At Least We Have Good Weather: A Life of Love and Loss

Chapter 10

My friend and former ICON colleague, Paul, and I started at this new Intekom help-desk in March 2000, eager to please and prove our worth. However within our first few days, we both had the Arrested Development feeling of "I've made a huge mistake". In fact, we were almost fired in our first few weeks as we accidentally sent out a private email conversation (seemingly between us) to the entire company about how much we hated it there. BIG mistake...although I still think it was sabotage!

A warning later and we knuckled down and made a pretty decent career for ourselves there over the years.

It was the new millennium and having started a new job, I was young, single and up for anything. Or so I kept telling myself. I had had work crushes before, but none that ever went further than an instant chat flirting session, or friendly coffee. This new job was miserable for a few reasons, but I did have an unexpected encounter with a colleague, Bayley.

She was an outspoken girl, but a real sweetheart, and I could never really tell how serious her flirting with me was, because she was the kind of girl who was always hugging other guys in the office. Those are always confusing to me, especially since I'm not a hugger.

Anyways, over the months our flirting progressed to the point where we were almost daring each other just to see how serious the other one was. She went on about how she liked me more than a friend, but because of the work thing she didn't want to take it further. I was cool with that, but then a suggestion was made that maybe we just needed to try spending time together away from the office.

We both lived far apart and our only common place seemed to be work, so that suggestion seemed to fall away just as quickly as it was brought up. I innocently mentioned I lived 15 minutes away from the office, and we started joking about popping out for a lunchtime "quickie" just to satisfy our needs.

The joking soon turned into a negotiation... would people be suspicious if we went on lunch at the same time? What could REALLY be done in a lunch break? Would it just be awkward afterwards?

These questions could only be answered one way.

We negotiated a day and time, and nervously built up to that moment. When the day arrived, we both came to work looking smart as hell (why I don't know, surely THAT would arouse more suspicion?).

Eventually lunchtime arrived! We set off in my car and made our way to my house, neither of us having a clue of what we actually expected or were prepared to do!

As we sat next to each other on the couch, like two teenagers we began awkwardly kissing and proceeded to fondle each other. Hey this was nice, but is this all we came here to do?

Then in a "what the heck" moment, she undid my pants and stuck her hand in my underwear. I kept thinking to myself "This sh!t just got real!"

I followed suit and slid off her top , and then her pants ...then replicating what I'd seen in the movies, I proceeded to satisfy her orally. (Clearly the movies I had learned this from were pornos). I seemingly did a pretty good job based on the moans and the look on her face...

She attempted to satisfy me in the same way, but didn't quite get the job done (as good as it felt, I admittedly had one eye on the clock...I just didn't realize which one eye).

Somewhat embarrassingly, we both noted that we had better get back to the office, so we quickly got dressed, and hopped back into the car and drove back.

When we got back to the office, a somewhat suspicious boss asked us how was lunch...I instinctively said I had the chicken.

A few awkward days passed and we didn't talk much about it, then at the end of that week she gave me a letter and said please read it at home.

The letter was in an envelope and written on the envelope were the words "The Friend", and yup that's exactly what the letter was about. She preferred to remain friends. I remember reading that letter in traffic and almost rear-ending the person in front of me at the traffic light because I wasn't paying attention. Little did I know that was the only rear-ending that was to come of this experience.

Whatever happened to her? Well, shortly after that she got retrenched, and ended up in a relationship with the cousin of a friend of mine, they got married and had a kid.

I've never seen her since...

Once again, I had no social life of which to speak. Home life wasn't the best and my career was not exactly what I wanted to be doing with my life. It was a difficult time.

I was always quite vocal about wanting to be a writer, and had a fear that I would spend the rest of my days in an industry that bored me to tears

The company even paid for me to study on the side as I completed a Call Centre Manger diploma. They had high hopes for me it seemed, and I was willing to put my dreams aside and show loyalty to them.

Paul moved into the system admin side of things so I didn't hang around him much, and

I, after being screwed over for a team leader position I had worked so hard for, got offered a nifty little position of "trainer" that they created for me. It was one of my favourite jobs I would have over my life, as I got to train staff - which if you've ever been in a training session with me...is fun and educational. I loved the job, I really did, and it really made me think I had turned a corner. Of course, by Burg's Law of Averages, this meant something was bound to go wrong.

Before things went wrong, they went VERY wrong as I met (and hired) Vicki Lee...