Little Cans

Susan got there to open the door at 12:35. We all filed in, and sat for the briefing.

“We need two buckets of black paint, rollers, and pans. Someone show Aisling where they are.” Regular Dave took me down stairs, and opened the closet. I was full of painting equipment. Rollers, extension poles, brushes, buckets of paint. “Aisling you take these,” he handed me a bag of roller brushes, and four of the unequipped rollers. “I’ll take the pans and a bucket,” He pulled them out of the closet and set them down. “We’ll come back for the poles and the other bucket.

I can take a bucket, I want to get strong. Brushes in hand I picked up Regular Dave’s bucket and challenged him with my eyes. He met my eyes for only a moment. They said, “Okay, whatever you want to do. And I headed upstairs, trying to balance everything.

This time I got upstairs before Regular Dave beat me. He was only two stairs behind, but I still did it. He let you beat him. He’s either a gentleman or a jerk. Whichever it was he had a dick that I wanted to ri—This time I did stamp it down. At the same time the image of his face, while I sat on his lap, leaped into my mind. I let it stay there for a moment, before my hips moved the tampon inside me and I hated my body again.

We cracked the paint buckets, poured a ton of black into the roller pans and got to work. The ply hadn’t been treated or anything, and soaked up the paint poorly. It meant four coats for every platform. This was something I knew how to do. I could paint. I picked up a pole, screwed on a roller with a twirl, and started rolling before anyone else.

We worked for two hours. Autumn and Bree and Big Davey all had smaller hand rollers and were going over the sides of the platforms. They did it while the first coat was drying, so we worked like an assembly line. One coat, move on to the next platform while they worked the sides. Get down a row of four, go back to the first. First isn’t dry. Sit on your haunches for ten minutes and bullshit with the others. Get back to work on the first platform.

Susan took off at hour three, and we were on until five. Regular Dave pulled us into a huddle, “We’re behind schedule, we have to get two thirds of these done by the end of the day. Loft for a half hour?”

There were “Aws” but people nodded their heads. The ladder was unlocked and we went up.

I sat on a pillow, feeling terrible. Sarah sat next to me and rubbed my back for a bit. She seems interested in me. ‘Free from envy.’ But I felt a little envious of Autumn. She saw Sarah comforting me, and sat next to the two of us, but she sat on Regular Dave’s lap. Whatever, I could get comfort out of Sarah too. I laid my head on her shoulder.

“Are you okay Aisling? You look pretty terrible.”

I tried my best not to cry, “I’m just… just going through a hard time.”

“Hard time, or hard time of the month?”

I just put my head on her neck and tried not to die of shame.

Sarah put her arms around me, “Does anyone have any emergency chocolate?”

Bree gave a nod and headed for the ladder.

“Are you taking anything?”

“Like Midol?”

“Like birth control, Aisling.”

Wait that’s a better idea now then it was before. Talk to mom. Why was I thinking about dicks so much? “Not yet, I see a doctor soon.”

“Okay, tell us when you do. We all sync up.”

I lifted my head up for a moment, “I thought that was a myth.”

“No kiddo, we do it artificially. Anyone know what day we’re on? I haven’t counted.”

“Put it on your calendar,” Rachel took out her phone. “We’re on day 13.”

“Well boys,” Bree came back into the loft, smart enough to extrapolate the conversation, “Looks like the break is going on for longer.”

“Well we still can—” Wee David started.

“Entertain your fucking selves today,” Bree finished for him. She handed me a bar of dove chocolate, “Sisterhood.”

I broke off a piece and felt it turn to rubble as I chewed. It didn’t make me feel much better, but it made me feel like I’d needed it. “Does the pill help with how shitty I feel?”

“Yeah, luv,” Autumn said. “Makes everything less terrible.”

Thank god. “That’s great because I almost didn’t come to tech today.”

Sara scooted away so I could lay my head on her lap. I laid my head on her lap, and just felt awful for a bit.

I could smell Sarah. I don’t know if it was from the loft or what but I could smell her pussy through her jeans. I had to lift my head up, because it was getting unbearable. Around that time Dave called time, and people started to head off.

Hey. You’re a lesbian in an orgy club. And I kissed her before she could get up. In under thirty seconds it was getting pretty intense before we realized where it was going and mutually broke it off. I cleared my throat, “Hey. I need to go shopping somewhere and…” And ‘do you want to come’ sounds dumb, Aisling. Think of something else, “… I don’t know any stores in Denver.”

“Are you doing anything tomorrow?” She stood and helped me up.

“Having my… my period.”

“Right. Tuesday? We’ll ditch the guys.”

“That sounds great.”

Downstairs everyone got back to painting. I didn’t get down fast enough to get a hold of a pole painter, and had to grab one of the handhelds. It was slower going because I had to get up and get to a pan every 20 seconds. Susan showed up at 4:00 and started on a fifth. Someone had hooked up a blutooth speaker and we were all (sort of) jamming out to Taylor Swift. You might think that my new gender would give me a new found liking for Swift, and you would be wrong. Maybe if she had some songs about how much periods sucked, but I think that’s more of a Lady Gaga type deal.

And yeah, I liked Lady Gaga. I had always liked Lady Gaga. I could admit I liked Lady Gaga now, to people I met casually. So that was a plus. I’m a girl, and I’m (mostly) gay. It’s cool now.

I thought about it as I worked and while I felt like my uterus was being swept like a chimney. That must be what cramps feel like. Great to know that now.

I had been sure I would be gay as a girl because I had been straight as a guy. Hadn’t I. Sure hadn’t looked at any gay porn. I hadn’t minded seeing guys dicks in my porn, but that was because they didn’t matter to me. Occasionally I would speculate about relative length, to my benefit. Otherwise they were a blank spot on my consciousness.

Now? Now I thought about dicks.

I thought about doing things.

With dicks.

Like, to them, and stuff.

Why? The tampon had been fine, if completely unarousing. My fingers must have been a problem because things had been so new down there. I could use my own fingers now. Or Autumn could use her fingers on me. Hard to imagine that things could get better than they had when another person rubbed my clitoris.

But I liked Regular Dave. As a friend. But, like, sort of the kind of friend you wanted to do stuff with. Or to. And I was part of the Orgy Crew now. That kind of thing was okay in this group.

I worked my way around the last platform, and went back to the first. Sarah was coming around the first, and the second hadn’t dried yet.

I was sitting down to wait for a bit, when my phone alarm chimed, just once. I went downstairs to the bathrooms, grabbing my backpack and hoping no one saw me do it.

The girls bathroom downstairs was just as covered in graffiti as a common mens room. The janitors didn’t seem to think graffiti removal was a priority down here, and I would guess some of it to be as old as the school. Sisterhood reigned here as well. While the walls of the stalls were a good list of who was a slut, and who was a bitch, and who fucked Steven Archibald in 1999; most of the names had been scratched away.

There were a few dicks scratched on the walls, and some comparisons between boyfriends. Big Davey had an endorsement, signed by names I recognized and didn’t.

Okay, how do I do this with pants on? I went with sitting on the toilet, leading way back because hunching didn’t work. Ow. Relax your muscles Aisling. Think of trees and rainbows and waterfalls. There, that got it.

I stood and pulled my pants up, scooting them back and forth on my waist. I realized too late that I was shaking my ass, felt embarrassed, and then felt like I was hot doing it. Everything is confusing now.

Now I had my tampon wrapper and syringe thing and where did I—Oh wait. That’s what those little boxes are for!

My god did I need some chocolate.

Platforms 8–12 were drying when I came back upstairs, and everyone was sitting around, while Susan talked. I snuck up to Bree and bummed more chocolate.

“… look good, Autumn. Everyone give Autumn applause.”

Autumn stood and took a bow, and I felt pride for her. Not my girlfriend, but the first person to get some sex onto me. Yeah, that was a nice feeling.

“I went to Kinkos and had them printed Autumn, so you wouldn’t have to spend the money on draft paper. I know they make you buy that shit. Care to explain?”

Susan took us into the office to the side of the shop, and put up each plan on a board that looked like it was there for plans to be on.

“Susan wanted me to keep it at three sets,” Autumn pointed to each of the pieces of paper, “With minimal rigging. We have three settings, the town with the exterior school with exterior and interior of Wendla’s house, the forest slash river slash graveyard, and the interior of the school, which will double as the prison.”

She pointed at one of the designs, and I had no idea what any of it was, “The trees will all be rigged on bars two and three and, they span the stage and there isn’t enough room for them in the wings. We’ll be doing the ghost in the graveyard with a scrim on bar two.”

Autumn cleared her throat, and I imagined she might be nervous talking about it. “The school and prison will be in the wings, and we’ll move the buildings in the background—I forgot there are buildings in the background on bar five, in front of the cyc—to change the location in act three. Umm…”

Susan rescued her, “What about the hayloft?”

“Oh yes,” Autumn grinned, “I’m really quite proud. We’ll be able to turn Wendla’s house to the side, the whole thing will be on wheels, and bring the hayloft out behind it. So it’ll look like the hayloft is attached to the house!”

I started clapping and it picked up for a moment, while Autumn bowed again and sat down.

Susan started explaining our work flow and telling people to figure out what they wanted to work on.

We broke out then and started for the stairs. Autumn was taking Sarah home too, she didn’t have a car on the weekends. It meant that we were driving further into Englewood before heading into Aurora. Sarah sat in the backseat, and found some moist towels to try and scrub some of the black flecks off of her face.

“We’re all going shopping Tuesday after school,” she told Autumn, “if you want to come.”

“I don’t have any money to shop right now, but I’ll come.”

“Oh, I’ll get you something. As long as you let me take it off you.”

I felt a little. I don’t know what that feeling was. Autumn wasn’t mine, but what we had was special. Then I realized that if I thought what Autumn and I had was special, and Autumn thought that what we had was special; then Autumn (or I) having something else that was a different special wouldn’t take away from anything.

Still, I reached out to take Autumn’s hand in mine as she drove.