Big Dick Energy - Cindi Madsen Page 0,3

it blows.”

Hope welled along with my curiosity, and I leaned in to hear the secret that might unlock my success.

“Do you know why I win so many cases? Why people refer to me as a shark in court?”

“I’m sure you’re about to brag about it,” I said, shoving more fries in my mouth and sharing a chuckle with Ellie; it was rare Cat opened herself up enough for a jab.

Ignoring it, Catalina lifted her chin. “Big dick energy—it’s as simple as that. You need to learn how to exude it, Pen. No more apologizing, no letting anyone interrupt or talk over you. No more blushing when a guy gives you the bare minimum of compliments.” She slapped her palm to the table. “You want a promotion? To be in charge of your own projects?”

I nodded, even though she knew I did. We’d spent more time than this girls’ night discussing it. Being in a predominately male field meant constantly being talked over and overlooked. It meant my ideas were described as cute or adorable. That when there was a salon area in a giant hotel, they graciously let me be in charge of “the lady stuff.”

As if ladies weren’t doing stuff all over the hotel, and a lot of that included running business meetings. Once I’d been asked to clean off the conference table after a messy meal I hadn’t even been invited to. I’d gritted back the response I wanted to make, explained that we paid a company to clean, only for my boss’s fragile male ego to shatter in front of me. As retribution, he pulled rank, and as I’d wiped down the table, I’d fought back tears.

That memory mixed in with the snide comments I’d heard—finding out they’d taken me along to a job site for “eye candy.” Hearing my pitched ideas presented by my male coworkers and them taking credit when the client fawned. The guy who’d been hired a short while ago made ten grand more than I did, and I’d been giving my all to BJB Architecture Firm for the past five years.

If I stomped my stiletto and said it wasn’t fair, I was overly emotional, on my period, or a bitch. My cause wasn’t unique. Women across the nation experienced the same thing, and my minority sisters had even more hurdles in their paths. The unfairness settled like a rock in my gut.

As someone who’d written papers on Susan B. Anthony, Katherine Johnson, Claudette Colvin, and the notorious RBG, I wanted to be among the great women who smashed the fucking patriarchy.

If only I had the balls, and sometimes it felt like that was the only way. “Big dick energy,” I said, letting the idea stew.

“You’ve got the biggest dick in the room, Pen. You’re Beyonce and Rihanna, all wrapped in to one. BDE goes beyond yard sticks. It tromps over toxic masculinity. It’s confidence without arrogance. It’s knowing that you’re the baddest bitch with the biggest dick in the room.”

Laughing had garnished us plenty of attention; kissing over the table had catapulted the stares to the next level. Now that Cat had yelled out “dick” we’d hit the trifecta.

“I’ve got the biggest dick,” I said.

“Once more with some feeling.”

“My dick’s so big that I gotta reel it up like a firehose,” I shouted. It might defeat the purpose, but I was also glad another table had gotten rowdy at the same time.

“Ew, but hell, yeah!” Cat lifted her hand, and I high-fived it. “And that doesn’t mean you’re not feminine or that you have to wear an ugly, untailored pants suit.

Ellie waggled her finger. “Nuh-huh. You put on one of your sexy pencil skirts that hugs your ass and makes everyone around you wanna be fabric. Prove to them you’ve got more than a banging body; you also have an intelligent mind that could crush their little peanut brains.” She lifted one of the nuts she’d snagged from the bar on the way in and fisted it.

Then she opened her hand, so the dust and peanut bits fell to the table. With a smirk, she brushed it aside as if it were nothing. Then immediately gathered the mess up in a napkin, as we weren’t animals who thought wait staff should clean up after us.

“If you’re wearing heels, all the better to do some ball crushing,” Cat said, stomping her heeled foot to the floor for emphasis. “In flats, you show them you can go faster, harder—”

“Is anyone else getting turned on?”