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After the disaster of her birthday, Peggy didn’t want to try dating again. She dreaded pursuing another man who would willfully misunderstand her in the name of positioning her neatly for marriage. And the men who weren’t interested in marrying her were only interested in saying whatever they needed to get her in bed. Did she want that? She didn’t know what she wanted. Maybe nothing at all. Except that she craved company, attention, in the privacy of her own bedroom she was able to admit that she desperately wanted to share a bed with someone, to have a confidant, a lover.
She went on a few fruitless dates with awkward men who were either completely turned off by her career, or a little too turned on at the idea of a career woman. One man asked if she would wear a fur coat and call him names.
Finally, she gave up, decided a date with her own hand face down in bed would be as close as she got to getting any satisfaction for the foreseeable future.
As she touched herself, Don came to mind. He was never far from her mind. Her roommates were sick of her complaining about him, had asked her to either shut up or make a move. She wasn’t attracted to him. She’d seen him sweating alcohol at 9am, vomiting in the office bathroom past midnight, so drunk he couldn’t walk, she’d seen him crying, and wild eyed with excitement. It was impossible to be attracted to someone after all that. Her mom had once described how easy it was to slip into rote caretaking with a man who you’d seen in every state of well and unwell, dressed and undressed. She said that you never really knew love until you were tasked with sleeping with the man you’d promised yourself to for all of time. Peggy had decided early that her life would be different. She would work and she would not be stuck with a man whose existence disgusted her. And yet, as she laid in bed, fingers smeared with her own wetness, Don’s voice played in her mind. She hear him: “If you want me to praise your idea, then bring me a good idea! All of these are shit!”
She shook her head, tried to remove his voice from her head. She called her last date to mind, Mark. He had been timid, prone to want to fuck slowly and face to face after an hour of exchanging timid kisses and light touches. He sometimes gripped her breasts, fondling her with an eagerness that she liked, though he always seemed embarrassed with his own forwardness afterwards. She wished he’d been bolder. She wanted him to get so excited they had to rush back from the restaurant to fuck with their clothes on against her bedroom door which they would close just in time not to disturb her roommates. She wanted to make out in the back of taxis and at movie theaters, and not have to talk a timid man through the basics of touching a breast.
None of those dreams came to her now. Instead, she imagined Don, his voice telling her that she had done a good job, that her idea was good, that she was brilliant. She orgasmed like that, humiliated by her own want. She was ashamed to want a man who slept in her lap like a child.
“It’s a good idea. I don’t know why you’re insisting on shitting all over it,” she told him at their meeting the next morning, already mulish. He hadn’t really shit all over the idea yet.
He gave her a look, What the hell? clearly legible in the crease of his forehead. She set her jaw.
“Ok, everyone else out,” Don said with a wave of his hand. She liked that, the way she was an unstated part of Don’s inner world.
Don waited for the door to click shut before he said, “Have I done something? Usually, I have to turn down a hundred of your ideas before you get this angry at me.”
She chewed on her frustration, unable to admit to what was bothering her. What could she say? That she got off to the thought of his voice praising her last night and now she couldn’t be in the same room without feeling a pulse of want, and that this want humiliated her, that the humiliation made her want it more.
“It’s nothing,” she sighed. “Personal stuff.”
Don leaned back. “Ok, so? Lay it on me.”
She shook her head but said, “You ruined my sex life.” Her cheeks were hot.
Don’s eyebrows went up, but to his credit he didn’t pause when he said, “I ruined your sex life? Peggy, you could have just told me that you had a date for your birthday! Do we really have to do this again?”
“Yes! Because you clearly don’t understand that I couldn’t have told you! You mocked me for having plans!”
“I didn’t know you actually had plans! I thought you just wanted to—” he waved a hand at her, “Besides, you didn’t even want to go to that dinner. You should be thanking you for getting rid of that guy.”
Heat rose in throat. Embarrassingly, heat also curled low in her belly.
“You didn’t know that! You don’t get to decide what parts of my life you get to shit all over.”
“Yes, I do. Because the job shits on your life. It’s not my fault you decided you wanted this to be your career, Peggy.”
Her hands were fisted in her lap, and she rocked forward a little bit, trying to get some pressure from her spandex underwear.
“No, Don. The job shits on your life and then you share it around. You need to make sure that everyone stoops down to your level,” Peggy snapped. She shifted in her seat, leg uncrossed, back straight, hips tilted forward, just a tantalizing bit of pressure on her cunt. Already she was thinking about how she could rush to the bathroom after this, though she wasn’t sure if the plan was to compose herself, or take a moment to lock herself in a stall and get off as quietly as possible.
“Peggy,” Don’s voice had changed, something soft there, “Are you—” He looked down significantly at her clenched hands.
“Do you want to—” he started.
“If you even try to suggest—”
He cut her off. “Woah, no, no. I was going to—Do you want some privacy?”
“No!” her voice cracked over frustration. “I want you to—” she sighed, irritated.
“Peggy,” Don started, looking a little too honest.
“Can you just—I need you to, keep going,” she choked out, her face hot.
“Doing what?” he looked lost.
“Tell me I did a bad job,” she said her voice thick. She grabbed fistfuls of her skirt in his hand, pulling up it up a little, the lacy edge of her slip visible.
“I don’t want to fuck you,” he said.
“Ew, what? No, I don’t want to fuck you either. Just,” she waved a hand as if that could explain it.
“What do you want me to say?” his dark eyes were wide, his cheeks flushed.
“I don’t know! Think of something!” she yelled.
“Peggy, if I thought you’d done a good job, I would have picked one of your other ideas. Everything you brought me today was worthless.” He gave her a questioning look. She was hot under her collar, sweat beading her forehead. She took a fistful of her skirt and pressed it between her legs.
“You have good ideas—” he started.
“Don’t! I don’t need you to do that. Just, pretend for a minute,” she told him.
Don took a shaky breath.
“Your ideas are shit. I mean, come on, the endorsement, the cute girl on his arm telling us all how good that blender is. No one wants to be told by a radio personality that a blender is good.” He started off shaky but a sneer was in place by the time he said the word ‘blender.’
She shoved up her skirts. She slid down in the chair, her legs spread, her stockings and garters on full display, her buttocks nearly hanging off the seat. She looked stupid she knew, double-chinned from looking down, unattractively arranged in his seat. And goddamn him for making her feel this way, for insulting her and making her wet, for haunting her dreams.
“And while we’re at it. What do you think you’re doing, flirting with the boss? With the clients? You don’t have enough brains to do your job so you use, what?” he cast a critical glance over her. The gusset of her panties was wet with her arousal. She fumbled with her girdle, the straps and clips that held up her stockings until finally, she got at her underwear. She shoved them down enough to get her hand on her cunt, gathering wetness from her vaginal opening to smear against her labia, against her clitoris, which she discovered when she was 11 while taking a bath and had loved ever since.
“It shows in your work, you know? How bad at this you are. You’re only here before you’re a woman, a little female touch, and you couldn’t even sell an icebox to a housewife. That’s why I got the Clio and you didn’t.”
She was swollen and blood hot with arousal, her labia puffy and begging for penetration. She stroked the sensitive skin, shivering at the cool her fingers left behind then slipped her fingers inside, pressing the heel of her palm to her clit, that bright spot of pleasure. Goddamn herself too, for needing this, for being unable to think of anything else for weeks but his smooth voice belittling her until she couldn’t hold on any longer.
“Is this all you’re good for? A bitch in heat panting in my office?”
She made a high noise, the muscles of her vagina quaking around her fingers.
“You really are a slut.” Her stomach swooped with nausea, then rage, the back of her neck getting hot.
“Fuck you,” she spit. The sound of her fingers as she fucked herself was loud in the room. She hated that he could hear how wet this was making her.
“Fuck me? I’m not the one putting on a two-dollar whore show in the office. Maybe we should film this and put a Frigidaire behind you, or a blender under your skirt. Bet they would buy whatever useless appliance you’re trying to sell if you show them your cunt on TV.”
She was close, her hips rocking, her palm mashed against her labia, her body starting to spasm, heat spreading slowly through her abdomen.
“Or maybe they wouldn’t. Maybe they’d all see a desperate slut, trying anything to prove herself.”
“Oh fuck,” she gasped, the spark of her orgasm spreading. “Oh fuck!”
Don’s expression went from haughty, mean and self-possessed to a open, a little wondering. Then, as her orgasm intensified, as she kept going, riding it out, riding her fingers, he went a little panicked.
In a moment, he was up and around the desk with a hand over her mouth, the other hand on the back of her neck to hold her in place as she threw her head back and let go. Let go of weeks of frustration, of humiliation and arousal with no outlet. She licked his palm, which tasted of ash and tobacco.
“Peggy. Peggy!” he called to her once the gasping was over.
She nodded and he let go of her face. He stroked her hair, just once as he looked down at her. He had sweat around his hairline and on his upper lip.
She nodded, “I’m done. I’m good. That was good. Thank you.”
He nodded. “Do you want a drink?” he asked.
“Yes, please,” she said. While his back was turned, she awkwardly shuffled her underwear back up, then rearranged the girdle so it was back in place.
“Thank you, Don,” she said when he handed her the drink, with more weight than the gesture warranted. Her fingers were hot where they’d been inside her.
He tilted his head in acknowledgement.
“None of that was true, I hope you know,” he said. He was still flushed.
“I know,” she softened her voice, gave him the real smile she didn’t often offer to people.
He nodded, expression still pensive. “I know, Don.” He met her gaze; she widened her eyes at him. His expression relaxed a fraction.
They sat for a moment in silence, each sipping their respective whiskeys. They didn’t make eye contact.
“If that did anything for you, I trust you to never tell me about it,” she said primly, as she stood. She rearranged her skirts, adjusted her stockings. When she went to wipe her face, she must have made some kind of face because she handed Her palm smelt of sex and she would have to go to the bathroom for a more thorough cleaning, though Don did hand her a handkerchief.
He nodded, “It never happened.”
“Right. Well, I’ll bring you some more ideas,” she checked the clock, “Around one. And Don,” she said, with her hand on the door handle. He looked up from where he was rummaging in a drawer. “Thank you.”
It was only as she turned the door handle that she realized, neither of them had thought to lock the door.