Wee David patched his phone into the stage deck. This was a privilege reserved for the last two weeks before opening, and then only show tunes were allowed. (Anomalous among every Techie I have ever met, I’ve always hated show tunes.) Wee David put on a classic (or what Zoomers think of as a classic anyway). V is for Vagina by Puscifer.

We started to clean, with the music pumped in to every part of the stage.

Bree, Sarah, and I were down at the sinks cleaning brushes. Everyone else was doing everything else. A paint brush isn’t clean until you can flick it at the wall, and only clear water hits the wall. The walls in the sink room were covered with a very very many failed attempts. So was the floor. So was the ceiling. Of the condition of the sinks themselves? The best I can say is that they appeared to be made of paint.

It took around 5 minutes to wash a brush completely clean, and the three of us were working at a pile of around 2 dozen.

It was very early in the album and Sarah was washing next to me when she began to make… like… lyric sex noises.

(This is a little imprecise, but here goes.)

She caught my eye in the middle of the sixth bar, “What? Can’t you hear her?”

The A-side of V is for Vagina was not a particular favorite of mine. The band was started as a joke, so its rap songs are jokes. I guess I had always felt there was something missing from the execution. But “Dozo” was playing off of every surface in the stage, and the chorus of the song had a woman making rhythmic and erotic sounds.

Bree winked and shrugged at me over Sarah’s shoulder as the chorus faded. I went back to washing paintbrushes. And when the chorus came back around, we all joined in. The acoustics in the room were lousy, but I could still get an echo of my voice off the concrete and the sink. As a boy, singing had been hard, caught between the upper ranges of a bass, and the lower ranges of a bari.

Now I was a straight down the middle soprano. And if I sounded this good in here, I was going to make someone tear their clothes off if they walked outside the loft.

The three of us were still having giggle-fits and moaning the chorus as we came up the stairs. Paint cans had been lidded, drop cloths had been put away. The beams with the trees were back in the flies where they belonged.

Regular Dave and Rachel each had a tool belt with two screw guns in it.

I looked from then to the crew, piled around 4 oblong boxes I had completely forgotten about. I remembered them and remembered why I got them, and my anxiety began to spike. Not the anxiety of an active shooter alarm (we hadn’t had one at Thomas Jefferson High yet, but I was acquainted), but the anxiety of jumping out an airplane. Or say the anxiety of being one small construction project away from losing your v-card in a setting with higher than normal participants.

If you do it right, it doesn’t hurt. I was entirely unsure if this information was true. I amended the adage a little: If it’s done to you right, it doesn’t hurt. No, that didn’t give me any agency. If we all do it right, I won’t hurt. That seemed right. Okay, Aisling. Time to go make your bed and get fucked on it.

Rachel was first on ladder, carrying a rope. Autumn went after her, and by the time she called off, Rachel had dropped her rope over the rail. She called, “Safety snake coming down stage left!” and Wee David quickly lashed a sleeping pad to it.

Then he looked at what he had done and began to untie it, “We can get all eight on a single line guys.”

I cracked the box nearest to me and threw the pad at him. He weaved around it and had just enough time to smile at me before the another two hit him inna face. I figured it was only fair to go get my pad, since I had thrown it. By the time I came back he was ready for me to hold it, while he threaded the rope through the pad roll, and tied it to itself. Eight pads on the line like a string of beads.

Regular Dave called up, “White, hot rope, cumming up, stage left.” It felt like a warm ball bearing dropped from my stomach into my solar plexus. I wanted to reach out and just touch him. But Regular Dave was already turning for the ladder, calling out, and climbing up.

I felt a few fingers slip into my hand, and Autumn laid her head on my shoulder.

Up on the catwalk the music was much louder. It was the last track, and I was continually admonished that it was “Time to get out of [my] head, and get back in [my] booty.”

Also that, “Lock it up, lock it up. Lock it up, lock it up.” (This was less pertinent to my present state of mind.)

She's got the stealth and prowess of the panther, Rickson Gracie

Watch her glide across a crowded floor like Fred 'n Gracie

Autumn and Sarah were dancing to the song on the catwalk, back-lit by the stage. Thus was the genesis of my desire to learn to dance. Watching them right then, I was certain I would need to be chained up to keep me from jumping their bones.

Is this an appropriate amount of horniness from you right now, Aisling? Autumn grabbed me as I was turning away. She put her hands on my hips, jammed her pelvis into my butt, forcing me to sway with her. It was surprisingly easy. Girl hips made my ass swing around like a load on a pendulum. I’m going to immediately use this to my advantage. Somehow. I’ll figure out how.

If anything my level of horniness was not inappropriate enough.

The song was right, though. I had been a little too cerebral lately. It was time to do things my body liked, not just the things my brain said were good. I mean, they were both on the same page about ditching my maidenhood. But it was time to spend less energy thinking about it.

Autumn stepped away suddenly and said, “Oh, did I hurt you?”

I think I might have been a little unfocused when I looked at her, “Hmm?” Then I jumped when she very lightly pinched my tail. “Oh! No, I couldn’t move it the whole time, so I sort of forgot about it.” You forgot about a new body part--oh hell, that’s stiff. Autumn had undone the ties around my tail, and it uncoiled with what I would swear were crackling noises. They weren’t, they weren’t any noise at all. They just felt like it. I think if I’m forgetting that a new and exciting body part even exists--oh fuck. Think about that later. If I’m forgetting these things, then it is time to get out of my head and get back in my booty. Thanks, Maynard!

Autumn grabbed the base of my tail, and stroked it down to the end, all while she twisted her wrist back and forth. It worked out the stiffness, and I had to clutch something while she did it.

She sounded genuinely concerned when she asked, “Was that good luvey?”

I tried not to look at her under hooded eyes, and I may have succeeded, “You just earned the right to pet my tail without asking first. I’ll make you a badge or something.”

“Oooh,” she did it again, and I shifted my hips into a “standing up-ass out” position.

Rachel called from the loft then, “Aisling, why don’t you come here and set up your project?”

I called out, “Right, sorry!”

Okay, I needed to be a little bit in my head. At least enough that I was aware of my surroundings.

It was a very short walk to the loft, but on the way I managed to call my penis. It wasn’t there, so I left a voicemail.

Hey penis. Listen, I’ve got to get ploughed like a fertile field in the Nile river delta. You know that I like you, but some of the farmhands are gonna get weirded out if you show up. Especially if you show up after the plow breaks the soil, you know? I know it’s going to be awkward, they say your first time always is, I just need you not to show up and make it a hundred times worse. Listen, we’re still cool though, and we’ll hang out soon, I promise. Love ya’, bye.

Right. I had no hope that that would work, but worrying about it would be in head, and I was back in booty.

In the loft Regular Dave and Rachel and Bree and Wee David were sitting around with the pads. They were still rolled up, and everyone turned to look at me like they expected something. “You guys haven’t started yet?”

“They’re your rolls,” Rachel pointed out. “That makes this your project.” She concluded by looking at me like this should mean something.

A returned fire with an expression like I knew exactly what she was talking about. I tried to calibrate it to let Rachel, and only Rachel, know that my face was lying to her. I wasn’t really good at calibrating my face, so it didn’t work.

After around 15 or 20 knowing nods, and a raised eyebrow that was trembling with exhaustion, Wee David saved my face. He leaned forward on the couch and asked, “So what do we do, Aisling?”

Oh! Oh. Oh crap. I ruminated over these thoughts as I stared at the floor. Ah, good. That was right where I should be looking. A bunch of my synapses flexed and started reaching out to hold hands with one another. Because I was more in my body, I totally noticed that I had looped my tail around my wrist and was flicking the end back and forth over my finger tips.

Okay. We wanted to prevent the screws from tearing out of the pads. Maybe six screws to a side, and two inches from the edge. Without a washer they would just tear out anyway. Thinking of that, we needed big washers. Not metal washers either, rolling onto that would be mood killingly cold. And the screws would snag on delicate skin.

I looked at--oh, everyone was in here now. “Do we have any big plastic washers?”

Bree looked at Regular Dave, “The ones that we used for the exposed insulation in Automata?”

“They’d be perfect. Do you know where they are?”

“Yeah,” she began to get up.

“Wait,” I told her, “in case we need something else. What do we do about the screw heads?”

“Do we need to do anything?” Wee David asked. Rachel was leaning back on his knees and he was braiding her hair.

“Well, they’ll snag on everything. I’m not really interested in sliding my ass along one.”

Sarah reached for her bag, “Leave that to me, I gotcha covered.”

“Oh good, another mystery. Lets unroll them and see how they match the area.”

The loft was 12x8, and the pads were 6’x20”. This meant that we could lay six of them down in a row, then leave off one under the couch. We all took a step back to look.

“Do you want to cut one in half, so we can put a pad on either side of the couch?” Sarah asked.

“I was thinking we’d scoot the couch over to the rail on that side,” I told her.

“Oh.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Girl, do you know all the options open to you, bent over the arm of a couch?”

Play to your experience, Aisling? What experience? I don’t even remember seeing a couch in any of my blowjob porn. I turned it into an opportunity to flirt instead. Leaning forward, I dropped my voice low as I asked, “Maybe you could explain some of them to me?”

Sarah got the hint atmosphere in leaned in as well, I was suddenly aware of just how good she smelled. Like teal and magenta. “I guess we could cut one of them in half,” I told her, a little breathless.

She leaned back, “Great!” There was a click, and she was skipping to the pads with an open knife in her hand.

At this time Bree came back with a sack full of washers, about the size of a half dollar across. Rachel, Regular Dave, Bree, and I grabbed screw guns. “Try not to stretch them,” I told the crew. “One at each corner, and--;what do you think, Rachel, five? Five to a side after the corners.”

Partway into this, Bree went with Autumn to get the laundry sacks. Sarah and Wee David sat down next to me with their bags. Both sorted through their nail polish until they found something they hated, and then they started making little sweeps over the screw heads.

“Yeah, that’ll keep it from catching on our socks,” I told her.

“Never doubt me,” she said, and quickly kissed me on the lips. She could treat the heads faster than I could screw them, but there were four of us screwing and only two giving head. She turned around and I enjoyed the next minute of looking up to see her ass waving in front of me.