Hita

by Anita Claire

  As I swim, all other thoughts leave my head. All I can think about is the dream I had last night and how I’m going to meet him. Does he have a girlfriend? Is he as interesting as he is beautiful? My roommate, Cassie, is a savant when it comes to men. Cassie would know what to do. The problem is that Cassie would want to check out Abs Guy—which brings up my big issue with Cassie.

  Cassie and I were inseparable best friends in elementary and junior high school, spending all our weekends sleeping at each other’s homes. As a kid, she was tall and painfully skinny, with long, thin, stringy pale brown hair, glasses, braces, and a face too angular to be cute. Both of us loved sports. From kindergarten till the end of junior high, we were on the same swim team, soccer team, and rode horses together. The summer between eighth and ninth grade she turned from an ugly duckling into a beautiful swan. She got boobs, her braces came off, she started highlighting her hair, and got contact lenses. Cassie’s summer transformation turned her into every teenage boy’s wet dream.

  Unfortunately, once the beauty kicked in she lost interest in sports and school. She chose what was easiest, using her beauty and charm to get ahead. In high school she ran with the “beautiful people” crowd, a clique of arrogant, fast moving, hard partying, good looking kids—that group always made me feel awkward, innocent, and nerdy when I was around them.

  Somehow, Cassie and I managed to maintain our friendship. We always had a good time when it was the two of us. While she was dating and partying with the handsome and popular boys, I was on the math team, the debate team, the fencing team, and the soccer team. I was a geeky jock. Our lives diverged when I went off to college to study electrical engineering and computer science, and she went to LA to be discovered.

  In high school, I was a late bloomer having plenty of boys that were friends, but never a boyfriend. Cassie was always going on about one guy or another. About half way through our sophomore year, Cassie kept on pushing me to tell her who I thought was cute. Finally, getting up the courage, I confessed to having a crush on this senior, Beau Bradley. His locker was across from mine. He had a look I really liked—dark eyes, dark shaggy hair, chiseled features, a tall lean body. He didn’t strut down the hall like the jocks; his attitude was more brooding and hipster. We had a large high school, about 450 kids per grade, which was merged from two middle schools and two junior highs. Cassie had no idea who he was because he didn’t run with her beautiful people crowd. Confiding in Cassie, I told her Beau Bradley always stopped at his locker after third period, and I had arranged my schedule around his so that I would be at my locker then too. At that point, I hadn’t yet gotten up the guts to even say hi. He was a senior, which intimidated me.

  The next day after third period, Cassie made a point of going back to my locker with me. Like clockwork, Beau strolled to his locker to pick up his books. Cassie struck a pose and “coyly” stared at him until he looked her dead in the eyes. She then flashed him one of her award winning smiles and giggled. By the end of the day, he had asked her out. They dated for about a month. Cassie was never one for keeping a guy long-term. She didn’t see that flirting with—and then dating—someone I had a crush on was hurtful. At the time, I was too shocked to say anything. When I finally got my thoughts together to tell her how wrong that was, she justified it by saying, “He had no idea you existed.” Then flicked her eyebrows in annoyance, “you weren’t going to do anything about it anyway.”

  Cassie had been competitive. After her summer transformation, she stopped competing with me on athletics and academics. Still, I think Cassie wanted to prove that she could always beat me in one arena--with guys. That incident has always been painful, it was the first time Cassie had ever broken my trust. Since then my feelings towards her have been torn. She was such an essential part of my childhood, but that betrayal has undermined my trust.

  All these thoughts flutter through my mind as I pull a long set in the pool. Resolving to stop ruminating on high school and focus on today, I decide to find out more about Abs Guy. My mind spins with questions. At the end of the workout, I do another kick set so I have the opportunity to watch Abs Guy walk across the pool deck. Oh man, swimming has to be the best sport. His beautiful body is seared in my brain.

  It’s interesting to listen to the women talk in the locker room as they shower and dress. I’m probably the youngest person here. There are a lot of women in their thirties, forties, and fifties. They all walk around comfortably naked while I stand in a corner covered up with my towel listening to them talk about kids, husbands, schedules, food. Some coordinate getting together for a run or bike ride. This would be the only group who knows Abs Guy…. but, I sense it’s probably not the right place to ask any of them about him. I’m on my own with that. Well, at least I know if I swim at six in the morning there’s a chance I’ll see him again.

  Chapter 2 – The New Job

  I work as an engineer at a Silicon Valley software startup. Yes, it sounds as geeky as it is; though, after growing up in a house with parents who are both Silicon Valley veterans and getting my bachelors and masters in engineering, it’s business as usual for me. Anyway, one of the perks at my company is a free cafeteria--that looks trendy, like a hip restaurant. Starting my day, I head directly there. Performing my morning ritual I say “hi” to Mario, who mans the breakfast counter, grab a plain Greek yogurt with granola, then fill my water bottle up with herbal iced tea. All the men I know view free food as a godsend, though I don’t want to gain the “Google 15.” It’s not that the guys don’t put on the weight; it’s that they don’t seem to care and then again there’s that old double standard, fifteen extra pounds on a guy and they still can get laid.

  Getting in early is great since most of the people on my team pull in at around ten or eleven, giving me three to four hours of privacy. My company has this crazy idea that an open environment facilitates communication and team building. This idea had to be dreamed up by some executive with a big office, and a door that closes. The floor I work on is broken up into large areas that house about twenty engineers in an open environment. A wall of conference rooms—rooms with copiers and cold drink dispensers, or offices where the managers sit, separate each section. In truth, an open office is really distracting, since I overhear and see everything that’s going on. Having people look over my shoulder when I work is disconcerting.

  By 10:00 a.m., the office is starting to fill up. Passing by Ian on the way back from my morning stretch my leg break, I shiver, and not in a good way. Ian is a mathematician that works on my team. He’s viewed by the other guys as some kind of genius. He’s also about sixty pounds overweight, and is pasty white with lots of thick red hair all over his body. I know this because he always wears a white wife beater and running shorts. Every day. To work. I’m hoping with winter coming, he puts on more clothes since he’s the physical equivalent of too much information. Trying to avoid looking and thinking about Ian causes a smile to cross my face. I flashback to Abs Guy. Now, spending my day looking at Abs Guy wearing a wife beater doesn’t sound half bad. This thought makes me excited and internally I gasp. Oh, god, stay focused, Juliette. I remind myself that’s not what successful engineers think about. My mom raised me to be serious, a leader, not some giddy girl who wastes her time daydreaming about scantily clad men. Damn, it’s much more fun thinking about beautiful men.

  My mind is jarred back to reality as I walk to my chair when, Buddy, a fellow engineer’s German Shepherd, comes bounding up sticking her nose in my crotch. Shit, can she tell what I’ve been thinking about? Pushing her head out from between my legs, I try not to look too embarrassed. It’s not like I don’t like dogs. I grew up with dogs. I really like them, but Buddy and her crotch sniffing drives me crazy.

  Then there’s Tom, who I have labeled Creepy Tom since he’s always staring at me. He’s a big guy with a goatee who must be more than ten years older than me. Plus, he’s married with a couple of kids. My goal is to avoid Creepy Tom. It’s disconcerting to have him in the same wo
rk area. Last week while I was getting a bottle of juice out of the drink dispenser, he came up real close behind me…and I think he sniffed my hair. Next place I work, I’m going to make sure they have cube walls that go up to the ceiling. I don’t want to see these guys; I don’t want them looking at me.

  Now that the office is filling up, I put earbuds in. My phone is tuned to my favorite Pandora channel; it allows me to focus back on the simulation I’m working on.

  I work in an engineering group that uses algorithms to develop analytical tools for making sense of big data. That is all kinds of organizations are saving petabytes of information on what people are doing on the web, Unfortunately, our ability to save information is much more advanced than our ability to figure out what this information means. My company makes products to search through the data and provide our customers with reports that show them meaningful occurrences.

  The first step for my group is to develop an algorithm, then we plug these algorithms into programs that run through the data to find trends; the next step is to optimize this process so it doesn’t take forever.

  Since I’m new to this group, I get to build simulations in MATLAB and write them in Python. We have our own large data set we use to test against. My job is to see if the new algorithms actually can be used to identify trends in large data sets. After I exercise the new algorithms, I provide Mark, the guy with the dog, my findings. He works with Ian, the hairy guy, to fine tune these algorithms so they work more effectively.

  I’m looking forward to when I’m considered knowledgeable enough to get past running simulations for my co-workers and can start using C++ to write code of my own, which actually will be a lot of fun—even though when I told Cassie what I did, she rolled her eyes halfway through the explanation, shook her head and said “What?”—then told me I needed to get laid. She may not be a rocket scientist, but on the sex front, she’s very perceptive.

  Taking into consideration Ian and Tom’s outlier personalities, the ten engineers on my development team work well together—we all have a strong mathematical background. Two other engineers on my team are big-time San Francisco baseball fans. In the month I’ve been here, I have learned a lot of baseball statistics. Before joining this group, I didn’t even know what an RBI was. Now I know who leads the team and what their RBI score is. Cassie says that that’s the first thing I’ve learned in all my years of schooling that may come in handy one day in landing a guy.

  At 11:50 a.m., I get an internal IM from Hita—the only other woman on my team: Ready for lunch?

  Hita and I have been friends since our freshman year of college. We were in the same classes and quickly became study partners. Back in the spring she got me in to interview for this job, lucky for me the position was still open when I decided to leave my boyfriend in London. Hita’s American, but her parents came from India. She’s tall, about five foot ten, with long runner’s legs, thick, shiny hair that goes down to the middle of her back, and she has an easy-going, happy personality with a quirky sense of humor that can get her in trouble.

  Our freshman year there were seven of us that decided to go to the Halloween parties at school as princesses. Hita was one of the princesses, Pocahontas. Get it? –Indian. My hair is very dark brown, my skin is pale, and my eyes are brown. I was Snow White. Initially, the seven of us had nothing in common except a desperate need to make the most of campus life, which we did, starting with that Halloween party. Six years later, I’m still tight with this group of women. We jokingly refer to ourselves as “The Princesses” to this day—and at times refer to each other by our princess names.

  As Hita and I walk down the hall, she asks, “Hey, how’s it going?”

  “Fine, though I’m looking forward to the day I can do more than run other people’s algorithms through MATLAB.”

  “Give it some time, it takes a while to get the hang of what we’re doing.”

  Changing the subject, I can’t help but tell her, “There is the most beautiful guy at swimming. I saw him again this morning.”

  She chuckles, “Juliette, you’ve been back what, a month, and you’ve already eyed your next man.”

  “What? How long do I need to be back before I can start checking out guys?”

  She shakes her head. “You’re amazing, I don’t even know what happened in London.” Then she gives me a long look and I can tell she wants details. Since I don’t say a word she jokes, “Hey, if he doesn’t work out, Tom can’t get his eyes off of you.”

  Scrunching up my nose I say, “Of all the guys who have to have the hots for me, just my luck, it’s Creepy Tom.”

  “Hey, it could be worse, Ian could have the hots for you.”

  “Ewww, could you imagine having to eat dinner with Ian? I think I’d barf if I had to look at all that white hairy skin while I ate.”

  “I never realized how much I should have appreciated my high school’s dress code.”

  “Someone’s got to get that guy to put some clothes on.”

  “Do you think men look at, or care about, what some other dude is wearing?”

  We both roll our eyes.

  Hita follows up with, “Yeah, unfortunately those creepy guys from school all got jobs and some of them are now working here.”

  By now we’ve reached the cafeteria. Hita spots Caroline, who works on the client side of engineering using PHP to develop our dashboard—what our customers see when they access the solutions departments like mine create.

  After standing in the sushi line to get lunch I head into the company dining room to find my friends. It reminds me of my high school cafeteria; everyone is there. You have your bro-grammers, those ex-jock and fraternity guy code-monkeys who are known for their cocky attitude, being bad at math, and sleeping around a lot, a feat made possible by their six figure salaries. Then you have the artist and psychology majors turned programmer types. They work on people's cognitive interaction with technology, write code, smoke a TON of weed, and make art on weekends. They tend to live in social collectives, and are a big reason communal living is making a resurgence in San Francisco. Both of those archetypes are the ones who go to hackathons, and play video games for hours on end. Probably most annoying is that they get to take advantage of that unfair and dumb double standard that allows them to be both nerdy and cool at the same time, while women are not.

  Harder to pick out from just looking at them are the engineers and the physicists. The engineers are simple guys who like to solve problems and excel in higher math. My mom always jokes that they make terrible boyfriends since they’re devoid of comprehending romance, but make fantastic husbands since they’re practical, handy and helpful. The physicists, on the other hand, usually can’t do anything around the house and also seem to be arrogant pricks. At companies like mine, we also have mathematicians. They tend to be weirdos; think: UniBomber, Hairy Ian, or Creepy Tom. We also have a gaggle of the H-1B visa carrying guys, mostly from India and China. They tend to hang out together, wear ugly polyester shirts and slacks, and have a habit of giggling and nervously ogling when a woman is near. This list doesn’t even include any of the marketing, sales, customer support, or finance people that work here.

  As I look over at the table, I see that Hita is already sitting down with Caroline and Kami. Besides their boss, we are the only women in engineering at this company. As I join them, Caroline looks at me appraisingly.

  Shaking my head at Hita, I ask, “What did you tell her?”

  Caroline laughs, “Nothing. We’re on our favorite topic: hot guys.”

  “I thought our favorite topic was sex,” I respond.

  “And the difference is...?” Hita says with a smirk.

  “Oh, Abs Guy is definitely hot.” I respond.

  Hita starts laughing. “Abs Guy, you’ve already named him.”

  “What, it’s not like he had his name written across the back of his speedo.”

  “Who cares about a name, what did he look like? Besides the six pack,” Caroline pushes. />
  “He got out of the pool with one big push up, every muscle in his body flexed.” I swoon as I replay the scene in my mind.

  “And?” Caroline says.

  “And, his body’s so buff. When he reached into the bin to get out a pull buoy the muscles of his stomach rippled.”

  Caroline says, “You have no idea what his face looks like, do you?”

  “Um…” I say, as I start cracking up, “he has dark hair and a nice dimple.”

  Caroline chuckles and shakes her head. “You sound like you need some, bad.”

  Rolling my eyes and groaning, I respond, “You have no idea.”

  Hita gives me another long questioning look before asking, “Juliette, last I knew you were taking off for London to be with Stephan.” She bobs her eyebrows up and down when she says Stephan. “The next thing I know you’re asking around about jobs here…without Stephan. “

  “How do we move from spotting hot guys to my experience in London? What about your love life? I haven’t heard anything from you since I’ve been back.” I too can give the power look.