The White Overall

Rachel was a furtive mouse. Her desk was faux wood and only large enough for her computer and keyboard. An entire row of such desks lined the wall but were empty. The wall was bare concrete and three feet thick. She had been shoved into the fourth-floor basement next to the nuclear science lab. The blue and gold university seal above the school spoke of royalty, prestige, and world leadership. The dim lighting worn carpet spoke of forgotten, ancillary, and servitude.

Another keystroke, labor-fully pulled out of her, to copy-and-past data into her spreadsheet, and she sighed deeply - not like anyone would hear her down here. Her advisor Professor Schweinebacke had assigned her studies for which she should verify the experiment data. He had haphazardly checked a bunch of studies, paying no mind to the likelihood of catching a mistake. He simply wanted to be able to brag to his colleagues that he had caused a paper to be withdrawn from a prestigious magazine. Researchers were cheap and useless anyway.

She pulled herself off her chair. She let her Vans sneakers drag on the floor. At least nobody cared about what she did down here. Not having to put on a face, she let a scowl of frustration on her face hang out. Shanice was in the kitchen - white veneer on the tables and metal chairs. The ever-low lighting to save electricity painted the place drab. Shanice was a large Black African-American woman. She was jolly not minding the place at all.

"It's cupcake Thursday!" Shanice sang with joy and melody, holding a golden one with colorful dots to Rachel.

"Oh, they are so gorgeous!" Rachel bit into one. "It's unbelievably moist. You have to give me the recipe!"

Rachel knew how to play her part in the role assigned to her. Yet as she broke a piece off and got lost in the snap of it and the jagged edge of yellow bubbles in the spongey cupcake, she couldn't help but ponder. "Do you want to drown yourself in cupcakes like Shanice?" Shanice's obsession with cupcake Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and every day was a clear coping strategy of forgetting about how they were in a dead-end job in a basement for minimal pay. Every day of work was an agony of boredom and pointlessness. Shanice got fatter every month, slowly destroying her liver and wreaking her body with diabetes.

Every morning walking into the lobby of the university, she received a sting that kept her awake that kept her from giving up that injected her with bitter anger. Soft cashmere sweater, fabric so soft that it sculpted the body of the wearer, and a color tone so exquisitely chose that you had to marvel at the spark, depth, and uniqueness of it, the woman in passing the security gate in front of her held her head high and her heels higher. The body was sinewy, sculpted, and refined from pilates, yoga, and kickboxing. Her bone structure was so slender and tall like a much-praised sculpture at the Met. Her face was covered in freckles, the skin so clear it glowed, and the blue eyes looking most educated. She was a symbol of the Jewish women from rich families who got the jobs above ground and got the interesting research grants. It was unfair.

Some days like that day, it got too much. Rachel acted out. She'd burn to relieve that torment in her chest that made her whole body feel sick. Her outlet was like cutting her skin, she needed that sharp sting, but she got it from something else. From something that she could hide from everyone else, compartmentalize it, drain the ulcer in her soul with surgical precision.

She went into the bathroom and changed into a white jeans overall. Not wearing a bra, the front covered her boobs but allowed plenty of view from the side and top. Also not being form-hugging, the overall front moved around. Her breasts were fat-filled to be beautifully full - the picturebook example warm, motherly breasts with that youthful smooth skin and teardrop shape of a thirty-year-old. The overall also covered her figure that gave her a little too much to make her a real woman. She knew her cleavage attracted looks of clerks at takeout counters. There was something very alive and full about how her natural breasts moved, wiggled, and swayed.

Her hands worked her hair into a ponytail and used cream to slick her hair back along the skull. The hair glistened smooth, black, and wet like almost right out of the shower. Her lips turned into burning passion with red lipstick. She drew black lines near her eyes to create that timeless going-out-look. She was still a bit mousy from her figure and posture, but the accents said that she was ready for the night. She put a big, black jacket on and zipped it up all the way to cover up - let people believe she was going to go for happy hour or a concert.

Slipping out of the university campus, which made her the pride of her family, through a side exit, she hurried down the nighttime street. Dodging past an old, white-haired man with a walking stick taking his time and making the pedestrian traffic part around him, she quickly hopped down the stairs into the subway. The blue sign for the A train uptown guided her to a platform, gloom-grayed, grime-encrusted, and with industrial-sludge-hued puddles.

The train shook in turns made too uneven and rattled over gaps in the tracks, all the while the wheels were singing their steel whine grinding against the tracks. This late and going away from the center of Manhattan, the train had plenty of empty seats. The only people on the train were working people. A big man with hard boots held a toolbox in front of him. White paint slaps covered his pants and hands. He seemed entirely comfortable having paint on his hand and going about the city. Another Latino man wore all-black clothes and shoes with his hair slicked back and a sullen look on his face - the telltale sign of a busser. A big belied lady held a dozen grocery plastic bags with churros - those golden, sugar-covered sticks - on her lap and all around her seats. She was one of those subway vendors to make a seemingly easy buck that involved standing around for hours and being crushed by waves of people spilling out of trains and storming to appointments that they are late for. But now it was night. They were all peaceful, calmly awaiting their bed at home.

For half an hour, she waited in her seat. Now was her time to get up and walk out. The platform was empty and abandoned. She climbed up the stairs into the pitch-black of the night. A dollar store was on the corner, a 99-cent pizza place was still open, and a store offering to buy any gold was shuttered. You knew right away that you were in a poor neighborhood because all the signs were old and dirty. The sidewalk rim was cracked all over. Cars blew through the intersection. From somewhere, she could hear the dum-dum-dum-bam of bachata music playing. She was in the Little Republic, the largest Dominican community outside of the island at the northern tip of Manhattan.

Most people had left the street already this late in the evening. That was a good thing. Rachel was Puerto Rican. Usually, everything was fine, but sometimes she got called unpleasant things. There was friendship and rivalry between Puerto Ricans and Dominicans, the dominant Latin groups in NYC. She preferred to get quickly off the street. A discomfort was in her belly. With quick steps, she walked uphill. The terrain at the north tip of Manhattan was wavy like the land didn't want to be flat to make it easy to cover it with buildings. A lonely traffic light played with itself changing the colors and shining the colors out into the night. A compact car blew down the street blaring bachata music. You could feel the island everywhere here. There was a flag in a window. There was a sign for a breakfast place offering sancocho.

Her breath got more winded. The barren trees got more elaborate crowns as she got higher up. Looking back, she could look down the straightness of the street to almost see the Hudson River. In the near distance at the peak of the hill, a wave of bachata music reached out to her and invited her. A door standing open with a golden glow flowing outside and lighting up a circle of people standing outside.

She approached and entered their circle. On their cheeks, she could see the joy. The cheeks were bunched up round from smiles. Sparkles were in their eyes. They had the bachata fever. Their bodies were hot and humid, almost venting steam into the cool night air. Quick words flashed over their lips telling how excited they were. The man at the door whistled an "oh la la!" A forbidden cheer in American culture because it constituted sexual harassment, but up here it had the sound of appreciation and celebration of femininity. She felt the wave of tingles running over her body in all the spots that she felt she was being evaluated on. And the warmth in his voice made her feel good about herself. She felt the research-in-the-basement identity slipping off and being replaced by the identity of attractive, desirable femininity.

The inside welcomed here with a wall of bodies - tightly packed together yet not touching each other. Every couple grooved in its own space, tightly wrapped into an embrace, hips shaking. A man raising his woman's hand high and creating a space for her to show off how she could play with her legs and fast footwork only to throw him a smoldering look to tell him that she was done doing a solo. A wall of men packed together like sardines at the wall. These were the lesser men, the ones new to dance. They were either too timid to ask for a dance or had been rejected due to their poor dancing skills. The music breathed into the room. Sucked up into everyone's lungs, it infused their bones to become incessantly alive. The bass echoed off the wall, sometimes clashing with itself.

She slipped her jacket off to reveal her breasts barely constrained by the white overall. They hung out there like udders. As soon, as she had draped her jacket over a chair, a man was already standing in front of her, holding out his hand to invite her for a dance. He was one of the lesser men. She knew her place. She was new to dancing bachata. She wasn't the most attractive. However, she knew how to reveal her body enough to get the guys excited.

He was hungry. His face had the shape of a weasel. He had the slipperiness of a weasel. There was something shy about how he touched her hands and put his hand on her hip to turn her. The shyness made him touch her fast and tentatively, like he was uncomfortable and scared about her. That shyness felt sly to her. Tolerating that slyness reminded her how much as a follower she was in the hands of the men who would dance with her whatever they'd offer. She was a guest in their aura. Their moves would be fast and surprising at times - too fast to resist or object. That sense of danger was part of the game that made dancing exciting - the sense of being on the edge, the very real possibility of going over the edge. That edge was the slice in her skin that she needed to shake off the feeling of her researcher life.

His hand pulled her into a turn, but she pressed her other hand on his chest hard to stop the momentum. She knew that to get the attention of the better dancers, she had to show off a bit. She let her bootie roll in a big circle to show off its shape and the arch in the back. She couldn't look back, but she hoped that she caught some glances. She smiled at the sly man like she was in love with him. She didn't like him, but she wanted to signal to the better men how seductive she was.

The men half realized that he was merely like a scratching post for a cat which she used to show off. Yet the other half of him was intoxicated by the show that she put on in his arms. Such a ravenous kitten! Such big and adoring eyes looking up at him! And then her hand slid down his chest like she was starving to rip off his shirt. And when the look on his face got too intense, she gave him a light-hearted laugh like it was all a joke.

For a moment as she spun around, she got a glimpse of Juan. With a purple suit and baroque ruffled shirt, he stood out and signaled that he was a legendary dancer. With a quick flick, he launched into a double-spin to catch his woman in a deep dip with her head almost gracing the floor. His face looked focused - the dancer look perfected, that combination of focus and intensity. Isabelly was in his arms - tight mini-dress with sparkly stones all over. She was a goddess on the dancefloor. They were dancing right next to the DJ. The room was a gradient with the lesser people near the entrance and the royalty near the DJ. You had to work your way up there. The space near the DJ was incredibly packed, but the highly skilled dancers found a way to fluidly use the space to move as if they were not constrained by it at all.

The song changed. She felt a firm grip on her wrist pulling her. Sacred-surprised, she turned her head to seize up the puller. A short round man without a neck pulled her into a gap in the crowd. His unpleasant, insistent, unasking pull reminded her to how much she'd be at the mercy of whatever would happen happen and would happen quickly. The man had hungry eyes for her breasts. He was shorter than her. His nose could have poked between her breasts. His hands were sloppy, brushing her butt. He bumped into other people. He made her step with her heel on someone's foot as she stepped back. The whole room was one wild and bumpy motion. Dirty! He made her feel dirty. There was the guilt that he had about acting on his impulses that made the whole dance feel dirty. Her mood started shifting.

The song changed. The face of a jungle doctor with silver wire glasses appeared right in front of her face - thoughtful, studious, and skinny like tormented from intellectual pursuit. With a pleasant tone, he whispered into her ear: "Would you like to dance?" She gracefully accepted. He guided her forward, slipping into the space the dancers made as they moved left and right with the bachata basic. Thank god, she was out of the reach of the wall of lesser guys. They could not reach this deeply into the crowd. She was still far away from the DJ.

She could tell that he knew that women liked to be rescued from that wall of lesser men. He was new to dancing. He only did the most basic, mixing the basic with inside turns and throwing in a hair comb arm toss occasionally. The was how his fingers touched her hand and body was like that of a doctor. There was an eerie precision and pointedness to the touch, like his aim and knowledge of anatomy was perfect. Yet there was also that lack of warmth and familiarity with touch that doctors exude. It made her feel conscious all over her body and sensitive to the pointed touches. A gentleman through and through, his eyes were glued to her face with a soft smile. He made her feel like a refined woman.

Being away from the lesser men, she felt safe to do what she had come here to do. The side of her overall had two buttons. Their function was to create space to allow her to slip in and then to fit more snugly. She popped the buttons. The result was that the front was freer to move around. The front was like a shield covering her boobs. With it being allowed to slide around, there was a risk that she might get exposed. She hungered to feel that risk to feel that shot of embarrassment from being exposed. She loved the danger singing in her blood like it could curl at any moment. She liked being right on the edge of possibly being exposed.

And when he lifted her arm, the strap on that shoulder rode higher and the front dropped on the other side, revealing a new part of her boob. The front slipped around with her movement exposing a little bit more left, top, and right boob. It was an ever-changing mosaic that allowed watchers to get glimpses of her boob and put from those snapshots together an idea of what her breasts looked like whole naked. Her boobs that the right amount of firmness and movability.

The song changed. From the shirt of the next man, she could already tell that he was a regular dancer. And he quickly spun her around to face away from him. He held her against his body while their hips bounced left and right to accentuate the beat. His face was leaning forward over her shoulder. She knew that his gaze was plunging deeply between her boobs. From his vantage point, the front was merely covering the nipples, and the whole sea of her mammaries was his to gaze at from the top. She loved that mix of being naked privately to one person while being in public. She reached her hands back to hold onto his neck and caress his hairline ravenously. She was playing the melted woman in his arms - a beautiful picture to seduce more men to dance with her.

His skill made the dance move a lot more and more unpredictably: fast spins, chest rolls, and slides. The moves came so fast at her that all she could do was instantly react if a hand was offered to her to grip or she received a little push to move a certain way. All that motion caused her front to move a lot more and more unpredictably. Her head started feeling hot because she could tell that a boob exposure could happen. The risk was still below the threshold where she would have excused herself and fled the dancefloor, but it was there.

Then he flicked one arm behind her back into what's called hammer lock. It's her forearm crossed behind her back. Then he flicked the other arm the same way behind her back. Her arms were double-crossed behind her back. He held her hands with his opposite hands to restrain them in place. With her hands locked behind her back, she could no longer tug on her front to put it back into place. If something happened, she could no longer cover herself with her hand. She was at his mercy.

He made her do a bootie roll. He made her lean forward into a bow. Her front fell forward. Her pulse tapped like anxious fingers drum on a surface. Her boobs changed shape as they were hanging forward, looking a bit more like the udder of a cow. The top still covered the nipples, but the gap of her front and tits hanging down was significant as she was leaning forward. He sensed that there was something that she liked about this pose. Yet he was a bit innocent and unsure of what was going on. The way how she bit her lip gave it away. So he stayed with her arms locked and led her into a head roll with her shoulder dipping deeply to the side. She could feel the fabric slide across her nipple. With high alert sensitivity, she focused on feeling the fabric on her nipple to sense if it was still there. And then when it was at the the very edge, he seemed to realize and quickly released her into a turn where she had a hand free to pull her front back into place.

"Slut!" she heard in a hushed feminine voice. Fire shot into her cheeks. But she looked around. She saw another woman with a dress that had a very high slit - a constant tease that her underwear might be revealed at any moment with a dramatic step. Rachel knew that she was in a place where that was how women competed. She needn't worry about the hater being jealous.

The middle dancers quickly embraced her. There were three ways to advance towards the DJ. You could be a really good dancer. You could be very attractive. You could be visibly very willing. Her boobs were beautiful. Her body was mousy. The rest, she made up by being willing. When the middle dancers dipped her, she let her body go to allow them to bend her around how they wanted. When they made her lean forward on top of them, she allowed them to do it. When a hand made her dug her head under, she dug under. When they forced her down to kneel or bent, she went as low as her body let her go. They loved a willing female body to toy around with. And in return, they made her do ever more advanced moves to catch the eyes of better dancers.

The way how her top moved precariously around her luscious breasts was a constant tease. Some of the dancers were really cautious to keep her safe and avoid twisting her body too much. This one dancer, who was a local instructor who tried a little too hard to show of his moves, didn't pay attention to her boobs. He was too busy trying to do unnecessarily complicated moves to impress people. His lead was rough. He'd grip her hand hard to jerk her into the shapes he wanted to put her in.