The Burp on the Call (Chapter 1) (Patreon)

I started working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. Like most others, I could go on and on about how COVID-19 changed our lives and shit like that. I feel cliché saying that but it did. It didn’t just affect people who got sick or died. It upended everyone’s lifestyle and, in my case, even had you meet new people despite being cooped up all day. I would have never met my wife if COVID-19 never happened.

I’m a web developer aspiring to get into cybersecurity, and also an artist. The whole idea of a “starving” artist didn’t appeal to me so luckily I found something to pay the bills by being good at coding. However, even when you’re good at something in a profitable field that doesn’t mean you’ll immediately get a good-paying job. After graduating, I worked at a private biotech company for the longest time being the sole I.T. guy. I thought it was a good job at first until I realized just how shitty the administration was and how many hats I was expected to wear. When quarantine hit in 2020, their numbers got so bad that they had to cut back on people. They turned my full-time job into a part-time job. Being a single renter in a shitty neighborhood in Tennessee, I said “Fuck that” and left. I became unemployed for most of summer 2020; my only source of income besides unemployment benefits being art commissions of a certain...variety. (Porn. It was porn.)

Later that fall, I landed a new job. I didn’t think I would get one so quickly but a certain clinical laboratory company was making money off this whole pandemic with COVID-19 testing. They needed more I.T. people badly because they were expanding their sites globally and had a lot of ground to cover. This lab was a contract research organization for pharmaceutical companies. They would test the toxicity of the drugs by dosing animals and analyzing the blood and urine samples. I knew next to nothing about biology but hey - as long as they needed an I.T. guy I didn’t need to know any of that stuff. It was the cushiest job I had up to then. Benefits up the wazoo and thousands of employees and networks.

My wife, then-stranger, was none other than my trainer – Courtney Esposito. She was based in New Jersey, some 800 miles northeast from me. I met Courtney for the first time during my interview. The company had a site there in a town called Somerville. She used to work there for quite a number of years before she became remote-only, so she was skilled and used to the system and the ins and outs. I wasn’t sure whether we would be having our cameras on for the interview. I dressed up for the occasion regardless (and yes, I made sure to be clothed from the waist down). While the recruiter and my soon-to-be boss were on camera, Courtney was not. Instead, she had her profile picture of a striped housecat stared directly into the camera.

“Hi, I’m Courtney.”

Her voice made me shiver right off the bat - in a good way though, that ASMR way. They call it frisson, when your body shivers at hearing a pleasant sound or song, and it’s like you develop goosebumps. Her voice had that sexy raspiness to it. You know what I mean? A bit scratchy but very much sexy. It sounds counterintuitive at first. Why would a raspy voice be sexy? I can’t really explain it myself. There’s a certain sense of maturity that you imagine behind a voice like that. High-pitched girly girl voices never really appealed to me. They sounded too childish. Courtney’s voice on the other hand conjured up images of a mature woman in tight leggings and a leopard-print shirt, a real MILF, a woman who can—

I stopped myself before I could go too deep. There’s so much your brain fantasizes about someone’s voice when you don’t see their face. There was that old saying that went “You have a face for radio!”. I didn’t want to think like that, but I already knew it would be a bummer if I ever saw her and did not find her attractive.

“Hey, I’m Pat,” I said, slightly nervous.

“Hi, Pat. We’ll be working closely moving forward. I’ve been with the company for about ten years so I’ve seen a lot.” The tenor of her voice - augh. It killed me. Her voice was so crisp and clear compared to the warbled static of the previous two interviewers. I imagined her saying shit like “Let me stroke your cock” and “Can we fuck?”

I took too long to respond. “Okay! Cool cool.”

“I see that you—oh my God! Is that Tsubasa?!”

I jumped, completely forgetting that I was on camera and that my office was visible. Behind me was my large bookshelf, mostly filled with volumes of manga neatly lined up in order.  Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle must have been in direct line of sight with the webcam, all 28 volumes.

“Uh, yeah.”

“I LOVE Tsubasa! Sorry. Totally ADHD here. I just noticed how much you read. I literally love everything by CLAMP.”

“I haven’t actually read many of their other stuff but–”

“xxxHolic was my jam. Oh my God. All the other girls liked Sailor Moon but I was so into xxxHolic. That was so early 2000's. Hardly anyone ever talks about it anymore."

I really had no idea the interview was going to end up talking about anime and manga. Then again I only had one other interview, which was a brief one with the boss of the biotech company I used to work for. He wasn’t very enthralling. I doubted he had any idea what manga and anime even were.

Out of the three interviewers, I spent time with Courtney the most. In just an hour we went on a tangent beyond anime to her love of cats. She had five cats - Bailey, Grogu, Bean, Poe, and Rey. (Two of those were Star Wars names, if you hadn’t noticed.) Bean was named because we all call cat toes “beans”, Poe after Edgar Allen Poe, and Bailey after the alcohol. I started falling for this girl already. She was a reader, a weeb, and a bit of a drinker.

We did finally get to go over my work history and my skillsets.

“Well, Pat, I’m certainly impressed with the websites you’ve made. It’s been a pleasure talking to you.”

“And you too!”

“Do you have any other–”

Courtney hiccurped mid-sentence. Hiccurped being a cross between a burp and a hiccup. My heart jumped. She sounded like a frog gurgling. It wasn’t obscenely loud but loud enough that she couldn’t lie about it and pretend like it never happened. I heard her pat her chest. “Whew! I’m so sorry! Excuse me! Haha! I had a late lunch today. I’m sorry. Aha. Anyway. Do you have any other questions?”

Can you burp again?

It drove me crazy. Thank God this didn’t happen in-person because I had a raging boner. I pictured her sitting there on her living room couch with her laptop and headset, lounging with her legs out and stuffing herself with food and burping obscenely loud.

“Pat? Are you still there?”

“S-sorry, can you say that again? The call dropped for a second.”

Nice save. I quickly learned you can say a ton of bullshit excuses over remote meetings.

“Oh. Can you hear me now? Maybe I need to–”

“Yes, I can hear you now.”

“Okay. I just wanted to know if you had any other questions.”

“Nope. None at all!”

“Good. Well, it was a pleasure talking to you. I think the others already had everything else they wanted to say and ask, so I’ll end the call here. Goodnight!”

“Goodnight!”

I remained sitting there long after the Webex window disappeared.

Wow. What a voice.