So, I Slept With My TaskRabbit

When a hot, buff Albanian showed up at my door to build my IKEA bookshelf, I couldn't pass up the opportunity.

Photography by Zoey Grossman

“He’s outside,” Mom texted me. I, a 23-year-old recent college graduate and sugar baby subletting a “bedroom” in a mickey-moused loft on the border of Williamsburg and Bushwick off the Morgan Ave L stop with three 40-year-old-men in a punk band for roommates, threw my hair into a messy bun and skedaddled out the door and down three flights of industrial stairs to greet Ermal M., the TaskRabbit my mom had hired to assemble my IKEA BILLY bookcase for me. I pushed the brawny metal door of the building open to—what the fuck?—a Greek god with a toolbox. Wicked tall—at least 6’ 4”—scruffy and ripped in jeans and a cold gold chain peeking out from under the neck of his navy blue t-shirt, he smiled a shelf of pretty white teeth at me.

“Are you… from TaskRabbit?” I asked.

“Yes!” he replied, enthusiastically.

This Chippendale is for me? I wondered as I scanned him up and down, considering the possibility that my mom was playing some weird stripper prank on me. He took me in, too. The dry March wind slapped me with the smell of his cold, earthy cologne. Meat and steel. Our eyes locked. I simpered. His professional smile turned cheeky as he clocked my blush. We burst out laughing(!) from what I can only imagine was the shared shock of finding the other attractive.

Realizing I was being rude and kooky, I said, “Come in, come in! Sorry. This way,” and led him to the stairway, suddenly mindful of what I looked like. Had I known that my mom hired a $60/hour hottie to piece together my cheap (but efficient) furniture, I would’ve worn a push-up bra or something. Instead, I wore a pair of ratty see-through leggings with a cigarette burn in one of the ass cheeks and a sports bra under a light pink tank top. Messy bun glazed with grease. No makeup on.

I bet he’s looking at the hole in my pants, I thought, rolling my eyes at myself and arching my back to show him a good angle of my ragamuffin ass while I walked us up the stairs. I made small talk as he followed. How’s the weather? Did you find the place okay? His voice was buttery smooth. Boyish but brute. How was the weather? And had he found the place okay? I don’t know. I was flustered! But I filled the silence with polite dumb questions and swallowed my huffs of exhaustion up the three flights and through the maze of hallways to the apartment.

“This is me!” I said, letting him into the loft and directing him to two slender IKEA boxes leaning against the plywood kitchen wall. “Can I get you anything to drink?” I asked. “Water? Coffee? Tea?”

“I’ll take a coffee,” he said, placing his toolbox on the floor next to his big brown work boots. I didn’t dare to look him in the face. I didn’t want to catch a case. I didn’t want to sexually harass this man. I did want to sexually harass this man, but I didn’t want to get my mother banned from TaskRabbit because of it. I switched the kettle on to boil and listened to his boots scoot towards the boxes. Music leaked in from the living room. Some indie shit—Pale Saints or Elliott Smith. My least favorite roommate—the one I had drunk sex and hangover sex with just a few days after having moved in (oopsie!)—was home and presumably getting stoned, vaping from his digital juicebox, and YouTubing “How To Leathercraft a BDSM Collar.” I wished he would fuck off and die, then and eternally. As the water got hot, I sat at the kitchen table and opened up my laptop.

“Wtf mom, he’s so hot,” I iMessaged.

“Lol talk to him,” she texted back.

That crazy bitch! Leave it to her to know my exact type. She is a phenomenal gift-giver.

I watched Ermal from the corner of my eye like a lazy-eyed stalker as he lifted and carried the tall, thick boxes to the center of the kitchen. His biceps, two bulky croissants, flaked for my lick. He gently laid the boxes down on the floor in front of him to slice open and handle. Me next! Me next! The kettle roared and bubbled. I got off my ass. He watched as I preheated the French press and bloomed his grounds before filling the carafe.

“Want any milk or sugar?” I asked.

“Sugar, please,” he said.

“Where are you from?” I asked, bypassing the four-minute steep with more dumb small talk.

“Albania.” He was proud. “But we moved to Long Island when I was young.”

“Cool!” I stood on my tippy toes and reached into the cabinet for the bag of sugar which had become brick-hard from nonuse. I pushed the plunger of the press down deep and slow, then poured Ermal a cup of coffee. “Coffee’s ready!”

We stood closer than ever at the kitchen table. Dear God, he was giant with an impeccable physique. My ex-boyfriend had been a wide-necked MMA fan, so I knew about and grew to get wet for these things (overall build, but well-defined biceps and deltoids, specifically). It’s a fascination that makes me feel like a gay man or a sculptor or a serial killer, enthralled and horny by man’s pretty pump.. Before him, I fucked limber, shy art twinks and fuckboys. After him, I fuck like a wolf and fight dirty. Hands, hair, and tongues everywhere. I’m a big girl–heavy-boned, tall, strong, soft, and womanly–and rarely ever feel small. So when a jacked man towers over me, I size up pathetically, am horrified, and love it. Extra points and grool if they’re pretty (like me). Ermal, Balkan bronze, was a fucking Rodin begging to be grazed and soiled by my filthy little fingers. I’ll give him something to think about, I thought as he thanked me and whiffed the steam from his mug. I handed him the sandbag of sugar and a spoon.

“This sugar’s hard,” he let me know.

“You have to work for it if you want to taste my sugar,” I actually said like an 80s porno bimbo or sexual predator. Horrified but impressed by my quick corniness, I laughed. He laughed too, but his lip bite and brow raise signaled that I’d either intimidated him or turned him on. He stared at me as he stabbed and shook the sugar bag, then stirred a heaping spoonful from it into his cup. He threw the hot coffee back like a shot and slammed the mug down. What a guy.

“Oh yeah?” the cocky handyman spat back and winked.

He returned to his handiwork, folding onto his hands and knees to map out the puzzle of plywood pieces. He didn’t shrink once condensed, but rather, offered me a new view to gawk and drool at. The back of his shirt read “Texas” and flashed a slash of the tanned leather skin of his lower back. I imagined attacking him from behind, mounting him and nuzzling my cheek into the slope between his shoulder and neck, letting myself hang deadweight like a sleepy orangutan against his landslide. My pussy ached empty. I squirmed my clit against the seam of the crotch of my leggings. I seeped wet through them—no panties on (I know, I’m a slob)—and onto the galvanized kitchen chair as I watched the nape of his neck bob for screws and pegs. Get it together, you slut, I dommed myself. I decided that the silent tension contributed to the eroticism, so I blue-balled myself and reverted to talk. We talked about music, food, movies, work, and the trials and tribulations of living and dating in New York. He confirmed his relationship status: single. He’d never fucked or dated a TaskRabbit customer before. I asked him, of course. I learned that he was in his late twenties, an ex-body builder turned gym rat and real estate agent (and TaskRabbit), and an aspiring YouTube fitness trainer.

“I could be the big Albanian guy that Albanians watch for fitness tips and shit,” he pitched.

“Totally.”

Nearly finished with the task at TaskRabbit hand, Ermal stood just an inch or two shorter than the 79.5” frame but nearly as wide. He started on the shelves. The plastic sound of a vape-crackle followed by a baggy sock-shuffle and polluted puff of smoke entered the kitchen. My roommate. The worst. Fuck off, pervert! (like I should talk). But how itty bitty and soggy he looked next to my lumberjack! I couldn’t help but mean girl-giggle at the shithead’s amplified frumpiness. I wished they’d start fighting.

Ermal lowered his drill and nodded respectfully at the elder. Man language. My roommate politely nodded back, then grabbed a White Claw from the fridge. As he popped the top and shuffled back to his living room kingdom, he mouthed a silent excitement at me as if he were cheering, fuck yeah!, while Ermal made an ew-who-is-this-beta? face behind my roommate’s back. I mirrored Ermal’s yuck. Moments later my roommate texted me.

“OMG that dude’s huge! He’s your exact type!” His support surprised me. What, are we bros now?

“I know right?!” I texted back. Fake ass bitch.

With maybe thirty or so minutes of the task left, I scrambled to scheme how to make my move. I mean, hadn’t I been so obviously into this guy, sluttily sticking my ass out and eyeballing him like a sexually-deprived poolside housewife? And hadn’t he matched my flirt, especially with the sugar? Maybe he didn’t want to overstep on the clock? For someone so forward, I’m clueless when it comes to men’s [sexual or romantic] interest in me (unless they’ve paid me, duh). I’ll make the first move, sure—I’m used to it—but I require an obnoxious amount of reassurance to seal the deal. My brain needs to “get” that I’m desired—ideally, more than any other shiny hole in the whole wide world—in order to spread my legs and tight slit open.

“He’s so gorgeous idk what to do,” I texted my mom again.

“Hahaha I’m dying laughing! I secretly did that on purpose. I found the hottest TaskRabbit I could find cuz I thought maybe you’d have a new friend. Is he talking to you?” she replied.

Wow, my sadistic nature is hereditary! Good to know. Fuck it. Fine, I’d lay it on him thicker than glob in hopes of him laying his thick megalith bod on me. What’s a [hot] girl got to lose? Oh, nothing, just my will to live and fuck ever again!

I gasped performatively, “Oh my God! Guess what?”

“What?!” Ermal gasped back, mocking me with playful exaggeration. He was obviously a dick.

“My mom just admitted to me that she hired you because she thought you were my type! I can’t believe her!” Better to blame my matchmaker mother than myself.

He chuckled coolly, unshocked. “Well, am I?” he smirked.

“Duh,” I confessed and rolled my eyes at the arrogant douchebag. I am obviously a brat.

“Then what are you doing after this?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

“Let’s hang out.”

“Okay.”

Success! How mortifying! Thanks, mom!

The IKEA shelf in question, fully assembled. Photo courtesy Madison Murray.

“I’ll be right back,” I announced and sauntered a little Rumba-walk to the bathroom. I took a quick but thorough shower to scrub and shave my legs and pussy smooth for my FuckBunny. We will fuck like TaskRabbits, I manifested as I moisturized my pruney flesh and brushed my teeth. I wrapped myself in a skimpy mini-towel and scooped my B-cup tits up-and-in to show off my dew-spritzed cleavage. Now, the fantasy was a bit—a requirement, an assignment, a real-life pornographic opportunity. Seize it! Material!—for writing, shitposting, slumber party storytelling, and learning. This (being a slut) is what your early twenties are for.

I emerged from the bathroom like a femme fatale Looney Tune through a mist of film noir sewage steam. Cue the va-va-voom. Ermal sat where I’d soaked at the kitchen table and looked up from his phone. The bookcase (now complete) stood liminally in the center of the room. Ermal leered at me with twisted, juicy, lickable lips so fat they’d burst caterpillar-goo if I bit them. He leaned back and studied me as I dripped steam to my bedroom in a tizzy. I left him wanting more as I closed the door and swaddled my naked body in a satin, raspberry robe. I welcomed him into my juvenile, borderline hoarder bedroom stacked from floor to 14’ ceiling with tinctures, tea blends, medications, troll dolls, clothes, candles, and animal bones. I knew there was no way he’d be able to fit, never mind fuck, on the lofted bed elevated just a few feet beneath the cracked, mildewed ceiling. Thankfully, I had a sleeper sofa (from IKEA) beneath the loft we could chill and fondle on.

“Where do you want it?” he asked.

“Wow, okay! Right to it, I guess…” I snickered.

“The bookcase!” he laughed.

I told him where I wanted it (the bookcase). He bear-hugged and hoisted it above him as if it were an anorexic ballerina and waddled to where I’d told him to put it. I liked telling FuckBunny what to do. Off the clock, he drank White Claws and curiously rummaged through my hoarded treasures. He held up a metal whip like some dude on a dating app with a freshly caught fish.

“What the fuck is this?!”

“It’s a whip!” I giggled, half-embarrassed, half-pleased to have shocked him. “I was a dominatrix for a little bit in college.”

“Sure you were…” he doubted. “Did you fuck them?”

“No…” I struggled to fight a grin. I’m a horrible liar—always have been. Also, what the fuck? What a presumption.

“You fucked them!” he called me out on my bullshit.

“Fine—yes! Only some of them,” I confessed. Why did I do that? What have I done? Will he murder me now? Tell my mom? Damn this sexy, evil man! Why, TaskRabbit, why?!

“It’s okay,” he said. “I get it. Money’s money. I did something like that for a bit too.”

“Oh? How so?”

When Ermal was fourteen, he started his very own YouTube channel. Having gone through puberty earlier than most of his classmates, he took pride in going to the gym, lifting weights, maximizing his protein intake, and widening his bulk, and wanted to document and show off his progress. Every day, he’d post a short shirtless video of him flexing his growing muscles in different positions on YouTube. He went viral. Suddenly, hundreds if not thousands of men were commenting under his videos and commissioning him to flex even harder and say things like, “I’m so much bigger and manlier than you, you puny shrimp.” One of these men made a website for him, managed it, and took 10% of his earnings. A digital pimp. Ermal was neither nude nor “sexual” in these videos. He did this (sold custom fetish content and put his earnings into a high-yield savings account) for two years—until he was sixteen.

While his casual “trauma dump” horrified me, it also made me… even more (and shamefully) attracted to him? Not because of his experience, testimony, or recounting as a means to humor me, but because he had opened up in a way that made me feel special; I doubted he shared this part of himself with his bros or bring-home-to-mama girls. We shared hot person camaraderie. We were just two people who’d always been—prematurely, commercially—“sexy.” Being hot can be very lonely. Funny! Bizarre! Boring! Lucrative! Maybe that was the psychic sympathy we shared when I’d first opened the door to him. And just as we did at the front door, we laughed. For a beat, I regretted having automatically eroticized him. Was I, like these criminal old men, predatory? No. Maybe? No fucking way! He’s a Redwood! A man! He can handle himself and obviously me (at least physically). And I, another “victim” of my own body and how others have historically handled it, could still want and need to give and receive a perverted objectification. We were fine.

We drank White Claws and cuddled on the futon. I stretched my creamy soft legs on top of his manspread, pointing and flexing my toes next to his crotch. We took turns making fun of each other. Ballbusting as foreplay; very Northeast of us. He played me one of his favorite Albanian EDM songs, humming and fist-pumping to it. The song sucked but his dance was cute. The more we hung out, the less porny and more nerdy he became, which only made me want him more. The more he made me laugh, the hornier I got.

“Can you flex your big muscles for me?” I asked coyly.

Like a good soldier, he answered physically. He stood dominant over me—his groin at the tip of my nose—and peeled his shirt off, baring his swole and hairy Adonis belt and pecs two times the size of my head. His left pec was tattooed with a phoenix rising behind an axe? Super trashy. Hot. His abs? Chef’s kiss; not too lean. I want thick-cut meat. Like a chick’s fat ass or hips, there’s more to grab and pull into. He reached his gorilla arms back, extending his abdomen far past the crown of my head, downturned his gaze to teensy-tiny little me, and flexed. Ding-ding-ding! The boxing bell inside my cervix rang, delivering vibrations down my cunt and thighs and into my toes which now bowed at his Hercules pose.

“Holy fuck,” I groaned.

He dropped his weapons and bent down to trace my mouth with his tongue, licking my pout lightly as if it were the summit of a soft serve. He clutched my thighs like dumbbells. I gripped his marbled beating neck with both hands and pulled his mouth closer into my own to absorb, suck, and pull on his tongue. My pussy pulsated; it sobbed to get stuffed. I whined for his cock, flailing and failing to undo his belt with feral hands. I felt his bulge beneath his jeans. I shoved my hand down his pants and strangled his snake. Fucking huge. Smooth-skinned and hard-boned. Hot breath. He whimpered drool onto my chin as I groped him, his lips snarling at the throb. “I need it,” I begged. He licked his spit from my cheek like a freak, then pushed my shoulders back into the futon, ripping my hand out and away from his wrench. We watched each other hustle to strip. I slid away from my robe, hunkered my feet on either side of the futon, and crunched my pelvis and pussy up to expose myself to him. He ogled my dripping sticky as I rubbed my clit and sucked on my fingers like an attention whore cam girl. He stepped out of his jeans and yanked down his boxer briefs, casting his 5 lb cut cock at me like a fucking 3D movie. “Fuck, you’re so big!” And it was true. I’d never taken a cock that thick and hung before, but I most definitely fucking wanted to [try to]. “Yeah baby?” he patronized and rubbed the head of his monster dick against my mucilaginous slit. “You want it?” he asked. “I want it so fucking bad. Please give it to me. Please.” He folded me in half and elevated my legs onto his upper traps and pushed his tip inside of me.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I breathed laboriously as he sank his shaft deeper and deeper into my pussy, testing the threshold of my little fuckhole. How much more cock is there?! But he continued to sink in and down on me. “You’re being such a good girl,” he reassured me, commencing his thrust and pump. Now we’re fucking. Sweat condensed at my temples from the pressure as he picked up the speed and fucked me fast. I’m lucky that when I’m close to dead from horniness, I drench myself and don’t need much lube, if any. So as he bunched my ass cheeks from under me and screwed me up-and-down and back-and-forth, slipping and sliding and grinding my flexible hinges against his wood, I WD-40ed his underbelly with my splosh. “You’re so wetttt,” he creaked. I nearly cried, “I knowwww.”

I pressed his pelvis away, popping his dick out from my warm spill. I crawled to my hands and knees—face down, ass up—and spread my ass cheeks apart, yawning for his machine to bore into my well. He drilled to the end of his shaft, his balls slapping against my thighs. He smacked my fat ass with his paw. I squealed like a filthy muddy piglet. My head thrashed, ratting my hair between the wall and futon. His mass jabbed my cervix. He’ll split me in half! My hole’s too small for his drill bit! I double-tapped his thigh and cried uncle. He extracted his cock from my swollen, bruised lips.

“You’re too big for me!” I yelped in defeat. “I’m sorry. Can I suck your cock?”

“Yeah, baby. Suck my dick.”

I dismounted the sofa, squeaky and covered with sweat, spit, my own grool, and his precum, and surrendered to my knees onto the cold floor. He relaxed into a manspread. His equilibrium. I filled the negative space between his thighs with my strawberry blood-filled face, resting my head beneath his balls and looking up at Him like God. My offering? My tongue and open throat coated in a spider web of spit. I showed it off. Blowjobs build my self-esteem. I feel my prettiest with a dick in my mouth. It’s a mighty performance. So fun to play and gag! Emit spit! Leak! I kissed his cockhead and cupped his balls, then worshipped the inches with my googly eyes and tongue. I’m sloppy with it. The lubricant is better for the dick and my throat, and I am nothing if not considerate. Like an opera singer, I raised my soft palate and gorged down on his tool, pushing it in as far as my throat allowed it to go. He clamped my head down with his hands and fucked my face, forcing me to pitifully gag a supragastric belch. I’m sure my roommate heard it all. He probably jerked off outside the door. Whatever. He suffocated me until he caulked, filling my esophagus to my teeth with cum.

We wilted together for a ten-minute breather. I asked if I could take a picture of his bicep. He smiled, “Yes,” and flexed. We exchanged phone numbers, got dressed, then hugged and kissed goodnight and goodbye. I checked my phone.

A text from my roommate: “OMG did you guys fuck?”

The bicep photo, courtesy Madison Murray.

A text from Mom: “How did it go?”

“Give him 5 stars,” I texted her.

That—the time I fucked a TaskRabbit—was my last (I hope not ever) truly slutty encounter on March 12, 2020. The next day, the United States government declared a nationwide emergency, and all the world’s decent and privileged-enough people quarantined. Ermal texted me. It was sweet. He apologized (unnecessarily) for coming across as just wanting sex. He schmoozed and confessed to wanting to get to know me better. He found me “interesting” and invited me to go hiking with him—an “outdoorsy” date to avoid the virus. I wasn’t so sure. Schools, offices, restaurants, and bars closed. Sugar daddies died. The economy collapsed. I moved back to Massachusetts. And to self-soothe from sickness and death and isolation and violence and bad news and boredom and alcoholism and overdoses and sexual frustration and biocultural decline, we all said “hi” extra loud and to everyone from our phones. Quickly, the internet became society and friend and work and money and diary and surveillance and fun and scary and sex and soapbox and everything and forever. Offline facilities gradually reopened in order of priority. I moved back to Brooklyn. I got a boyfriend. I got a remote corporate job. I got a dog. I moved in with my boyfriend. I broke up with my boyfriend. I moved in with my best friend.

On September 29, 2022, I texted Ermal: “Hey! It’s Madison from two years ago lol (TaskRabbit hookup). I hope you’ve been well! I’m back in Brooklyn! Do you help with moving?”

He replied: “Lol my favorite client! Yea sure. I have an SUV or we can rent a uhaul. Too bad COVID kept us apart cuz I thought you were really hot. And I’m well. Hope you are too :)”

We made a plan. A few hours later, I got a “Someone you may know is on TikTok” notification. Ermal! With 20k followers! He did it! Good for him! Proud and curious, I scrolled through the grid of Ermal in muscle tees, Ermal in hoodies, Ermal in button downs, Ermal shirtless. His first TikTok: December 2021. But his niche wasn’t fitness. He ranted in Albanian. Oh no… Clueless about what he preached, I googled his username to uncover a Reddit discussion declaring him a violent racist, misogynist, Neo-Nazi, and the “Albanian Andrew Tate.” An article doxxed him for having rallied with Unite the Right and Rise Above Movement. My pussy retreated into my gut. What ever happened to shame? What ever happened to secrets? But also, thank God (I guess?) I dug up his moronity sooner rather than another fuck later.

I texted him to cancel our plans, politely explaining that I’d found his social media and couldn’t see or talk to him again due to our sociopolitical misalignments. His response? A tale as old as time. No surprise. He snapped and called me an ugly worthless whore amongst other things. He wrapped up his derogatory paragraph with “Truth hurts. And just so you know, I had these exact same beliefs when you sucked my dick. How does it feel to have blown a man like me? I bet it felt nice.” As a matter of fact, it did feel nice! I missed not knowing him. I missed not knowing any man, depersonalized into body and fantasy for me to eyefuck, choke on, and swallow. Rest in peace to being slutty.

I blocked his number and sent a screenshot of our textoff to my mom, who knew the TaskRabbit and I had hung out but (of course!) didn’t know that we hooked up.

She reported his TaskRabbit account and texted him:

“How dare you! I am very disappointed in you, Ermal M. You should not turn to degradation if someone decides that they want nothing to do with you. Just because your ego is bruised, don’t go lashing out with insults at my daughter. Lastly, you’re lucky to have had your little dick sucked by her!”

Bless her soul for never knowing how big it was.