Barely Paralegal – Chap 1 by story442..,
Chapter 01 – No Experience Required
This is a story about a summer internship I had working as a paralegal immediately after graduating high school. I was initially very excited about this job, as I thought it was going to be both a great learning experience and an opportunity to earn some actual money. And while it did end up being both of those things, in the end it was so much more, and so much more complicated. I never could’ve known how much of a sexual aspect this job would entail, and while I’m still not fully sure if any crimes were committed, either by me or against me, I do know that this job severely warped my development, both sexually, and as a person in general. So here’s what happened…
Both my mom and dad are lawyers. And while my mom is no longer practicing, my dad is as committed to his work as he’s ever been. As the older of two boys in my family, my father was pretty excited for me to finally start my college education, and more importantly to him, a potential legal career after that. To help facilitate this, as my senior year of high school was wrapping up, he decided to reach out to some of his lawyer friends to see if anyone would be interested in hiring a hardworking, but completely clueless and inexperienced kid like myself, to do some very remedial paralegal work for the summer. I honestly didn’t have much of a choice, but I was fine with his plan.
To my surprise, he actually managed to hook me up with an internship with one of his law school classmates named Mark Dwyer. I’ve known Mark for years as he lives close by to us and has been over to our house a number of times for BBQs and other informal gatherings. Like my dad, he’s in his early 50s, but he’s always come across as more goofy and easy going than either of my parents have ever been. My parents have always struggled to find the humor in anything, so it’s kind of surprising they’re even friends with someone like Mark.
But anyway, Mark is quick to make jokes, even at his own expense, and he also seems to have a great relationship with his wife, Linda. He often will make suggestive, but playful, comments about how attractive Linda is, but never in a creepy cheats-on-his-wife-smooth-talking-businessman kind of way, but rather more of sincere he-just-still-finds-his-wife-really-beautiful kind of way. Ironically, Linda has always seemed totally ordinary to me in terms of looks. It’s not that she’s particularly unattractive or anything, just that she looks similar to any other 40 or 50-year-old woman, which suffice to say isn’t my target market when it comes to girls, so what do I know. But regardless, it was always refreshing to see the Dwyers be flirty like this, because my own parents have basically never showed any kind of physical affection towards each other, like ever.
But anyway, in terms of the internship, once Mark heard that I was looking for a summer job and that I was also going to be attending Wash U. in the fall, which happens to be his undergraduate alma mater, he was all-in for hiring me. Normally, paralegals have at least some college experience, if not more. But coming out of high school, I was already a pretty decent writer, and Mark was confident that there would be a number of ways I could help assist him in his patent attorney work, even if I had zero actual experience. So right before graduation, I went over to his home/office and he gave me a formal job interview. He kept it all very laid back though, and by the end of the hour-long chat, he said he’d be glad to bring me on for 8-hour days, 5 days a week at $15 an hour. I was pumped.
As luck would have it, my 18th birthday was the same day as my high school graduation, so it was a festive day to say the least. After that, I had roughly two weeks to hang out with my friends before starting this job the last week of June. After I calculated just how much I would be making ($120 a day!) I actually couldn’t wait to start the internship. I knew working forty hours a week was going to be a lot, but I figured as long as it wasn’t totally and completely monotonous, it would be worth it.
My first week working went great. Mark’s home office is setup in the basement of his house, but it’s a really nice, finished basement. In fact their whole house is quite fancy. I had my own desk with a laptop and a full working environment. And best of all, the work itself wasn’t too bad. Mark started me off by giving me a bunch of patents he was working on to proofread. He mentioned that by the end of the summer I would be working on writing up some documents of my own, but until then the best learning experience for me would be to read as much as I could. He said I’d also be able to help him research existing patents related to ones he’s working on, and that he’d be giving me a tutorial on that in the next week or two.
I’m sure reading patents all day long doesn’t sound exciting, but Mark and I spent a lot of time just chatting, which was really cool. We talked a lot about what college, and specifically Wash U., was going to be like. The refreshing thing about chatting with Mark is that he always seemed to present things as trade-offs. For example, we talked about whether I was going to pledge a fraternity, and he mentioned that while he had joined one when he was there, he wasn’t sure if he would again if he was doing it all over. He talked about how he developed some really good friendships, but also how there were some aspects, for example the emphasis on binge drinking, that he wasn’t big on. He also warned me that it can be very limiting, as a significant amount of your social life will be locked into your frat events. Either way, it was nice chatting with someone who treated me as someone who could decide things for myself.
My dad has never really treated me like that. I actually don’t even know what his stance on fraternities is, but I guarantee you it’s one of two view points. Either it’s: you HAVE to join a frat because it’ll be the best part of your college experience. Or if it’s not that, I’m sure it’s: you should NEVER join a frat because it’s a giant waste of money that’ll get in the way of your classes. Everything is so goddamn black and white with him, it can be infuriating.
Not only was it fun getting to chat with someone like Mark everyday, but his wife Linda was so extremely nice too. Multiple times throughout the day she’d come downstairs to see how we were doing. She’d constantly bring me a refill on my water glass and even brought some light snacks down from time to time. The two of them didn’t have any children, so I’m guessing she actually enjoyed having the company around the house. Sometimes she’d stay and join in our chats though, and it was clear she had plenty of funny stories and anecdotes to contribute to whatever the topic at hand was as well.
We were discussing drinking in high school and college, and Linda mentioned that she didn’t really drink at all in high school, but as soon as she arrived for her freshman year in college, she didn’t hold back at all. She told a story about one night during the first month of school when she was so wasted after a party, that she had to stumble her way back to her dorm room and couldn’t do anything except crawl into bed, get under the covers and pass out. The problem was, while she was in the right room, and the right bed, she was on the wrong floor of her dorm. This room just happened to be unlocked and have a similar layout, so she fell asleep in the bed of some random girl on a different floor. She was laughing the whole time retelling this story, and as it turns out the girl she had never previously met was surprisingly cool coming home to a stranger sleeping in her bed. In fact, they even ended up becoming friends. But just hearing this middle-aged woman tell this story was kind of mind blowing, because never in a million years would my mom ever tell a story like that. Chances are she never did anything like that in the first place, but even if she had, I’m sure she’d be so mortified to relive the tale today, she certainly wouldn’t be laughing about it. Yet again, it just reinforced both how different the Dwyers were from my own parents, but also how it was legitimately kind of fun hanging out and chatting with them.
It was the middle of my second week of work, and I think Linda was out running some errands or something, so it was just the two of us down in the basement. Mark and I were getting a fair amount of work done, but still shooting the shit like usual. But this afternoon, Mark decided to bring up a subject we hadn’t discussed before.
“So did you date a lot in high school?” he asks me.
First off, it’s weird hearing him refer to my high school experience in the past tense, but I guess that’s because the fact that I graduated still hasn’t sunk in yet.
“No, not really.” I answer him pretty generically, when really the most accurate answer would’ve been “not at all”.
“So are you a virgin?” Mark follows up with, clearly escalating this conversation rather quickly. To be honest, even in just the week plus of working for him, he’s had such a comfortable and honest way of chatting, that this extremely personal question doesn’t seem weird or even unexpected.
“Yeah, I am.” I answer. And then I figure I might as well save us both from the subsequent follow up questions, so I add, “I haven’t even kissed anyone yet.”
After saying this, I’m thinking holy shit, that’s not even something I’m comfortable saying out loud to my closest friends, even though they probably could guess at my total inexperience when it comes to girls. But here I am just admitting it to my dad’s friend, who’s also my boss? How weird is that.
“Don’t sweat that at all.” Mark says reassuringly. “Hell, I didn’t even have my first kiss until I was 19. Sophomore year of college. In fact I must’ve been almost 20 by then too, so I hope that’s not something you ever stress about, because you shouldn’t.”
To be honest, it WAS something I’m embarrassed about. I’m extremely curious about sex, as I’m sure most 18-year-old guys are. I definitely have watched my fair share of internet porn, and I want so badly to try all the different things I’ve seen in those videos, but at the same time I also know that eventually my time will come. Or at least that’s what I keep telling myself, to prevent me from getting too down about it. But suffice to say, it’s hard to imagine any 18-year-old, sexually active or not, who thinks about sex and the female anatomy more than I do.