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Under the cover of this thing called "my new job", I meet and befriend a cavalcade of smart, straight men — a species I've lived without since splitting up with a Big Love nearly a year before. On the night of the Content Producers' big kickoff party, I'm the first one downstairs. Basking in the summer-evening warmth of the sidewalk, I watch the junior staff pour out of the elevators and ricochet around the lobby like a sackful of superballs. (What I didn't discern at the time: within two years, four of them would be married or engaged to each other.)

At the party, the dorkily handsome Australian web designer attaches himself to me. I've never really spoken to Webby before, but I'm flattered by his attention and charmed by his quick wit. I don't particularly trust either, but after six glasses of Sancerre, what sensible girl wouldn't snag a half-bottle of champagne, hide in the coatroom of the empty upstairs bar, and make out with him like a randy teenager for an hour? When I find out that Webby is notorious for this kind of thing, I don't even care. Adrift in a sea of options, I'm rapidly shedding my chronic libido-crippling shyness.

That's how I find the Hooksexup to pursue Billy, the twenty-four-year-old son of a noted theater producer who's also a design
"Hey baby, you want some fries with that shake?"As it happens, I do.
consultant for the Content Producers. As we're being introduced, I can't help but notice a few mischievous tendrils of dark hair creeping up his broad chest, toward the opening of his wilted linen shirt, a shirt which happens to perfectly match the overdyed blue of his eyes. We flirt until one very late night after someone's birthday. He hurls his jacket to the ground in mock disgust over the lack of available cabs. I'm still laughing when he sweeps me into a loose backward dip and gives me the last first kiss I'll want for quite some time.

I lay my head on Billy's broad chest for almost a year, at first in secret. I cautiously out us to good friends at work as they start to look askance at our suspiciously synchronous cigarette breaks or similar-sounding vacation plans. One particularly loathesome assistant starts giving me knowing looks, so I draw her into conversation, mention Billy in passing, and let her ask me about him. I deny anything untoward but entrust her with the "secret" that I — hey, doesn't everyone? — have a little crush on him. Billy and I continue dating in privacy until we're finally tired of arguing all the time. He leaves the Content Producers, and soon afterward, I leave him. He promptly takes up with someone at his new job.

For several weeks, I am a mad kissing bandit, both at work and in my larger life. One day, my buddy Mack, the daddy of New Business Development, takes one long, wolfish look at this new swing in my step and yells down the hall after me, "Hey baby, you want some fries with that shake?" As it happens, I do.

Mack, who's about fifteen years and eighteen salary levels my senior, has a lot more to lose than I do.
We will not submit to the tyranny of underwear.
He is an unruly man of large and messy appetites, not empirically attractive but powerfully sexual. He drinks too much, drives a revoltingly fast little car and wakes the neighborhood with his barking when we fuck. And for one hot summer, that's about all we do. We establish from the outset that, having each just ended capital-R Relationships, we will indulge our ids without wondering what to call it. We will not submit to the tyranny of underwear. It is perfect bliss, until suddenly, one night over dinner, it is simply not. He says, "Um, listen…," and I say, "I know," and we hurry home together one last time.

After a year-and-a-half with the Content Producers, I'm a little fatigued. I know that I don't want to fool around with Francis the copywriter as soon as I take his glasses off. He stands there blinking at me like a stunned bat, apparently wondering what's going to happen next. I want to shout, "Some sort of sex act happens next, so get it going!" And I'm frustrated that my job isn't changing anymore. The fun is over, so I get some lucrative freelance work at a more established company, The Content Recyclers. On my first day there, I discover that I will be sitting right next to my one-time fling, Webby, and two chairs down from another Content Producer I once knew — I'll call him BJ. If they hadn't put the copier across the hall, I might've been surrounded.

Everyone hears — and has — tales of career-immolating disaster: Getting caught in the powder room with two grams and a topless intern at the boss's Christmas party; obsessively dressing for, and walking past the office of, the person you kissed after a work event six weeks ago and immediately became invisible to; fending off the needy boss who mistakes an assistant's eagerness-to-please for a secret love. These projects, once launched, tend to end badly.

I think I got lucky. My pride got wounded, and I obsessed about a few guys I didn't even like that much, just because they were there. But despite the occasional whispered speculations about my leisure activities, I was never the center of an office scandal. Either I have a gift for giving my notice just in time, or else bringing work home with you isn't what it used to be.

Perhaps the culture of the workplace has expanded to include as many diverse expressions as the American family. Perhaps post-post Baby Boomers are the first to have the luxury of using the corporate ladder as a prop in our libidinous gymnastics routines. At least I'll never be fired for not getting along with people. And I have eight or nine references who can attest to that.  n°

Names and identifying details have been changed.

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13 Comments

Ew.

TBA commented on 09/13

Great writing! I, too, have past experiences with inner-office romances and I found the story to be quite funny and, at times, very familiar...lol!

JM commented on 09/13

woof!

non commented on 09/14

Though our culture is becoming completely raunchy,tacky and tasteless in every way ( the "New" New Romantic period perhap?),hopefully this chick was at least an ethical slut and only messed around with single people!

w.k commented on 09/16

Yes, but what did you DO?? Sounds like you flirted a lot, but only screwed two people in one and a half years. Either there is more to the story and you need more space to tell it, or there there was very little to the story (two people in 18 months is dry) and you've filled too much space already. How about some details about what happened physically instead of what it all felt like inside your head?

NNYA commented on 09/17

In the restaurant business, it happens every hour or so. I would have to agree that it happens just as much in the business world too. But it takes certain people to go for it. Not everyone has the balls to mess with someone at work. In the business world it happens, but with all the sexual harassment rules it just keeps it all on the down-low. Sounds like she was just making her job a little more interesting. Nothing wrong with that.

SB commented on 09/20

okay, that was a lot leading up to almost nothing, so vague and scattered the writing style was good, but content-wise it needed more

mt commented on 09/24

loved this

ja commented on 10/16

Wonderful diversion.

MAD commented on 10/16

This was surprisingly well-written, for Hooksexup. Between the comments from people complaining it was gross, slutty, and tacky, and those saying it was not revealing or climactic enough, I'd say the content was just about right. Aside from the whole situation kind of screaming low-self-esteem, maybe.

SG commented on 10/16

The problem wasn't that it was slutty. The problem is that it was drearily normal but for it to merit consideration and value from Hooksexup it had to be dressed up as slutty and that was poorly done. Hooksexup - celebrating the slut under the guise of saying something worthwhile about love and culture.

NN commented on 10/18

Why do you see this as Hooksexup celebrating anything? Hooksexup is just presenting one person's point of view.

pp commented on 10/18

PP - Are you reading the same website I am? All Hooksexup does is talk about casual sex. they laugh at it when its bad, trumpet it when it is good and generally the only articles about commitment or monogamy are couched in terms of how boring and unnatural such unions are.

NN commented on 10/19
 

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