Me and my girlfriend Lara met for the first time a couple of months ago, and it was immediate chemistry. Our personality seems to be perfectly matched. One of the things that impressed me about her was that she wasn’t disgusted by the trash. One time, we were at her place (she still lives with her parents and her little brother) and opening the lid of the food waste bin she saw that his brother had thrown the cellophane of his new phone in there. Without any problem, she dug with her bare hand in the mug, taking way too much time for grabbing it and messing around with the waste.
Fast forward to yesterday: “Mike, I think I know a good way to save some money.”
“Go on, I’m listening.”
‘We should go dumpster diving! The people throw away a lot of good stuff, most of it still in his packaging. I know, it’s not the hottest date and it’s probably stinky in there but hey, we could save something.”
“Yeah, sound like a good idea.”
Going to the place we agreed, an apartment complex, I couldn’t stop thinking that maybe this time I had found a garbage fetishist like me. But I was throwing back that idea, it seemed too good to be true.
She was waiting for me: hair tied to chignon, oversized beige hoodie, black sweatpants and a really old pair of sneakers. She was beautiful. After we kissed, she pointed behind me and said: That’s the place! - A huge red container, two metres tall, three by four metres area, with a metal ladder to reach the open top. I was surprised and more convinced that this wasn’t going to be a normal dumpster dive.
I climbed the ladder and looked in the lid.
“Lara, there’s a chute here. I think the only way to reach those bags is go inside.”
“I know! It’s called dumpster DIVE for a reason haha. If the big boy doesn't want to dirty his hand first, I will, haha.”
“Ladies first then.”
I helped her to climb on the chute. She sat there, looked down and then said, “See ya in there!”
I heard Lara slide in the container, then a sound of plastic crackle. “It’s a soft landing!”
So I climbed in, slid down and arrived sinking with most of my leg in the sea of black garbage bags. “Lara, where are you?” It was really dark in there. Not seeing my girl, I started walking in the bags. It was all quiet. Not a single noise. I was going to call her again, when two bags flew away and Lara jumped out of there. I fell back in surprise. She fell back too, dying with laughter.
“Lara what the hell were you doing?!” I said, more amused than angry.
“It was a thing that I had to do! You should have seen your face!”
She then started laughing again. This was the moment of the truth: I wanted to know how of a trash fetishist she was. So I jumped up, took two soft bags and launched them at her. She started laughing more. Two seconds later, Lara jumped on me making me fall between two bags and under the surface level. I laughed too.
“Mike, you think that I didn’t see your computer history? I perfectly knew you were a garbage fetishist, like me. So I wanted to test you.”
“So, how am I doing?”
“We will see.”
“What...?”
With a small cutter, she ripped open the bag at my right, jumping back before she could be hit by the fall of waste that landed on me: various packaging, small food cans, napkins, and a huge amount of broccoli. She was laughing so hard. I couldn’t let her win. So I jumped up, covered in trash, and I charged her through a soft wall of bags. She looked at me chuckling, “Do you like broccoli?”
“Not too much.”
So I jumped back after opening a bag exactly on top of her, giving her a trashy shower. Apparently this bag was huge, so she was almost completely buried under the avalanche of garbage.
“You bastard!” she laughed, muffled by all the trash “That’s unfair, you’re stronger!”
“Okay, you’re right!”
So I went and sat next to her. “You know what? We should do this as a couple.”
“I totally agree.”
She then ripped open a bag that was on top of us, making the garbage fall on us while we kissed. Both of us were completely covered in all types of household trash.
“You know, never I could have imagined a weirder date,” I said.
“I know, but we aren’t exactly normal.”
“Details haha! Also, you have a banana peel right on your chignon.”
“Just that? Haha!”
“That one particularly caught my attention.”
So we were, sat there, completely covered and surrounded by trash, in this huge container, when she looked up and said, “Wait. Why is there a wall of squished bags behind us?”
“Yeah, I was wondering too. Could it be...”
I didn’t even finish the phrase when a loud metallic noise started from the opposite side of the container. Then a wall started going directly against us.
“The compactor! Mike what the hell do we do?”
“I don’t know! You were the one who checked the place! How didn’t you notice that this had a damn compactor?!”
“Ok, calm, think.”
“There’s no time to think!”
“Okay we should jump inside the wall of trashbags.”
“What? Are you serious?”
“You have a better idea, banana chignon?”
“No! Mmmh, I like this name. Whatever, let’s just jump in there! Hope it works.”
So we started digging through the black bags as fast as possible. Once we created a space, we sprinted in there and I managed to make a fall of four or five bags in front of us to soften the impact. Then I crunched with Lara and we hugged. It was beautiful. I was hugging the girl that I loved, both covered with trash, surrounded by soft black bags. It was like being buried in pillows. Then the pressure kicked in and, as scary as it was, the adrenaline and the emotions went wild for both of us. Some bags started popping. One bag popped right on our faces and we were now covered in a mess of coffee grounds, tea bags, spaghetti, spinach and rotten eggs.
“Goddamn!”
When we thought we couldn’t handle more pressure, the compactor backed off and we started breathing again.
“Wow, this was close... puah!”
“Don’t spit on me!”
“I was eating some of this spinach!”
“Okay, that’s a weird situation.”
“Yeah, but I like it.”
“Me too, haha. Mike? I’m horny like a horse. And I have a condom in my pocket.”
“Well, I don’t think we’re going anywhere, so...”
We started banging back and forth, moving all the trash and the bags around us and both with our faces pressed in a bag, bringing some breathplay with it. With the final bang, one of the bags that was under us popped. We sank in a mess of food wrapper, juice bricks and a pizza carton.
“Damn girl, we couldn’t be more messed up than this.”
“I know... yaaawn. I’m really tired.”
We fell asleep very quickly. It has been an intense day.
After some hours, we woke up and difficulty made our way through all the compacted bags. Lara took a deep breath.
“I can finally breathe normally!”
“I’ve never thought that the air of a dumpster could have been so refreshing!”
“Yeah, better that we clean ourselves a bit before we go out.”
“Yeah. What a pity, I like your banana peel chignon.” She threw that peel right to my face. “Okay I got it!” I said, giggling. Then we removed all the crap that was attached to our hair. “Damn eggs.”
It was incredible how much stuff our clothing had collected. I had the hood of my sweatshirt full of spaghetti, seasoned with spinach and broccoli, Lara’s hood even had two apple cores and canned beans in it! Searching through the sweatshirt big pocket I had a banana peel dipped in food wrapper, napkins and used tissue. Lara had a couple of cans of tuna, some tissues, some food wrappers and two plastic water bottles. When I arrived home I also found that inside my sweatshirt were a lot of coffee grounds, other food wrappers and napkins and yet another banana peel. I even found a tea bag and some paper in my underwear...
After cleaning ourselves up, we finally got out of there and walked home hand in hand. Luckily, it was 5 a.m., so no one was around.
The End