The Receptionist [FM] [Very Long]

I answered the craigslist add assuming that the pay indicated was a typo.

In fact, I had answered so many craigslist posts for administrative positions that week that I was hardly paying attention to them at all. If they were within what I figured would be a forty-five minute drive or less, I answered them. I was nineteen years old, soon to be twenty. It was my second semester at UCLA for anthropology (I had taken a gap year, as they call it, mostly backpacking around Europe with my best friend Rachael after graduating), and the money my parents had loaned me to get set up in LA was running short. Since I wasn’t a traditional incoming student, I had been living off campus from the start with a friend of the family, “Aunt Sara,” I called her, in Santa Monica, who only charged me two hundred dollars a month for rent. But between that, food, textbooks, and some spending money, I needed an income.

I probably replied to thirty different adds that week, and the one with the typo was one of the few that responded. The position in question seemed normal, bland—receptionist needed for web design firm, basic administrative skills required, part time hours offered. The only thing out of the ordinary, as I mentioned, was the pay. The add stated one hundred and fifty dollars per hour. I assumed they had typed an errant zero, meaning to say fifteen an hour. Frankly, fifteen an hour was fine by me. After a few emails back and forth with a manager named Steve Pinker, we settled on an 11:30 am interview for Wednesday of that week.

I arrived at a quite modern office building in West Hollywood fifteen minutes early and told the security guard at the lobby desk the nature of my business. He pointed me through to the elevator suite, where I found on the directory that the HelloWeb offices were located on the fifth floor. I pressed the elevator button, fixing my hair and straightening my posture as I waited.

The elevator opened directly into the reception area, and immediately one got the impression that HelloWeb was doing quite well for themselves. One got the impression of money, in a word. I don’t mean to say that it was tacky, either. It was beautiful. Behind the massive oak reception desk, probably twenty feet from end to end, the main part of the suite—which I realized constituted the entire floor—was a huge area of open plan work spaces. There were some drafting tables, desks, cubicles, and a large conference table off to one side, near an open kitchen and eating space. It was like an old news room, but with that tech company *we’re relaxed here* attitude. The only non-open areas at all seemed to be the hallways leading left and right from the reception area—otherwise it was one large space. And, best of all, from the three walls around the main area, massive floor to ceiling windows were pouring ample morning light into the whole office. It was stunning.

Approaching the desk, I noticed that the receptionist, too, was drop dead gorgeous. *Welcome to LA*, I thought, smiling politely and introducing myself. Now, at this point in my life, I was no slouch. In fact, I took great care of myself. I ran five miles, three times a week. I ate healthy. I didn’t smoke. And, in my own opinion, I cleaned up pretty darn nice. I’d certainly been called pretty once or twice. But these LA girls were different. They’re like an army of little supermodels. So, I was a little intimidated, or maybe just having some pre-interview nerves, when I introduced myself, and was therefore relieved when she greeted me in the classically overly-friendly style of one attractive woman attempting to make a confident first impression on another. *Okay*, I thought, *maybe I’m not completely out of my league, here*.

Her name was Stephanie and, it turned out, she was a student like me, though not at UCLA. We engaged in some friendly chit chat for awhile as I waited, myself sitting on what I imagine would be properly called a *divan*, next to the desk, and sipping from a bottle of spring water she had offered me. At one point, I made a joke about the typo in the craigslist add, saying something to the effect of how one-fifty an hour would be pretty sweet indeed. Oddly, to this, Stephanie didn’t reply, but only smiled at me and cocked her head to the side in a cute little way. She looked at me like that, saying nothing, for what seemed like a long moment before tapping her pen on the desk and standing up. “Well, I’m running to the little girl’s room,” she said, “Steve, should be out in just a minute or two.” I thanked her and watched her walk away. She glanced back once, just before turning down the hallway out of sight, and smiled at me again.

Waiting still, I looked out into the open work area behind the reception desk. There was a friendly, busy vibe about the place. I figured I could see about two dozen people—mostly men—coming and going, or taking phone calls at their desks, or clicking away at their computers. I heard occasional banter or laughter from one area to another. It seemed like a nice enough place to work. And all the light, which I took in again, spilling from the massive windows, was a huge plus. I figured I wouldn’t mind sitting here on reception a couple of times a week. Not at all.

Soon enough a middle aged guy, short statured but confident, came out of one of the closed offices in the hallway and strode towards me. I assumed he was Steve Pinker, as he was smiling and reaching his hand out to me as he came closer. I stood up from the divan, straightened my posture, and accepted his handshake.

“You must be Melanie,” he said.

—————

That afternoon, when I got home from the interview, I shut the door to Aunt Sara’s guest room, and collapsed on the bed. I laid there, looking at the ceiling, having no clue what to make of the days events.

To recount, Steve (he insisted on first names from the start) was quite friendly. After getting me settled in his office, we made some introductory small talk. I talked about my hometown, about UCLA. He told me about his own background. Pretty standard stuff. After awhile I asked about the position, since he hadn’t gotten to it yet, to which Steve replied that, funny enough, if I wanted to discuss the details of the position he was offering, there was something he needed me to sign first. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of that, but before I could ask anything further, he was handing a document to me across his desk. I looked at it and saw that it was titled ‘Nondisclosure Agreement.’

I laughed, and asked why I would need to sign a nondisclosure agreement to discuss a receptionist position, to which Steve replied that he couldn’t answer that question until I’d signed it. We both found this funny. Steve was rather disarming, to be honest. I thought it over for a moment and then figured, basically, what’s the harm. I signed the bottom of the sheet and handed it back to him—and that’s when things took a turn for the bizarre.

Tucking the papers away, Steve cleared his throat and explained the following. The position I was being offered was not, in fact, that of a receptionist. My job at HelloWeb, rather, would be to make myself available to gratify the sexual needs of the in house staff, as and when they arose, but with the understanding that I was always in charge of my time and my body, and that the staff were all quite versed as to how to behave respectfully. I would have use of a well equipped office to carry this out, I could more or less make my own hours and, any time I was not directly engaged with a staff member I was free to use the office for my school studies or personal pursuits. Lastly, he noted, the craigslist add was not a typo—I would be paid a hundred and fifty dollars an hour for my time and my work.

Around this point I asked Steve where the hidden camera was, because I certainly wasn’t believing a word of this. This was absurd. I didn’t feel unsafe, or anything like that. But I did have a desire to figure out if I was being mocked—if this was all just some weird personal joke or kink of his. He asked me if I had any questions. *Well sure, I’ve got about a thousand*, I thought.

And funny enough, as I began to ask him some question, more or less to humor myself, I realized that, at least in Steve’s universe, this was not only a real job position, but also a seemingly normal, common thing.

I asked if there were other women who worked here in this capacity. He said that yes, there were two others, Danielle, and Maryanne, and that we could coordinate schedules around sharing the office. He said that they had just had to say goodbye to another young woman, Janelle. (“Great girl,” he elaborated. “Terrific girl. Off to grad school now. Last I heard, she got engaged. You’ll probably meet her at the next Christmas party, if you stick around.”) The casualness of it all was dumbfounding. I asked how long this type of thing had been going on, here at HelloWeb. He explained that when they moved into the new office space, the current space, is when they had set it all up. He said it was his idea.

“It’s been a big hit!” he beamed. “Really keeps the team motivated.”

Well—I got quite the kick out of that one. This was all too much, really. I told him I was happy his idea had been such a success. He thanked me, seeming genuinely flattered.

I asked him—“*hypothetically*,” I said, stressing the word—what exactly these kinds of services entailed, what would be asked of a person in this position. He said that it was up to the individual—up to me. I was the boss. I would be entitled to draw the line at any point, anywhere, with the staff. He said the staff understood this. He said that he liked to think of the service as ‘stress relief,’ and that this usually entailed sexual release. But not always, necessarily. He said that some of the guys would probably end up stopping in for chats. (Though, he said, he had made a note of asking staff to keep chats with the girls to a minimum, so that they could tend to keep the office for themselves when it was not being used for ‘sessions.’) He said that the ones who did want sexual release were quick and polite.

“And again, hypothetically, you would be paying a person one hundred and fifty dollars an hour to do this. To sit in an office, wait for staff members to come in, and…sexually service them.”

“Yes,” he said, “One fifty. And right now, between Danielle and Maryanne, I’m looking at offering a new hire one day a week to start. I’d flexible on that moving forward, if things worked out for—”

“That’s not what I was getting at,” I cut him off.

“Oh,”

“What I’m getting at, is that this is all completely illegal,” I said.

“Well yes,” he said. “But it’s not unheard of. Not in Los Angeles, anyway. In fact, there are plenty of people these days who see this kind of thing as no big deal.”

“Okay, but big deal or not, I just don’t understand. You just put an ad on craigslist, and people respond to it. How do you even know who you’re dealing with? How did you know I wasn’t the wrong kind of person to be talking to about this?”

“Well, I looked up your social media, for one thing,” he said.

“So?”

“If you hadn’t seemed like an attractive, forward thinking young woman, I wouldn’t have scheduled the interview. And if I had gotten the wrong feeling when I met you, I would have briefly interviewed you regarding a position as receptionist, and told you I’d let you know.”

“Okay,” I said. “And that contract you just had me sign?”

“What about it?”

“Well, I’m pretty sure that nondisclosure agreements don’t really hold water in regards to illegal activities.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” he winked. “Heck, I’m not a lawyer, so I guess I wouldn’t know. But I’d prefer if you didn’t see it that way, Melanie,” he said. “If you don’t like what you’re hearing right now, we can just go our separate ways. No harm, no foul.” He looked at me as if he was waiting for a response to this. “Or,” he carried on, “if you do decide to stay, and you’re still worried about the legality of things, then you should know that we’re basically one big family here in the office. No one wants to see anyone else get in any trouble. For what it’s worth, your official title here would be ‘administrative assistant,’ for which you would receive a biweekly paycheck at fifteen dollars an hour, the rest of the money would be paid in cash at the end of each day.”

I sat there for a minute not knowing what to think.

“Listen, it’s a unique position,” he said. “Personally, I think it might be a great fit—but I understand that it’s not for everybody. Why don’t you take a day or two and think about it. And if you do end up finding yourself interested, shoot me an email and we can get you in for a trial run, see how it goes.”

“I don’t really…” I stammered.

“Just think it over,” he said. “Not to be gauche, but there’s a lot of money to be made here. And you’re a student—you’ll be able to get a lot of studying done while you’re here. From what the girls tell me, they usually see four or five guys a day, tops. The rest of that time, the office is yours. And you’re on the clock whenever you’re here, at one fifty an hour. Like I said, it really is a unique position.”

All in a moment, I shook my head as if from a daydream and stood up. I extended my hand to him.

“Well, thank you for the most bizarre interview of my life,” I said. “If nothing else.”

He accepted my handshake, and then held my hand still for an extra moment, addressing me.

“I do hope that you consider it,” he said.

I thanked him and left.

—————

I should interject here and say that actually, I like sex.

Or perhaps, the more accurate way to put it would be that, at this point in my life, I *wanted* to like sex.

I lost my virginity to my high school boyfriend, Sam, who was a sweet, goofy, shy guy. I loved Sam, honestly I did. We did it for the first time at the end of sophomore year, and mostly what I felt was relieved that it was out of the way. We were together for the rest of high school, and I guess you could say we were sexually active that whole time, but if I’m being honest, we probably had sex less than ten times total. I was never physically attracted to Sam in the first place. I loved him, and he was sweet—and I was curious about sex, and wanted to have a boyfriend—but that’s it. By the end of school I considered him a good friend. When I broke up with him the summer after graduation, I know part of him was heartbroken, but part of him had to figure it was going to happen. He was on his way to school out of state, anyway.

After Sam left for school and before I took off for Europe with Rachael, I went on a handful of Tinder and OkCupid dates. I met three guys before I left town, and slept with one of them—Mark. He was older than me, he was charming, and he was genuinely very physically attractive. We met for coffee once, dinner the next time, and on the third date he took me back to his place. I was a nervous wreck. Mark was great—he knew that I was inexperienced so he took things really slow. But not in a cheesy way. This was just before I left for Europe, so we only had a few weeks together. And it would be accurate to say that I wound up having sex more times with Mark over those two weeks than I did with Sam throughout all of high school.

I don’t mean to disparage Sam at all. We were just young. With Mark, it was different. I got the chance to try different things. Heck, I simply got the chance to try different positions, other than missionary, which was something Sam and I couldn’t have even dreamed about. I liked sex with Mark, but something was still missing from it. I guess I was nervous every time we did it. He did things to please me, he took his time, he went down on me. But I never had an orgasm. Still, I had fun. And I loved staying at his place. He had a really nice set up, and staying over there felt very grown up to me. (My parents were none the wiser, thinking I was with Rachael every night.) I said goodbye to Mark two days before I left for Europe, with no regrets whatsoever.

You might expect that I had some kind of further sexual awakening while backpacking in Europe, but that would be wishful thinking. On the contrary, I had one drunken hook up with a guy I met at a hostel (I wouldn’t even quite call it sex, even if *technically* his penis was inside me for a brief moment) at the start of the trip, that was so awkward and gross, that I put sex out of my mind for the rest of the time I was there. And that, I am embarrassed to say, bring us up to date. That is a full accounting of my sexual partners before I moved to Los Angeles. Three guys—two and a half, really.

But like I said, I *wanted* to like sex. I thought about it a lot. I had two different vibrators, and used them both regularly. I had a very active fantasy life. There were a lot of things I wanted to do, and to try. Still, just because I thought about sex a lot and didn’t consider myself a prude, didn’t necessarily mean I wanted to make a living at it!

Which is exactly what I was thinking as I sat staring at my laptop, open to my gmail account, Friday afternoon, two days later. Or, I should say, that was one of about a hundred thoughts that was going through my mind. It had been forty eight hours since the interview and, in reality, hardly a single one of those hours had gone by that I hadn’t thought about it again. It had become a sort of obsession.

Firstly, I had to stop pretending to myself that I wasn’t actually considering it. Because I was. Then I had to wonder whether I thought I could handle it or not—I had no idea. I tried any way I could to figure out whether I genuinely wanted to do it. Part of me felt like I did. And part of me thought it was completely absurd. I thought about the fact that it was illegal. I wasn’t scared of that, per se, but I thought about my future. What would happen if the whole place got busted? Raided? Christ—my parents. And of course, I thought about the money. It was a ridiculous amount of money. If I went in for even one day a week, six hours a day, I’d be making close to fifty thousand dollars a year—and most of that free and clear. And what if I found the work interesting? Even fun? It couldn’t be that hard, could it? Again, I had no idea. But, like I said, if nothing else, the interview had taken up my almost every waking thought for the last two days.

And so it was, that with my heart racing, I opened a new email to Steve Pinker. *Okay*, I said to myself, *one day—I’ll go in for one day and see what happens. I can handle that. This is just another life experience. An adventure. Like school. Like Europe…*

I composed the email quickly.

*Steve,*

*I’ve thought it over and decided I do have some interest in the position. How would you like to move forward?*

He responded immediately.

—————

After some back and forth on scheduling, we agreed that I would come in for a day, a trial day, Tuesday of the following week.

And so there I was, on Monday night in Aunt Sara’s guest room, with the door shut and locked, half listening to the music I had put on, half practically just pacing. I was incredibly nervous. Or, I guessed nervous was the right word. I didn’t know. I sort of had that first-day-of-school feeling. Excitement, almost. On the other hand, I also decided ten different times that this was insane and that I was just going to write Steve an email and cancel…but I never did.

I spent the better part of an hour picking an outfit, laying different choices out on the bed, finally going with something I thought of as *LA business casual*. Loose fitting oxford blouse. Vintage black corduroy skirt that fit rather tight and came down to the mid-thigh. Black tights under the skirt. And a cute pair of black-and-white loafers. Underneath would be my favorite pair of ‘nice’ underwear.

I took a long bath. And I shaved as well.

After the bath I laid on the bed, looking at the ceiling. I turned my music off. It was ten pm. I was worried that I was too nervous to fall asleep. But eventually I drifted off. The next thing I knew my alarm was going off and it was time to get up and get ready.

—————

I arrived at the office just before nine am. Steve greeted me in the reception area, offered me a coffee, and led me down one of the hallways to a closed office marked ‘Private.’ Stepping inside, the room was rather large. The walls were glass, but on the hallway side there were full blinds drawn shut, and on the street side the windows were deeply tinted, and there were a few large plants in front of them. The light was subdued. It felt a bit like a spa. And actually, there was a massage table along one of the walls. A small shelf unit next to the table held a few stacks of rolled up fresh towels, and there was a hamper underneath. In addition to the plants along the exterior wall, half the space was taken up by a smaller, partitioned room. The door was open and I could see that it was a small private bath. There was a couch and end table along the other side. And lastly, a smart looking desk and office chair along the lefthand wall.

“Well, this is the space,” Steve said, waving his hand across the room.

“It’s nice,” I said, and I meant it.

“Thanks. Now listen, when you’re here this is your office, okay? I want you to make yourself at home. The rest of the place, as well. You saw the coffee machine, snacks—whatever you need is in the kitchen. And feel free to head out for lunch whenever you like. If you’re just stepping out it’s no problem, though if you end up taking a full hour for lunch, please jot that down. Are you nervous?”

His question caught me off guard.

“Yes,” I said.

“Don’t worry, you’re gonna do fine. Get comfortable. Kick back. Remember, the guys here really appreciate what you do. You aren’t going to have any trouble with them,” he said. “Okay, I’m going to leave you to it. Why don’t you stop by my office this afternoon and let me know how things are going?”

“Okay,” I said.

“Great.”

And that was it. He gently shut the door and left me alone in the office.

I had no idea what to do with myself, so I sat down at the desk and sipped my coffee. I opened my purse. I had brought a book, a novel, but I was far too nervous to concentrate on anything like that. So, I just waited. I didn’t even know what I was waiting for, exactly, so in my mind I took to referring to it as a ‘visit.’ I closed my purse and sat there quietly.

Eventually, I got kind of bored, and so I started to explore my surroundings a bit. The bathroom was nice. Tiny but well equipped, with nice looking fixtures—vanity, toilet, and a little shower stall as well. The massage table seemed firm, nice. There were some massage oils on the racks with the towels. Sitting back at the desk, I decided to open the little drawer on the side. Inside there was a wicker basket with a large selection of various condoms, next to that a small selection of different personal lubricants. As it pertained to these items, a thought occurred. *I’m not having sex with anyone*, I said to myself. I had no idea what to expect when someone did actually come in, but like Steve said, the rules were up to me. And I wasn’t going to have sex with anyone. Some kind of sexual contact, and sexual release—okay. But no full sex.

The morning kind of dragged on, to be honest. Nothing happened for even the first hour I was sitting there. Eventually, I made a couple of forays, to the bathroom, to the kitchen. I saw Stephanie at the desk—I said a quick hello to her but not much else. And mostly, throughout the morning, I simply sat at the desk and waited.

And then eventually, it just happened.

—————

At 11:20 am (I remember exactly) I heard a gentle double-knock on the door.

“Come in…” I answered, not quite sure how to proceed.

The door opened, and one of the guys I had seen around the office when I was there to interview came in. He was nondescript, late thirties, neither really attractive or not.

“Melanie?” he asked.

“That’s me,” I smiled.

“Hey,” he gave me a friendly little wave, shutting the door behind him, “I’m Jeremy.” And with no further small talk, he simply walked around to the side of my desk, next to my chair, and started touching me.

First, he gently put his hand on top of my head and pulled it up slightly so that I was looking straight forward, sitting in an upright posture. He was not rough in any way while doing this—more like efficient. He held my head like that for a moment, and with his other hand he began undoing his belt buckle. Already my heart was pounding out of my chest. I had never experienced anything like this in my entire life. He got his buckle undone, then his pants, and then reaching down the front of his briefs, he simply pulled his dick out. I could see from the corner of my eye that it was almost completely hard. After holding it for just a moment, he started stroking it. I could hear every little movement he was making. He also began rubbing my head with his hand, and running his fingers through my hair, which sent a kind of shiver up my neck—I was too nervous with what was happening to tell if the shiver was pleasant or not. Soon enough, he stopped playing with my hair and started unbuttoning the top of my blouse. He got the first few buttons undone, and slid his hand down the front of it, and under the fabric of my bra. Whether from nerves, or natural response, or who knows what, my nipple was completely hard. When he felt how hard it was, he made a little “*Mmm…*” groan and put it between his fingers. He grabbed it rather tightly, in fact, almost just to the point of causing pain but not quite. He kept stroking his dick, faster, breathing deeply, and now also playing with my nipple and cupping my breast. This didn’t go on for long, maybe two minutes, before he stopped touching himself, and began undoing the next couple buttons of my blouse and pulling it open further. When he did this, I wasn’t sure what he wanted, or how far he was planning to go—but then I realized he was just moving it out of the way. Within the next few moments of him stroking his dick again, he let out a huge sigh, and I felt a series of warm lines land on my breasts and cleavage and the bottom of my neck.

That was it. He zipped up and headed off to the bathroom, where I heard him washing his hands. I sat there dumbfounded. Eyes wide. After a minute, he came back out of the bathroom and, noticing me still sitting there with his semen on my chest, he said—in the friendliest little tone, as if nothing could be more normal—“Oops, my bad,” and tossed me one of the small towels from the shelf near the massage table. “Oh, hey. Thanks,” I said and gingerly started using the towel to wipe myself up. He headed for the door, and before he opened it he turned and said, “Well, hey. Welcome to the team. Just let us know if you need anything, okay?” I uttered something vaguely polite and affirmative in response, and he left.

My head was swimming. A dozen thoughts were racing through my mind. I realized that my armpits were sweating, and that I was breathing faster than normal. *Okay*, I thought, *let’s just take it easy here and see how we feel about this*. I checked myself to make sure all his semen was gone, and tossed the little towel onto the desk. I sat up straight and took a couple of deep breaths. Slowly, I calmed myself down. My breathing relaxed. And, as I was sitting there breathing and taking stock, that’s when I realized something. I realized that underneath it all, underneath the nerves and the confusion and the god knows what else, I was incredibly—devastatingly, *humiliatingly*—turned on. I didn’t want to admit it, but it was true. It overtook me in an instant. I’ve been horny before, but this was different. This was more like a fire—and it needed to be put out immediately. I stood up and went into the bathroom and locked the door. In a frenzy, I unbuttoned my skirt and hiked it up to my waist. I slid my tights and my panties down to my thighs and, steadying myself with my other hand on the vanity, I started rubbing my clit and made myself come in less than thirty seconds. It was one of the most intense orgasms I had ever felt, and I had to let go of the counter and clench my hand over my mouth to keep from screaming or moaning out loud. My knees started buckling underneath me and I slumped forward over the vanity, taking long stuttering breaths. I stayed like that, my top half laid across it, squeezing my legs together and gently pressing myself with my hand, until every last decreasing wave of my orgasm was over with.

Eventually I stood up, fixed myself, and made my way back to the desk.

I supposed I *really* had to take stock of things now. I was undergoing such a bizarre mixture feelings—confused, embarrassed, shockingly physically gratified. I wasn’t freaking out, but I decided that I needed to get up and leave the office. I needed to be outside, in the sun, where I could think.

—————

I hurried out of the building. Across the street there was a ritzy little plaza, and I went into the health juice shop and ordered the simplest thing I could pick out. I took my drink outside and sat down at one of the picnic bench style tables. I sat, sipping the cooling drink, and assessing what had happened.

Soon I noticed someone coming towards me across the street. It was Stephanie, looking perfectly beautiful in the late morning sunshine. She plopped down next to me and gave me a cute little laugh.

“So it’s weird, huh?” she said.

“Yes,”

“Did you see any of the guys yet?”

“Yes.”

“Oh my god, tell me *everything*,” she laughed.

And so I did, more or less. I told her about how he had just come in and gotten straight to business. I told her that I didn’t think I was horrified by it, but that I wasn’t even completely sure how I felt during it because I was practically in a state of shock. I told her how he just left after that, polite as can be. And I left out the part that happened in the bathroom after that. “Well, how about that,” she smiled. And then there was a brief lull as we sat in the sun.

“So, you’re not…” I ventured.

“Nope. Just a boring old receptionist. I think it’s kind of neat, but it’s not for me. I envy you guys. I don’t think I have the nerve!” she said. “I do like working in the office, though. And I’m super busy with school. That’s about all I’ve got on my plate for now.”

“Yeah,” I said.

We sat for just another minute and then Stephanie hopped up.

“Well, I can’t be away from the desk for too long,” she said. “I guess I’ll understand if I never see you again!” she laughed. “But, I hope you stick around. It’s always nice to have people to talk to.”

“I—I guess—Well, I have no idea what I’m going to do, to be honest,” I said.

“I hear ya,” she smiled. She headed back across the street and into the building, saying hello to both the groundskeeper and the security guard on her way in.

I sat for a good fifteen minutes at the table, finishing my drink. Eventually, I stood up and threw the cup away. I walked toward the street and I stood on the sidewalk. I contemplated the building on the other side, and everything inside it.

And I stood still there, in the sunshine.

***

Did I go back inside?

Yes, I did.

In fact, I ended up working at HelloWeb in the above described capacity for the next three years of my life. More importantly, based on what I was going through and experiencing in those early days, I wound up shifting majors at UCLA from anthropology to psychology, with an eventual focus on human sexuality.

And as I write this now, six years later, I suppose there are a few things I should explain.

As I described, I had an incredibly strong reaction to that first encounter. That much is true. What I don’t want to imply, however, is that the next three years I spent in that office were some sort of orgiastic sexual saga. Not at all. It was a job. In many ways a great job, but just like any job, it had its ups and downs—its pros and cons. Once I got comfortable in the office, and established my own ways of working, then men were incredibly easy to deal with. I usually saw three to five clients a day, and the rest of the time I was free to study and socialize. Some of the men presented unique challenges, sure. I’m not talking about disrespectful behavior or sexual pressuring, which hardly ever occurred, and was nipped in the bud whenever it did. I’m talking more about things like bad personal hygiene, or certain men overstaying their welcome in the office, and being tempted to overshare about their personal lives—wanting to rely on me emotionally. It was a crash course in social skills and setting boundaries.

And yes, occasionally the work turned me on, or led to my own personal fantasies or gratification. But that was by far the less common occurrence. Mostly, I saw myself as something like a massage therapist or a chiropractor—the sessions were brief and perfunctory, and it was in no way difficult to keep them separate from my personal life and personal feelings. This was easier, almost from the start, as soon as I clearly established with the clients exactly what types of acts were and were not on the table, and which parts of—and in what ways—my body itself was on and off limits.

Which brings me back to the first encounter. Because that was not the case at the time. I was so nervous and intimidated when he, Jeremy, walked in, that I had no idea what to expect, or how I would handle whatever was going to happen. On the other hand, part of me felt safe enough in the office, and with the groundwork that had been laid, that I was able to believe that I wasn’t in actual danger—if he had gone too far, part of me knew I could have stopped him. But I didn’t stop him. I let him use me. And for me, at that point in my life, with my relative little experience, doing so was the most raw, surreal, and overpowering sexual moment I had yet experienced. In essence, my strongly felt *sense of a lack of control*, juxtaposed with my harder to access but underlying knowledge of safety, allowed a transgressive experience to occur—a momentary shattering of psychic, social, and sexual boundaries. The result being my overwhelming reaction, and the incredibly powerful orgasm that came with it.

And that was unique, as well. I never had a reaction that strong to working with a client again. Looking back now, it is still one of my most personal, intense—and in a sense, favorite—sexual memories. And believe me, that is stacked up against plenty of great sex, of both the loving and ‘raw’ variety in the six years since, with actual partners. But that day (and starting the job in general) marked a turning point for me. From there, I would begin to learn so much about myself, and about the world—and in ways that, previously, I hadn’t even quite realized that I wanted to know. As I said, sexuality is my field now. In fact, I’ll be defending my master’s thesis soon. Though I am no longer at UCLA, or living in Los Angeles.

And that is about all there is to tell. The next three years of my life were exciting and mostly good. Stephanie and I became close, which was great in and of itself, and also led to me having a social circle in LA.

Eventually, I made the classic mistake of falling for a coworker, as many of us do, which was probably the beginning of the end for me at the job. And not too long after that, things came to a dramatic finish for *everyone* at HelloWeb.

But those would be stories for another time.

Source: reddit.com/r/eroticliterature/comments/7v27qg/the_receptionist_fm_very_long