Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 102781 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 514(@200wpm)___ 411(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 102781 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 514(@200wpm)___ 411(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
“Sure.” For the sake of teamwork, I grabbed two pads and a pen from my desk drawer. Not thinking anything of it, I tossed one on the table in front of her and the other in front of where I’d been sitting. Annalise noticed the ink on the front before I did. She turned the pad to face her.
Shit.
I attempted to grab it from her hand, but she pulled it back and out of my reach. “What do we have here? Did you draw all of this?”
I held out my hand. “Give me that.”
She ignored me in favor of studying my doodles some more. “No.”
I arched a brow. “No? You’re not going to give me my notepad back? How old are you?”
“Umm…apparently…” She waved the notebook in the air, displaying my art. “…the same age as the twelve-year-old boy who drew these things. If this is what you do all day at work, I’m not sure what I was worried about. I was thinking I had to compete for the job against a seasoned professional.”
I had a bad habit of doodling while I listened to music. I did it whenever I was stuck creatively or needed a palate cleanser in between projects. I had no fucking idea why, but the mindless sketching helped clear my busy head, which in turn allowed the creativity to get its turn inside. The habit wouldn’t be so bad—maybe a little embarrassing that a thirty-one-year-old man still draws cartoon superheroes at his desk—but nothing to get me in trouble…that is, if the superheroes I doodled daily were male. But they weren’t. My superheroes were all women…with pronounced body parts, sort of like the caricatures you can get done by a street artist where your head is five times the size of your body and you’re roller-skating or surfing. You know the ones, right?
Probably have one of yourself riding a unicycle tucked away in the back of your closet somewhere. It’s ripped and wrinkled, yet you still haven’t thrown the damn thing away. Well, mine are similar. Only it isn’t the heads of my creations that are exaggerated. It’s the tits. Or the ass. Occasionally the lips, if the mood hit me. You get the idea.
Jonas had recently warned me again about not leaving that shit around the office after a little incident with a woman from human resources who had stopped in unexpectedly and gotten a glimpse.
I snatched the pad from Annalise’s hand, ripped out the page, and crumpled it into a ball. “I doodle to relax. I didn’t realize I’d grabbed that pad. I usually rip the page off and toss it out when I’m done. I apologize.”
She tilted her head, like she was examining me. “You apologize, huh? What exactly are you sorry for? Me seeing them or you sketching characters that objectify women on company time?”
I’m guessing this is a trick question. Of course, I was only sorry she’d seen them. “Both.”
She squinted and stared at me. “You’re full of shit.”
I walked back to my desk, opened the drawer, and deposited the wadded-up doodle page. Closing it, I said, “I don’t think you’re qualified to know when I’m full of shit yet. We’ve spent, what, an hour with each other in total?”
“Let me ask you something. If I was a guy—say one of your buddies here that you probably go out with for happy hour once in a while—would you have apologized to him?”
Of course not. Another trick question. I had to think about the right way to answer this one. Luckily, I’d been through HR sensitivity and sexual harassment training, so I was armed with the right answer.
“If I thought it would offend him, yes.” I left out that it wouldn’t offend any of the guys I socialized with outside of the office…mostly because I don’t hang out with pussies. Figured Jonas would be happy with my restraint if he knew.
“So you apologized to me because you thought it might offend me?”
Easy one. “Yes.”
I hoped that was the end of the discussion, so I took a seat. Annalise followed suit. But she wasn’t letting it go that quickly. “So objectifying women is okay, just not when you think you might offend someone with it?”
“I didn’t say that. You’re assuming I objectify women. I don’t think I do.”
She tossed me a look that called bullshit.
“I think you’re the one who objectifies women.”
“Me?” Her eyebrows jumped. “I objectify women? How so?”
“Well, that drawing was a superhero—the woman had the power to fly. Every day, she leaps from tall buildings and fights crime like a badass. And here you are assuming that because she’s a little on the buxom side she’s some sort of demented fantasy. You didn’t even take into consideration that Savannah Storm has an IQ of 160 and just yesterday saved an old lady from getting creamed by a bus.”