Page 97 of Whirlwind

Back for You

Interlude

Charlie

Charlie grabbed a fork and knife, neatly rolled them into a napkin, and tucked in the corner to make it stay. She aligned the bundle in the tray and picked up the next fork and knife in the same motion. She’d been doing it for twenty years, so the motions were soothing and automatic.

That left her attention to wander… or follow the conversation of her employees a few feet away. As usual, most of them were young and discovering the joys of sexual freedom as if they were the first generation to ever do so.

“Alright, weirdest place you’ve ever had sex. Go.”

“Treehouse in my backyard. With, like, a bunch of dead leaves everywhere and a pile of toys leftover from when I was a kid.” That was one of her newer employees, barely old enough to drink himself.

That got a round of laughter. Charlie’s lips quirked. In her mind, all of them were still kids. The part that made a difference was that all of her employees were queer. It was such a different time than when she’d been finding herself, feeling scared and alone, like she truly was the first one to have such unnatural urges.

“Mile high club! Woo hoo!” That was her bar manager.

“In the airplane bathroom?”

“Nope. Blow job at our seats. It was an overnight flight and they gave us blankets.”

She heard the sound of high fives being given.

“Um, does a boarding school dorm count?” She heard Nina ask. Nina was Charlie’s best server and one of the many lost souls Charlie had taken under her wing over the years.

“Girl, I thought that was why people went to boarding school.”

Nina snorted. “Probably.”

A few more locations were offered, but apparently they weren’t deemed as exciting. Charlie thought they might be having some sort of competition, but she was staying out of it.

“Next one: sexiest part of the body. Like the one that makes you do a double-take.”

“Cocks.”

There was a groan. “Dude, that’s not what I mean.”

“What? I like cocks! Big, little, fat, skinny, straight, curvy… They, like, each have their own personality, and you have to figure out the best way to touch them. Man, if I were an artist I’d just paint cocks all day. I could write odes to cocks...”

“OMG. No more cocks.” Mandy, one of the other servers, made a gagging noise. “My God, just give him that one. OK, mine is shoulders. Like, especially in those baggy shirts where one side of the neck hangs off a woman’s shoulder and you can see her collar bones. Mmmmm... OK, Nina, your turn.”

“Feet. Definitely feet.”

“Ooh! Do you have a foot fetish?”

“Maybe…” Nina answered coyly, eliciting a laugh and another high five.

Charlie couldn’t imagine why she was being coy. She wasn’t subtle about being a regular visitor to the kink club around the block. As much as Charlie found all that kinky stuff… overwhelming, she wanted everyone to feel safe at Whirlwind.

Watching Nina grow from an overwhelmed teen sleeping on people’s couches into a confident woman with a network of friends meant a lot to Charlie. Soon she’d likely move on to bigger and better things. But she would have a firm foundation beneath her.

That was a big part of why Charlie had opened Whirlwind and did so much outreach to the queer community. She wanted her bar to feel like family, and it really did. Maybe she couldn’t have her own family, but her staff and customers meant the world to her.

Even if all they did was talk about sex.

“Umm… I guess if I can’t say cocks…” There was a wave of mixed reactions. “Hands? I like watching people’s hands.”

“Cool. Um, next one…”