Zac Efron (not quite fan) fiction

Inspired by this post.

"She put down all the men she's bedded in Hollywood, and you were one of them."

The words cut through the din of the other paparazzi and Zac paused; his eyes, blessedly hidden behind sunglasses, widened and for a brief moment he forgot how to breath. The immediate flashback was intense and arresting--a blur of body parts, the stink of sweat and stale cigarettes--he closed the car door and pursed his lips together, not fully conscience that their edges turned up into something of smirk.

It was back in August of '07, a party at a music producer's mansion in Malibu. He was riding high off of the success of High School Musical 2 and Zac wasn't sure how he'd pulled it off but he couldn't remember a single sober scene he'd acted. Everyone knew what he did during his frequent bathroom breaks and no one dared to say anything. He was immeasurably glad they didn't. Uttering those lines with a straight face and "honest emotion," dancing poolside with Ortega yelling at him after every goddamn take ("Christ Zac we worked on this sequence for three hours last night. I need more from you.") -- it was impossible to get through without a little extra help.

That August was humid and sticky, every August in LA is, but this summer the central air in his house kept breaking and he'd wake up in the middle night gasping for air and soaking in sweat. He and Vanessa spent days holed up in his place despite the oppressive heat; they lied on his bed drinking whiskey and smoking blunts and fucking. "Your place is cooking us," Vanessa would slur. "We're roasting like chickens. I think I like it though. I think I would taste fucking delicious." They were enabling each other more than they were dating and it had stopped being fun awhile ago but their bodies fit together so nicely and Zac didn't expect anything from her and she had long since stopped expecting anything from him.

Zac hadn't been to this producer's house before but it made no difference. All beachside mansions looked the same and he had grown weary of their homogenous opulence--the furniture a crisp white, floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out onto the ocean, big, bold, abstract art on the walls. He remembered, after the night's first hit of molly, standing inches away from one of those pieces, transfixed at the bright globs of paint that jutted off the canvas, and with an urgency he was certain he'd never felt before reached out to touch the paint; but the producer grabbed his wrist and threw it down. "Fuck, man. This is a Still. No touchie." The roughness and abruptness of the producer's touch excited Zac and his dick got hard, fast. He poured himself a drink and sat down on the couch.

Lindsey sat down next to him. It must have been after the the third time she left rehab and even though she was hell--bloodshot eyes, hair greasy at the roots and skin like burnt amber--she was fucking sexy. They stared at each other and said nothing. Zac felt his heart beat through his chest, could swear everyone saw it like he was a goddamn cartoon or something, and his breath quickened. They were still silently looking at each other when he grabbed her hand and put it over his cock. She let out a short laugh and led him into the nearest empty room.

They each snorted a line of coke and started fucking immediately after. They kissed but the cigarettes that drenched her tongue repulsed Zac and he buried his face in her hair. Lindsey's hair smelled so sweet, like an overripe ripe peach, and he filled his mouth, clamped down, and pulled. Her yelp of pain quickly dissolved into a moan of pleasure and he kept chewing until, after a few deep thrusts, he grunted and came. He couldn't remember if she did and frankly he didn't care. He pulled a few strands of her hair out of his mouth and after they both dressed they parted, barely saying goodbye.

Zac hadn't thought about that night in years. When his friend made a hard stop at a red light he jolted forward and tumbled out of his reverie. "You OK, dude? Pretty quiet over there." "Yeah man, everything's cool," Zac said. He looked out the window and shut his eyes.

Turn that noise down

There are certain sounds people make that cause me such discomfort, sounds so tingly and itchy when my skin absorbs the vibrations my body shudders and shuts down. Constant, heavy breathing; the squishing and smacking of lips, tongue, and teeth as they suck and bite and tear fingernails; full, open mouths eating soft foods; cracking knuckles.

I wonder why I have such a fixation on oral sounds? Now that I think about it they're almost the same  noises a dude makes while going down on me but I'm usually able to ignore the unpleasantness of the slurping .. unless it's all slurp and no satisfaction (ha ha?).

Anyway I hear all of these damn sounds (except the pussy one) at work. It's especially irksome because hearing them somehow feels too...intimate. Loud open-mawed chewing is not only sloppy as fuck (how old are y'all) but it forces me to imagine your mouth and the sludge that you're moving in and around your teeth before it goes sliding down your gullet. I don't want to think about your Lean Cuisines like that. No one does. Nail biting is a pruning and preening that should be reserved for the home (pray tell where do all those nail bits go oh right the carpet we all walk on that's NASTY) but it's also an undeniable manifestation of anxiety; it opens the floodgate for all sorts of personal and private problems I now imagine you have.

I'm fairly good friends with my coworkers but it's no doubt superficial on all fronts. I don't like most of them enough to really know them and I'm pretty sure they don't like me enough either. Any ~real~ conversation we've had almost always spills out after a few drinks and it's certainly never mentioned again afterwards. I'm not so sure that registers on the Genuine Sincere Friend Scale. Maybe it's not simply an issue of who likes whom, though. Within the coworker-friend relationship there are boundaries to be sure. Monday through Friday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. bantering and bitching is cool. If immediately followed by 5-8 drinking, also cool! That's light and fun and forgettable. If we wander into territory outside of work-approved times/subjects/locations conversation becomes clunky and awkward. When relationships gain weight they gain responsibility and I just want to wind down with a beer, man. I don't want to hear about your problems I've got enough of my own.

So coworkers bite fingernails or chew on reheated pasta or scratch dried skin off their head and then maybe eat that dried skin (???? OK that's not a sound there but IT DOES HAPPEN IN MY OFFICE SPACE) and their story, their demons, their insolvable, unpredictable, innumerable issues start to push through and I put on my headphones to drown it out and push right back.

Friday Funday

Fridays are the worst. HA! Who says that who thinks that. Listen sometimes Fridays suck because there's no worse feeling than feeling antsy at 3:34 on a Friday afternoon. I swear to god I'm never not antsy at 3:34 on a Friday. And then I take that anxious energy and pick the shit out of my cuticles; if no one is looking I pick the shit out of split ends (sometimes I do it when people are looking sry); my stomach feels queasy and the pointlessness of my life, my job, my existence, bubbles up and splatters all over the damn place. Because I realize I really am working for the weekend. That's who I am now :-( A paper pusher who pushes paper to the front, to the back, sometimes to the side if I'm feeling punchy; and ultimately pushing it toward the soft, gentle glow of Friday at 5:00 p.m. Or 4:53 let's be real. And weekends are great. Don't get it twisted I love sitting around reading for hours, walking for hours, making big meals and filling up my time with shit like that. But I know I'm coming back on Monday! And it's all the same again! And again! Shit I'm only 23 and it already feels like my life is an endless loop of 9-5 days dealing with the same people and the same work with no end in sight, just that glow.

A coworker burst into my office space today, bee-lined for the nearest trashcan like she was going to vomit up her reheated lunch and spat some candy shit out. "Ahh where'd it go?" She bent down and looked for it. "I don't know where it went." She had the gall to laugh! "Sorry if you find something sticky back there..." Bitch! You do not spit out half-chewed candy into my space, miss the trash can and then not pick it up. I made her get on her knees to find it. She did and proceeded to tell me why what just happened happened but ugh it doesn't matter. I work with the weirdest motherfuckers on the East Coast. TGIF I guess!!!

Casual Friday; casual racism

For the most part I like my coworkers but I often think they're maybe racist? Or something! They might just be those white people who say stuff that's offensive (sometimes vague; sometimes with a fairly hard edge) and anyone who is offended should *calm down* and *lighten up.* Does that a racist make? One of our interns mentioned how she had a terrible literature teacher in high school--the intern grew up in northern China. My white coworker expressed surprise. "You talked about him behind his back?" "Yes of course we did!" "Isn't that...." pause pause "Isn't that disrespectful? Like it goes against Confucianism values?" I rolled my eyes in a big way and he defended himself saying we're all friends now so he doesn't have to worry about the stuff he says around her. Rock solid, bro.

The agency's staff  retreat last spring featured a heavy emphasis on diversity in the workplace and how to recognize and avoid micro aggressions, casual racism, etc etc. The folks who came to speak to us about it were smart and nice and had some great stuff to say, but they were also dripping sticky sweet with sincerity and that always makes for an easy target. I admit it was a bit heavy handed at times but my other (white) (duh) coworkers were positively exasperated. "What, are they just trying to make us feel guilty?" "This is a colossal waste of my time." "It doesn't help anyone to be that politically correct, Jesus."

A few of us went out afterwards and near the end of the night when we'd all had a few drinks, when lips get loose and people start to feel a little too comfortable when they probably shouldn't, when they really have no right to, someone mentioned how she thought a manager got her own office solely because she is black. I guess that's what she came away with after all that diversity babble. I made only a half-hearted defense of the manager and left the bar wishing I'd said more. Was I so weary of these people and their words that I didn't bother to argue with her? Was my acquiescence just as harmful as if I'd agreed?

The result of boredom, desperation; a well for my tears.

Welp this is my almost first blog post (sooo second?) because I'm fucking bored and unhappy at work. I should note that when I clicked on blogger.com, it automatically signed me into the blog I created for my AP Lit class during my senior of high school. Which was in 2009! 5 years ago! How does that even work? For some reason it doesn't bother me that Google and the US government and whoever the hell else knows pretty much alllll my shit but this old blogger account that somehow never logged off? Very unsettling. (EDIT: Did not realize blogger was linked with gmail so I guess that explains that :-/) I'll keep that first post for posterity. It's just a dumb old question anyway.

Ughhh my job sucks so hard! Seriously! It's terrible. I've gotten to a point where I'm simply don't do the work I'm supposed to do and then proceed to lie about actually doing it. My life is just like Office Space except it's not that funny and where's my male equivalent of kooky hot waitress Jennifer Aniston?? I sit and refresh twitter and facebook and several blogs and pick at my split ends or dried cuticles. It doesn't matter what I'm supposed to be doing--office jobs are office jobs are office jobs. An added "perk" to my day is hearing the coworker that I once upon a time hooked up with through the wall of my office. He's teaching a class and his voice dully cuts through the wall and into my space and I guess I could put headphones on but I'm a masochist. We had a sloppy, drunk hookup, where I could barely go down on him for fear of vomiting all over his dick and when he fingered me it was somehow very, very painful. He kept hitting a bone or cartilage or something!!! that I did not previously realize was part of my pelvic area. Blech. Neither of us had condoms so no p-in-v sex (the one solid piece of judgment amid a sea of jello choices) and needless to say it never happened again.

Speaking of hookups -- I'm horny as fuck! My ex broke up with me about 6 months ago and that train wreck of a night has been my only physical sexy contact (save for my right hand). Rides on the T are almost unbearable. My neck is sore from the constant craning it does scoping out cute guys. My mind is exhausted from imagining these cute guys naked and what their hard dick would feel like through their jeans. Damn!! I don't think this blog will turn into smut central (I am writing this at work so I gotta be careful who looks over my shoulder and when) but maybe it will? Or at least sometimes...gotta keep the readers (ha!) interested. Anyway.

I sign into our agency's online database system just to feel like I'm doing something and also to have a window open to pull up when someone (my boss, my boss's boss, a coworker I don't trust) knocks on the door. It logs out after about 20 minutes of disuse and then I sign right back in.

I work in a room with 3 other coworkers and a rotating slew of interns. The only good part about the space is the enormous window. It  lets in glorious natural light and looks out onto an alley with a concert hall at the end of it. It's always a little exciting to see the tour buses and equipment vans line up along the street and I hope to catch a glimpse of the headlining act shoot the shit with roadies or smoke a cig by the bus but of course I never do. Last week a youtube tween sensation performed at the hall and the14-year-old girls with their stick-straight hair and skinny jeans started lining up at noon. They were with parents who all had that bored, dead look in their eyes; maybe even tinged with a little bitterness because they'll never again be so young and so excited about something where standing for hours doesn't amount to pain, but only to a mounting nervous energy begging for release.