my body. Hot.
Thing was, I needed the job,
and these boys,
they had a bet to see
who’d fuck me first.
Really, Ava!
Though I didn’t know it then.
What started as gentle flirting, well,
it escalated
fast.
And though some of them were cute – especially
this curly-headed boy who smelled so good… the rest
were kind of gross, and one guy – Matthew –
well, he was really mean.
I giggled through a week or two.
The work itself was great – a busy bar, the rush of
keeping up, and all the happy, horny eyes of strangers.
With the bar between us, I was safe.
I loved to pull a pint with eyes locked on the eyes of a
student, banker, hairdresser, local alcoholic, then move
on to the next.
You might be thinking I was up for it,
I was.
I’d pin the bits of paper, napkin, cards with people’s
numbers, names, and little notes onto the pinboard in my
room – near-conquests! what-could’ve-beens!
There, I was Woman. Born from egg.
Gazed upon, adored, fought over, stolen –
I felt indestructible.
They’d have these lock-ins after work.
The manager was rarely there at shift time but after
closing he’d emerge. He had this office like a cupboard,
would sit and watch the footage from the cameras.
He was pallid, wormy-thin, I guess
in his late thirties – soft, sad eyes.
The only one who didn’t try it on with me. In fact,
I seemed invisible to him.
Slightly disconcerting.
He had girlfriends on and off.
Once, when I was working on the daytime shift, a
