Long Time Coming

[🍷 𝗔𝘀𝗵𝘁𝗼𝗻 𝟳𝗖 🍷]

This this my recollection of the first physical female fight.  Names changed, events recalled best I could.  Feelings of how it effected me, couldn't be more true.


The summer I spent elbow-deep in a dish pit, I learned that the most dangerous thing in a restaurant isn't the grease fire or the knife rack. It's two women who've hated each other since high school, smiling at tourists side by side like nothing on earth is wrong.

The place was a white tablecloth joint planted right in the beating heart of tourist country. Doors opened Memorial Day weekend, closed two weeks past Labor Day, and in that short, frantic season a good waitress could clear thirty grand in tips alone. Most of the wait staff had been there since day one--eight summers running--and Marsha and Dee were the crown jewels of that crew.

Both 24. Both tall, five-eight, five-nine, maybe one-forty soaking wet. Not stacked, but blessed, I'd have bet money on matching 36Cs straining the buttons of those white blouses. And their legs. Good lord, their legs. They'd run with different cliques back in school, and the history between them was a landfill of rumors and backstabbing that never got buried, just compacted. If you didn't know the stories firsthand, you'd never have guessed. They were complete professionals. I knew better, and I took every single chance I got to compare them when they ended up side by side at the prep table or the drink station, same height, same build, same golden hair, like the universe had made the same great mistake twice.

That morning I took my break like always. The locker rooms were attached to the single 6 seat table break room. They were nothing more than a fifteen-foot wall of tiny metal boxes, purse-sized, with a little bench. Men's and ladies' rooms were identical. I sat down and heard raised voices through the tiny vents at the bottom of the door, both of them straining to keep it quiet.

"Well where did it go?"

"I have no fucking clue, you bitch!"

Stolen tips. The proverbial straw. Then the volume dropped to something far more frightening than shouting.

"If I had you all alone I would kick your fucking ass."

No hesitation. None. "We can meet after work and see, cxnt."

My heart stopped. I knew those voices like I knew my own. Marsha again, calm as Sunday morning: "Ok, we meet where the fights took place in school if you care to show up!"

"I wouldn't miss it for the world," Dee fired back.

They walked out and I sat there like a statue, staring at my shoes, doing everything in my power to hide what that thirty-second exchange had done to me.

The next three and a half hours were geological. They glided through the dining room, refilled drinks, laughed at tourists' jokes, brushed past each other without a flicker. Finally Marsha ended up alone and I pounced. "Did I hear what I think I heard back there in the locker room?"

She shrugged. A grin crawled across her face. "What did you hear?"

I laid it out. She smiled, turned, and walked off. "Sounds correct to me."

2:30 came and I was out back by2:30:03. Dee emerged first, stalking to her car. Ten seconds later Marsha pushed through the door. I was already in my seat, window rolled down. Dee sat in her car with hers down too. Marsha swung her door open, one long leg inside, and called across over the top of the car: "I'll be about ten minutes behind you, I need to run him home first."

Dee's eyes slid to me. "Probably best he comes along to help you back to the car." beat. "Meet you there if you don't chicken out."

Marsha dropped into the drivers seat and sighed. She'd treated me like an adult since I was four years old, and she didn't insult me now. "You know the situation. Can you watch and, for whatever reason, not interfere?"

Could I. I'd grown up on studio catfights and old magazine hotography. I knew exactly what this was going to be. In my head I delivered a smooth, ice-cool line about it being between the two of them. All calm cool and collected.


In actuality I probaly looked more like this.


We rolled out a block or two behind Dee, and Marsha turned to me, deadly serious. "Do not stop us. This has been a long time coming." Six or seven times in school, at parties, they'd been dragged apart, both of them landing their share of shots every time. We pulled in and Dee was already in her car, stripping the extras off her uniform, her name badge, earrings. Marsha did the same beside me. We stepped out and Dee went straight at me.

"Not as dumb as you look, I see you took my advice. I promise not to hurt her too bad, Ashton. But enough that you can see how weak your stepsister is."

Then they started walking, and I forgot how to breathe. The sway of their hips. Their calves flexing and releasing with every step on the dirt path. The cut of their shoulders, their asses, those endless legs. No screaming, no drama--just bold, quiet claims traded back and forth like bets at a card table. In the clearing, Marsha stopped. Dee took another four or five steps and turned. One last warning from both of them: "Don't stop us unless you hear one of us say stop and the other doesn't." I rattled my last two functioning brain cells together and nodded.

Then I let my eyes drink it in, because I knew it was the last calm moment I'd ever get. Two bottle blondes, golden waves spilling past their shoulders, standing across from each other in identical uniforms, white blouses, black skirts cut one size too small to coax the tips up, legs shimmering in sheer black hosiery, black flats. A mirror image built for war. They slipped their flats off in unison.

"You ready?" Dee asked.

"For the past four years," Marsha said, "I have dreamed of this day."

There was no signal. There was no count. One heartbeat of silence, and then both of them had a full fistful of the other's hair and the woods came alive with violence.

Every clip, every photo set I'd ever studied......garbage. None of it prepared me for the real thing. They swung with everything they had, and while plenty of punches missed, enough found a home, each one landing with a thick sound I'll hear when I'm 80. The grunts were feral, punched out of them from the gut. But the shrieking? The squealing I'd braced for? It never came. And somehow that was the sexiest part of all. Without it, I could hear everything, the strain, the effort, the raw work of two women trying to destroy each other. Wild. Feminine. Primal. Beautiful in a way that made my stomach clench.

Their nylon sheathed feet carved wide stances into the forest floor. Blood appeared on noses and lips, not pouring, just there, dark and honest. The pace slowed but the intensity didn't; now they were wrestling for leverage, each trying to trip the other down, blonde strands already scattered across the dirt like offerings.

Then a thud I felt in my own ribs, and both bodies hit the ground.

They landed on their sides and never stopped swinging fists at faces, now feet driving into torsos, nasty names grunted out between clenched teeth as each hunted for the weak point in the other's will. Their skirts rode up and my mouth went dry, they both wore stay-up stockings, lacy tops biting into bare thigh. Their blouses shredded from friction against the earth, buttons giving up one by one. Wet, fleshy smacks cracked through the trees. Their breathing came wild and ragged, two untrained warriors burning every calorie they had. They kicked like mules, clean shots that rattled and shoved the other backward, and still the hair stayed stretched taut between them, each pulling like she meant to scalp her rival. Every landed blow came with a swear word nailed to it, a promise that there was plenty more where that came from. Defiant. Stubborn. An absolute wreck of human beings, somehow sexier than anything my imagination had ever dared build.

They grabbed with both hands now, twisting, trying to tear each other's heads clean off. In a blink they surged from their sides to their knees, yanking each other forward, and the uppercuts started. Vicious, rising blows, each one punctuated by a one-word name spat like a curse. Marsha was getting rocked, head snapping, and I held my breath, waiting.

Then she ripped Dee's head down by the roots, and three loud, fleshy smacks cracked through the clearing like gunfire.

"OK-- I AM DONE!!! Stop! Stop!" Dee cried.

Marsha stopped. The hair fell from their fists. Then Marsha wound up and delivered one last open-handed slap across Dee's face so hard I swear the echo is still bouncing around those woods today.

"Maybe Ashton should help YOU back, bitch." Hatred dripped off every syllable.

And then silence. Both of them sobbing, not from pain, from the adrenaline dumping out of them all at once. Their hands were tangled full of what looked like pounds of each other's golden hair, and they shook the strands loose from between their fingers like confetti at a funeral. The carnage was total. Sweat-slick, blood-flecked faces with hair plastered across them. Blouses hanging open and unbuttoned, breasts spilling slightly free. They sank back onto their heels, knees in the dirt, skirts bunched high, torn stockings laddered to ruin, asses on full display, yet neither one made a single move to cover herself. Too proud. Too spent. They sat there in the wreckage they'd made of each other, and they looked like goddesses.

I just stood there. Useless. Gaping. Not knowing what to do with my hands, my eyes, anything.

That fight is the whole reason I'm in this forum, period. What blew me away wasn't the violence, it was the silence wrapped around it. No bravado beforehand. No screaming during. The literal epitome of the calm before the storm. Both of them walked back into those woods absolutely certain, in her own head, that she was the one walking out victorious. That confidence was beautiful. That intensity was shocking. And that's when I finally understood how real women fight. There is nothing on this earth more beautiful, more impossibly feminine, or more powerful than two women going at each other on that level, in real life, with everything they have.

[Kiva]

The fact that you took the time and effort to post a small note of gratitude to every author on this thread for the past three months has not gone unnoticed. Please allow me to return the favor.

Your story is well written and will undoubtedly resonate with many readers.

Thank you for your kind support!

[Astrakhan]

Great story, and very fun writing style!

[🍷 𝗔𝘀𝗵𝘁𝗼𝗻 𝟳𝗖 🍷]

The fact that you took the time and effort to post a small note of gratitude to every author on this thread for the past three months has not gone unnoticed. Please allow me to return the favor.

Your story is well written and will undoubtedly resonate with many readers.

Thank you for your kind support!

Thank you Kiva. 

So many seemingly don't get that no one is asked (most of the time) to spend their free time writing tales for us. Easiest to just respect their version / ability and say thanks.

I loved reliving it and trying to convey how that fight made me feel in that moment that day. There was not a "cool"    bone or thought in my head in the moment.

Yes, it most assuredly is nicer to see happy responses and multiple likes, than Joe Blow saying you could/should of had this or that. I write for me and hope people can enjoy my scene in a way that they can relate to.

Some people just think they deserve what they want, just because they want it. World is sadly oversaturated with the Karen's & Kevin's. 

[🍷 𝗔𝘀𝗵𝘁𝗼𝗻 𝟳𝗖 🍷]