Stuck Under Foot in Washington

Author's note: This story takes place on the same day as my two other stories, "Getting Ahead" and "Something Afoot." It tells "Something Afoot in Washington" from an alternative perspective.

*****

Chip had to make the best impression possible. He just had to. This was his first week interning in the office of Congresswoman McIntire, (District 1-CT).

First week's uniform: white oxford over white tshirt, diagonal striped tie with muted colors, grey suit pants over Lululemon boxers, black loafers, freshly shined a few blocks away by the guy on the wooden curbside box.

But, by Day 1, in fact by 10am, he'd already blown it, in his mind. Rushing to make the first floor elevator before the doors closed, he'd walked too close to the guy with the tall open cup who turned sharply and bam - brown coffee stain down Chip's front.

Fortunately, the Congresswoman wasn't in the office at all day Day 1 or Day 2 of his internship. So only B, Chief of Staff to Congresswoman McIntire, had witnessed his sartorial disgrace. (Chip had nicknamed her "Queen B" in his mind on the first day because, well, it just fit.)

B said nothing, only half-raised an eyebrow as she scanned his white oxford shame, walking quickly past. She had no time for a new intern. Primary season ahead. Chip felt pure relief to be so insignificant and so overlooked. On Day 1 he just wanted to keep his head down.

For the rest of the day he was just grateful to work by himself on the constituent communications database entry - eliminating duplicates, updating contact information, fixing obvious errors, looking up zip codes online.

On Day 3, however, Queen B walked over to his desk. 8:15am.

"You know computers." It wasn't a question. Chip started to formulate a modest answer, "Well, I -"

"Good. Internet's down on a bunch of our desktops. Go figure out why and fix it. Start with the Congresswoman's computer and make sure there's no connectivity problems under her desk."

"Sure, ok, the -"

"Start now. She'll be here anytime in the next hour and has major fundraising calls all morning. Primary season is just months away. Crunch time." B turned her back and looked down at her phone as she strode away, before Chip could even think of a reply or further question.

Well. In truth, he wasn't much of a computer guy. But as the youngest person in the office by at least 5 years, maybe they just assumed he's tech-savvy? Could he develop the "Go to fix-it guy" reputation as a summer intern? That would be a fine start. Shoulders squared. Ok, Chip, time to make a good impression.

Chip headed through the inner doorway to the empty office. The huge wooden desk dominated the room. He glanced at the photos on Congresswoman McIntire's wall. There was the young Olympic medalist, wrapped in the American flag. She looked really hot in her track shorts. God, those legs. What was that, anyway, the '92 Games? What a babe she'd been!

Weirdly, he hadn't ever thought of her that way before. She was his mother's age. Strange. But in those years she would have been what? 24? 27? Smoking hot legs, firm body. All-American smile. Chip took that all in, in an instant.

Another framed shot on the wall was McIntire with President Clinton, and then another photo with Bush Senior. McIntire looked so young then. Super-hot Olympic track star. Not much older than Chip was now, maybe even the same age.

Chip dropped to his knees at the side of the massive desk. He craned his neck into a dark crawl space with computer wires. Now shuffling forward on hands and knees, he awkwardly squeezed in his suit pants past the swivel chair. Momentarily stuck, chocking feeling on his neck. He pulled his tie free, out from under his knee. Then he ducked his head to avoid a metal outlet attached to the under side of the desk. It was so cramped down here.

Ok, let's see. Time to act like an IT fix-it guy. What do we have? Blue USB cord. Got it. That goes there. Tracing his hand in the semi-dark up to the top of the desk where a hole had been drilled. Ok, what's this? Voice-Over-IP line, follow the black plastic-coated line down. That other line must connect the hard drive to the monitor. This thinner one must be a telephone landline. I guess Congressional offices still used those, Chip thought to himself. The final wire from the back of the hard drive was a power cord.

This looked like it would take another minute to trace all the lines and test their connections. Chip paused on his hands and knees to rest a moment and adjust the awkward cramping in his neck from trying to see connections behind the computer box hard drive. He closed his eyes and tilted his neck back. Then, side to side. Now forward. Ok, feeling better.

But then the Queen B's voice rang out:

"Welcome back. Gary from GetAhead Cash on line 2. I promised him ten minutes this morning, first thing."

Shit! Chip's eyes burst back open.

No. No. No no.

Nononononono. Congresswoman McIntire's body, from the waist down, blocked Chip's exit from under the desk. Fuck.

He held his breath. Muscles frozen in place, hunched over on all fours. Oh please, no. Make her go away. He couldn't possibly meet her for the first time like this. For a moment he considered: Should he just bite the bullet and execute the world's most awkward hi-Congresswoman-I'm-your-new-intern introduction as he shamefully crawled out from under her massive desk?

No, that's stupid. That's humiliating. She would think him the biggest weirdo of all time. First impressions matter, especially in this town! He could never stay the rest of the summer in the office. He'd die of shame. Don't screw this up, Chip, c'mon get a grip.

A better solution: Just wait a few minutes, Chip told himself, and he'd get a chance to escape. She'll walk away, he'd make a dash for it, and he could avoid sinking his DC career before it even began, right here on Day 3. Ok, stay calm. Just a minute or two of patience, and he'd save his reputation. How bad could a few minutes stuck into a cramped space under a desk be?

Chip didn't dare move. His neck scrunched, the left side of his head pushed up at an angle to the bottom of the wooden desk. His eyes at just above knee level on McIntire.

He saw straight to the hem of her tight blue skirt, lower legs in sheer nude pantyhose. He glanced down to see the barest cleavage of her toes as they disappeared into closed-toe heels. McIntire turned and backed away from the desk for just a moment, speaking with B, and he glimpsed the bottom of the untucked white blouse at her waist.

Then she sat down on the leather cushion of the swivel chair and pulled herself in close to the desk. Her knees facing him.

Now he was truly trapped.

Chip didn't dare breathe. This was terrible. How was he going to remain completely still and unnoticed under here, while she worked or took phone calls for a few minutes? What a catastrophe.

Between the fight-or-flight adrenaline surging through his body, lack of breath, and his desperate desire to not move even a millimeter, Chip felt like he might pass out.

But with the next words McIntire spoke, things suddenly got far worse.

"Gary! Claire here! So great to hear from you!"

Oh no. Oh no no no.

Chip's father was on the other end of the line.

The only body part Chip dared to move were his eyelids. Closing them tightly, he exhaled through his open mouth, as calmly as his 20 trillion simultaneously-firing neurons allowed.

Of course Gary would call Claire. His father, narcissistic power-broker that he was, had landed him this internship opportunity. His father, competitive and rapacious, had significant pull with the Congresswoman's office. His father, philanderer and drinker, repelled Chip in their every interaction over the past ten years. Ever since Chip started to understand that some adults - some relatives in particular - were just horrible people.

But this same horrible person was responsible for his opportunity in DC this summer. Because even Political Science-majoring Juniors at Brown with a 3.85 GPA didn't exactly procure Congressional internships whenever they wanted them. Chip knew that. A little part of him died every time he remembered that he was only here because his father was a longtime, ongoing, and major donor and fundraiser for the Congresswoman.

Strategically though, Chip told himself that a little compromise with Gary's way of doing business was necessary to begin forging his own path in Washington, far from his father's piratical and lucrative business of GetAhead payday lending.

Deep in phone conversation, Congresswoman McIntire shifted forward and spread her thighs. Chip inhaled shallowly. She hitched her blue skirt up a few inches to allow space to open and close her knees and thighs twice, as she settled her bottom more comfortably into the cushion of her swivel chair. Her voice on the phone warm, comfortable, and conversational.

Chip's face was no more than 18 inches from her knees, but she had already pushed her swivel chair all the way into the desk. Unless she kicked sharply forward, there wasn't any way she would discover him under here. Just breathe, Chip, just breathe. This will be over soon.

Chip marveled at how she could speak with an upbeat tone on the phone with Gary. His father. That complete dickhead. That was something he never could muster.

His father would like nothing better than to have Chip join the business in Connecticut, and groom him to take over some day. Build the family payday-lending empire to new heights. Chip, meanwhile, took after his saint of a mother. He loved the idea of public service, of debate and public policy. He wanted to make a difference, and he was inspired by Congresswoman McIntire's compassionate yet moderate and pro-economic growth approach. He hoped with a policy career in DC to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

Now this idealistic yearning had landed him with a crimped-neck and scrunched-up position trapped under a desk. His father, with his untimely call, had somehow trapped him in the most compromising position he'd ever been in his life.

His hands, palms pressed on the floor, began to tingle with uncomfortable pins and needles.

As Congresswoman McIntire got wound up, speaking passionately, Chip couldn't help but notice her thighs rubbing together. She shifted her ass in her seat from one cheek to the other, as the conversation continued. His face was so close and his body so tense and unmoving that he could hear the swoosh swoosh of nylon passing over nylon quite distinctly.

As badly as this position hurt, his eyes kept returning to the exact position where her nyloned thighs parted, then came together. With her legs closed, light shined off her pantyhosed knees. But as her legs shifted open, his gaze drew upward along her inner thigh. Up, up, up her skirt, nude colored hose underneath but darker and mysteriously disappearing. An ever-changing dark hidden shape in front of him. She opened and closed her legs, still chatting on the phone. The sight of her nylon-covered thighs, disappearing under her skirt, mesmerized him. Had he ever seen anything so hypnotizing?

Chip silently lifted first one hand, then the other, flexing his fingers and circling his wrists to try to return circulation to the digits and palm. Tiny prickles kept shooting through his hands. With one wrist raised he inadvertently leaned his head forward towards her knees before catching himself by putting his hand back down, his fingers just inches from McIntire's heel.

So much danger. Implied pain mixed with real pain mixed with near-miss shame. He inhaled in relief as he returned to a more neutral all-fours position. Safely more than a foot away. From her foot.

An odd image snuck into Chip's mind. What if she somehow lifted her heel while distractedly talking on the phone, and then accidentally ground the heel into the back of his hand? He winced from the thought alone. His hand already tingled from the discomfort of his position, but also the idea of a sharp spike from her heel.

Then tingling in another place. Up on all-fours, Chip could feel the pleasant tickling prickle of his balls tightening up closer to his body within his underwear.

A tightening from arousal. A shifting sensation as blood engorged his cock. His cock filled up space even as his scrotum gathered tighter.

He was very frightened, yes. But excited too. The danger of his position, and the danger of those sharp heels. And the smoothest shine of Clair's knees, thighs, calves. Delicious tingling coming from his exposed hand, his balls, the skin on his arms, his engorged member and now a buzzing inside his head. What is happening to me, Chip thought?

In that tightly enclosed space, so close to McIntire's legs, he felt a new sense overwhelming his whole head. Olfactory overload - new smells filled his sinuses and brain in a sensory burst like he'd never known before. The smell of synthetic fiber, he knew must be from the layer of sheer hose covering her legs. That mixed with the fresh laundry soap he assumed wafted from the tight blue fabric of her skirt. This swirled and filled his buzzing brain, but also, something darker and further on the smell spectrum, a more animal smell.

A synesthetic explosion between the prickling on his hand, his aching cock and the image of a sea anemone shell, seemed to explain a damp salty tang inside his nose, warmer, and triggering his mouth - a bit of unexplained watering. If he could only press his lips and tongue forward...

Chip raised the heel of his right hand up to his mouth and bit down, hard, before he did something incredibly stupid. That pain brought a moment of clarity.

Chip, he told himself, get a fucking grip.

From above the desk, he heard McIntire's voice ring out.

"B, my internet's down again!"

And then the muffled reply from B, in another room in the office:

"I already told one of our interns to fix it. Don't worry, I'll find him."

Uh-oh.

Chip prayed B wouldn't think of where she'd sent him, the first logical place to look. He simply could not risk being discovered this way, his promising Washington experience destroyed.

Trying to clear his head and regain his focus long enough to survive this ordeal, he forced himself not to look up McIntire's skirt anymore. Trying to be more respectful of her privacy, and her private parts. Less ogling.

Instead, he decided to stare down at her feet.

The pantyhose heels and toes were reinforced with a slightly darker nude color, just where the inside of the shoe would rub against nylon as she walked. He guessed that extra reinforcement would prevent runs and ordinary wear and tear of the hose. He could make out through reinforced nylon the darker line just at the base of where her individual toes separated. He imagined what her arches would look like out of the heels. He pictured the contrast between the light nude nyloned arch and the darker-hued toe and heel. Chip hadn't ever had such a close-up view of a woman's feet and shoes before. He'd never paid this much attention to these parts before. But it seemed quite a sexy part of this very attractive woman.

A woman whose legs, he suddenly realized, belonged to no mere mortal. Rather, an untouchable, powerful woman whose face he could not even see. In this position, cramped underneath the desk, somehow naturally Chip began feel an overwhelming desire to prostrate himself to her beauty and power.

Somehow, he didn't even deserve to see her face. That was too far above him.

These legs had once made her the world's Olympic champion. These legs went far, far beyond the merely mortal. These are the legs of a demi-goddess, at least.

And he, Chip, might as well have been a bug. So far beneath her notice that it almost began to make sense that he was stuck here under the desk.

Now those goddess legs were sheathed in nude pantyhose in a way that only enhanced the otherworldly perfection of her skin. Such smooth perfection. If only he could, for a mere second, feel the soles of her feet on his face, the curve of her calves against his fingers, or - ascending Mt Olympus in the worshipful trance of his mind's eye - her pantyhose thighs on his cheek.

Was it the awkward constrictive pain in his hands, knees, feet, and neck? He couldn't stay in this position any longer. The powerful triggering smells of warm salty animal, laundry soap, and nylon? The surreptitious and naughty upskirt view? Something shifted, or recombined in his brain, at that moment. Otherwise it's hard to explain how and why Chip did what he did next.

She was a powerful Congresswoman, a Goddess in flesh and nylons, and he was a nobody college student, and he'd seen something he never should have seen. All of those combustible elements took over his actions during the next few minutes. He gave in to the ache overwhelming his body. He gave in to what his cock wanted and his brain needed.

As silently as possible, only shifting when McIntire spoke loudly on the phone, Chip eased his ass backwards onto the floor. He bent his legs, and lay down, relieving his hunched posture. Vertebrae by vertebrae he lowered himself, until his head was in the farthest, deepest crevice under the desk, furthest from his object of lust. With his legs still bent at the knees and pointing upward, he tucked his ankles as close to his ass as possible, to remain out of site if McIntire happened to look down. This position offered him partial relief, stretching out his neck, shoulders and back.

But only partial relief, of a certain kind. Another growing problem bloomed achingly in his pants.

Craning his neck upward, he could see his shoes were around 8 inches away from the toe of McIntire's shoes. That should be far enough to avoid detection. But looking up from that supine position, Chip now once again had a perfect upskirt view. The crotch of his suit pants was probably a good 18 inches away from her feet. So that remained safe from discovery.

But satisfying one problem had created another. Safe from discovery was not safe from erotic imagination. Chip's brain, on fire from what he would later (in calmer times) identify as a sudden pantyhose, foot, and upskirt fetishistic lust, was in powerful communication with his cock. His cock demanded attention.

He could not stop his hand from what it had to do next. He could no longer keep his arousal restrained like this. The crotch of his pants a mere 18 inches from the goddess's legs, heels, feet. But it was a grand canyon of space and air that protected him from touching her, she'd never traverse that gap, she couldn't see him, and fuck if he didn't desperately need to relieve the ache of his raging cock right now. If he didn't do something he would die, or burst a blood vessel, or be punished by the gods. Or the Goddess.

Slowly, silently, desperately, metal tooth by individual metal tooth he zippered his pants open. Holding his breath, he reached inside the fly, hooked his left thumb upward into the waistband of his tight Lululemon undershorts, and oh sweet fucking glorious mercy, released his erection from its stretchy elastic prison.

Chip shuddered with pleasure and arousal and relief from the removal of the constraint of his underwear. His purple angry cock top skin so taut it shined. He noticed his pee-hole slick and overflowing with pre-cum. He'd left a smeared wetness in the front of his Lululemon shorts. Oh God he'd never felt so turned on in his life. A mini internal contraction produced a slick droplet that emerged at the top, dripped over the shiny surface of the cockhead, to the mushroom edge.

He'd certainly never done anything at all as insane as this. He felt out of control, dizzy with lust. With his right hand he grasped the shaft lightly then wiped with his thumb pad the edge of his head, rubbing the pre-cum around more surface of the cockhead. Eyes open and looking up McIntire's skirt, visible between his bent knees. Where the nylon thighs disappeared under her blue skirt. A river of ecstatic thick electric pleasure flowing between his slow cock stroke and his brain.