Popped

(Call Center
Diaries Volume 1)

By Casey
Truman

Copyright © 2012
Casey Truman

All Rights
Reserved

Cover
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Chapter 1

The call
monitor showed sixteen calls waiting to be answered and only four
agents logged on as
ready
or
working
. It was
unacceptable. There were twelve customer service agents on the
floor, and each one of them should have been on the phones, taking
calls. It was just this sort of behavior that led to a drop in
productivity, and I was determined to do something about it.

Parker
Morrison seemed to be the focus of the malingering, so I stood up
and strode towards her desk. She was lounging half-on half-off her
chair, swivelling left and right as she faced her coterie of
admirers
—
all male, of course. I’d been
against hiring Parker to begin with, but was over-ruled by Adrian
and Stephen, my fellow Call Center managers
—
a pair of forty year old boys who thought with their
penises.

Parker had a
body that she wasn’t afraid to flaunt. It wouldn’t have surprised
me if she’d been propositioned a time or two on the street going
home from work. That was just how she carried herself
—
all sex and availability. Today’s outfit was comprised
of a tight top that would have been more at home in a gym than an
office, and a pair of low hung jeans. Her thong was the icing on
the cake
—
visible to the entire office every
time she bent over her desk or reached into her handbag.

“Parker,” I
said, stopping next to her desk. “Why aren’t you logged on? There
are calls waiting.”

“Come on,
Clara,” she said, rolling her eyes. “It’s New Year’s Eve. We’ll be
closing in half an hour. Lighten up.” She threw a bright and cheery
smile at the young men who were lounging in chairs around her
desk.

“We may very
well be closing in half an hour, but we’re open now, and there are
clients trying to get through.” It was insufferable the way she
ignored my authority.

“Ok, Mom,” she
said, with an exasperated sigh, as if she were humoring a
delusional parent. “They’re probably just calling to wish us all a
Happy New Year.”

“Just answer
your phone, Parker, and that goes for the rest of you too.”

I turned and
began walking back to my desk when I heard her half whisper behind
me, “
Someone needs to get laid.
”

“What was
that?” I said, turning to face the crowd.

“What?” said
Parker. “I didn’t say anything. Did you say something, Bill?”

“Nope,”
answered Bill Farris, a lifer who’d worked as a customer service
agent in the Call Center for seven years, “didn’t say a thing.”

I glared at
them all before turning away and resuming the walk back to my desk.
“
Frigid little virgin
,” a different voice whispered, and
this time I chose to ignore it.

It was so
infuriating. All I wanted was what was best for the company and the
clients, and all I got was disrespect and incompetence. To have
tarts like Parker insult me like that
—
in
front of everyone. Just because I chose not to make my private life
public, or to go out drinking and carousing after work, they all
felt entitled to make comments about my sex life. It just wasn’t
fair.

I was thirty
one years old, and if I hadn’t had sex yet it was because I’d
chosen to wait for the right man, not because I was
frigid
.
I could go out and get laid any time I wanted to, but I preferred
to wait until the time was right. I even had a boyfriend; I’d met
Phillip Criddle just after my thirtieth birthday, when I was
feeling a little down, and we’d been seeing each other for nine
months. He was a very accomplished lecturer of Anthropology at
King’s College, and unlike so many of the sex crazed kids in the
Call Center, he was a grown man of forty three. Every week I had
dinner at his mother’s house, and we’d go for a walk afterwards. It
was civilized, the way respectable people behaved.

We’d decided
to wait a while before consummating the relationship. Phillip had
said that in many cultures sexual relationships were different to
our own, and that just because it was the norm to have sex
immediately in our culture, that didn’t mean it was a more valid
way of expressing our feelings for each other. We kiss sometimes,
and there was that incident after the faculty party in October when
he groped me in an alley on the way home
—
all very unseemly, but, he had been drunk at the
time.

No, I was
right to wait. I may be a virgin, but I had a boyfriend. I was
content with the way things were. Tonight was New Year’s Eve and
his mother was throwing a small, dignified party for a few of
Phillip’s friends from the university. I’d sooner be there than at
whatever sort of get together Parker and her friends would be going
to.

Thirty minutes
later I switched the phones off, and everyone rushed about
gathering up their things and preparing for the night ahead. Parker
waved at me on the way out the door, “Night, Clara. Don’t do
anything too wild now.”

I didn’t
dignify that with an answer. Everyone seemed to be going
somewhere
—
parties in flats or houses,
drinks in bars or restaurants, meet ups on street corners across
London. For me, it was Mrs. Criddle’s party, and maybe a kiss from
Phillip later, once he’d had a few drinks. I gave my glasses a
quick clean, then lifted my briefcase and walked briskly out the
door. I had a train to catch.

Chapter
2

New Year’s Eve
in London gets a little crazy. Everyone is either drinking or going
drinking, the tubes and trains are packed, and people are all
dressed up in their Saturday evening party outfits. It was standing
room only on the District Line to Chiswick. I was sandwiched in
between a young man wearing a scruffy suit and a trio of ditzy
blondes who’d already made a start on the evening’s
festivities.

One of the
disadvantages of being short was that even average sized men
towered over me. I was about half an inch shy of five foot, though
whenever anyone asked I said I was 5’ 1”. My short stature meant
that men were always looking down at me on trains, and tonight was
no exception. I was trying to read my book, but the suit guy kept
jostling me as the train lurched from side to side, taking bends at
speed as if it too were on the way to a party of some kind.

“Sorry,” he
mumbled. I smelled alcohol on his breadth and said nothing,
contenting myself with a brief smile in his direction. Talking to
drunken men on trains never led to anything good
—
best to just smile and look non-threatening, or take
out a phone and pretend to be texting someone. He was looking down
at me and disguising it with a vacant expression, as if his head
were simply pointing in my direction for no reason, but I knew that
he was staring down my blouse, trying to catch a glimpse of my
boobs.

I usually wore
a pant suit to work, but today I’d worn a black skirt and matching
jacket from Dorothy Perkins
—
I really didn’t
want to change before going to the party, and I thought a skirt was
more feminine. Unfortunately, it seemed that my lecherous train
companion thought so too. As we pulled out of Earl’s Court station,
the influx of new passengers forced us both into a corner, and he
was pressed up against my back, moving against me in synch with the
train’s movements. It wasn’t long before I felt the growing
presence of his cock. Great, I thought, here we go again.

Men are dogs.
I learned this at an early age, when I used to catch a bus to
school every day as a teenager. I’d be standing at the bus stop in
my school uniform, just minding my own business, and every second
male driver would stare at me as if he wanted to do things to me.
It was disgusting. I don’t have the figure of the Parkers of the
world today, but back then I was like a stick insect, short and
slim, with nothing to look at, tiny tits barely visible, hardly any
hips to speak of. When I was fifteen I looked twelve, but that
didn’t stop them
—
perverts one and
all
—
and many of them would have their own
kids in the back of the car, on the way to school.

Lecherous suit
guy’s behavior was not a surprise to me. Some days I wished I had
the courage to do something in situations like this, but it wasn’t
worth the hassle
—
we’d be pulling into
Chiswick Park soon, and I’d be free of the growing cock and the
heavy breathing. In the meantime, I returned to reading my book and
tried to ignore the penis that moved against my lower back.

Chapter 3

It was seven
o’clock when I arrived at Phillip’s mother’s house on South Parade
and rang the bell. The lights were on in the downstairs living room
and classical music was drifting out of a partially opened window.
Winter hadn’t started in earnest yet
—
it
seemed to get later and later every year
—
and the weather was mild. Joyce opened the door and
offered me a welcoming smile.

“There you
are, dear,” she said, genuinely happy to see me. She stood to one
side and motioned me in. “Phillip’s in the kitchen trying to sort
out the wine.”

“Speaking of
wine,” I said, and handed her a bottle I’d picked up on Chiswick
High Road earlier.

Joyce was
sixty nine years old, and she ran her son’s life as if she were his
wife. Phillip had never left home. He’d gone to university in
London, and studied for his doctorate at the same college. He’d
been on the faculty at King’s for twelve years and looked like he
was going to stay there forever. If things went well between us,
I’d probably move in here after she died. It was one of those
things that was understood by all of us, but never mentioned or
discussed openly. I was to be the new Joyce, taking care of Phillip
when she died.

The party was
boring. I wish I could say it wasn’t, but the dozen or so middle
aged academics were about as dull as a well-educated group of human
beings could possibly be. The men were all dressed in tweed and
mismatched jackets, and they stared at my bottom whenever I turned
my back. The women were shrill and nervous, and they hugged their
wine glasses as if they were life jackets. This was to be my life
if I married Phillip. These people would be friends and these
parties would be
fun
. As the clock counted down to midnight,
I wondered what Parker was up to. Was she standing in a room full
of drunken professors talking about the indigenous populations of
tiny African countries? Or was she laughing and kissing and
drinking foreign lagers and having fun?

Phillip had
crept up beside me without my noticing. He bent over and whispered
into my ear, “Clara, come up to my room, I have a present for
you.”

I followed him
up the stairs, noticing as I did how badly he was in need of a
haircut. It really would be a full time job taking care of him, and
I began to pity his mother just a little. I wondered if he was the
man he was because of her, or did she give up her life for him?
Something seemed to have been wasted but I couldn’t identify
what.

Phillip’s
bedroom hadn’t changed much from when he was a child. A single bed
occupied the center of the room, and the walls were decorated with
pictures taken from various National Geographic Magazines. I
wondered if he’d ever had sex in that bed. Probably not. While I
was musing on Phillip’s previous sexual history
—
something we’d never talked about
—
he closed the door behind me and pressed me up against
it. He was drunker than I’d thought, and his five o’clock shadow
grated against my cheeks as he rubbed his face against me. I felt
his lips slide over mine and his tongue snaked out and forced
itself into my mouth, between my teeth. He needed to brush.

“Mmmm,
sweetie,” he mumbled, sliding his hands down my body. His engorged
cock was evident. That was new. We’d kissed many times, but it had
never led to anything solid on Phillip’s part. In all the months
we’d been together, I’d never even noticed that he had a penis, but
tonight it seemed to want to put in an appearance. His breath
smelled of garlic and alcohol, and his hands reached around and
grabbed my bum
—
another first. It was all
happening tonight.