The Wisdom of Fast Women & Fast Food
Table of Contents
Nicole: The Filthy Beauty Teen Heartthrob
I met Nicole at a burger joint in a mall where she worked the register, looking hot in the ridiculous uniform and paper hat, which said much about her beauty. She began the guy-girl banter while wiping the counter, coyly glancing at me, and inspiring me to ask when her shift ended. That night, our first date, we smoked weed in my car, followed by a make-out session before exiting the vehicle to strip and lift the pantless Nicole, sprawling her on the hood. A faint scent of bacon and grilled beef emanated from her well-formed, after-work body I groped and licked before going down on.
At seventeen, I had little experience but just enough to know her vagina should not be so tart. I endured the flavor to return my salty favor, which she took, without complaint (at least to me), orally or vaginally. I thought much of that almost unbearably tart vagina; until the next time, and the next time, I grimaced between those shapely, muscular thighs.
Thoughts of taking Nicole to the movies or a party formed many invitations, but never did I meet her friends or did she mine. Always, we parked behind the nearby school after her burger-selling shift. I felt the relationship urge growing and figured more time needed investment in my sexy burger queen.
Despite my willingness to endure the tart vagina, Nicole unexpectedly dumped me for another burger buyer. The breakup came on a Tuesday just after the dinner rush, when I stepped up to the counter, and she callously stated, “I don’t want to see you anymore.”
Her firm resolve to give no more explanation spun me around in defeat, wondering how I failed to please her. Perhaps failing to overcome her vagina’s odd taste led to improper cunnilingus? Walking away, I looked back, and another high school burger lover leaned against the counter that Nicole wiped while shooting him the same coy stares she enticed me to partake in her wares.
For years, I wondered why Nicole dumped me but eventually realized the breakup bore no mark against me. Nicole just wanted another guy tasting her tart vagina. With the ease she dropped me for the other guy, Nicole likely enticed many new burger lovers. As much as I and other guys tasted Nicole, she tasted us without worry about friends, parents, or other stigmatizing relationship elements.
A fucking genius, literally, Nicole figured out how to work her sexuality and sate her passion with whomever she desired without social strings, worry, or consequences. Well, at least not consequences for her, but surely, her desires dissatisfied more than a few customers.
Still, there’s always another burger joint, but truly rare is the beautifully filthy Nicole: an interlude unquestionably ruined had I succeeded in chaining her with a relationship.
Louisiana Baked Turkey
Cherry Reed came to work at the LBT when I was seventeen, going on eighteen. I held the vital position of drive-thru cashier, undoubtedly because of my age and wisdom, but also because management positioned guys in the kitchen or other places less visible to the customers. Leaning back on the empty drive-thru window while I adjusted my headset to listen for customers, I watched the small-framed, quiet girl, with hair stuffed under the LBT mandatory hat, professionally scribbling in a spiral notebook while strolling behind the manager, Chip. He walked her around the dining area and then behind the cashier line, introducing her to LBT while shoving his thick glasses up his fat nose, appearing to wedge them in front of his eyes on his pimpled, thirty-five-going-on-fifty face.
He was a grotesquely overweight, sun-starved-from-nightshifts animal who ruled the LBT with an iron apron. A manager unafraid of sexual harassment claims, Chip often cracked offensive jokes in front of the female workers as though this might entice them to fuck him in the office. I knew this to be the case because Chip often told me of his fifteen-year-old cashier conquests, like Cherry, whom he recruited in abundance, as though invaluable to the LBT operation. Despite a turnover rate of 120% annually, Chip swore these girls couldn’t go without his sexual prowess, described as “balling them up and pounding them” on his tiny desk in the closet-like office in the back, but, so far, during my six-month employment, I never witnessed his sexual escapades or heard anyone confirm his triumphs.
Almost salivating, Chip kept eyeing her small, perky breasts jutting her ugly brown uniform shirt outward, which seemed to offend her less than the other girls, who scowled at the sight of him. Cherry and Chip rounded the deep fryers and walked behind the cashier line to the drive-thru area I ruled with a lackadaisical, slightly stoned attitude.
“Vince, this is Cherry. She’ll be working the cashier line, but today is her training day, so she needs to watch the videos. Tomorrow night, she’ll start with you so you can show her the ropes.”
I nodded and shook Cherry’s smooth, tiny hand, and she shot me a half smile. “Hey.”
I said “hey” back, and they left to go to the training room, which was actually a stock room for cartons and other dry goods. Training videos took about four hours if you could stand the boredom of sitting in the middle of empty cups and paper food buckets while staring at the tiny TV. As they walked away, she took notes in her notebook and seemed cute but uninteresting, even a bit geeky for taking the first day so seriously. The drive-thru chimed, and I began taking orders and dispensing turkey through the little window for the next two hours of the dinner rush.
When the dinner crowd dispersed, the cashiers began restocking their stations with cups and other necessities. Everyone needed more supplies, so I headed to the stock/training room in the attic at the top of a small wood-winding staircase behind the kitchen. From the outside of the LBT, a second floor did not seem likely since the roof’s slope appeared too low to walk beneath. In fact, you could only walk in the attic if you were dead center.
As I entered the attic, Cherry sat about halfway across the room, scribing studiously in her notebook behind the small TV droning about the hot case timers that let you know when to dispose of the turkey that sat too long. The slanted walls held dry goods that threatened to cave in on her as she glanced up and over the TV. “Hey.”
I began pulling the sleeves of cups off the shelves. “You know you don’t have to take notes, There’s nothing you can’t learn out there in five minutes.”
She laughed, “Oh, I had some homework to finish, but mostly I’m just faking.” She held up her open notebooks with lines of writing and doodles in the margins. “This shit’s so boring.”
I nodded. “No doubt.” Then continued pulling items off the shelves and looking around for Styrofoam clamshells.
Her voice called across the room, “Hey, do you party?”
I looked up from the shelf and turned my head to find Cherry behind the TV, arms crossed, awaiting an answer.
“Yeah, but I don’t recommend getting high in here. I tried once, and the smell went right down into the kitchen. Luckily, I went back downstairs before Chip came up to investigate. I would have probably got fired.”
She rolled her eyes. “I need to get stoned after hours of this boring ass video. Are there any parties tonight?”
Spotting the clamshells on the wall behind her, I walked toward her. “It’s always kind of iffy by the time we get off. It sucks working on Saturday nights. I usually just go home and drink with my roommate if he’s around. Excuse me, I got to squeeze past to get something.”
She stood and placed her notebook on the TV, then turned sideways as I turned toward her to slide past, causing the back of her hand to rub my crotch. The arousing touch felt strange, almost purposeful, as she fixed her stare to mine as I passed by. As I collected the clamshells, now feeling turned on, her voice came over my shoulder, “I got some weed. You want to party after work?”
Looking up revealed Cherry smiling, flapping a healthy bag of weed with her right hand.
“Absolutely!” I laughed, grabbed the clamshells, and slid past her again as she stuffed the bag in her work pants.
She lifted her notebook from the TV. “Chip said I would be done around eleven-thirty.”
I gathered up the supplies. “I get off at midnight or quarter till. What time do you need to be home?”
“I’m good. My parents think I’m going to my friend's house. They don’t give a shit.”
With hands filled with supplies, I said, “Cool. We can go back to my place and get wrecked. I got a bottle of Wild Turkey.”
“Cool.” She smiled and returned to scribbling in her notebook.
While hauling the supplies to the front line, thoughts churned in anticipation. Did she mean to touch my cock? Nah. I’m reading too much into it. Just got to play it out and see where things lead.
After returning to the drive-thru, Chip approached me. “Hey, Vince.”
“What’s up?”
“Did you check out Cherry when you were upstairs?”
I nodded, not wanting to divulge too much because I intensely hated him and knew he would just act like a cock if I said I was partying with her after work. One time, when I first started the job, I took one of the cashiers out, and Chip gave me every shitty task in the store when he found out: as though I had cock-blocked him with a girl he had no chance of fucking.
His fat, red face beamed through the riot of whiteheads as he slid his glasses up his nose. “I’m telling you, I’m gonna fuck her.”
“Oh, yeah. Do you think she’ll give it up?”
He appeared almost frantic. “Yeah! Yeah! I can tell she’s into me.”
I choked a laugh back. “Good luck!”
“No luck needed.” He turned and strutted along the cashier line, barking at the girls to clean and not lean. I shook my head in despise. What a chump. I went back to cleaning and stocking my area.
Surprisingly, I got off before Cherry but waited for her to finish her paperwork with Chip. She dashed out the door about five minutes past midnight with her small purse swinging at her side and jumped in my car. “Dude, we’re going to have the munchies!”
We decided on Taco Bell, the ultimate munchie food, but anything would have sufficed as long as it wasn’t LBT. The drive to my apartment ended in the discovery that my roommate was not home. If not home by that late hour, he likely stayed over at his girlfriend’s house. Cherry pulled from her small purse a toothbrush and raised it to eye level. “Hey, I need to clean up. That place makes me feel disgusting.”
I looked toward the hall bathroom. “Sure, go ahead. I know the feeling. I’ll use my roommate's bathroom.”
When you left LBT, the smell of baked turkey coated your body and infiltrated your nostrils. Even after showering, you still smelled the cooked bird everywhere.
As though racing to the sound of Cherry running the water, I dropped my pants and used my roommate’s girlfriend’s loofah to scrub my crotch, mainly because I hated her. Grabbing the toothpaste, I shot a wad in my mouth and swished it around with my tongue as I exited the bathroom and headed to the kitchen to get the bottle of Wild Turkey and some glasses. I placed the glasses on the table and uncapped the bottle as Cherry entered the living room, dark hair flowing over her shoulders, wearing one of my T-shirts that hung down to her mid-thigh like a dress. “I stole one of your shirts.” She pulled at the shirt, as she tossed her clothes to the side of the couch.
“That’s cool.” She looked so different without the uniform; so sexy.
I sat and filled the glasses with Wild Turkey as she packed a bowl with weed. She flipped her silky hair back as she fired the bowl, sucked the smoke, then passed it to me as she held her breath. As I fired the bowl and inhaled, she coughed, freeing the smoke, just in time for me to hand it back to her. As she hit the bowl again, I coughed and soon found her offering the smoldering weed. After a few more hits each, I took a drink as she smoked and found my hand naturally moving up her thigh to her bare ass beneath the t-shirt. Lifting the shirt revealed the triangle of hair in the heart of her hips that the poorly-fitted uniform slacks completely camouflaged at work. She smiled with the bowl in her left hand while pointing to her Wild Turkey with her right. I handed the glass to her, and she drank and gagged a little, not used to drinking straight booze. I tightly wound the t-shirt to her body and turned her figure to view her ass. She leaned, placing the glass on the table as I marveled and touched her cheeks, then turned and pulled the t-shirt off, revealing her thin, shapely body. Placing her right knee on the sofa and straddling me, she pulled my head to kiss between her breasts. The classic rock station’s DJ freed the late-night albums: Houses of the Holy, Disraeli Gears, and In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, orchestrating our animalistic sex that switched positions roughly before climaxes. Music, laughter, and conversations about everything from movies to philosophy exhausted the hours.
Spooning Cherry felt warm and natural when I awoke around noon on Sunday. She awoke shortly and turned into my arms. “I don’t know if I can handle work tonight.”
I laughed, “You can’t call in sick on your second day; besides, you're supposed to be helping me while I train you.”
She lightly beat her fists on my chest. “Nooooo.”
“It’s not that bad,” I laughed.
She rolled on her back and stared upwards. “No, you’re right. I won’t be doing anything too fucking hard anyway. I’m just going to tell Chip to give me something easy.”
“Oh, really. I guess he’ll just let you sit in the office while everyone works.” I laughed.
She raised her eyebrows and grinned. “He will.”
I sat up, leaned my head on my arm, and walked my fingers across her stomach beneath the sheet preparing to tickle her. “Why on earth would he do that?”
She turned and looked at me. “Well, I didn’t blow his small dick for nothing in the stockroom yesterday.”
I fell on her, laughing, “Ewwww! He is so nasty.”
“Tell me about it. He made some stupid joke; something about me watching porn instead of the training video. He's so pathetic. I told him I'd blow him because I know he'd do anything to get another BJ. You should have seen the look on his face. I almost laughed when he nervously pulled out the three-inch wonder, that I could barely see under his hairy belly.”
Her hands locked on the small of my back as my body blanketed her while my right hand lightly tickled her ribs.
“Stop!”
Continuing to prod her into hysterics, I laughed, "You are a filthy animal: so sick!"
She cackled, "Hey, I brushed my teeth!"
As we kissed and talked, everything about her compelled my thoughts into visions of us together. Her life and mine fit together with an uncanny similarity. She had a busted family situation, not quite as bad as mine, but she completely understood why I lived in an apartment with a roommate and worked full-time in my last year of high school. Telling her I dealt a little coke and acid to make the rent didn't faze her, and nothing I told her drew judgment. With no fronting or fear of topics, the expected new relationship uncertainty had no place in our space. Her antics, endless humor, and conversing seemed so perfect that if not love, I wanted to love her more than anyone I ever knew.
Because it was a school night, we worked the three to nine shift, and after rising from bed, we had just enough time to clean up, eat, and head to LBT. I never actually felt so happy to attend work as I did that Sunday afternoon, right up until the moment I pulled into the parking lot and saw Chip opening the door as if waiting for us. Exiting the car and walking to the door, his zit-cratered, pock-marked face glared jealousy. He held the door open for Cherry, and when she entered, he closed it and stood in my way. “Vince, look, I don’t want to be a dick, but you need to know there’s something between Cherry and me.”
I gaze past him at Cherry lingering in the restaurant's foyer, watching the interaction. A battle waged to contain laughter as Chip stared intently at me through the dense lenses distorting his eyes. If anyone else, I would have just unloaded spite in a whirlwind of insults, informing this fat, lazy, disgusting, pedophile manager he had no hope and should stop deluding himself, finishing my rant with a tasteful, yet firm declaration of having already hit that ass.
“You’re married.” I stated, “Not that anything is going on between us, but are you sure you want risk your marriage? Are you sure she’s into you?”
He folded his arms, looking insulted. “I’m sure.”
Not desiring to clean bathrooms and deep fryers all night, I backed off and returned to warring with laughter as I raised my hands. “It’s cool, man. I can take a hint.”
He opened the door. “We good?”
“Copasetic.” I crossed the threshold.
Outside of Chip’s tiny office where the time clock rested on the wall, Cherry waited, and as I approached, she shot me an inquisitive look. I grinned, whispering, “I’ll tell you later.” With Chip right behind me, I clocked in and went to my drive-thru station to prepare for the dinner rush. I stocked the cups and other items between the occasional customer as the dinner hour neared and wondered what Cherry was doing. I walked back to the office and saw her sitting by herself stapling papers and filing. I leaned in the door. “What are you doing?”
She smiled deviously. “Chip needed me to do some paperwork.”
“You got to be kidding me?”
“Nope.” She slammed the stapler.
The headset chimed, and I departed to my station, clicking the microphone switch. “Welcome, to Louisiana Baked Turkey. May I take your order please.” Beneath my cordialness, anger for Chip welled. That dickhead left me to work the drive-thru alone as punishment for showing too much interest in Cherry. The dinner rush seemed endless with racing about the hot cases to pack food while trying to ring up the customers and take new orders. The rush finally calmed after about three hours, allowing me the needed time to restock my area. I asked another cashier to watch my station, handed her the headset, and in exchange told her I would get her supplies from the stock room.
Pissed and despising Chip, I walked through the kitchen to the staircase and looked but didn’t see Cherry in the office. I figured he gave her something stupid to do like counting stock in the nice cool walk-in freezer. I climbed the stairs, and as I approached the top, I heard the murmur of Chip’s voice. I rounded the corner, and across the narrow stockroom, Chip stood half-turned, pants around his ankles with his back almost to me as Cherry sat on a chair, grasping his pimpled, saggy ass, sucking his dick.
Horror froze me for a moment, during which her eyes shifted to me, and, to make matters worse, her forefinger rose from his jiggly, hairy, acned ass as if to signal to me, “Give me a minute.”
I backed down a few steps, turned around, and headed to the kitchen and back to the office to consider punching out and leaving. A sickness infected me with the violence to beat the shit out of Chip, but my feelings twisted in a confusion that made me question the situation. Is he forcing her? No. She must be mentally fucked up, like from being molested as a kid or something. Maybe that's it.
Cherry entered the kitchen and approached the office. “Hey. Sorry, you had to see that.”
Confusion swarmed my mind again in her normal, unperturbed voice and actions.
“Are you for real?” I scowled.
Chip crossed the kitchen approaching the office, and I walked away, returning to the stockroom to collect the items needed then returned to my station. The rest of the night, I worked in a quiet, simmering rage while Cherry remained in the office. Chip strutted, commanding cashiers like he was the emperor of the world, inducing a desire to split his throat with a cleaver. Thankfully, the store remained busy right up until my shift ended, at which time I punched my card and exited the building.
Outside, I sat in the car, struggling against the urge to drive home. Perhaps I remained in my car because of curiosity or because I already agreed to take Cherry home after work and the thought of her riding with Chip and him groping her along the way infuriated me. Perhaps both points kept me waiting, but not more than a minute or two before she exited the building. She stopped, seeing me in the car, and walked over and entered the passenger side, turning to me. “I didn’t think you would be here.”
I started the car and began driving to the area where she lived, gripping the wheel like a vice. “Why?”
“Look, I’m sorry, but I told you, and I thought we were on the same wavelength.” She stared at me.
Her sober answer incited a disturbed chuckle, “Well, I can’t say you didn’t tell me, but I thought you were joking.” I shook my head. “I don’t understand what you're saying, but you know, I’ve only known you a day. I don’t know what I expected. I guess I just liked you a lot.”
Cherry pointed to a shopping center on the right. “Pull over.”
I turned into the parking lot, parked, exited the car, and put my hands behind my head, staring into the night sky in exasperation. She walked around the car and put her hand on my chest. “I like you a lot.”
My arms dropped with my stare into her dead seriousness, to which I stammered, “Then why would you suck that horrible, fucking beast’s cock when we're just getting to know each other?”
I expected to hear some lie like "he forced me" or a down-on-your-luck story like her parents beat her and this was the only way for her to escape or some psychological issue compelling her to degrade herself because she had been raped. She stepped back and leaned against the car. “Vince, I’m sorry I read you wrong, but I just don’t give a shit about sex. It doesn’t matter.”
“How can you say that?”
She folded her arms and looked me in the eye. “Because it's all just a bunch of bullshit. Everybody cheats so what does it matter?”
“So, you just suck any guy’s dick?”
“No, you won’t understand.”
I turned my palms to the sky in bewilderment. “Try me.”
She tilted her head. “Well, my parents cheated on each other, my grandparents cheated on each other, every friend I have cheated on or was cheated on, so pretty much everyone I know is either a cheater or has been cheated. Then, about a year ago, I thought losing my virginity would be some special thing, but that just turned into an awkward shit show, which I would have been alright with, but then the guy cheated. Everyone cheats, Vince, because sex isn’t this big important commitment we like to think it is. It's all BS. If it was real, people wouldn’t cheat, or at least not as much as they do.”
I shook my head as she rolled her eyes. “After losing my precious virginity and boyfriend, I began thinking about all those people who cheated and how unimportant sex was and decided that fucking wasn’t going to be the thing binding me to a relationship. Sex is just not all that, which makes it like denying someone ice cream or anything pleasurable.”
I frowned. “It certainly seems important.”
“It’s not, Vince. I can prove it.”
“This I got to hear.”
She leaned back against the car and smirked. “Okay, fine. I’ll give up sex with anyone but you to make our relationship work, but you have to give up something for me, but not sex.”
“Okay.” I pensively stated.
“I want a real commitment. You can have sex with anyone you want but you come home to me. To prove your loyalty, I want you to give up eating anything but LBT.”
“What?”
“You heard me. As long as we are together, I won’t fool around, but you can only eat LBT, not the desserts, but the little cups of green beans, the side of mashed potatoes with gravy, and the big, deep-fried turkey leg. That’s the only food you can eat. What's the big deal? You can survive not having other food choices. So why won't you take the deal and have all the sex you want and just eat the LBT?”
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard. You’re insane.”
“Is it? Am I? You just won't take that deal because you know you don't want to give up other foods. You like them, maybe even need them, but it really just makes no sense to give them up just to have a relationship. As important as sex seems in the beginning of a relationship it is just as unimportant once you're in it.” She stepped toward me and put her hands on my chest, which made me ache inside. “Look, we have fire, and I love the way you touch me, but I like even more the way we talk, laugh, and get along. If I told you to never fuck anyone else, it would ruin all those things by turning sex into the most important thing about us: the same way eating LBT would become the most important thing about us, which it's not, and you would start sneaking McDonald's or Burger King. Imagine when we’re too old to have sex or don’t chase it like we did, and while eating the dinner of our choosing, we look back and laugh at those losers like Chip, who despite having a wife, will risk his livelihood for a blowjob to feel like a man or just for just a minute's pleasure. In another life, he might have been a decent guy if he didn't believe sex was the most important thing."
Her finger playfully touched her chin as she looked upward. "Remember that time, I made money not working at LBT because I made that small dick manager blow a wad in the stockroom?” She closed her eyes and seemed to drift to some joyful place. “We’ll still have all the conversations, laughter, and fun, plus the memories of our ridiculous youth will replay fondly” She opened her eyes and placed her hands on hips, stating sternly, “You remember that time you fucked the dog walker and she came crying to me because she thought I gave a shit?” Her arms returned to my chest. “Don’t you see? That’s why people cheat and break each other’s hearts because they took love and reduced it to sex and then allowed it to control them. The only thing that matters is us: all those memories, words, and feelings glue us together, not fucking, eating, or whatever.”
She pressed against me, and I held her. For an unknown length of time, a moment of clarity coalesced in her words as though some truth finally revealed itself but then faded, and I broke our embrace. “Cherry, I can’t do this.”
Her face fell in sadness and she reached into her small purse and pulled out a pen and receipt, then turned to use the hood of the car to write. She turned extending me the crumpled paper while pointing to the other side of the parking lot. “Here. This is my address and phone number. I live in the development behind the shopping center. I hope you change your mind.” She began walking away.
“I can give you a ride.”
She walked, ignoring me, and I regret not chasing after her.
She never returned to LBT, and I quit in the months to come but not before Chip was fired for not doing his job properly. I graduated high school and by the time I was twenty-six, I was divorced by a girl who not only cheated on me but betrayed me at a time in my life when I needed someone loyal the most.
I lost Cherry’s receipt but over the years searched and discovered the address she once gave me, but her family moved. I thought about Cherry a great deal as life progressed in one-night stands, seventeen girlfriends, and a handful of live-in almost-fiancés. By my mid-thirties, I could think of no one, including myself, who had not cheated on their spouse or partner or been cheated on. Just before I moved out of state at the age of forty, I happened to be driving through the area and saw the old parking lot where Cherry and I split. I stopped, exited my vehicle, and wondered how her life turned out.
After all those years, I stood in the same place where we parted, with only the fifteen-year-old girl's memory, words, and feelings glueing us together.
Photo by Hennie Stander on Unsplash
