You were already lying on her bed when Van walked back into her room, tank top off, sports bra discarded somewhere on the floor. Her mouth had that crooked grin, the one she used when she was being smug, or when she was about to do something she knew you’d never forget.
Your stomach fluttered. Not from nerves, not really, more like anticipation wrapped tight with want. Firsts weren’t something you rushed with someone like Van. She took her time, even when she teased like she wouldn’t.
“You look nervous,” she said, standing at the edge of the bed, arms crossed under her bare chest. “You should be.”
You gave her a look. “Real comforting, Van. Thanks.”
She laughed, but it was low and quiet, and she leaned down, climbing onto the bed to straddle your hips. “I’m kidding. Kind of.” Her fingers brushed a strand of hair from your face, then curled under your jaw. “You’re lucky you’re cute.”
You rolled your eyes, but you were smiling. “You’re the one who begged me to sleep over.”
“Oh, yeah,” she said, voice dropping as her eyes scanned your face. “Because I love sleeping.”
She kissed you before you could say anything else, slow at first, a test, her hand on your cheek and her body settling against yours like she was already memorizing how you fit together. Then deeper, her mouth moving with more heat, tongue brushing yours, her other hand slipping down between your bodies.
“You ready?” she asked, whispering the words against your jaw. “We don’t have to—”
“I want to,” you said, breath catching. “I do.”
She pulled back enough to see your face, eyes serious now beneath all that nonchalance. “You tell me if anything hurts, okay?”
You nodded.
“And you tell me if you want to stop.”
You nodded again, softer this time. “Okay.”
Van kissed you again, then got up, crawling off the bed and walking to her drawer like she’d done this before, like she was cool and calm, but her hands weren’t as steady as usual when she buckled the harness, and her ears were pink.
She caught your gaze in the mirror and smirked. “What? Don’t act like you’re not into this.”
You snorted. “You’re not subtle, Palmer.”
“Never said I was.”
She climbed back onto the bed, her hands warm on your thighs as she settled between them. The toy stood proud against her stomach, black and thick and intimidating, but her voice was soft again when she looked down at you. “Breathe. I’ll go slow.”
The first touch was careful, fingers first, her mouth still on yours as she coaxed your body open, whispering quiet praise in between the teasing.
“Already soaked for me?” she murmured, mouth at your ear. “Fuck, you are easy.”
You let out a breathy sound, part embarrassed, part turned on, your hips twitching under her. “Van—”
“I like it,” she said, grinning now. “You think I don’t get off on knowing I make you feel like this?”
She pushed in slow, the toy thick and filling, her hand gripping your hip to steady you. You gasped, legs tensing, but her other hand came up to cradle your face.
“You’re okay,” she said, her voice dipping into something lower, sweeter. “You’re doing so good.”
Your fingers gripped her forearm, grounding yourself as she rocked her hips once, gently, experimentally, and the stretch made you whimper.
“There she is,” Van breathed. “Taking me so well.”
She moved a little more now, each thrust careful but more certain. Her eyes never left your face, watching every expression like she was studying you, like nothing else mattered but how you felt.
“You want it faster?” she asked, breath catching a little. “Want me to fuck you like I’ve been dreaming about all week?”
You moaned, nails digging into her skin. “Yes.”
She grinned. “I knew you were filthy.”
And she gave it to you— slow at first, then faster, deeper, fucking you into her sheets while her hand slid under your shirt to cup your breast, thumb brushing your nipple until you arched under her.
Eventually you cry out, unraveling under her touch, your body clenching around the strap as Van rocks you through it. Her movements slow, deliberate again, like she wants to drag it out. Like she wants to make sure you remember exactly who made you feel like this.
She kissed you through it, through the breathy sounds you made, through the way your body shook around her. She didn’t stop until your legs trembled and your hands clutched at her shoulders.
When she finally pulled out and collapsed beside you, sweaty and breathless, her arm came around your waist, tugging you close.
You curled into her, heart still pounding.
Van pressed a kiss to your temple. “Told you you’d survive.”
You laughed into her neck. “Barely.”
“Worth it though?”
You tilted your head up to meet her smug grin. “Yeah. Worth it.”
Van brushed your hair back, fingers soft now. “Good. ‘Cause next time, I’m not going so easy on you.”
You flushed, but you didn’t look away. “Promise?”
Her eyes darkened a little, a grin on her lips. “You really are filthy.”
"Efficiency" left the Big Three vulnerable to smart UAW tactics
Tomorrow (September 22), I'm (virtually) presenting at the DIG Festival in Modena, Italy. Tomorrow night, I'll be in person at LA's Book Soup for the launch of Justin C Key's "The World Wasn’t Ready for You." On September 27, I'll be at Chevalier's Books in Los Angeles with Brian Merchant for a joint launch for my new book The Internet Con and his new book, Blood in the Machine.
It's been 143 days since the WGA went on strike against the Hollywood studios. While early tactical leaks from the studios had studio execs chortling and twirling their mustaches about writers caving once they started losing their homes, the strikers aren't wavering – they're still out there, pounding the picket lines, every weekday:
The studios obviously need writers. That gleeful, anonymous studio exec who got such an obvious erotic charge at the thought of workers being rendered homeless as punishment for challenging his corporate power completely misread the room, and his comments didn't demoralize the writers. Instead, they inspired the actors to go on strike, too.
But how have the writers stayed out since May Day? How have the actors stayed out for 69 days since their strike started on Bastille Day? We can thank the studios for that! As it turns out, the studios have devoted so much energy to rendering creative workers as precarious as possible, hiring as little as they can getting away with and using punishing overtime as a substitute for adequate staffing that they've eliminated all the workers who can't survive on side-hustles and savings for six or seven months at a time.
But even for those layoff-hardened workers, long strikes are brutal, and of course, all the affiliated trades, from costumers to grips, are feeling the pain. The strike fund only goes so far, and non-striking, affected workers don't even get that. That's why I've been donating regularly to the Entertainment Community Fund, which helps all affected workers out with cash transfers (I just gave them another $500):
As hot labor summer is revealed as a turning point – not just a season – long strikes will become the norm. Bosses still don't believe in worker power, and until they get their minds right, they're going to keep on trying to starve their workforces back inside. To get a sense of how long workers will have to hold out, just consider the Warrior Met strike, where Alabama coal-miners stayed out for 23 months:
As Kim Kelly explained to Adam Conover in the latest Factually podcast, the Alabama coal strikers didn't get anywhere near the attention that the Hollywood strikers have enjoyed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvyMHf7Yg0Q
(To learn more about the untold story of worker organizing, from prison unions to the key role that people of color and women played in labor history, check out Kelly's book, "Fight Like Hell," now in paperback:)
Which brings me to the UAW strike. This is an historic strike, the first time that the UAW has struck all of the Big Three automakers at once. Past autoworkers' strikes have marked turning points for all American workers. The 1945/46 GM strike established employers' duty to cover worker pensions, health care, and cost of living allowances. The GM strike created the American middle-class:
The Big Three are fighting for all the marbles here. They are refusing to allow unions to organize EV factories. Given that no more internal combustion cars will be in production in just a few short years, that's tantamount to eliminating auto unions altogether. The automakers are flush with cash, including billions in public subsidies from multiple bailouts, along with billions more from greedflation price-gouging. A long siege is inevitable, as the decimillionaires running these companies earn their pay by starving out their workers:
The UAW knows this, of course, and their new leadership – helmed by the union's radical president Shawn Fain – has a plan. UAW workers are engaged in tactical striking, shutting down key parts of the supply chain on a rolling basis, making the 90-day strike fund stretch much farther:
In this project, they are greatly aided by Big Car's own relentless pursuit of profit. The automakers – like every monopolized, financialized sector – have stripped all the buffers and slack out of their operations. Inventory on hand is kept to a bare minimum. Inputs are sourced from the cheapest bidder, and they're brought to the factory by the lowest-cost option. Resiliency – spare parts, backup machinery – is forever at war with profits, and profits have won and won and won, leaving auto production in a brittle, and easily shattered state.
This is especially true for staffing. Automakers are violently allergic to hiring workers, because new workers get benefits and workplace protection. Instead, the car companies routinely offer "voluntary" overtime to their existing workforce. By refusing this overtime, workers can kneecap production, without striking.
Enter "Eight and Skate," a campaign among UAW workers to clock out after their eight hour shift. As Keith Brower Brown writes for Labor Notes, the UAW organizers are telling workers that "It’s crossing an unofficial picket line to work overtime. It’s helping out the company":
Eight and Skate has already started to work; the Buffalo Ford plant can no longer run its normal weekend shifts because workers are refusing to put in voluntary overtime. Of course, bosses will strike back: the next step will be forced overtime, which will lead to the unsafe conditions that unionized workers are contractually obliged to call paid work-stoppages over, shutting down operations without touching the strike fund.
What's more, car bosses can't just halt safety stoppages or change the rules on overtime; per the UAW's last contract, bosses are required to bargain on changes to overtime rules:
Car bosses have become lazily dependent on overtime. At GM's "highly profitable" SUV factory in Arlington, TX, normal production runs a six-days, 24 hours per day. Workers typically work five eight-hour days and nine hours on Saturdays. That's been the status quo for 11 years, but when bosses circulated the usual overtime signup sheet last week, every worker wrote "a big fat NO" next to their names.
Writing for The American Prospect, David Dayen points out that this overtime addiction puts a new complexion on the much-hyped workerpocalypse that EVs will supposedly bring about. EVs are much simpler to build than conventional cars, the argument goes, so a US transition to EVs will throw many autoworkers out of work:
But the reality is that most autoworkers are doing one and a half jobs already. Reducing the "workforce" by a third could leave all these workers with their existing jobs, and the 40-hour workweek that their forebears fought for at GM inn 1945/46. Add to that the additional workers needed to make batteries, build and maintain charging infrastructure, and so on, and there's no reason to think that EVs will weaken autoworker power.
And as Dayen points out, this overtime addiction isn't limited to cars. It's also endemic to the entertainment industry, where writers' "mini rooms" and other forms of chronic understaffing are used to keep workforces at a skeleton crew, even when the overtime costs more than hiring new workers.
Bosses call themselves job creators, but they have a relentless drive to destroy jobs. If there's one thing bosses hate, it's paying workers – hence all the hype about AI and automation. The stories about looming AI-driven mass unemployment are fairy tales, but they're tailor made for financiers who get alarming, life-threatening priapism at the though of firing us all and replacing us with shell-scripts:
This is why Republican "workerism" rings so hollow. Trump's GOP talks a big game about protecting "workers" (by which they mean anglo men) from immigrants and "woke captialism," but they have nothing to say about protecting workers from bosses and bankers who see every dime a worker gets as misappropriated from their dividend.
Unsurprisingly, conservative message-discipline sucks. As Luke Savage writes in Jacobin, for every mealymouthed Josh Hawley mouthing talking points that "support workers" by blaming China and Joe Biden for the Big Three's greed, there's a Tim Scott, saying the quiet part aloud:
Quoth Senator Scott: "I think Ronald Reagan gave us a great example when federal employees decided they were going to strike. He said, you strike, you’re fired. Simple concept to me. To the extent that we can use that once again, absolutely":
The GOP's workerism is a tissue-thin fake. They can never and will never support real worker power. That creates an opportunity for Biden and Democrats to seize:
Reversing two generations of anti-worker politics is a marathon, not a sprint. The strikes are going to run for months, even years. Every worker will be called upon to support their striking siblings, every day. We can do it. Solidarity now. Solidarity forever.
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
A big and powerful machine. It stands near the house. Someone can go with this car, maybe. To a supermarket, u know. It is a joke. Yes, a building machines, of course, they are a titanic things.
Such a big machines. Symbol of industrial era. Maybe, it can be placed there a computers. Maybe. And this is, already, a symbol of computer era. Everyplace – a computer.
Steel monster. I remember game Monster Truck, Madness Monster Truck about racing with a big cars. Sorry, but I play a little into it. But I remember that game.
Such a tractor can dig and build something on the Moon! I think so! A moon builder! It digs a moon dust. On a grey moon. And it has a black sky. It is calm everywhere. And this is sci fi.
