The Dizziness of Freedom - Chapter 4
Vents blasted warm air into her face. Wordless instrumentals played calming guitar chords through the speakers of the Toyota. Olive took long breaths in through her nose, held the breath for a second and slowly exhaled through her mouth. The last few minutes of sunshine cast warm shades of orange and pink across the sky, tinting the clouds with muted pastels of the same colors.
The anime club met every Wednesday, and Olive was sitting in her car working up the courage to attend for the first time. She spent most of her free time watching Japanese animation so she figured it would be easier to make friends with people who already shared her interests. Good plan, Olive. Taking two deep breaths, she got out of the car and crossed the parking lot to OSB-I.
OSB stands for Operational Support Building, one of two at Kennedy Space Center. For an office on a federal space agency site, you might expect something very 22nd-century and flashy, but even as one of the more recent buildings on center, OSB-I feels old. The interior is outfitted in muted navy carpet and pale grey walls, standard fare for cubicle farms. The halls are lined with overcrowded bulletin boards and the awkward smiles of management arranged in helpful photo organizational charts. The anime club had set up in a conference room on the fourth floor of the building. A large television monitor dominated the east wall of the room, and at the center table a young man was fiddling with the various electronics to get his laptop connected to the display.
“Which of these is the right one?” the young man held two cables plugged into a node on the conference room table.
“It’s this one here,” an older woman passed him a third cable, but when he plugged it into his computer, the screen only flashed and went back to blue.
There were six people in the room, including Olive. Like Olive, everyone was in the clothes they’d worn to work, and as she performed an initial scan of the room she took in all the different interpretations of work-appropriate attire. Two younger ladies, both in pencil skirts and heels, sat together in the chairs that lined the conference room walls. They were angled toward each other, talking in low voices and occasionally showing each other something on one of their phone screens that would elicit a round of quiet, shared laughter. The young man at the table was in a button-down shirt tucked into creased khakis. Olive noticed that his belt matched the polished crocodile oxfords he wore over a smart pair of argyle trouser socks. The third woman, who was now reaching over his shoulder to press buttons on the A/V controls interface, wore a faded sweatshirt with jeans and what Olive thought were orthopedic sneakers. The last man sat away from everyone else against the far wall, scrolling through his phone with concentration on his face. His understanding of “business casual” appeared to include unwashed hair, a wrinkled and oversized blue polo, and a pair of jeans that, judging by the food stain on the crotch, must have been pulled out of a pile of dirty laundry.
“Ha!” The large display at the head of the room was no longer blue. Now it showed a cluttered desktop, dozens of shortcut and folder icons obscuring a stylised illustration of Darth Vader, red lightsaber in one hand, the other raised in his iconic Force-choke. “Thank you so much, Susan,” he said to the woman who’d been helping him. Mission accomplished, the young man at the table looked up and smiled broadly when he saw Olive standing in the door.
“Oh hey! Please, come in.”
Olive obliged, and the well-dressed man jumped up to meet her halfway. “Welcome to the anime club, I’m Jamal.” He held his hand out to her. Olive felt her eyelid twitch and for a split second she was unsure what to do, but after consideration, she shook the man’s extended hand.
“It’s always awesome to see a new face. As you can see, we’re a pretty small group right now, but hopefully that will change once we get the word out!” Jamal smiled a smile that felt warm and authentic. He was attractive and Olive had begun to notice. A brief silence elapsed before Olive realized she should probably introduce herself at some point.
“Oh, I’m so - I’m Olive,” she sputtered. “I’m in pneumatics.” Not that he asked.
“Hi, Olive, Nice to meet you. You know -” he paused for a second and his smile grew to what Olive thought was the beginning of a laugh.
“You know, I hate olives.”
Jamal’s teeth flashed bright white and he chuckled for a second, still looking at Olive.
“Oh,” Olive said, and she laughed a little too. “Lots of people do.”
Jamal turned to the room and the rest of the club members. “Hey guys! Real quick, this is Olive. She’s gonna sit in with us today, try not to scare her off.”
All four of the others looked up and at Olive at once. She felt heat crawling up from her tight stomach, and managed a timid wave.
Jamal pointed to the pencil-skirted women. “That’s Rachel and CJ there,” his finger swept toward the older woman at the table, “and Susan,” moving to the dirty-jeans guy, “and that’s Adam over there, don’t let him fool you, he’s friendly.” Everyone waved when they heard their names, and then returned to their phone screens.
“Well, we’re working through Inuyasha right. Now that we all know each other, I’ll get this episode started. Sit anywhere you like, but I think the table has the best view,” Jamal gestured to all the chairs lining the room and flashed Olive another encouraging smile before walking past her to close the door and turn off the lights. Olive crossed the room and took a set two chairs away from Adam.
What did he mean when he said he hated olives? Olive thought, sitting in the chair next to Adam. Did he mean “olives” or did he mean “Olives”?
Inuyasha started playing on the monitor and a vaguely sexualized fox guy did stuff. Olive wasn’t watching the screen. Her left leg pistoned up and down and she gnawed at the corners of her fingernails.
God, I’m definitely being paranoid, she thought. He was being nice and he made a little joke about my name that’s all. I hate olives, too, so what? Unless he thinks I’m ugly or maybe... she looked over at Adam. He still had his phone open but he was splitting his attention between the phone and the anime, shifting his focus between the two screens every thirty seconds or so. Whenever he looked up, his phone tilted away from him a little, and when Olive glanced over she caught him in this transition from phone to monitor and when the phone tilted up she could see what he had open on the screen.
A naked man was making sex to a woman doggy style, but bouncing between his bare ass cheeks was a furry white fox tail. The woman was bent over on the bed with her bare ass up in the air. She was naked from the waist down. Her upper half was a dark purple leopard costume with light purple spots. It was hard to tell if they were enjoying themselves because each of their heads were covered with a mascot-like animal head.
Olive knew what furries were. She had seen some images like that before during her “research” on the topic, but she had never seen anyone in the real world looking at it for sexual reasons. She had also never been around someone who was so comfortable watching porn in public while seated right next to a person they had just met.
Olive wondered what she had done wrong to make such a bad impression on Jamal. He seemed really nice, so it must have been something really embarrassing on her part. Something about the way she looked, obviously, since she had only spoken six words to him so far. Those six words did come out sounding pretty stupid, though. Am I gross? Am I the female version of this guy? Oh God, he already thought I was gross and then I immediately sat with the furry. Her breathing was growing shallow and halted the more she thought about the implications of Jamal hating olives. I look like an idiot.
The moment she thought this, laughter broke out from across the room. Rationally, she knew it must have been inspired by some moment from the episode, but she couldn’t be sure because she hadn’t been paying attention and, obviously, the anime club was watching the subtitled version of the show rather than the English-dubbed version. On a philosophical level Olive agreed that subs were in fact superior to dubs for a number of reasons she had once written out into a pros and cons list. At this moment, however, she wished she had more context for the outburst of laughter because as she sat in her chair next to greasy Adam and his furry delights, she became more and more convinced that their laughter was at her expense. They were probably texting each other back and forth about her dumpy outfit and bad skin.
Now Adam and his neck beard had an erection. It was subtle, but Olive was sure of it. There was a small tent in the lap of his grubby jeans, where there hadn’t been one a few seconds ago. Her breath was escaping and she couldn’t get it back so she stood up and left the conference room.
Cold water from the bathroom sink felt good on her face and her breathing slowed to a normal level. Drops of water streamed down her face. She looked at the scar just under her left eye. The scar was so faded only someone who knew it was there would have noticed it, but to Olive it was a defining feature on her face. It looked like a lowercase “i” one of freckles dotting the letter. She cleaned her face and went home.
