Close Encounters 01: of the Fourth Kind

Ugh. Managers are the same everywhere.

Literally, everywhere, in the entire universe.

When I was 16, I worked at a supermarket as an underpaid check-out girl. One day, the manager, Mr Schwimmer, came into the staff room (five minutes before my shift had even started!) and informed me that I should go clean up the men's toilet. Skid marks in the bowl.

No points for guessing whose skid marks those probably were in the first place.

When I was 21, I worked as a temp for Mr Ellis at a local real estate agency who tasked me with breaking up with his clingy mistress for him.

Twice. It was the same mistress both times.

When I was 23, Mr Hernandez, of Hernandez Rentals, would renew my contract only under the condition that I 'comply with company policy in regards to promotional attire' henceforth. Company policy stated that the hemline of my skirt should end 3 inches below my buttocks or higher. 2 inches if I wanted a "more visible" position.

Mr Hernandez checked personally with a ruler every day for a week until someone snitched him out to his wife.

And now that I am 25, my current manager whose name I can't pronounce is sending me forward to cater to the group of deadly, frightening barbarians that have just entered the establishment I'm calling home right now.

I'm not entirely sure if my current manager is actually male, to be honest, but all the signs seem to be there. If it quacks like a duck and occasionally molests you like a duck and all that.

Just to clarify: My current manager isn't human. He (She? It? They?) is an eggplant-colored 5-foot-tall five-legged slug with a serious barnacle problem. The barnacles are, functionally speaking, the face.

Aliens.

Yes, they exist.

Surprise!

Yes, they have tractor beams and use them to kidnap people who drive home from work at night, car and all.

No, they don't have any particular interest in your sexual organs -- unless your organs look particularly edible, I suppose.

But the aliens do have space ports and their space ports have... well, I guess this is basically a brothel. It's also a trading place, a bar, a hotel, a repair workshop, a supermarket, a restaurant, a news station, and a post office. In short, they have an economy and just like in every economy, they are constantly low on staff.

Which is where Valerie Greene comes in, Jill-of-all-trades with her very diverse CV, armed with the ability to flip a burger, fix an engine (or at least identify the engine's problem), wait a table, smile benignly through entire meetings, whip up some mystery broth, wear a very short skirt, and clean a mean toilet (thanks, Mr Schwimmer). Topped with a heavy helping of I WANT TO LIVE! PLEASE DON'T KILL ME! I'LL DO ANYTHING! -- oh, and boobs and a vagina -- I've basically been the Andromeda Galaxy's unofficial employee of the month for the last 36 months running.

In short, I've managed to convince my abductors (transporters, really. Abduction usually presupposes some sort of personal intent, but those guys just picked the first moving thing off planet Earth, which just so happened to be my piece-of-shit 2003 Volvo, which happened to have me in it at the time) that I'm hella useful and versatile and willing, under the one condition that I stay alive.

So, here I am. Girl Friday, maid-of-all-work, chief cook and bottle washer extraordinaire, handywoman (and yes, by 'handy' I mean 'hand job') at this restau-market-bar-tel-arage-without-a-name, located a stone's throw away from the 3rd port on planet Vurn X'lora 15, several million light years west of the Milky Way. I eat, I sleep, I work six planetary days a planetary week (which consists of six planetary days (cue the sad trombone)), and I get to keep breathing. Even though the air does smell a bit of ozone.

Glamorous, I know.

And it's not going to get better today because today... the Dryth have arrived. On "my" planet, in "my" bar.

The Dryth are... well. Think '13th century Mongols in space'. Think 'Stormtroopers if Stormtroopers were tall and scary and capable of hitting a target'. Think 'If Vulcans and Klingons had children'.

Last I heard, Vurn X'lora 15 was supposed to be in the neutral zone, so fuck knows what they are doing here. I'm hoping they're just hungry and thirsty and then head over to the next planet they want to conquer.

Shoved in the butt by one of my manager's noodly appendages (the trick is really to not think about these things too long) with a string of not-so-nice words that boil down to 'get your fat human ass over to them and put your exotic body parts into their faces before they kill everyone in this bar and then burn it to the ground', I head over to the table the group of six Space Mongols have occupied to take their orders.

Other patrons and my colleagues seize the moment and scram as soon as I pass by. I feel like that idiot hero who heroically goes to confront the rampaging villain everyone else is running away from. Except without the heroism part. My motivations are much less valiant. I'm just scared of the manager and of losing my job. Banal, I know. Story of my life. One galaxy over and still nothing has changed.

At my rather small-voiced "Yes, please, how can I help you?" -- one of the few phrases in the galactic languages I have mastered while being able to understand spoken galactic well enough through my implanted translator chip -- heads swivel and all eyes fix on me.

After three years of survival in space there isn't too much that can faze me anymore but, damn, these specimens give me the fucking creeps.

For one, they are all big (seven feet plus, and still huge while seated), scarred (disfigurements that are worn like badges), and armed (meaning that they have arms with hands and fingers, with which they can wield the many gore-splattered weapons they carry).

Also, they don't talk. Neither to me nor to each other -- unless they communicate with some sort of telepathy, which isn't a thing even among aliens as far as I know. So I just stand there, all dressed up and nowhere to go, trying to figure out the wisest course of action. Repeat my question? Slowly back away from the table? Stay right here like a deer in headlights and hope they are like the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, unable to see me if I just stay still and don't make a noise?

Oh, but they're seeing me, alright. They are peering hard at me out of uncomfortably many eyes, and they all either have the 2000 yard stare of the soldier in Thomas Lea's painting, or are channeling Joseph Goebbels glaring in lethal disgust at his Jewish photographer. One of them has bright yellow eyes with strange pinprick pupils, reminding me of the World War I photograph I had once seen in which the soldier in the trench appeared to have spooky cat eyes in addition to a creepy, psychotic grin.

I look around cautiously. The manager has disappeared into the kitchen area as fast as his five stubby legs could carry him -- surprise, surprise. Other clients are equally slinking out the doors or otherwise vacating the site. Unfortunately, I don't think I really have that option now that I've caught the attention of everyone on this table.

"Food? Drink? Services?" I inquire with only minimal tremble in my voice. Fake it 'til you've survived it, Val.

"Food", the one closest to me repeats with a voice like a mudslide, and one of his (I presume it's a male) hands (I presume it's a hand) shoots out and clamps around my elbow, then yanks me towards him -- and towards his wide open mouth, ringed with shard-like teeth.

Oh, fuck. How to say 'This is a cultural misunderstanding' in galactic again?

"Oh no, no, please!" I yelp in Standard English and fight against his hold like a cat fights against a snare, thinking that context clues should be enough for him to understand my meaning here.

"I'm not on the menu, I'm the goddamn staff!" I screech through clenched teeth as I writhe and squirm around and try to brace my legs against whatever is available. "Go eat the manager! He's basically escargot!"

I kick and claw at the alien and try to twist my arm out of his grip. Said grip oozes down my arm. Ewww.

"Fucking unhand me now, you disgusting, ugly fucking--"

There's a wet 'thunk', exactly like when a meat cleaver goes through a piece of fresh meat, and the hand (thing) that was holding me turns to some sort of goo. Suddenly left fighting an insubstantial mass, I overbalance, slip on the freshly goo-covered floor and inelegantly slide, face-first, onto the table. Right between the six Dryth, sending pyramid of mugs of complementary tea onto the floor with a crash.

My reptile brain short-circuits on me and I freeze in terror right there.

Then, things explode into chaos.

I protectively clamp my arms around my head, press my shoulders up to my ears against the deafening noise, and curl up into a ball with my eyes screwed shut.

There are many hands/appendages that grab and shove and pull at me, and heavy metal items clang together noisily and there are shouts and roars loud enough to vibrate in my stomach and rattle my bones.

Breathe, Valerie. Don't move, but breathe.

Eventually, the noise dies down. I don't still dare to move as I take inventory. There's a hot line across one of my right arms -- a cut? A scratch? How deep? -- my knees and shins are throbbing, and the side of my face and forehead feel a bit sore. The place where the first Dryth had clamped down on my arm is pulsing hotly and a little painful.

But I am still drawing breath and that's the important thing.

Something touches the back of my neck. I flinch, open my eyes and untangle my arms from my head just enough to peek upwards and see what's going on. And to fight back, should the opportunity arise.

Above me, the Dryth with the yellow eyes is hunched over the table. One of his hands is curled around the back of my neck. The other is holding aloft a shiny silver knife-like weapon that's dripping with black liquid.

For some reason, this reminds me of a picture I once chuckled at on reddit. It showed a leopard on a thick tree branch, perched over a dead antelope that was dangling limply over that branch. The big cat was looking right at the camera and seemed intensely satisfied with itself. It was called the 'drunk girl meme', hence the chuckle. Yeah, my humor is a bit dark sometimes.

This situation is sort of similar.

Unfortunately, I am the antelope here.

He scans the surroundings very slowly. I crane my neck to see at least two of the Dryth with their respective weapons at the ready but standing at a very respectful distance to us.

Apparently satisfied with the lay of the land, he finally looks down and we make eye contact. His pupils are serrated vertical slits that dilate and constrict as he focuses on me.

"Services," he says with a voice like smoke, and I'm too stunned to process his meaning. He pulls me up by the neck and upper shoulder like I weigh nothing and puts me on my feet, then half-pushes, half-carries me towards the corridor that leads to the back rooms.

Oh, okay. Now I'm catching on. "Services." Oh, right.

Fuck.

Literally.

Bedding a Dryth was all the way down on my list of things to do before I die, especially after what just happened.

But I'm still breathing, and I'm determined to keep it that way. Come what (who?) may.

After we arrive in the back suite, the biggest of the four rooms intended for exactly this type of service, and my... customer has let me go, I have to cling to the back of the chaise-lounge for half a minute before I'm entirely steady on my feet. I use the time to check in with my dinged-up limbs. My arm is bleeding a little, but it's nothing serious. My knees and shins will probably sport some ultra sexy bruises tomorrow, but they'll also be alright.

All things considered, that could've gone worse, really.

He noisily shoves the old-fashioned double deadbolt into place, cutting off my easy escape route and setting the tone of our little encounter to 'real dark'.

I sigh. Damn. Things were going so well until just now.

I draw in a deep, fortifying breath. Time to pull down my big girl panties and get this show on the road, I guess?

"I don't speak language well," I tell him in what I know is broken Galactic, then point to the spot behind my ear where a microchip is implanted. "But listen well. I you understand." I open my hands in an inviting sort of gesture. "Services, yes? Yes, please, how can I help you today?"

The urge to go 'Me love you long time' is there. Yep, my life is fantastic sometimes, thanks for asking.

He keeps staring at me with his shiny eyes for a long while. I wait patiently, because that's what you do. You don't hustle the predator. It's the law.

As I look back at him, I take more thorough note of his appearance.

He is... generally humanoid, I suppose. At least seven foot tall in all, shoulders like a professional swimmer. One head, with ridged lines across the dome of his skull that reminded me of a horned lizard. One face only, far as I can see from this angle. Three eyes, two in the usual spots and one additional one in the center of his forehead, a little smaller than the other two, currently closed. One nose, straight and aquiline. One mouth, thin lips, sharp white teeth. No visible outer ears, I notice.

My gaze travels downward, over his thick neck and wide shoulders to his two muscle-corded arms with one elbow each, ending in hands that look roughly like mine from this distance, just much bigger. His torso has a weird shape with bumps and dents where none should normally be, even taking into consideration that some of what I'm looking at appears to be armored clothing.

There's a thick rope slung around his waist several times. At a second glance I realize that it isn't a rope at all but a tail that's softly undulating, like some sort of snake. Two legs, one knee each that mercifully bends into the right direction. (Backwards knees still freak me out. Additional knees, too.) His footwear goes halfway up his calves so I can't guess the shape of his feet.

Oh, and he's gray. His skin, dotted with scale mail armor-type patches, is like slate. There are deep black cracks in it here and there that speak of brutal battles and general violence.

Standing before me as he is, I realize that he wasn't the biggest, tallest or brawniest Dryth at the table. I'd even say he isn't quite 7 feet tall at all. I'm guessing his securing me as his spoils still didn't have much to do with luck, though, and more with the manifold weapons secured to his body. That, and maybe his... presence? He's exuding a sort of effortless menace that the other Dryth out there didn't have.

Or maybe my slightly terrified human brain is just imagining things.

Lastly, I closely inspect his crotch and make an educated guess as to what he's hiding under that garment there. It's an occupational disease, don't judge.

In the three years in space, the 'hooker'-aspect of my multifaceted job has, against all odds, not been the most unpleasant part of my existence by far. There are several factors to blame for this.

Three, to be exact.

One: I have personally come to the conclusion that there is no God or that he truly doesn't give a shit, so the whole catholic shame and guilt associated with sex goes right out the window. Ahh, freedom.

Two: I'm basically a unicorn to the denizens of the universe and therefore not beholden to any standards of beauty or etiquette when it comes to my naked body and the act or sex whatsoever. My tits? Utter perfection, as far as aliens are concerned. My thighs, complete with mild cellulite and stretch marks? Same. Hang-ups? Those are some furry, ground-dwelling little aliens over on Vurn G'lora 19, right? Performance anxiety? Never heard of it because no one expects me to perform a certain way. There's no one to compare me to, no one in comparison to whom I can possibly fall short. It's quite wonderful to be the gold standard.

And three: Penises.

Bear with me here. I swear there's a point.

You see, whether we like to admit it or not, many human women are afraid of the male penis. It's the one thing that can (and often does) make sex awful for women (and receiving men, for that matter, but for the sake of simplicity let me just talk about vagina-having people here). Once you take a step back and look at it from afar -- like, from the next galaxy over -- the main reason for that fear, irrespective of the actual person whose penis we're talking about, is quite obvious.

There are design flaws. Massive ones. In the penis, specifically.

In their erect state, penises are, on average, too big in both length and girth for easy vaginal comfort (without long minutes of proper physical foreplay with added mental stimulation, that is, and who the hell has time for that anyways?). Every woman who ever bedded an (even only slightly) impatient or overeager guy will know this to be true. It doesn't even matter whether she's massively into the guy or not -- that shit hurts. Every sexually active heterosexual woman has a fucking breathing technique to get her through those first few minutes of what's supposed to be the most awesome thing in the world. This should've made the design team behind the Penis™ go "hmm".

Compounding this problem is the fact that penises don't come with inbuilt lubrication. All their discharge does is taste sort of gross, ruin your clothes (and sometimes your presidency) forever, and occasionally give you a baby, or herpes, or both.

Those two aspects alone should've been enough to prevent Penis 1.0 from going into production, really -- I'm just saying, human women are lucky that men's dicks don't have barbs. It was touch and go there for a while.

But wait, there's more.

To add insult to injury, the general shape of a penis does nothing at all for the female pleasure HQ, aka the clitoris, aka the bit that's a full inch or more removed from where the action is happening for the guy with his Straight Single Rod model of the Penis series. And even if you're one of the lucky women who get vaginal orgasms: Erect penises are inflexible and not squishy; they don't vibrate nor ripple, nor do any of the things that make a standard vag go 'woo!'. Whether or not the guy manages to hit your Right there! Right there!-spot or not really just comes down to... luck.

Dudes literally just stick it in and hope for the best.

Not their fault, nothing they can do about it. Design & development didn't give them anything else to work with.

Lastly, for the most part, cocks are honestly goofy-looking at best (and downright gross at worst), especially when adding pubes and testicles to the picture. Don't bother denying it. If they weren't, everyone would feel differently about unsolicited dick pics.

Now I'm not saying that vaginas and vulvas are so much better in several of the aforementioned aspects and don't have the same corresponding design flaws themselves. Like, female pig's clitorises are inside their vagina (thereby making the average's female pig's sex life better than that of most human women. Let that sink in for a second). So that problem would've been an easy fix. Vaginas, on average, could've been just a liiittle big bigger, wider and deeper. Would've made childbirth easier, too. All in all, it seems that D&D just had two really off days when they came up with human genitalia, and after that, production just waved it through like 'not our problem'.

But guys, at least, and their trusty Penis 1.0 usually don't have any reason to be scared of the physical aspects of sex. Pain or considerable bodily discomfort doesn't usually enter the equation for dudes (unless they are into pegging which is another matter entirely) , while there's plenty of blood, tears, pillow-biting and lying back and thinking of England involved for large portions of the female population. Sad but true.