THE GRADUATE

After graduation, my college roommate Heather returned to her hometown, a small fishing town on the southern coast of Washington. After six months of sending in resumes, still had not found work. She'd mail me funny postcards with silly pictures or long rambling letters and tell me how bored she was getting in her small town. She said she could feel her unused education evaporating from her brain. She said she'd joined a bowling league, just to get out of the house, but hated bowling. The last time she had sex was in college, and it was going to drive her mad.

Being unemployed and in a small coastal town, she actually didn't have the internet. She could only get her porn the old-fashioned way, by going to the one porn shop in town, and renting it. She'd gone through a good many of the titles, and even bought herself a toy to help. But after a while, all the movies started to seem trite and monotonous. As she was looking for something new, she discovered the hall in the back, which lead to two booths, like the men's and women's bathroom. One was closed, but the other open, so she peeked in. It wasn't a bathroom, but a small booth, like a dressing room. She glanced around, and to her shock, saw an erect penis protruding through a hole in the wall. She was both repulsed and fascinated. It was the first non-rubber cock she'd seen in nearly a year. Curiosity overtook her, and leaned in closer for a better look. She inhaled the unmistakable whiff of a man's balls. Reflex overtook her better judgement, and she took the cock into her mouth. More surprised than the logger or fisherman or trucker on the other side of the wall, she sucked and slurped, eager and hungry, as if starving to death and only cum could fill her need. In less than a minute, the cock erupted, shooting its pent up sexual energy into her mouth. She lapped it up.


The stranger's penis withdrew, but before Heather could even wipe off her hands and leave, there was another cock. Heather took it, and then a third. In an hour, she'd sucked off five eager cocks. Her jaw was sore, her mouth salty, and her belly filled.

During that rainy winter, her visits became regular. She'd wake up, make coffee and work on cover letters and resumes. Then she'd shower and walk to the post office. Without any other job leads to follow that day, she gave herself a reward, and stopped by the porn store, and slipped secretly into her booth. There were four cocks that repeated; they became her new no-strings-attached boyfriends. There were others mixed in, making the variety always a surprise. Sometimes, when she had an especially long or thick one, she'd turn around and put it in her. Occasionally, she'd see an unfortunately small one. With these, she took pity and gave a special, dedicated blow job. She was like an angel of mercy, she thought, and this her community service.

Eventually, she got a job offer teaching at a community college in Oregon. Just as quickly as her community service started, it stopped. She packed up and moved, with no one knowing what had happened besides her, and of course me. At first, her candid, and graphic letters shocked me. I then began to enjoy them, and used them to generate a few fantasies of my own. At first, I just thought that Heather was letting off sexual frustration and exercising her creative imagination that had no other outlet. Since she didn't have a boyfriend or internet, I figured she was just writing homemade erotica, and I was her only available confidant.

It was only later, when I experienced my first unemployment that I realized what Heather must have been going through. Unemployment is hard, not because of the lack of funds, of the tedium of writing cover letters and mailing resumes, it's not just the boredom that comes from the unstructured days, or even being cut off from the social interactions of a workplace. It's all of those things, yes, but even deeper and harder to deal with is the loss of control. Normally in our lives, we feel like we can make choices, we feel like we can shape who we are and what we're doing, and where we're headed. But unemployment takes that from you.

Heather had lived on ramen noodles in college, she was plenty social and smart. She could deal with almost anything, I knew, except that deepest blow to one's self esteem and sense of purpose. When you're unemployed, one looks for anything to restore that sense of control. I realized maybe Heather had been telling the truth.