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But right now, I give exactly zero fucks. “Damn right, we can eat! I’m the youngest person in the company to ever be promoted to Senior Developer and the first woman at that level. Glass ceiling? Boom, busting through! Boys’ club? Infiltrated.”I mime like I’m sneaking in, shoulders hunched and hands pressed tightly in front of me before splaying my arms wide with a huge grin. “Before they know it, I’m gonna have that boys’ club watching chick flicks and the whole damn office is going to be painted pink!”
Elise snorts, shaking her head again. “I still don’t have a fucking clue what you actually do, but even I understand the wordspromotionandraise. So huge congrats, honey.”
She’s right, no one really understands when I talk about my job. My brain has a tendency to talk in streams of binary zeroes and ones that make perfect sense to me, but not so much to the average person. When I was in high school, I even dreamed in Java.
And even I don’t really understand what my promotion means. Senior Developer? Other than the fact that I get updated business cards with my fancy new title next week, I’m not sure what’s changed. I’m still doing my own coding and my own work, just with a slightly higher pay grade. And when I say slightly, I mean barely a bump after taxes. Just enough for a bonus cocktail at a swanky club on Friday maybe.Maybemore at year end, they’d said. Ah, well, I’m excited anyway. It’s a first step and an acknowledgement of my work.
The part people do get is when my company turns my strings of code into apps that go viral. After my last app went number one, they were forced to give me a promotion or risk losing my skills to another development company. They might not understand the zeroes and ones, but everyone can grasp dollars and cents, and that’s what my apps bring in.
I might be young at only twenty-six, and female, as evidenced by my long honey-blonde hair and curvy figure, but as much as I don’t fit the stereotypical profile of a computer nerd, they had to respect that my brain creates things that no one else does. I think it’s my female point of view that really helps.While a chunk of the other people in the programming field fit the stereotype of being slightly repressed geeks who are more comfortable watching animated ‘girlfriends’ than talking to an actual woman, I’m different. I understand that merely slapping a pink font on things or adding sparkly shit and giving more pre-loaded shopping options doesn’t make technology more ‘female-friendly.’
It’s insulting, honestly. But it gives me an edge in that I know how to actually create apps that women like and want to use. Not just women, either, based on sales. I’m getting a lot of men downloading my apps too, especially men who aren’t into tech-geeking out every damn thing they own.
And so I celebrate with Elise, holding up our glasses of wine and clinking them together in a toast. Elise sips her wine and nods in appreciation, making me glad we went with the waiter’s recommendation. “So you’re killing it on the job front. What else is going on? How are things with you and Kevin?”
Elise has been my best friend since we met at a college recruiting event. She’s all knockout looks and sass, and I’m short, nervous, and shy in professional situations, but we clicked. She knows I’ve been through the wringer with some previous boyfriends, and even though Kevin is fine—well-mannered, ambitious, and treats me right—she just doesn’t care for him for some reason. So my joyful buzz is instantly dulled, knowing that she doesn’t like Kevin.
“He’s fine,” I reply, knowing it’s not a great answer, but I also know she’s going to roast me anyway. “He’s been working a lot of hours so I haven’t even seen him in a few days, but he texts me every morning and night. We’re supposed to go out for dinner this weekend to celebrate.”
Elise sighs, giving me that look that makes her normally very cute face look sort of like a sarcastic basset hound. “I’m glad, I guess. Not to beat a dead horse,” —too late— “but you really cando better. Kevin is just so... meh. There’s no spark, no fire between you two. It’s like you’re friends who fuck.”
I duck my chin, not wanting her to read on my face the woeful lack of fucking that has been happening, but I’m too transparent.
“Wait... you twodofuck, right?” Elise asks, flabbergasted. “I figured that was why you were staying with him. I was sure he must be great in the sack or you’d have dumped his boring ass a long time ago.”
I bite my lip, not wanting to get into this with her... again. But one of Elise’s greatest strengths is also one of her most annoying traits as well. She’s like a dog with a bone and isn’t going to let this go.
“Look, he’s fine,” I finally reply, trying to figure out how much I need to feed Elise before she gives me a measure of peace. “He’s handsome, treats me well, and when we have sex, it’s good... I guess. I don’t believe in some Prince Charming who is going to sweep me off my feet to a castle where we’ll have romantic candlelit dinners, brilliant conversation, and bed-breaking sexcapades. I just want someone to share the good and bad times with, some companionship.”
Elise holds back as long as she can before she explodes, her snort and guffaw of derision getting even more looks in our direction. “Then get a fucking Golden Retriever and a rabbit. The buzzing kind that uses rechargeable batteries.”
One of the ladies at the next table huffs, seemingly aghast at Elise’s outburst, and they stand to move toward the bar on the other side of the restaurant, far away from us. “Well, if this is the sort of trash that passes for dinner conversation,” the older one says as she sticks her nose far enough into the air I wonder if it’s going to be clipped by the ceiling fans, “no wonder the country’s going to hell under these Millennials!”
She storms off before Elise or I can respond, but the second lady pauses slightly and talks out of the side of her mouth. “Sweetie, you do deserve more thanfine.”
With a wink, she scurries off after her friend, leaving behind a grinning Elise. “See? Even snooty old biddies know that you deserve more thanmeh.”
“I know. We’ve had this conversation on more than one occasion, so can we drop it?” I plead between clenched teeth before calming slightly. “I want to celebrate and catch up, not argue about my love life.”
Always needing the last word, Elise drops her voice, muttering under her breath. “What love life?”
“That’s low.”
Elise holds her hands up, and I know I’ve at least gotten a temporary reprieve. “Okay then, if we’re sticking to work, I got a new scoop that I’m running with. I’m writing a piece about a certain famous someone who got caught sending dick pics to a social media princess. Don’t ask me who because I can’t divulge that yet. But it’ll be all there in black and white by next week’s column.”
Elise is an investigative journalist, a rather fantastic one whose talents are largely being wasted on celebrity news gossip for the tabloid paper she writes for. I can’t even call it a paper, really. With the downfall of actual print news, most of her stuff ends up in cyberspace, where it’s digested, Tweeted, hashtagged, and churned out for the two-minute attention span types to gloat over for a moment before they move on to... well, whatever the next sound bite happens to be.
Every once in awhile, she’ll get to do something much more newsworthy, but mostly it’s fact-checking and ass-covering before the paper publishes stories celebrities would rather see disappear. I know what burns her ass even more is when she has to cover the stories where some downward-trending celebritymanufactures a scandal just to get some social media buzz going before their latest attempt at rejuvenating a career that peaked about five years ago.
This one at least sounds halfway interesting, and frankly, better than my love life, so I laugh. “Why would he send a dick pic to someone on social media? Wouldn’t he assume she’d post it? What a dumbass!”
“No, it’s usually close-ups and they’re posted anonymously,” Elise says with a snort. “Of course, she knows because she sees the user name on their direct message, but she cuts it out so that it’s posted to her page as an anonymous flash of flesh. Look.”
She pulls out her phone, clicking around to open an app, one I didn’t design but damn sure wish I had. It’s got one hell of a sweet interface, and Elise is using it to organize her web pages better than anything the normal apps have. It takes Elise only a moment to find the page she wants.
“See?” she says, showing me her phone. “People send her messages with dick pics, tit pics, whatever. If she deems them sexy enough, she posts them with little blurbs and people can comment. She also does Q-and-As with followers, shows faceless pics of herself, and gives little shows sometimes. Kinda like porn but more ‘real people’ instead of silicone-stuffed, pump-sucked, fake moan scenes.”
She scrolls through, showing me one image after another of body part close-ups. Some of them... well damn, I gotta say that while they might not be professionals or anything, it’s a hell of a lot hotter than anything I’m getting right now. “Wow. That’s uhh... quite something. I don’t get it, but I guess lots of folks are into it. Wait.”
