the one she'd actually asked.
"Uh.  I don't remember," I said truthfully, and stuck my hand in my
underwear.  "No, don't think we did, I don't feel sticky or anything."
     She laughed and laughed and pointed at me and laughed and fell off
the bed and complained about how that had hurt.  I stared at the
ceiling, absent of all thought.
     This proves that Buddha was a liar; if Nirvana was achievable
simply by emptying one's self of all passions, then I would have
ascended that morning.  I was a completely blank slate for a time.
     My transcendental state of lump was cut short when some Wet fell on
me.  "Uh?" I complained as I sat up, and there she was, wrapped in a
tiny towel and smiling at me.
     "Want to take a shower?" she asked.
     Instead of trying to talk, I just nodded, and let her lead me into
a bathroom.  It was a hotel bathroom, which of course wasn't MY
bathroom, which led to the inescapable conclusion that we had ended up
at her place last night.  Or this morning, whatever.
     *Well, not necessarily,* said the paranoia generator.  *Maybe this
is someone else's room.*  *Yeah right,* Occam's Axe said - other people
use Occam's Razor, but mine tends to end up like an axe -  and I
resolved to Wait And See, which I usually had to when these sort of
internal conflicts arise.  More data, Captain.
     She had a couple of towels left, but they were little bitty things,
barely big enough for me to use as hand towels.  It was irritating, but
I did what I could with the three of them and then opened the door.
"Hello?" I called out.
     "Hi," she said back, and I opened the door enough to see her,
wrapped in a robe.  "I ordered some breakfast, you like eggs right?"  I
like most everything if it's dead and cooked, so I nodded and smiled at
her as I made my way to the bed and pulled the sheet off and wrapped
myself in it, shedding the towels in the process.
     We had a very sensual - and non-sexual, sorry - morning, involving
a lot of touching and kissing and caressing, but nothing two girls
couldn't have done in public.  If you had brass balls, of course.  But,
nothing really sexual.  I don't know if she wanted me to take the lead
or something and I'd missed a cue, but I was just really really happy to
be with her and next to her this morning.  So I touched her a lot, and
rubbed her shoulders and kissed them and trickled my fingers down her
back and cupped her breasts and stroked her hair and face, and she did
all that back to me, and it was really nice.
     Finally, though, her phone rang and she had stuff to do and I had
stuff to do and so I had to get dressed in last night's remnants while
she called me a cab and we said goodbye and then she walked me down to
the lobby where the cab was waiting and then we said goodbye again.
     I couldn't stand not to, so I put my arms around her and gave her a
kiss, and she returned it with interest, but then the cab was there, and
I hate long goodbyes, so I left.
     We waved to each other until I was out of sight.
     I remembered to take the cab back to my car, which was still there,
and then I drove home by myself, and crawled into bed.  Maggie was there
and asked me how it went and I said Unexpectedly Great and I'll Tell You
Later and then I was in my bed and unconscious.

     The fact that I had forgotten to have pictures taken was not lost
on my pervert coworkers, who called me all sorts of names denigrating my
intellect and sense for a long time afterward.  I suppose I deserved
them, but they did get tiresome after the first two hours.
     About five in the morning, we were talking about cars, and someone
casually mentioned that they'd seen someone's headlights on earlier but
they didn't know whose car it was, and now they thought it might be my
car.  I left my headlights on about quarterly, so I cursed them and went
outside to see if it was true.  My headlights weren't on when I opened
the building door, which was perfectly predictable no matter what.  I
was cursing and fumbling with my keys when a car horn got my attention.
I looked up, and it was a white limousine.
     Before I could do more than stop and make a really stupid face, she
popped out of the back, wearing her Angelica hair and nosebleed heels
and a crop top and cutoffs that left nothing to either imagination OR
padding.  "Ellen!" she squealed and ran over to me and hugged me.  "Can
I see where you work?" she asked, and winked at me where no one else
could see it.
     So I brought her in and introduced her as Angelica a friend of
mine, and after the applause, the perverts gave me looks like 'you
brought her HERE?!' and all I could do was shrug and announce that it
wasn't my idea.  One of the perverts - every group has a weirdo, and
ours was simply without any social graces at all; I kind of liked him
because there was no dishonesty in the man at all, even if he was a
bonehead - reached out his hand to grab I-don't-know-what and she
slapped his hand back into his stomach before any of us could blink.
That got her another round of applause, and she curtsied for it too.  I
introduced her around on the mundane side too, and you could see a
couple of the guys recognized her but were too chicken to say anything.
I know she got a kick out of that; she kept poking me and pointing
subtly at those particular guys.
     And then we were out at the limo, which she dismissed again, and
then we were in my car and she was asking me if I knew a good place for
breakfast....