~BBW, Curvewatching, ~SWG - four men at an extended lunch, four viewpoints, and one flattered plumper
Part One
It was back in the early days Reagan’s first administration, and it was early in the spring. It was also Friday, and of that I was very glad. I’d finally reached the end of my first week at Integrated Processes and even though I wanted to believe that my new, corporate job was working out well, I couldn’t pretend that it hadn’t already begun to exhaust me.
Sitting at a desk was wearing me out twice as quickly as pushing a taxicab through traffic ever had. I could only hope that, as time went on, I’d get into better shape for the demands of office work. Either that, or I’d learn some ‘tricks of the trade’ to get things done more efficiently. Today, for example, it had taken me all morning to open just five accounts – even for a newcomer that had to be pretty slow. Was there any chance that, after getting some experience under my belt, things wouldn’t take me so long to complete?
I was distracted from these ponderings by the sound of heavy footsteps walking toward my desk. Carl, from Marketing, poked his head into my cube. I recognized him by the conservative cut of his light brown hair and the pale blue eyes over his clean-shaven face. I looked at him and wondered, as I had when I first met him, if he might possibly be a member of the Young Republicans Club. He’d certainly be well cast in that role.
When he tilted his body forward to get his bulky torso into my tiny workspace the lower half of his tie went AWOL, abandoning its post over the buttons of his white shirt. While he was in this position, I got to see a penny-sized food smear which was directly North of the button at the apex of his belly paunch and due South of the one immediately above it. Carl obviously subscribed to the belief that a shirt merited more than one wearing before it had to be relegated to the laundry hamper.
I couldn’t determine whether the stain had always been brown, or had once been red and later faded to a darker hue. It might once have been chocolate sauce, but it could just as easily have been ketchup; either way, it had gone undisturbed for some time.
“Watcha doin’ for lunch?” The tone of his voice was boisterously friendly. He made me feel as if we were old chums rather than two guys who’d spent less than two hours together in the course of a four-day association.
“I brought a bag – tunafish and a Devil Dog.”
“Save it for later. A few of us are going out. Do you like Italian?”
“I don’t know, Carl, I only get half an hour.”
“Forget what they told you at Orientation. Everyone goofs off on Friday afternoons. If you make it back from lunch by quitting time nobody will say a thing.”
“You’re kidding me!”
“Gotta do it, Man, the pace around here will kill you if you don’t take a break now and then. You’ll see – ”
The hopeful promise of a lazy afternoon was soured by the ominous tone that Carl added to the phrase, ‘You’ll see’. I suppressed the impulse to get him to follow up on the remark.
“What time are you leaving?”
“Twelve Thirty. Meet us in the lobby.”
He spun around without giving me the chance to decline.
When I got to the lobby, Carl was standing near the exit, speaking animatedly with two other men. I recognized the tallest in the group. He was a full six and a half feet, and extremely thin. The tall man had straight, reddish-brown hair which he wore in a ponytail and which covered the entirety of his back. His name, I recalled, was Tim, or Tom. He was a programmer in our Information Systems department. The other man was short, squat and craggy faced. He looked to be at least fifty, which was roughly twice the age of the rest of us.
Carl called out as I approached.
“Hey! Justin – you know everybody? Justin, Everybody; Everybody, Justin.”
The craggy faced man rolled his eyes and stretched out his hand to meet mine. He gave it limp shake.
“Joey DiNapoli,” he said, “I run the place.”
“Oh, well then,” I gave the older man a deferential glance, “I’m glad to meet you, Mr. DiNapoli.”
“I didn’t say I own the place,” he corrected, chuckling, “I just run it.”
“He means,” Carl said, pushing the glass door that led to the parking lot, “that he sits all day at a desk in front of the Supply Room.”
“Yeah,” Tim added, or was it Tom? I couldn’t settle on which it was, but I decided against asking; hoping, instead, that someone would use it before I had to, “his job is to give you an argument when you come looking for a ballpoint pen.”
We piled into Carl’s Jeep before the laughter subsided and headed directly to Alfredo’s, a large eatery along the strip on Route 1.
“This place has everything,” Joey told me as we were led to our seats, “Italian – American – if it’s good to eat they serve it here.”
“Joey doesn’t know there’s anything in the world to eat but Italian/American,” Carl said, grabbing a stick of garlic bread from the center of the table. “I took him to a Japanese place, once, for sushi. I thought his eyes were gonna pop out of his head.”
“Don’t worry, Kiddo,” Joey assured me, pulling an ashtray over the red and white tablecloth toward his place at the edge of the booth, “they won’t try to serve you any raw fish here.”
Tim/Tom was studying the menu. “I don’t know why I even bother looking,” he intoned, “I always get the same – Large Pepperoni Pizza.”
Carl was shaking Parmesan Cheese over a second piece of garlic bread. “I don’t know how you can eat like that and stay so skinny.” He turned to me and added, “he doesn’t even work out. Isn’t that right, Stick?”
Tim/Tom didn’t answer right away. He was in the process of removing the ‘scrunchie’ that had been keeping his hair in a tight knot. It was a transforming gesture, and when it was complete, his head appeared to command twice the space it had previously.
“Who, me,” he asked, finally tuning in to Carl’s question. “I don’t do any exercise more strenuous than tapping on a keyboard. I just have a fast metabolism.”
I was still trying to adjust to the sight of Tim/Tom’s hair as our waitress arrived. She stood directly next to me and I caught the scent of her fragrance. Her aroma was an orgy of flowers and sweetness. I’m not the kind of guy who learns the names of perfumes, but this one was distinct, and evocative. I recognized it immediately because it was the same one June Sommers wore every day when we sat next to each other in Eleventh Grade Chemistry. My heart pounded as I was flooded by the memory of that voluptuous beauty and by the passion of my own unexpressed crush. Laughable as it seems, I actually expected to behold Miss Sommers' gorgeous curves when I turned to face our server.
The face that smiled at me wasn’t June’s, of course; it belonged to a pretty, perky slip of a girl who was only half June’s size. She had brown eyes and olive skin, and when she said, “how are you gentlemen doing today?” I detected irrepressible joy in her voice.
I checked her nametag and noticed that her breasts were surprisingly large for such a slender young woman. To my way of thinking, their size seemed to promise that the rest of her body would eventually fill out and balance the proportions of her figure.
“How do you say your name,” I asked. Realizing that my throat had become dry, I reached for a glass of water to suppress a cough.
“Crucificia,” she said, with a hint of pride, “it’s Italian.” She clasped the religious icon at the base of her necklace. “It means crucifix; but everyone here calls me Fanny.”
The Lunchbreak
By Charon's Aide
By Charon's Aide
Part One
It was back in the early days Reagan’s first administration, and it was early in the spring. It was also Friday, and of that I was very glad. I’d finally reached the end of my first week at Integrated Processes and even though I wanted to believe that my new, corporate job was working out well, I couldn’t pretend that it hadn’t already begun to exhaust me.
Sitting at a desk was wearing me out twice as quickly as pushing a taxicab through traffic ever had. I could only hope that, as time went on, I’d get into better shape for the demands of office work. Either that, or I’d learn some ‘tricks of the trade’ to get things done more efficiently. Today, for example, it had taken me all morning to open just five accounts – even for a newcomer that had to be pretty slow. Was there any chance that, after getting some experience under my belt, things wouldn’t take me so long to complete?
I was distracted from these ponderings by the sound of heavy footsteps walking toward my desk. Carl, from Marketing, poked his head into my cube. I recognized him by the conservative cut of his light brown hair and the pale blue eyes over his clean-shaven face. I looked at him and wondered, as I had when I first met him, if he might possibly be a member of the Young Republicans Club. He’d certainly be well cast in that role.
When he tilted his body forward to get his bulky torso into my tiny workspace the lower half of his tie went AWOL, abandoning its post over the buttons of his white shirt. While he was in this position, I got to see a penny-sized food smear which was directly North of the button at the apex of his belly paunch and due South of the one immediately above it. Carl obviously subscribed to the belief that a shirt merited more than one wearing before it had to be relegated to the laundry hamper.
I couldn’t determine whether the stain had always been brown, or had once been red and later faded to a darker hue. It might once have been chocolate sauce, but it could just as easily have been ketchup; either way, it had gone undisturbed for some time.
“Watcha doin’ for lunch?” The tone of his voice was boisterously friendly. He made me feel as if we were old chums rather than two guys who’d spent less than two hours together in the course of a four-day association.
“I brought a bag – tunafish and a Devil Dog.”
“Save it for later. A few of us are going out. Do you like Italian?”
“I don’t know, Carl, I only get half an hour.”
“Forget what they told you at Orientation. Everyone goofs off on Friday afternoons. If you make it back from lunch by quitting time nobody will say a thing.”
“You’re kidding me!”
“Gotta do it, Man, the pace around here will kill you if you don’t take a break now and then. You’ll see – ”
The hopeful promise of a lazy afternoon was soured by the ominous tone that Carl added to the phrase, ‘You’ll see’. I suppressed the impulse to get him to follow up on the remark.
“What time are you leaving?”
“Twelve Thirty. Meet us in the lobby.”
He spun around without giving me the chance to decline.
When I got to the lobby, Carl was standing near the exit, speaking animatedly with two other men. I recognized the tallest in the group. He was a full six and a half feet, and extremely thin. The tall man had straight, reddish-brown hair which he wore in a ponytail and which covered the entirety of his back. His name, I recalled, was Tim, or Tom. He was a programmer in our Information Systems department. The other man was short, squat and craggy faced. He looked to be at least fifty, which was roughly twice the age of the rest of us.
Carl called out as I approached.
“Hey! Justin – you know everybody? Justin, Everybody; Everybody, Justin.”
The craggy faced man rolled his eyes and stretched out his hand to meet mine. He gave it limp shake.
“Joey DiNapoli,” he said, “I run the place.”
“Oh, well then,” I gave the older man a deferential glance, “I’m glad to meet you, Mr. DiNapoli.”
“I didn’t say I own the place,” he corrected, chuckling, “I just run it.”
“He means,” Carl said, pushing the glass door that led to the parking lot, “that he sits all day at a desk in front of the Supply Room.”
“Yeah,” Tim added, or was it Tom? I couldn’t settle on which it was, but I decided against asking; hoping, instead, that someone would use it before I had to, “his job is to give you an argument when you come looking for a ballpoint pen.”
We piled into Carl’s Jeep before the laughter subsided and headed directly to Alfredo’s, a large eatery along the strip on Route 1.
“This place has everything,” Joey told me as we were led to our seats, “Italian – American – if it’s good to eat they serve it here.”
“Joey doesn’t know there’s anything in the world to eat but Italian/American,” Carl said, grabbing a stick of garlic bread from the center of the table. “I took him to a Japanese place, once, for sushi. I thought his eyes were gonna pop out of his head.”
“Don’t worry, Kiddo,” Joey assured me, pulling an ashtray over the red and white tablecloth toward his place at the edge of the booth, “they won’t try to serve you any raw fish here.”
Tim/Tom was studying the menu. “I don’t know why I even bother looking,” he intoned, “I always get the same – Large Pepperoni Pizza.”
Carl was shaking Parmesan Cheese over a second piece of garlic bread. “I don’t know how you can eat like that and stay so skinny.” He turned to me and added, “he doesn’t even work out. Isn’t that right, Stick?”
Tim/Tom didn’t answer right away. He was in the process of removing the ‘scrunchie’ that had been keeping his hair in a tight knot. It was a transforming gesture, and when it was complete, his head appeared to command twice the space it had previously.
“Who, me,” he asked, finally tuning in to Carl’s question. “I don’t do any exercise more strenuous than tapping on a keyboard. I just have a fast metabolism.”
I was still trying to adjust to the sight of Tim/Tom’s hair as our waitress arrived. She stood directly next to me and I caught the scent of her fragrance. Her aroma was an orgy of flowers and sweetness. I’m not the kind of guy who learns the names of perfumes, but this one was distinct, and evocative. I recognized it immediately because it was the same one June Sommers wore every day when we sat next to each other in Eleventh Grade Chemistry. My heart pounded as I was flooded by the memory of that voluptuous beauty and by the passion of my own unexpressed crush. Laughable as it seems, I actually expected to behold Miss Sommers' gorgeous curves when I turned to face our server.
The face that smiled at me wasn’t June’s, of course; it belonged to a pretty, perky slip of a girl who was only half June’s size. She had brown eyes and olive skin, and when she said, “how are you gentlemen doing today?” I detected irrepressible joy in her voice.
I checked her nametag and noticed that her breasts were surprisingly large for such a slender young woman. To my way of thinking, their size seemed to promise that the rest of her body would eventually fill out and balance the proportions of her figure.
“How do you say your name,” I asked. Realizing that my throat had become dry, I reached for a glass of water to suppress a cough.
“Crucificia,” she said, with a hint of pride, “it’s Italian.” She clasped the religious icon at the base of her necklace. “It means crucifix; but everyone here calls me Fanny.”
