Three Co-Workers...

Over my professional life including time in the military, working as a defense contractor and as a DoD civilian, I have had at least a 95 percent success rate in being able to pick out co-workers who I can safely talk to about delicate matters - like sex.  Realistically, in this age of harassment claims, one should never engage in any sort of discussions with co-workers that they would not be completely willing to share with their boss or for that matter, the local press.  This is doubly true for sex with co-workers.  Against this reality, I have pushed the envelop for years, daring to engage willing participants in casual banter about sexual topics, and in some cases going well beyond talk.

This week has been very busy and hectic for me at work, but I have found the time to pause long enough to have some interesting conversations.  Three of these may be worth mentioning.

Co-worker A.  He is a fairly young (mid/late 20's) single guy, straight, who has shared on more than a few occasions details of his random encounters with women. I called him into my office and told him I needed to take a break to de-stress for a few minutes. He said, "what should we talk about?" and I responded "sex".  I then quickly asked him how he felt about porn involving women using strap-ons on their boyfriends.  For a split second he looked down and I could see him start to blush.  I immediately followed up with, "You let that (a girl he mentioned before) do you with a strap-on, didn't you?"  He laughed and then divulged that he allowed a previous girlfriend to use a small vibrator on him, and he absolutely loved it.  I quickly cut him off with, "Well of course; who doesn't enjoy that?"

From there the discussion went on about how things that were so taboo during my youth in the 70's are now fairly accepted by most people these days.  Toward the end of the conversation, I said, "Strictly hypothetically, if I told you I was Bi, would you tell everybody?"  "Oh, no. he responded,  I never share personal things like that."   I quickly  reminded him with a smile, "Of course, that was all just hypothetical you know."  And with that, our openly gay co-worker walked into my office.

C-Worker B: I walked into a cubical down the hall from my office where a nice middle-aged civilian lady sits and she was having a discussion with a young Air Force officer and another civilian guy.  They were talking about movies.  I mentioned that I had recently seen Mulholland Dr and it was terrible.  None of them had heard of it.  I mentioned that there were a few lesbian sex scenes which caused the young officer to perk up and wonder if it was available on NetFlix.  The middle-aged lady then tells us how her friend called her the other day and told her that she had walked out of a movie, Hoover with Leo DiCapprio because it involved men kissing. Almost in unison, me and the two other men in the cubical all said "Big deal!"

The lady went on some weird rant about how the gay people are trying to force it down our throats and push all this gay business on us.  She told us how she thought the show Modern Family was funny until they had to ruin it by showing two men sharing the same bed.  I asked her if she enjoyed Will & Grace or The Ellen Show (I' can be a real dick sometimes).  No, of course she doesn't like those shows.  And, she refuses to watch any movie that includes Jake Gyllenhall or any member of the cast of Brokeback Mountain.  This is a genuinely nice lady who, I guess I had never realized was so overly religious, and I chose not to engage further.  But I did ask her, "What fuckin' century are you living in?" and then left the cubical before she could respond.

Okay, maybe I didn't handle that one so well.

Co-worker C: This is the guy I wrote about sending the note to on FaceBook and him finally responding with the need for us to have lunch and talk.   Over the last week or so, we have not had a minute to talk but when we see each other, he is clearly tickled that we are eventually going to share our secrets. He came into my office and sat down to talk about a few scheduling issues. When we were just about done, I looked at him and asked him if he was surprised by my message on FaceBook.  He laughed and said "No, not at all."  I laughed and said, "so are you saying I look gay?".   "No. he quickly said, But we need to go to lunch and talk so I can confess everything."

Can't wait.