chapter 1: job hunting

“Fuck today” Jenna yelled in her head as she stormed out of her job; or rather, her previous job.

It was Jenna’s third time being late, and management wouldn’t stand for it any longer. She ran in almost an hour late, and was told to just go home. This wasn’t even the first job she had been fired from. It was her third job in 5 months. In fact, the longest she ever held a job was for just over 2 years.

Jenna wasn’t the most “responsible” person in the world either. She liked to sit around binging TV series, played entirely too many games, flunked out of college (for lack of attendance) and lived a mostly hedonistic lifestyle. She was stubbornly shy, and tried her best to simply avoid people.

She threw her car door open and slammed it behind her, knocking something loose from the door. She grunted, having had this happen on multiple occasions, and pushed whatever had fallen back into place before turning on her car and driving home.

Home, if that’s what you’d like to call it. She lived in a crappy apartment in a terrible part of town. She’d hear at least a couple shots being fired a week. She hated it there. She wanted to move out, but everywhere was expensive, and being lazy doesn’t pay the bills.

Her car made grinding and clunking noises as she drove street by street. She felt every pothole she couldn’t avoid, until she couldn’t take it anymore. She broke down before her car could.

“Why does this keep happening to me?!” she sobbed as she pulled into her apartment complex. She parked as close as she could to her room in the parking lot and waited; attempting to hide any evidence of having cried at all. She just knew that some asshat would try to get her attention as she went for her room.

She stepped out of her car and began to walk as fast as she could without looking like she was jogging or running to get inside. Two men were just outside her building, sitting lackadaisical in front of the stairs to get in.

“Daaamn, you okay girl? Because you look fiiine!” One of them shouted.

“Come onnn! Let us see you smile! You look so good!” The other said with a chuckle.

He wasn’t wrong, albeit an asshole that wasn’t wrong. She DOES look good. She was 5’6 with a slim waist, legs that stretched for days and wide hips that matched well with her bubble butt. She was a perfect hourglass figure, and unfortunately the men around her liked to gawk.

“Fuck, whys she always gotta be a bitch?” she heard in the distance before the doors closed behind her.

She bolted for her room door and slammed it shut behind her. She jumped onto her bed and began sobbing loudly. Thoughts raced through her head. She was already late on rent. What was she going to do for work? How was she going to pay her rent? Her amenities? Would she get evicted? She couldn’t move back with her parents; she had moved all the way to California for an art degree, and her parents lived in Pennsylvania. She wasn’t about to go crawling back to them.

She grabbed her laptop from off the floor and began searching for jobs; somewhere she knew she’d get hired in. Fast food? She’d been there, done that. Bar-tending? That’s what she was just fired from. Retail? Fuck retail. Warehouse? Too strenuous.

Nothing looked good, nothing looked pleasing, and none of them paid well. California was expensive, and the tips she made at her old jobs barely covered rent anyway.

“Fuck,” she whispered out loud to herself. “I should just be a fuckin’ stripper”. She laughed as she cried the way you do when you feel at your lowest; like life was just a big joke. She knew she could probably make a good amount of money that way, but to have men grabbing at her, and the inevitable confrontations she’d have to deal with after? Not a chance in hell.

But then she started to think in parallel. “What about web modeling?” She thought to herself. She’d heard stories of women making bank just chatting online. But she’d have to do shit on cam she wouldn’t be comfortable with. No, she didn’t want to do anything like that. Was there a less revealing way she could make money?

She started to get more serious, and her tears started to dry up as she researched what she could do. She started tumbling down fetish content, but some of that made her feel even MORE uncomfortable. Ew! She saw a few things she’d never even think would turn someone on. But, everyone has their kinks. Maybe she could do feet content?

She looked at her feet, and wiggled her toes.

“... No.”

Not long after that, she saw “Mukbang”. Just people eating on camera? Some of these people don’t even talk? And they’re paying for their food?! It sounded like a dream. Hell, some of the models didn’t even show their faces; not completely anyway.

She got a little excited, and decided to give it a shot. But in order to film that kind of content, she needed something to eat, and her bank account was almost dry. She checked her online banking: $13.47 left.

“Fuck.”

She searched for a few places to try and order food, but ended up ordering a small meal from Wendy’s and had it Uber delivered to her. By the time it was delivered, she had finally positioned her phone in a way that she was comfortable filming from her bed.

“Thank you!” She grabbed the food from the delivery boy and slammed the door; not wanting to leave anytime for chit chat. She sat on her bed and groaned in frustration as her phone fell forwards from her sitting down. She placed it back up, fiddled with it for a few minutes to get it in juuust the right spot, and began to record.

“Hi, uhhhh,” She stumbled as she thought about what to say. “I’m MukbangForYourBuck, and uh, this is my first video?”

She looked awkward as she continued to think of what to do. The video only showed her face from the nose down, so she wasn’t too worried about that.

“I got a small Baconator combo from Wendy’s, as I’m too poor for much else” She felt the words exit her mouth hard at the realization of them. “So uh, this is the best I could do for uh, you? Enjoy?” She felt stupid and uncomfortable, but she started to eat regardless.

She didn’t take long to finish, and she didn’t really think to do anything else after, so she simply stopped the recording. She added a title, put a description, and uploaded the video to a site that was fond of such videos, and went to play some games for a few hours to wind down. Today was a rough day.

Tomorrow would be a better day.