Monday, November 24, 2014

Miri in Love

Miri had been at her new job for two months when she got her first perk. Other employees, she knew, got perks like stock options, free massages, and gym membership. This was a start-up, after all, and that was the whole point of working for a start-up. But as the office assistant, all Miri got was a talking dildo.

Bill, her boss and the founder of TALKTOYSTOME, a distribution app that handled exclusively voice responsive, talking sex toys, was a young man, younger than Miri even, who was barely thirty. He had the questionable social skills Miri had come to expect from programmers, and as such she was only sort of surprised when he called her into his office and handed her a dildo.

The dildo’s name was James.

“Anyway, welcome to the company,” Bill said. “Have a good time with him.”

Miri did not think he was as uneasy as he ought to have been, giving a sex a toy to a subordinate, but she was also curious. She was unsure if she’d ever had an orgasm before, and James came with glowing customer reviews, and an average four and a half star rating.

Now, as she removed James from his packaging, she wondered how Bill selected this particular model for her. James seemed awfully large, and this particular model was an obnoxious shade of hot pink.

Her first and only date with James did not go well.

“You like it like that, don’t you?” James shouted. “You want me to fuck you harder, don’t you?”

Miri felt acutely uncomfortable.

She poured herself a glass of wine, but it didn’t help. Using James felt a little like humping a helicopter. To make things worse, she couldn’t figure out how to turn the volume down on him, and she was sure his stupid, booming voice could be heard through the thin walls of her apartment.

She put James away, and wondered how you even dispose of a dildo—she couldn’t just throw James in her trash. What if one of her neighbors saw? So she put James in her sock drawer, and hoped to god that Bill wouldn’t ask how she liked him.

The next day Miri wanted to tell Bo about her conversation with Bill, but Ashley wouldn’t leave him alone. Distantly, Miri could hear Bo saying “I’m just not sure what you’d like me to do,” which figured, because Ashley was the worst, and had no idea what she was doing, a reality which never stopped her from delegating. Ashley was fresh out of college and already ran their social media marketing. She spent most her time cussing loudly about vendors and fucking around on Facebook, a role in their company which, Miri had to admit to herself, made her deeply envious.

“Bo,” Ashley whined. “I need this document in legal AND in letter.”

“I’m just not sure what you’d like me to do,” Bo repeated.

Miri loved Bo.

He was tall, square-shaped and black. His full name was Bo_Laser, and also, he was a combination printer and flat bed scanner. Miri had worked with some terrible printers in her long career of shitty admin jobs, and so she could appreciate a good printer when she met one. And Bo was a good printer. Like the vibrating dildos and sucking, rubber orifices they sold, Bo talked, and was voice responsive. But unlike the sex toys they sold, his voice had been recorded by Benedict Cumberbatch, making everything he said sound, Miri thought, rather alluring.

by Maggie Tokuda-Hall, Boing Boing | Read more:
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